Leor Halevi, Modern Things on Trial: Islam’s Global and Material Reformation in the Age of Rida, 1865–1935 (New Texts Out Now)

Leor Halevi, Modern Things on Trial: Islam’s Global and Material Reformation in the Age of Rida, 1865–1935 (New Texts Out Now)

Leor Halevi, Modern Things on Trial: Islam’s Global and Material Reformation in the Age of Rida, 1865–1935 (New Texts Out Now)

By : Leor Halevi

Leor Halevi, Modern Things on Trial: Islam’s Global and Material Reformation in the Age of Rida, 1865–1935 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019).

Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book?

Leor Halevi (LH): Modern Things on Trial started out as a side project—a quick detour from the path I had been on as a historian of medieval Islam. It is a modern history, as the title suggests, that deals with material objects and legal trials. Twelve years ago, when this detour began, I was a medievalist through and through. My research at the time concerned medieval fatwas relating to foreign trade; my focus was on imported commodities that had given rise to theological conundrums, such as European paper with Christian watermarks. Out of curiosity, I began reading a few modern fatwas about “Western” objects. I turned first to fatwas about gramophones and toilet paper published by a journal that strove to capture the spirit of Islamic enlightenment and lead the movement for Islamic reform, Rashid Rida’s al-Manar, The Lighthouse. What I found there challenged many of the basic notions that I had about Islamic reform in the late imperial period.

Three findings surprised and perplexed me, which motivated me to write a new history of Islam in modernity. First, although these fatwas evaluated European inventions, they seldom referred to Europe. As consumers or as critics of consumption, fatwa seekers who turned to Rida for religious and legal advice wanted to know how to use new products while honoring Islam’s sacred law, the shariʿa. This was a discourse about the religious utility and legality of modern technologies that were already in circulation in Muslim societies, not a discourse about Western innovation and Western dominance. Pondering this fact, I came to realize that Islam’s modern history had been greatly distorted by geopolitical Eurocentric approaches that had exaggerated the significance of “the West” in Muslim thought.

Second, I grew up thinking of the Middle East as a historical region and got trained as a graduate student at Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies to regard the Middle East as my area of study. But when I started to pay attention to the location of al-Manar’s fatwa seekers, I discovered that they were from all over the world yet often faced the same dilemmas and posed similar questions. Indeed, Rida corresponded with inquirers from Brazil, Russia, India, China, and many other countries. In addition, due to trans-imperial trade and economic globalization, these inquirers confronted many of the same material and technological challenges. This made me realize that the story of Islamic reform in this period needed to be reconceived and rewritten not as a regional, but as a global history.

Third, through their books and articles, intellectual and legal historians had taught me to think about Islamic law and Islamic reform in highly abstract ways. I had learned, as everyone in my field also learns, that Rashid Rida contributed to the great chain of ideas that linked Muslim reformers across generations by developing the religious utilitarian philosophy that he inherited from his predecessor Muhammad ʿAbduh. But then I discovered that Rida’s rulings did not derive from the ideas of the reformers of the past; they were responses, often urgent responses, to the critical and pressing concerns of Rida’s contemporaries. And these contemporaries were participants in local debates that included laypersons as well as religious scholars and that centered on things like shellac discs and paper money, not on religious utilitarianism. As I reflected on this, I realized that the history of reformist Islamic ideas needed to consider the influence of laypersons, including fatwa seekers, as well as the role of material pressures and technological objects.

Specifically, these fatwas dealt with toilet paper and gramophone records, which first caught my attention ...

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures does the book address?

LH: The fatwas that it analyzes concerned a wide range of commodities and technologies that stimulated or provoked debates about the rules of the shariah during the transitional period between imperialism and nationalism. Specifically, these fatwas dealt with toilet paper and gramophone records, which first caught my attention, as well as banknotes, telegraphs, lottery tickets, tourist hotels, French trousers, Javanese gongs, British colonial codes of law, and many other things. By analyzing these objects and fatwas historically, the book contributes in the first place to scholarship on Islamic law and scholarship on material culture.

Furthermore, the book directly challenges previous scholarship on Islamic reform, which has focused on elite reformers’ failure to modernize traditions and institutions, by directing our attention instead to a widespread process of religious change that no scholar or circle of scholars had the power to direct. This process is best described as a “material reformation.” Broadly speaking, my book therefore contributes to the history of religious change in the modern period.

J: How does this book connect to and/or depart from your previous work?

LH: On one level, it is a radical departure from my previous work. I indicated earlier that this book started as a medievalist’s detour into modern history. The leap I had to make was a long one. In my first book, Muhammad’s Grave: Death Rites and the Making of Islamic Society (published by Columbia University Press in 2007), I focused on the first two centuries of the Islamic era and analyzed some very early sources: tombstone inscriptions and hadith collections. This was a history of early Muslim funeral practices and ideas about death and the afterlife. In geographic terms, it focused on the Arabian Peninsula and Mesopotamia, especially the cities of Mecca, Medina, Kufa, and Baṣra. My new book, Modern Things on Trial, has nothing to do with death in early Islamic times; it dwells instead on commerce and technology in modernity. And, in geographic terms, it focuses first on Syria under Ottoman rule and Egypt under British rule—in particular on Levantine Tripoli, where Rida was educated, and Cairo, where he established his publishing house and printing press. Then, after mapping the multitude of cities—from Tinogasta, Argentina, to Guangzhou, China—that were linked to al-Manar’s global network, it pays some attention to local circumstances here and there in the world. Thus, the books are remarkably different.

That said, there are a few common threads. Both of my books deal with the construction of Islamic law in relation to material culture and everyday life. Both concentrate on the social practice of religion and suggest that a wide range of social actors, not just the ulema, contributed to Islam’s formation or reformation. And, despite their focus on different historical periods, both dwell on times when pious Muslims found it imperative to search deeply for a distinct religious identity vis-à-vis non-Muslims.

J: Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

LH: I do not want to dream or speculate about its future impact, but I am tremendously pleased that you asked to interview me because Jadaliyya’s readers are in many ways ideal readers.

Before explaining why, I should say that to write Modern Things on Trial I used diverse research methods to analyze a great variety of sources, so hopefully it will appeal to a diverse readership. The book is far more than a history of one reformer’s fatwas. As one reviewer remarked, it “deploys everything from shipping records to department store catalogues to properly situate the material transformation of the Muslim world.” It makes original contributions to the history of Islamic law, Islamic reform, and the making of Salafism, as well as to the cultural and economic history of Egypt during its transition from British oversight to national independence. I expect that readers who are passionate about any of these subjects will turn to the book. In addition, I hope that the book will attract readers who are curious about the history of modern Islam in relation to material culture, technology, commerce, imperialism, and globalization.

Jadaliyya’s readers may be especially interested in it, however, for a few reasons. My book deals with a magazine that might well be described as “the Jadaliyya of the last century.” Al-Manar was a pioneering Arabic magazine of the era of print that circulated worldwide. It shunned classified advertisements, unlike most other daily, weekly, and monthly journals printed at the time in Cairo. And its sections (its news roundup, book reviews, Qurʾan commentary, and fatwa columns) were very much the product of debate; they reflected disputes and at times engendered great controversy. In addition, if the readers of this magazine have a special interest in the value of Arabic, then they should find the analysis of Rida’s legal and religious communications intriguing. He communicated—in Arabic—with Russian, Indian, and Chinese Muslims who had learned Arabic as a second or third language as well as with petitioners from the Middle East and the Arab diaspora in South America and Southeast Asia. This is impressive, since it suggests al-Manar’s astonishing reach. But what I would like to point out is that most histories of globalization in the age of Rida are based on primary sources written in the languages of European colonialism: English, French, Dutch, etc. Modern Things on Trial is very much about global exchange and global communications, but it rather features Arab-Islamic perspectives and interconnections.

J: What other projects are you working on now?

LH: I am putting finishing touches on two articles and working on my next book. One of these articles is about ultramodern technological innovations that relate to Muslim rituals of worship; the second analyzes a debate between Rashid Rida and an obscure Indian mufti concerning alcohol, ritual impurity, and political power. And my next book, now under contract with Harvard University Press, is a kind of sequel to Modern Things on Trial. It will focus on Najdi Salafism, global exchange, and the fatwas of Bin Baz.



Excerpt from the book (from the introduction)

Good Things Made Lawful:

Euro-Muslim Objects and Laissez-Faire Fatwas

Around 1940 Muḥammad Shafīʿ, an interpreter of Islamic law from a seminary in British India, wrote a fatwa to persuade his followers to resist a new foreign commodity—the synthetic toothbrush. He wanted Muslims to brush their teeth with a miswāk, a type of tooth-cleaning twig used by those who wanted to imitate the practice of the Prophet Muḥammad, rather than with a toothbrush, “nowadays usually made of pig-hair.” A Japanese company had recently introduced the synthetic alternative into the colony. It had the grand ambition to sell its pork-free product in what multinational corporations would eventually call “the global Islamic market.” Competition soon followed from an American firm that began to advertise Dr. West’s Miracle-Tufts, equipped with the now familiar nylon bristles, at home and abroad. Under different brands, the product quickly spread across the world. Its early adoption by Muslim consumers in India is what inspired a circle of wary disciples in the seminary to inquire about its legality.

Their attitude is easy to understand historically when we consider that they belonged to a revivalist movement that arose in the wake of the rebellion of 1857. This was the great uprising that began with the “mutiny” of the East India Company’s Muslim and Hindu soldiers, who were spurred to action by the rumor that the paper cartridges for their new Enfield rifle-muskets had been lubricated with the fat of forbidden animals. Since the military drill required biting the cartridges to extract the bullet, this was all the more upsetting. Within a decade of their momentous rebellion, disenchanted religious scholars established the first of many Deobandi madrasas: retreats where seminarians spurned the metropolitan English curriculum and colonial British culture to concentrate instead on the cultivation of Islamic orthodoxy and orthopraxy. Since this discipline required purging foreign corruptions from everyday life, Muḥammad Shafīʿ had every reason to reject boar-bristle if not synthetic toothbrushes and to recommend instead the genuine Islamic article.

This is a book about the trials of modern goods—from the toothbrush to the telegraph—under Islam’s sacred law. It focuses closely on many strange and wonderful new things: gramophone records, brimmed hats, tailored trousers, lottery tickets, paper money, gigantic gongs, and even toilet paper. These things provoked religious conundrums as they crossed cultural and political frontiers in a transitional period at the end of the imperial era. Scattered in diverse colonies, protectorates, mandates, and rising nations, Muslim societies under European hegemony nevertheless shared one powerful experience: they all encountered an astonishing array of novelties fabricated overseas. With early adoption and rising consumption came riveting communal debates. Pious actors at times demanded the banishment of foreign products to the other side of that invisible boundary that separated the lawful from the forbidden. But the day’s most pressing discussions were not about technological innovation in the abstract, the imperial ideology of free trade, or the meaning of modernity. They were far more concrete. Muslims specifically wanted to know if their divine scriptures sanctioned particular interactions with particular goods. They turned to arbiters of the sacred law, who responded with ad hoc fatwas: casuistic sentences that pronounced the objects and actions on trial economically advantageous or socially harmful, conducive to piety or suggestive of infidelity, and—in the final analysis—admirable or abominable.

The fatwas that this book focuses on were published by al-Manār, or The Lighthouse, a magazine that promised, by its very name, an Enlightenment. Printed in Cairo by an Arabic press, this monthly magazine grew famous during its run in the early twentieth century. Despite its modest circulation, it earned a global readership. The Ottoman Syrian cleric who founded it in 1898, shortly after he immigrated to Egypt under British suzerainty, was the entrepreneurial religious reformer Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā, a critical figure in modern Islam’s history. He edited al-Manār and issued its “enlightening” fatwas until his death in 1935. An admirer of modern inventions, he would never have asked his urbane Muslim readers to surrender their artificial toothbrushes and take up Salvadora persica twigs.

His fatwas matter because they show how advocates for Islam’s reform as well as their opponents responded to a changing material and technological environment. Modern things of foreign origin had a profound impact on Muslim societies in the late imperial and early nationalist periods, stimulating religious reflections on the new world of goods. Rather than taking everything for granted, laypersons pondered things discriminately. They wondered about the role and place of new objects in an ideal Islamic society. With their everyday questions about novelties, they breathed new life into a moribund legal genre; they helped to turn the fatwa, in the age of print, into an exciting vehicle for trans-imperial Islamic communications.

Pressed to judge European commodities and technologies that had become objects of controversy, Riḍā repeatedly argued that Islam’s law presented few, if any, barriers to trade, consumption, and adoption. His liberalizing rulings were justified by a method of legal interpretation that privileged scriptural precedents (verses from the Qurʾan, narratives from the Ḥadīth) and ancestral paragons (idealized accounts of early Islamic heroes known as the Salaf). I call this method “laissez-faire Salafism.” By this technical term, I basically want to describe Riḍā’s prosperity gospel: the good tidings, which he spread far and wide, that adherence to the shariʿa’s original spirit would empower modern Muslims to overcome hardship and rise to affluence. This was the ethos of the economically liberal movement of Islamic reform that arose under the aegis of the Empire of Free Trade. It manifested itself in an incipient form in Cairo around 1900, at a booming time in the city’s history, and then developed over time as its adherents, including Riḍā, elaborated upon its inchoate propositions under changing material, social, and political conditions. Emerging before the elaboration of “Islamic economics” as a postcolonial discipline for Muslim nation-states, it had one central goal: to interpret and invoke scriptures, the Qurʾan and the Ḥadīth, as well as the principles of the Salaf, the exemplars of a golden age, in order to bless “the good things” (al-ṭayyibāt) that came from factories abroad.

New Texts Out Now: Mandy Turner and Cherine Hussein, guest eds. "Israel-Palestine after Oslo: Mapping Transformations in a Time of Deepening Crisis." Special Issue of Conflict, Security & Development

Conflict, Security and Development, Volume 15, No. 5 (December 2015) Special issue: "Israel-Palestine after Oslo: Mapping Transformations in a Time of Deepening Crisis," Guest Editors: Mandy Turner and Cherine Hussein.

Jadaliyya (J): What made you compile this volume?

Mandy Turner (MT): Both the peace process and the two-state solution are dead. Despite more than twenty years of negotiations, Israel’s occupation, colonization and repression continue–and the political and geographical fragmentation of the Palestinian people is proceeding apace.

This is not news, nor is it surprising to any keen observer of the situation. But what is surprising–and thus requires explanation – is the resilience of the Oslo framework and paradigm: both objectively and subjectively. It operates objectively as a straitjacket by trapping Palestinians in economic and security arrangements that are designed to ensure stabilization and will not to lead to sovereignty or a just and sustainable solution. And it operates subjectively as a straitjacket by shutting out discussion of alternative ways of understanding the situation and ways out of the impasse. The persistence of this framework that is focused on conflict management and stabilization, is good for Israel but bad for Palestinians.

The Oslo peace paradigm–of a track-one, elite-level, negotiated two-state solution–is therefore in crisis. And yet it is entirely possible that the current situation could continue for a while longer–particularly given the endorsement and support it enjoys from the major Western donors and the “international community,” as well as the fact that there has been no attempt to develop an alternative. The immediate short-term future is therefore bleak.

Guided by these observations, this special issue sought to undertake two tasks. The first task was to analyze the perceptions underpinning the Oslo framework and paradigm as well as some of the transformations instituted by its implementation: why is it so resilient, what has it created? The second task, which follows on from the first, was then to ask: how can we reframe our understanding of what is happening, what are some potential alternatives, and who is arguing and mobilizing for them?

These questions and themes grew out of a number of conversations with early-career scholars – some based at the Kenyon Institute in East Jerusalem, and some based in the occupied Palestinian territory and elsewhere. These conversations led to two interlinked panels at the International Studies Association annual convention in Toronto, Canada, in March 2014. To have two panels accepted on “conflict transformation and resistance in Palestine” at such a conventional international relations conference with (at the time unknown) early-career scholars is no mean feat. The large and engaged audience we received at these panels – with some very established names coming along (one of whom contributed to this special issue) – convinced us that this new stream of scholars and scholarship should have an outlet.  

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures do the articles address?

MT: The first half of the special issue analyzes how certain problematic assumptions shaped the Oslo framework, and how the Oslo framework in turn shaped the political, economic and territorial landscape.

Virginia Tilley’s article focuses on the paradigm of conflict resolution upon which the Oslo Accords were based, and calls for a re-evaluation of what she argues are the two interlinked central principles underpinning its worldview: internationally accepted notions of Israeli sovereignty; and the internationally accepted idea that the “conflict” is essentially one between two peoples–the “Palestinian people” and the “Jewish people”. Through her critical interrogation of these two “common sense” principles, Tilley proposes that the “conflict” be reinterpreted as an example of settler colonialism, and, as a result of this, recommends an alternative conflict resolution model based on a paradigm shift away from an ethno-nationalist division of the polity towards a civic model of the nation.

Tariq Dana unpacks another central plank of the Oslo paradigm–that of promoting economic relations between Israel and the OPT. He analyses this through the prism of “economic peace” (particularly the recent revival of theories of “capitalist peace”), whose underlying assumptions are predicated on the perceived superiority of economic approaches over political approaches to resolving conflict. Dana argues that there is a symbiosis between Israeli strategies of “economic peace” and recent Palestinian “statebuilding strategies” (referred to as Fayyadism), and that both operate as a form of pacification and control because economic cooperation leaves the colonial relationship unchallenged.

The political landscape in the OPT has been transformed by the Oslo paradigm, particularly by the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Alaa Tartir therefore analyses the basis, agenda and trajectory of the PA, particularly its post-2007 state building strategy. By focusing on the issue of local legitimacy and accountability, and based on fieldwork in two sites in the occupied West Bank (Balata and Jenin refugee camps), Tartir concludes that the main impact of the creation of the PA on ordinary people’s lives has been the strengthening of authoritarian control and the hijacking of any meaningful visions of Palestinian liberation.

The origin of the administrative division between the West Bank and Gaza Strip is the focus of Tareq Baconi’s article. He charts how Hamas’s initial opposition to the Oslo Accords and the PA was transformed over time, leading to its participation (and success) in the 2006 legislative elections. Baconi argues that it was the perceived demise of the peace process following the collapse of the Camp David discussions that facilitated this change. But this set Hamas on a collision course with Israel and the international community, which ultimately led to the conflict between Hamas and Fateh, and the administrative division, which continues to exist.

The special issue thereafter focuses, in the second section, on alternatives and resistance to Oslo’s transformations.

Cherine Hussein’s article charts the re-emergence of the single-state idea in opposition to the processes of separation unleashed ideologically and practically that were codified in the Oslo Accords. Analysing it as both a movement of resistance and as a political alternative to Oslo, while recognizing that it is currently largely a movement of intellectuals (particularly of diaspora Palestinians and Israelis), Hussein takes seriously its claim to be a more just and liberating alternative to the two-state solution.

My article highlights the work of a small but dedicated group of anti-Zionist Jewish-Israeli activists involved in two groups: Zochrot and Boycott from Within. Both groups emerged in the post-Second Intifada period, which was marked by deep disillusionment with the Oslo paradigm. This article unpacks the alternative – albeit marginalized – analysis, solution and route to peace proposed by these groups through the application of three concepts: hegemony, counter-hegemony and praxis. The solution, argue the activists, lies in Israel-Palestine going through a process of de-Zionization and decolonization, and the process of achieving this lies in actions in solidarity with Palestinians.

This type of solidarity action is the focus of the final article by Suzanne Morrison, who analyses the “We Divest” campaign, which is the largest divestment campaign in the US and forms part of the wider Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Through attention to their activities and language, Morrison shows how “We Divest”, with its networked, decentralized, grassroots and horizontal structure, represents a new way of challenging Israel’s occupation and the suppression of Palestinian rights.

The two parts of the special issue are symbiotic: the critique and alternative perspectives analyzed in part two are responses to the issues and problems identified in part one.

J: How does this volume connect to and/or depart from your previous work?

MT: My work focuses on the political economy of donor intervention (which falls under the rubric of “peacebuilding”) in the OPT, particularly a critique of the Oslo peace paradigm and framework. This is a product of my broader conceptual and historical interest in the sociology of intervention as a method of capitalist expansion and imperial control (as explored in “The Politics of International Intervention: the Tyranny of Peace”, co-edited with Florian Kuhn, Routledge, 2016), and how post-conflict peacebuilding and development agendas are part of this (as explored in “Whose Peace: Critical Perspectives on the Political Economy of Peacebuilding”, co-edited with Michael Pugh and Neil Cooper (PalgraveMacmillan, 2008).  

My first book on Palestine (co-edited with Omar Shweiki), Decolonizing Palestinian Political Economy: De-development and Beyond (PalgraveMacmillan, 2014), was a collection of essays by experts in their field, of the political-economic experience of different sections of the Palestinian community. The book, however, aimed to reunite these individual experiences into one historical political-economy narrative of a people experiencing a common theme of dispossession, disenfranchisement and disarticulation. It was guided by the desire to critically assess the utility of the concept of de-development to different sectors and issues–and had a foreword by Sara Roy, the scholar who coined the term, and who was involved in the workshop from which the book emerged.

This co-edited special issue (with Cherine Hussein, who, at the time of the issue construction, was the deputy director of the Kenyon Institute) was therefore the next logical step in my research on Palestine, although my article on Jewish-Israeli anti-Zionists did constitute a slight departure from my usual focus.

J: Who do you hope will read this volume, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

MT: I would imagine the main audience will be those whose research and political interests lie in Palestine Studies. It is difficult, given the structure of academic publishing – which has become ever more corporate and money grabbing – for research outputs such as this to be accessed by the general public. Only those with access to academic libraries are sure to be able to read it – and this is a travesty, in my opinion. To counteract this commodification of knowledge, we should all provide free access to our outputs through online open source websites such as academia.edu, etc. If academic research is going to have an impact beyond merely providing more material for teaching and background reading for yet more research (which is inaccessible to the general public) then this is essential. Websites such as Jadaliyya are therefore incredibly important.

Having said all that, I am under no illusions about the potential for ANY research on Israel-Palestine to contribute to changing the dynamics of the situation. However, as a collection of excellent analyses conducted by mostly early-career scholars in the field of Palestine studies, I am hopeful that their interesting and new perspectives will be read and digested. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

MT: I am currently working on an edited volume provisionally entitled From the River to the Sea: Disintegration, Reintegration and Domination in Israel and Palestine. This book is the culmination of a two-year research project funded by the British Academy, which analyzed the impacts of the past twenty years of the Oslo peace framework and paradigm as processes of disintegration, reintegration and domination – and how they have created a new socio-economic and political landscape, which requires new agendas and frameworks. I am also working on a new research project with Tariq Dana at Birzeit University on capital and class in the occupied West Bank.

Excerpt from the Editor’s Note 

[Note: This issue was published in Dec. 2015]

Initially perceived to have inaugurated a new era of hope in the search for peace and justice in Palestine-Israel, the Oslo peace paradigm of a track one, elite-level, negotiated two-state solution is in crisis today, if not completely at an end.

While the major Western donors and the ‘international community’ continue to publicly endorse the Oslo peace paradigm, Israeli and Palestinian political elites have both stepped away from it. The Israeli government has adopted what appears to be an outright rejection of the internationally-accepted end-goal of negotiations, i.e. the emergence of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital. In March 2015, in the final days of his re-election campaign, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, visited the Jewish settlement of Har Homa in Palestinian East Jerusalem, which is regarded as illegal under international law. Reminding its inhabitants that it was him and his Likud government that had established the settlement in 1997 as part of the Israeli state’s vision of a unified indivisible Jerusalem, he promised to expand the construction of settlements in East Jerusalem if re-elected. And in an interview with Israeli news site, NRG, Netanyahu vowed that the prospects of a Palestinian state were non-existent as long as he remained in office. Holding on to the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), he argued, was necessary to ensure Israel’s security in the context of regional instability and Islamic extremism. It is widely acknowledged that Netanyahu’s emphasis on Israel’s security—against both external and internal enemies—gave him a surprise win in an election he was widely expected to lose.

Despite attempts to backtrack under recognition that the US and European states are critical of this turn in official Israeli state policy, Netanyahu’s promise to bury the two-state solution in favour of a policy of further annexation has become the Israeli government’s official intent, and has been enthusiastically endorsed by leading ministers and key advisers.

[…]

The Palestinian Authority (PA) based in the West Bank also appears to have rejected a key principle of the Oslo peace paradigm—that of bilateral negotiations under the supervision of the US. Despite a herculean effort by US Secretary of State, John Kerry, to bring the two parties to the negotiating table, in response to the lack of movement towards final status issues and continued settlement expansion (amongst other issues), the Palestinian political elite have withdrawn from negotiations and resumed attempts to ‘internationalise the struggle’ by seeking membership of international organisations such as the United Nations (UN), and signing international treaties such as the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court. This change of direction is part of a rethink in the PA and PLO’s strategy rooted in wider discussions and debates. The publication of a document by the Palestine Strategy Study Group (PSSG) in August 2008, the production of which involved many members of the Palestinian political elite (and whose recommendations were studiously discussed at the highest levels of the PA and PLO), showed widespread discontent with the bilateral negotiations framework and suggested ways in which Palestinians could ‘regain the initiative’.

[…]

And yet despite these changes in official Palestinian and Israeli political strategies that signal a deepening of the crisis, donors and the ‘international community’ are reluctant to accept the failure of the Oslo peace paradigm. This political myopia has meant the persistence of a framework that is increasingly divorced from the possibility of a just and sustainable peace. It is also acting as an ideological straitjacket by shutting out alternative interpretations. This special issue seeks a way out of this political and intellectual dead end. In pursuit of this, our various contributions undertake what we regard to be two key tasks: first, to critically analyse the perceptions underpinning the Oslo paradigm and the transformations instituted by its implementation; and second, to assess some alternative ways of understanding the situation rooted in new strategies of resistance that have emerged in the context of these transformations in the post-Oslo landscape.

[…]

Taken as a whole, the articles in this special issue aim to ignite conversations on the conflict that are not based within abstracted debates that centre upon the peace process itself—but that begin from within the realities and geographies of both the continually transforming land of Palestine-Israel and the voices, struggles, worldviews and imaginings of the future of the people who presently inhabit it. For it is by highlighting these transformations, and from within these points of beginning, that we believe more hopeful pathways for alternative ways forward can be collectively imagined, articulated, debated and built.