Middle Eastern Politics

تستعرض المقال  ملامح الاهتمام الرئاسي في مصر بفئة الشباب، وأبرز المبادرات التي تبنتها أجهزة الدولة، وأفرزها المناخ العام المصاحب لها، مع محاولة تقييم مدى فعاليتها، وتقديم مقترحات بشأن الآليات، والخطوات اللازمة في الفترة القادمة لتفعيل تلك الجهود، والحد من أوجه القصور. وهى تصل إلى نتيجة أن الفترة التالية لثورة 30 يونيو 2013 قد شهدت عدة مؤشرات دالة على ازدياد دمج الشباب في الحياة العامة، وعلى اهتمام نظام الرئيس عبد الفتاح السيسي بالشباب ليس بوصفهم فقط أداة لتعزيز شرعية نظام الحكم، وحمايته من أية اضطرابات أو هزات سياسية كما كانت تنظر النظم السابقة بل لكونهم أحد أهم الموارد التي يمكن أن تحقق التنمية المنشودة. إلا أن تلك المؤشرات الجادة لم تخل من تداعيات غير مقصودة تتطلب المزيد من تنسيق الجهود لدعم التوجه العام نحو دمج الشباب في الحركة الكلية للمجتمع.

Believers say he preaches a new, modern form of Islam. Critics charge he is a power hungry wolf in sheep's clothing preparing to convert secular Turkey into an Islamic republic; a conspirator who has created a state within the state and attempted this weekend to topple democratically elected Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a failed military coup.

That was not how past Turkish governments or for that matter Mr. Erdogan in his first eight years as prime minister saw Fethullalh Gulen, the leader of one of the world’s largest and wealthiest Islamic movements.

Bahrain’s Royal Family, the Al Khalifa, has long pursued a strategy of divide and rule in order to prevent the emergence of cross-opposition coalitions, while exacerbating the country’s sectarian divide has become a critical means of ensuring regime survival. This article examines the country’s twentieth century imperial and post-independence history through the framework of divide and rule theory, providing crucial context for current events in Bahrain. It demonstrates how a divide and rule strategy is structurally embedded within the ruling family’s mode of governance, and reveals how it continues to be employed as an effective means of maintaining absolute monarchy in Bahrain.

Keywords: Bahrain, Arab Spring, Gulf Cooperation Council, divide and rule, sectarianism

The Islamic Dawa Party was the first modern Islamist group to be formed in Iraq. It went through a long struggle with the Iraqi government that resulted in its banning by the Baathists, open warfare with Saddam Hussein’s regime, which forced it to go underground, and led many of its members to go into exile. Below is an interview with Dr. Rodger Shanahan, a former officer in the Australian army and senior adviser in the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs. He is currently a non-resident fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy who specializes in the Middle East. Dr. Shanahan goes through the history of the Dawa Party, and how that has shaped the worldview of Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

First published in Buzzle on 16th August 2006

Republished on the same day here:
http://sudaneseonline.com/en2/publish/Articles_and_Analysies_12/Sudan_s_Beja_Blemmyes_and_their_Right_to_Freedom_a_929.shtml

Republished on 23rd August 2006 and discussed in the forum below:
http://www.politicsforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=62793
At the moment the misinformed international community plans to spend so easily US $ 3 billion for Lebanon's reconstruction, it is essential to highlight that much less money would be enough to bring peace in the strategically crucial area of Eastern Sudan where the Blemmyes / Beja have started their struggle for self-determination and independence. Support to historically indigenous Beja would bring the Khartoum tyrants at the brink of collapse, opening the path of independence for the oppressed peoples of Sudan, and at the same time it would reshape the entire area of the Red Sea where historical nations demand international recognition.

Il aura suffi de l’annonce par le gouvernement d’une taxe sur l’application de messagerie WhatsApp pour qu’éclate un mouvement de contestation populaire inédit dans l’histoire du Liban contemporain. En ce 17 octobre 2019, trente années après l’accord de Taëf, censé mettre un terme à la Guerre du Liban et permettre au pays exsangue de renaître de ses cendres, une limite est franchie. Des citoyens en colère se rassemblent sur une des artères principales de Beyrouth, le pont du Ring Fouad Chehab, jadis ligne de démarcation entre l’Est et l’Ouest de la capitale. Très vite, les grandes places de la ville répercutent l’onde de choc dans un élan spontané assimilé à un sursaut, à une prise de conscience fulgurante.
Il va sans dire que ce ras-le-bol cache un mal plus profond. Celui-ci prend racine dans les graves dysfonctionnements qui sévissent depuis la fin des hostilités armées en 1990 et l’installation de la tutelle syrienne. La fin de cette dernière, suite à l’assassinat de l’ancien Premier ministre Rafic Hariri en 2005, laisse la place à une crise de pouvoir et à une paralysie politique nées des rivalités inter et intra-communautaires sur fond de corruption généralisée et institutionnalisée (y compris au sein du pouvoir judiciaire), de clientélisme et d’impunité qui ont marqué les années 1992-2005. L’afflux massif des réfugiés syriens fuyant la guerre qui se généralise en Syrie à partir de 2012, exerce une très forte pression sur les ressources du pays, d’autant plus que les réfugié…

The Iraq War’s enduring conflict has proven resilient in its on-and-off relationship with the US and international forces occupying.  Streamlining a more sustainable counterinsurgency plan remains a critical link to securing stability designed to promote Iraqi nation-rebuilding efforts.  While the smart power approach to foreign policy has yet to realize its potential full effect, recruitment of younger generations into recurrent violence via Islamist co-optation persists with threat to bleed across the region.  Military, diplomatic and politically weighed strategies struggle to contain the violence by advancing innovative methods to counter and disengage while supporting Iraqi democracy, not altogether unlike US operations in Afghanistan.  COIN directive requires in-depth analysis of the socialization of teenage youth as they undertake transnational violence into adulthood.  Nation building through better concerted and inclusive effort of relief, intelligence, military and policymaking drive is the key to tapping the potential of next generation Iraqis as immediate and future leaders.  Youth at risk raised with a history of violence will otherwise require constant intervention.  Policy transition moving towards internal stability and an exit strategy has the resources to launch effective social programming for political infrastructure and business strategy to guide better negotiation in resource and conflict management.  Media’s role in promoting proactive social networks promises to be a game-changer for ground game where youth are enabled to access it.  International support and inter-alia networking then remain to be fully realized if Iraq and the US are to emerge from the war in two pieces.

NOTE: EMBARGOED BY PUBLISHER.  The latest edition of this renowned textbook explores the states and regimes of the Middle East and North Africa. Presenting heavily revised, fully updated chapters contributed by the world’s leading experts, it analyzes the historical trajectory, political institutions, economic development, and foreign policies of the region’s nearly two dozen countries. The volume can be used in conjunction with its sister volume, The Societies of the Middle East and North Africa, for a comprehensive overview of the region.  The chapters are organized and structured identically, giving insightful windows into the nuances of each country’s domestic politics and foreign relations. Data tables and extensive annotated bibliographies orient readers towards further research. In sum, the book provides the most comprehensive and detailed overview of the region’s varied politics available for prospective readers, travelers, journalists, scholars, and policymakers who need usable knowledge about the MENA region.

NOTE: EMBARGOED BY PUBLISHER.  This new regional anthology explores the societies and populations of the Middle East and North Africa. Presenting original chapters written by the world’s leading Middle East scholars, it analyzes the social fabric of the region’s varied countries to uncover the organizing structures, human vulnerabilities, and dynamic forces that shape everyday lives. It provides the historical and cultural context necessary for understanding the peoples inhabiting Arab world, Israel, Turkey, and Iran since the early twentieth century. Linking past to present to future, it also ascertains the ongoing developmental trajectories of these societies, including their overall stability and prosperity. The chapters are clearly structured, and contain insightful case studies, illustrative photographs, and visualized data. They also end with discussion questions and annotated bibliographies to help spark further research.  It is an invaluable companion for students of Middle Eastern politics, as well as sociology, history, economics and anthropology.

Diyala can be said to be a microcosm of Iraq. It is the home to all three major ethnosectarian groups in the country. It has lush farmlands and mountain ranges. It also remains a battlefield between the security forces, militias and the insurgency today. In 2005 Richard Buchanan worked there as a defense contractor interrogating prisoners where he saw first hand the early stages of the civil war. Here is an interview with Buchanan about how the Iraqi insurgency was organized, what the militias did in response, and how the Americans were caught in the middle.

This paper proposes and illustrates a framework for analysis of the recent events in Middle Eastern and North African countries (the so-called Arab Spring) by bringing into dialogue recent theoretical advances in democratization theory with the comparative-historical literature on the political development of the MENA region. We advocate two analytical shifts from conventional approaches in the analysis of the Arab Spring: first, reconsider the temporalities of democratization processes; second, focus on struggles over specific institutional arenas rather than over the regime as a whole. The former recommendation draws attention both to the strategies used by key actors in the political, economic, and civil society spheres, and to the historical legacies that built the influence and resources of these actors over time. The latter allows us to consider the institutional safeguards for old elites that are likely to be included in the post-authoritarian regimes emerging in the region. Even though some of these safeguards are clearly anti-democratic, historical examples show that they do not necessarily preclude democratization. Indeed, in some cases, their introduction might be necessary to achieve democratic openings in other arenas. We illustrate these theoretical points with reference to the case of Egypt.

Mark Kukis worked as a journalist for Time magazine in Iraq from 2006-2009. That covered the peak of the civil war. During those years it was hard to get around the country, and even harder to talk to any Iraqis out of fear that they might be killed for being seen with an America. In January 2009, when the sectarian conflict had faded, Kukis got the idea to put together an oral history of Iraq, inspired by The Good War by Studs Terkel. Unlike the vast majority of books on the subject, this would not be a story told by the Americans, but rather one by the Iraqis themselves, something that has largely been missing from most of the reporting on the country. Using the Iraqi staff at Time, he was able to interview dozens and dozens of Iraqis from all parts of Iraq except for Kurdistan, because it largely escaped the civil war. These were put together in his 2011 book Voices From Iraq, A People’s History,2003-2009. Below is an interview with Kukis about his motivation, and some of the amazing stories he heard. This adds an important chapter to the Iraq War, because it includes the Iraqi perspective of the struggles that they went through during the U.S. invasion, the insurgency, and the subsequent civil conflict.

Iran's ballistic arsenal is one of the largest in the Middle East, and, according to the Director of National Intelligence, many of Iran's missiles are "inherently capable of carrying a nuclear payload" (Hildreth, 2012). Iran has made important technical strides in recent years with regard to missile development: it has successfully placed three satellites into low earth orbit using its own two-stage launch vehicles. It has built and successfully tested multi-stage missiles with improved long-range guidance, diversified fuel capabilities, and accuracy. These developments allow Iran to extend the range of its missiles and to deploy and fire them more quickly within a short time span. Iran has also worked to ensure the survivability of its missiles, mobile launching capabilities, and deployment to newly built silos. The objective of this study is to understand the dynamics of Iran's missile program, particularly in the scenario of its implication on the Middle East. Qualitative and analytical techniques have been utilized to produce effective reading for the research scholars and academicians.

It is now more than 30 years since the publication of Edward W. Said’s seminal text Orientalism. With his discourse analysis of an astounding number of academic, bureaucratic and literary texts from the colonial period, Said was able to demonstrate that the western colonial project was premised on a matrix of interdependent discourses, institutions and practices, which he termed ‘orientalism’. The net output of such orientalism was an ideological fantasy, a fantasy that bore no relation to the reality and complexity of non-european society with its myriad cultures, religions, peoples, customs and histories. Instead, orientalism has served to homogenize, demonize and stereotype the non-european world according to fairly reductive and negative terms, so that the oriental was viewed as the ‘other’. Clearly the unquestioned tendency to view the people of the orient as eficient and inferior ‘others’ served the colonial agenda of continuing to dominate and control sections of the East.

One cannot overstate the significance and impact of orientalism. Indeed, in the years that followed, Said’s work was both contested and applied by a whole range of different disciplines including middle-east studies, media analyses, international relations and history. It has also spawned an entirely new sub-discipline known as postcolonial studies. What has long been missing in the field of research is a sustained engagement with Said’s work from the perspective of defence studies and military history.

The 2011 Arab uprisings were initially hailed by many observers in the Western world as the harbinger of a “modern” Middle East. Finally, it was believed, the hegemony of corrupt autocrats and the prolonged “dark age” of the Arab world were coming to an end. In the context of this narrative, the so-called Turkish model gained popularity as a potential guide for the modernization of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Accordingly, modernization has been defined as the inevitable path to a liberal democratic, free-market capitalist, and secular society within non-Western settings. This conceptualization is highly Eurocentric as the contents of modernization are solely limited to the contemporary characteristics of social, economic, and political life in Western Europe and Northern America.

This study criticizes much of the literature on the Arab uprisings, arguing that the excessive enthusiasm shown by Western mainstream media and governments toward the promotion of the Turkish model reveals the limits of their understanding of the complexities of MENA societies and polities. Modernization is actually a highly customizable path whose nature is determined mainly by the contingent socioeconomic and political characteristics of each country. Therefore, in order to develop a generalizable understanding of modernization in the MENA region and beyond, the Eurocentrism of mainstream literature needs to be replaced with more flexible frameworks such as the ones developed in recent years by proponents of postcolonialism, multiple modernities paradigm, and the uneven and combined development theory.

The idea of Arab unity is based on the integration of some or all of the Arab states into one political and economic framework and the removal of political boundaries between them, forming a single state, entity, or region with a strong political, economic, military and human character. However, despite the fact that the Arab League is one of the oldest regional organizations in the world, yet the Middle East has remained a region of conflict and instability and it has failed to create viable regional structures.

While Saudi Arabia’s role as a counter-revolutionary force in the Middle East is widely understood and thoroughly documented, the counter-revolutionary role that Iran plays in the region’s politics has been largely overlooked. In this essay, I demonstrate how Iran’s roles in three key sites of popular mobilization and contestation — Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria — illuminate the Islamic Republic’s decidedly counter-revolutionary agenda amid the shifting fault lines in the politics of the Middle East. I argue that these developments call into question the image of Iran as a “revolutionary” state in the vanguard of a regional “Axis of Resistance” to US imperialism and its allies. I argue that it is time to dispense with such zombie-categories, which Ulrich Beck characterizes as ones that are “dead but somehow go on living”. I contend that the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, while regional rivals, should be seen as competing counter-revolutionary powers in the contemporary Middle East, and form what we might think of as a regional counter-revolutionary hydra.

This handbook brings together a mix of established and emerging international scholars to provide valuable analytical insights as to how China’s growing Middle East presence affects intra-regional development, trade, security, and diplomacy.

Can a democratic society and Sharia law co-exist? This question increases in importance as the number of nations who follow Sharia law while modernizing is increasing. One argument suggests that there is no difference between allowing sharia tribunals to hear family and financial law and allowing Jewish families to have separate mediation. Another argument reflects that Sharia law is discriminatory against women and thus is an affront to development. This paper develops a proposal to study whether or not democracy and Sharia law can co-exist, in order to make public policy recommendations.

The Nutuk, or ‘Speech’, is Mustafa Kemal’s seminal address to the weary subjects of a deposed Ottoman Empire. Its English translation comes equipped with a preface by the Ministry of Turkish Education: “With the publication of this translation, […] [we] hope to be of service to foreign students of the Turkish Republic” (Kemal, 1). There is one word in this preface that conveys the gravity of Nutuk’s legacy: “republic”. Before Mustafa Kemal spoke in 1927, ‘Turkey’ was not a place at all, but an idea. By carefully overlaying a rhetorical analysis of Kemal’s deliberate narrative of struggle and Turkishness with the region’s historical context, we can reconstruct the birth of a nation. Nutuk is therefore a rhetorical cipher of the ongoing struggle to not only define, but physically implement the idea of nationalism in the Middle East.

Sam Wyer is an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War specializing in Iraq. In December 2012, he authored a paper on Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, the League of the Righteous. It provided one of the most detailed breakdowns of the history and organization of the League, and how it has tried to change itself from an Iranian-supported Special Group militia to a social and political party. Below is an interview with Wyer about Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq.

Most funding provided by international, governmental and non-governmental agencies to the non-profit sector is conditional, which implies that the recipient organization should commit to specific objectives and measures as defined with the donor to meet common needs, rights and interests. These conditions may be of an administrative, financial, or political nature. Political conditional funding remains acceptable as long as it does not, in principle or in fact, impose a political or moral dilemma to the recipient organizations, or minimize their agency over their own purpose and projects as protected under international humanitarian and human rights law.

This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the legality and political implications of Article 1.5 bis imposed in Annex II of the General Conditions Applicable to European Union-Financed Grant Contracts for External Action. This analysis is anchored in both international law and Palestinian domestic law. It provides legal and political context to the unacceptability of the imposition of the aforementioned article and Palestinian arguments and concerns vis-a-vis the claims put forth by the European Union (EU). 

The paper demonstrates that imposing political conditional funding on CSOs pursuing the right to self-determination of an oppressed and colonized people is not only morally and politically unacceptable, but also illegal in consideration of international law. In particular:

- Although consistent with the continuous reinforcement of the counter-terrorism regime within the EU, Article 1.5 bis was only included in grant contracts with Palestinian CSOs in 2019 and constitutes an alarming precedent that undermines the trust upon which the EU-Palestine relations are based.

- Article 1.5 bis imposes a new obligation on Palestinian grant recipients, as it entails the endorsement of EU restrictive measures, screening and vetting processes of the Palestinian CSOs’ own people, the Palestinians. By forcing such conditions upon Palestinian grant beneficiaries, the EU is unacceptably asking Palestinian CSOs to monitor and police their own counterparts and to endorse the European counter-terrorism framework to do so.

- Article 1.5 bis is not only inconsistent with the principles of humanitarian action, but also with the Palestinian people’s legitimate human rights as recognized under international law, including the right to self-determination, and the right to resist by any legitimate means against foreign oppression, occupation, colonization and apartheid. The current counter-terrorism framework imposed on Palestinian civil society by means of Article 1.5 bis criminalizes the Palestinian people’s struggle for their right to self-determination, contributes to the de-politicization and alienation of Palestinian civil society, and neglects the Palestinian people’s right to legitimate resistance.

- Article 1.5 bis contradicts Palestinian law that prohibits political conditional funding, therefore imposing an unacceptable legal and moral dilemma on Palestinian CSOs vis-a-vis their own domestic law.
Given that Article 1.5 bis reflects the current EU counter-terrorism policies, largely influenced by the US and Israel, there is solid evidence that support the possible escalation of measures targeting Palestinian civil society and labeling their work under the framework of terrorism in order to discredit them.

-Although framed in an innocuous way, and while no Palestinian person currently appears on EU sanctions lists, Article 1.5 bis would have dramatic consequences as it lays the foundations for a system of generalized screening and vetting of the whole of Palestinian civil society.

-If compared with the USAID’s conditions imposed in the early 21st century, the EU’s imposition of a terrorist framework on Palestinian civil society occurred later but follows the increasingly tight counter-terrorism framework imposed by the US.

This book analyses Turkey’s role in the Arab world and investigates the effects of the Arab Spring on Turkish foreign policy, decision-making and its role. Particular attention is focused on widespread terms such as strategic depth, neo-Ottomans and the Turkish Model. It also provides incisive discussions of the key tenets of the Turkish official responses to Arab revolts and narrates the advantages and challenges that come to forge any potential regional role for Turkey.

تصاعدت الانتقادات لمفهوم "الاستراتيجية الكبرى" نتيجة عدم استيعابه للتحولات السريعة في النظام الدولي، وتتابع الأزمات والتغيرات المفاجئة، وتصاعد تعقيدات التطورات الإقليمية والدولية، وتعدد الفاعلين ومصادر التهديدات، وهو ما أدى لصعود مفاهيم ومصطلحات بديلة تركز على المديين القصير والمتوسط في التخطيط للسياسات الخارجية والأمنية للدول.

The recent government crackdown upon demonstrators in the town of Hawija, and the ensuing violence has highlighted Iraq’s protest movement. People began taking to the streets in Anbar province after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government issued an arrest warrant for former Finance Minister Rafi Issawi’s bodyguards for terrorism. Activism quickly spread to northern Iraq. Rather than being a monolithic group with a central leadership however, these protests have involved a variety of tribes, political parties, and insurgent groups across many different cities and towns. They have also been explicitly Sunni and sectarian compared to previous demonstrations in Iraq from 2011 and 2012, which were national in character. To breakdown these various movements and their agendas is Kirk H. Sowell, a Washington DC-based political risk analyst who is the editor of the biweekly newsletter, Inside Iraqi Politics.

Discuss the causes and consequences of "Operation Desert Storm" in 1990/91. "Operation Desert Storm" was one of the few modern wars with a high degree of systemic legitimation-backed by the UN, NATO, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states and even tacit support from the Soviet Union-in which Bush's administration hoped to achieve more than just a regime change in Iraq. Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, in August 1990, gave the US an opportunity to make an example out of him-to show the world the "price that must be paid by any regime that violates the terms of its alliance with the United States. The 1991 Gulf War was literally a punishment." (Mamdani, 2004, P. 146).

This chapter focuses on the Iraqi Kurdish response to the rapid and devastating advance of ISIS. Of course, the Iraqi Kurdish response to the ISIS advance has been a multifaceted, complex, and evolving one that includes military strategy, pragmatic politics, and aspirations of independence. Leaving aside the fact that the ISIS advance has granted the Iraqi Kurds unprecedented access to Iraq’s rich oil reserves and the fact that the initial Kurdish reaction was to ramp up their rhetoric toward complete secession from Iraq, this chapter focuses on two further dimensions of the Iraqi Kurdish response. Firstly, it documents the Iraqi Kurdish seizure of the so-called “disputed territories,” especially
Kirkuk, and their stated intent to hold a referendum on the future of these
regions (effectively to force a resolution to Article 140 of the constitution). Secondly, the chapter documents the Iraqi Kurdish use of the ISIS advance as leverage to enhance Kurdish relations dramatically with the US and Europe via direct military support (including airstrikes and weapons supply) and to become the key launchpad
in the fight against ISIS planned for 2015. The chapter concludes by briefly assessing the efficacy and wisdom of the Kurdish strategy of leveraging the ISIS onslaught to advance their own interests.

David Palkki is the deputy director of the Conflict Records Research Center (CCRC) at the National Defense University in Washington D.C. He was the co-editor, along with Kevin Woods and Mark Stout of the recently released The Saddam Tapes. The book was based upon hundreds of captured tapes of Saddam and his inner circle discussing foreign and domestic issues from the 1970s to the 2000s. The second half delves into how Saddam treated Shiites and Kurds, Islamism, weapons of mass destruction, the United Nations inspections, and the defection of his son-in-law Hussein Kamal in 1998. Overall, what The Saddam Tapes revealed was a dictator who spoke his mind both privately and publicly. Rather than a mad man, Saddam held wide-ranging discussions with his top advisors. The problem was he often miscalculated foreign affairs, but was much better at controlling his own people within Iraq.

This chapter provides the reader with a background to the political analysis of Qatar and the 2022 FIFA World Cup and to the text itself. It does so by first offering a succinct account of the motives underpinning Qatar's desire to stage one of the largest events on the planet, as well as various responses to FIFA's decision to award Qatar the games. The chapter then progresses towards providing the reader with the key theoretical framework which the authors use throughout the text: small states and international relations; in doing so, it is made clear in this chapter that the authors look to analyse Qatar from a social constructivist-international relations perspective, one that views 'power' in broader terms, encompassing both material and subjective factors. Finally, the chapter sets out the structure of the text, and the remaining chapters.

Link to order the book: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-96822-9#reviews

This thesis examines Balkanisation as a force in the destabilisation of nation-states. It articulates a number of themes – including legitimation crisis, identity and nation-building, territory and borders, resources, and intervention – for the purpose of defining Balkanisation and analysing its effects. The thesis aims to demonstrate the impact of each theme through a case study of modern Iraq. The study is qualitative and chronological, navigating through various sources and trends of political decision-making, diplomacy, and conflict to provide evidence of a fluctuating crisis of nationhood.

Guided by this framework, the thesis proves a two-fold research hypothesis. Firstly, that Balkanisation is not only a widely-used metaphor, but a real political process. Secondly, that this process has had a significant effect on the history of Iraq – from its origins in the wake of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, through the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, to its contemporary civil war. Importantly, the thesis shows that Iraq has not seen the benefits of a synthesis between the state and national identity and has been unable to develop a tradition of stable, democratic governance. By demonstrating these things, the thesis moves to further our understanding of the dynamics at play in the failure of a nation-state, and to give more nuance and applicability to the notion of Balkanisation.

The aim of this module is to provide students with good understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict, its roots and complexities. This module explores the Arab-Israeli conflict both for its intrinsic importance and as a case study in contemporary world politics. The module is designed to equip students with sufficient knowledge to be able to analyse current events and decision-making processes, comprehending the best interests of each stake-holder in this protracted conflict. The module starts with an overview of the historical beginnings of the conflict when Palestine was controlled by the Ottoman Empire. It explains the significance of the Zionist Revolution, through World War 1, The British Mandate over Palestine, and the first Arab-Israeli war (1947-1949). The module analyses processes that led to major wars between Israel and its Arab neighbours -- 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, 2006, and the birth of the Palestinian problem. The module explores the Israeli occupation and the 1987-2002 Intifada. Finally, it discusses different proposals as to how the conflict can be resolved.

This book develops a theory of sectarianism and its relationship with communities of shared religion and with the emergence of imagined communities of this kind. Distinguishing between social sectarianism and political sectarianism, it discusses the relationship of political sectarianism to communities of religion as pre-existing social-historical entities. The main concern of the study, however, is to investigate how modern sectarianism invents imagined religious communities, or ta’ifas in Arabic. It does this by exploring sectarianism in various Arab countries. The book puts forward five theses. First, political sectarianism is a modern phenomenon. Second, an ‘imagined community of religion’ is a modern social imaginary based on the sectarian conceptualization of a religious or confessional affiliation as an identity shared by people who have never formed a community in practice within a vast imagined community, built on a selective reading of history and legend. Third, religious communities do not produce sectarianism, but sectarianism reproduces these communities as imagined communities. Fourth, power in modern authoritarian regimes is not attained by sectarian (Khaldunian) ‘asabiyya (group solidarity), but rather an authoritarian regime might use primordial ties to ensure loyalty and thereby produce sectarianism. Fifth, unlike a traditional community, an imagined community is not an ethical community.

Contents

Preface
1. On the Problematic of Sectarianism
2. Mapping Terms: Towards Analytical Conceptualisation
3. Confessionalisation as a Prelude to Sectarianisation
4. Is a Ta’ifa a Community?
5. Firqa and Iftiraq in Islam
6. Social Conflict, Sects, and Foreign Intervention: The Tanzimat and the Events of 1860
7. Ibn Khaldun’s ‘Asabiyya and Sects
8. Sectarianism, its Historicity, and Some Ethical Implications
9. Nothing Eternal About It
10. Is Modern Sectarianism a Product of Secularisation?
11. Community to Imagined Community, Social Sectarianism to Political Sectarianism
12. Sectarianism from Popular Participation in the Public Sphere to a Barrier to Participation
13. Majorities, Minorities, and Tolerance
Conclusion

Often peppered with religious references, “family values” rhetoric has become a trademark of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan since his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002. His frequent encouragement of early marriage and criticism of childless women illustrate an ever-expanding repertoire of conservative pronouncements regarding gender, reproduction and the family. Erdoğan’s critics often downplay these religiously inflected pronouncements as either diversions from its policy failures or indicative of the AKP government’s ulterior agenda to Islamize Turkish society by imposing religiously inspired norms. Rather than simply a rhetorical sideshow or shorthand for covert Islamism, however, Erdoğan and the AKP’s emphasis on strengthening family values and promoting conservative views on reproduction and gender are central to the AKP government’s broader demographic, social service and welfare policies predicated on neoconservative, neoliberal and neo-patriarchal rationalities. Moreover, the AKP’s politics of family values is at the core of its long-term strategy to rebuild a “New Turkey” by recuperating from the alleged damages to the social fabric and strength of the nation perpetrated by the formerly hegemonic Kemalist oligarchy.

Previous studies have noted the dominance of official sources within the news process and their unique ability to shape media narratives. This research addresses the role and implications of news sources in contributing to the overwhelmingly positive portrayal of the anti-Mubarak opposition protesters within British and American newspaper coverage of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. Furthermore, this paper will assess how the position of global political elites towards the protests in Egypt possibly opened up the editorial space within the news coverage of the revolution for the anti-Mubarak opposition movement to emerge as the dominant voice within the reporting.