“Wr s Unavdble”

2020 ◽  
pp. 86-99
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Einboden
Keyword(s):  
North Africa ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Original Manuscript ◽  
Entire Nation

This chapter details events that occurred in the early days of Thomas Jefferson’s presidency. These include his decision to order the destruction of the original manuscript of his translation of Comte de Volney’s Middle Eastern “meditations.” The war with North Africa also broke out when Jefferson assumed the presidency, which gave new impetus for him to encode his correspondence. As in Paris many years before, Jefferson’s engagements with the Muslim world helped turn his mind towards the “art of secret writing.” However, when he exchanged ciphered letters with Adams back in 1785, Jefferson was a lone European minister. Now, as U.S. President, Jefferson had the brightest minds of an entire nation within reach, including one residing not far away in Philadelphia: Robert Patterson.

scholarly journals Muslim Intellectualism in the Wake of the Arab Uprisings

2011 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. i-ix
Author(s):  
Zakyi Ibrahim
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Positive Outcomes ◽  
Islamic Studies ◽  
Treasure Trove ◽  
Arab Uprisings ◽  
The People

With the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa come scores ofintellectual initiatives and academic investigations geared toward understandingthe forces and motives propelling these unprecedented developments.Conferences are being convened and special issues ofjournals are being dedicated to addressing some aspects of the currentphenomena ‒ not to talk of droves of “experts” (academic tourists?)pouring into the Muslim world for research. In short, the so-called“Arab Spring” ‒ also known by the people from the region as revolution(thawra), uprising (intifāÌa), renaissance (nahÌa) and awakening(ṣaḥwa)1 ‒ has been an intellectual treasure trove for academics in the areasof Middle Eastern Studies, Islamic Studies, and Comparative Politics.But are the attempts to explain these phenomena enough to guide the presentand future Muslim generations to proper trajectories toward sociopoliticaland intellectual success? This editorial is intended to argue that, despitethe potential positive outcomes from recent initiatives, now is the opportunetime for Muslims to seize in order to design future trajectories for their upcominggenerations. The sociopolitical imperatives (civility, freedom, empowerment,pluralism, and happiness, to name a few), to which they aspireto respond, must be guided by, or anchored in, grand intellectual endeavors ...

Assessing the bank profitability in the MENA region

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-332 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rim Ben Selma Mokni ◽  
Houssem Rachdi
Keyword(s):  
Method Of Moments ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Banking Sector ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Generalized Method Of Moments ◽  
Mena Region ◽  
Bank Profitability ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Conventional Banks ◽  
Econometric Technique

Purpose – Which of the banking stream is relatively more profitable in Middle Eastern and North Africa (MENA) region? Design/methodology/approach – The empirical study covers a sample of 15 conventional and 15 Islamic banks for the period 2002-2009.The authors estimate models using the generalized method of moments in system, of Blundell and Bond (1998). They exploit an up-to-date econometric technique which takes into consideration the issue of endogeneity of regressors to evaluate the comparative profitability of Islamic and conventional banks in the MENA region. Findings – Empirical analysis results show that the determinants’ significance varies between Islamic and conventional banks. Profitability seems to be quite persistent in the MENA region reflecting a higher degree of government intervention and may signal barriers to competition. Originality/value – The main interest is to develop a comprehensive model that integrates macroeconomic, industry-specific and bank-specific determinants. The paper makes comparison of the performance between two different banking systems in the MENA region. The authors consider a variable crisis to gain additional insights into the impacts of the financial crisis on MENA banking sector.

Rethinking the Middle East and North Africa in the Cold War

2011 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-319
Author(s):  
Paul Thomas Chamberlin
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Third World ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Mena Region ◽  
Transnational Connections ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Cold War History

The new Cold War history has begun to reshape the ways that international historians approach the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) during the post-1945 era. Rather than treating the region as exceptional, a number of scholars have sought to focus on the historical continuities and transnational connections between the Middle East and other areas of the Third World. This approach is based on the notion that the MENA region was enmeshed in the transnational webs of communication and exchange that characterized the post-1945 global system. Indeed, the region sat not only at the crossroads between Africa and the Eurasian landmass but also at the convergence of key global historical movements of the second half of the 20th century. Without denying cultural, social, and political elements that are indeed unique to the region, this scholarship has drawn attention to the continuities, connections, and parallels between the Middle Eastern experience and the wider world.

scholarly journals Environmental Performance and Economic Growth in Middle East and North Africa Countries

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (24) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hichem Dkhili
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Environmental Performance ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Smooth Transition ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Mena Region ◽  
Mena Countries ◽  
The Impact

Background. Studies on environmental performance/quality and economic growth show inconclusive results. Objective. The aim of the present study is to assess the non-linear relationship between environmental performance and economic growth in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region from 2002–2018. Methods. A sample of fourteen (14) MENA countries was used in the present analysis. However, due to important differences between countries in this region, the whole sample was divided into two sub-samples; nine Middle Eastern countries (MEAS) and five North African countries (NAF). We performed the panel smooth transition regression model as an econometric approach. Discussion. Empirical results indicate a threshold effect in the environmental performance and economic growth relationship. The threshold value differs from one group of countries to another. More specifically, we found that the impact of environmental performance and economic growth is positive and significant only if a certain threshold level has been attained. Until then, the effect remains negative. Conclusions. The findings of the present study are of great importance for policymakers since they determine the optimal level of environmental performance required to act positively on the level of economic growth. MENA countries should seek to improve their environmental performance index in order to grow output. Competing Interests. The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Colonial Policies, Middle Eastern War, and City Spaces

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maud S. Mandel
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
French Government ◽  
Jewish Refugees ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Minority Policies ◽  
The City ◽  
Politically Active

Beginning in 1948 when war in the Middle East caused minor unrest in the city of Marseille, this chapter traces the way in which disagreements over Israel became a way to debate inequities in French minority policies at home and in North Africa. In Marseille, the gathering point for Jewish clandestine migration to Palestine, Algerian Muslims' anger toward what they perceived as French complicity in migration schemes was compounded by frustrations that French officials seemed to be favoring Jewish refugees over newly minted French Algerian Muslim citizens. Conflicts around war in the Middle East thus became an opportunity for politically active Muslims and Jews to negotiate their relationship with the French state, as the former established new parameters for political participation in the aftermath of the Holocaust by pushing the French government to support Israel, and the latter tested the limitations on a citizenship that never made good on its promises.

Muslim Preachers of the Approaching End

2019 ◽  
pp. 41-79
Author(s):  
Bronislav Ostřanský
Keyword(s):  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Substantial Part ◽  
Great Expectations ◽  
The World ◽  
Considerable Impact

This chapter focuses on the essential constitutive segments of modern Islamic apocalyptic thought and writing, as well as the spiritual developments that led to its formation. The main objective of the chapter is to explain how this popular and, at least from “a theoretical perspective”, widely viewed subject from the last century has become one of the most important parts of current Islamic discourse and how this remarkable transformation took place. This is why the chapter also provides an extensive outline of non-Islamic (i.e. Western) “ideological borrowings” (both religious and secular) that have had a considerable impact on the shaping of contemporary apocalyptic imagination among a substantial part of the Muslim world. The decisive shift in the prevalent Muslim perception relates to the “Portents of the Hour” (i.e. the apocalyptic signs foreshadowing the End). There has been a move away from the level of an intellectually attractive, yet personally distant subject, that was addressed in various bestsellers (e.g. in Egypt, Turkey, etc.), towards the anxieties and great expectations that coalesced with the disintegration of the long-term Middle Eastern order, following the Western invasions of Iraq, which led to concerns in the minds of Moslems throughout the “World of Islam”.

Crafting the Ancient Near Eastern Canon

2020 ◽  
pp. 319-321
Author(s):  
Zena Kamash
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Creative Writing ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Personal Reflection ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Art Practices

This chapter offers a personal reflection on two projects that seek to find alternative ways to respond to Middle Eastern heritage: “Remembering the Romans in the Middle East and North Africa” and “Rematerialising Mosul Museum.” Both projects aim to provide ways for people to rejuvenate friendships with heritage objects through a range of craft and art practices (felting, drawing, photograph, and creative writing). This chapter reflects on the author’s own crafted responses and uses these to explore how crafting can help people think more deeply about how they relate to the canon as individuals and how they might use crafting to make their own personal canon. In particular, this chapter thinks through why practices of this kind are important to the author as a person who is a British Iraqi, as well as an archaeologist.

“Written in fair Arabic Characters”

2020 ◽  
pp. 33-41
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Einboden
Keyword(s):  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Single Person ◽  
Arabic Characters ◽  
African Slaves ◽  
Entire Nation ◽  
Of Greece

This chapter details Thomas Jefferson’s dealings with Ezra Stiles, President of Yale and New England’s leading intellectual. Stiles became Jefferson’s confidant in 1786. Meeting only a month before Jefferson embarked overseas from Boston on July 5, 1784, the two men enjoyed an immediate connection, despite their divergent roles and regions. A master of many disciplines, Stiles was most distinguished by a single interest in particular: his facility with Middle Eastern languages. Jefferson shared anxieties with Stiles concerning Muslim captivity—captivity not of a single person, however, but of an entire nation, sharply criticizing Ottoman occupation of Greece. Anticipating future experiences of his new friend and a later U.S. President, Stiles also gained access to manuscripts arising from Muslim captivity and Arabic documents written by African slaves.

She Came from Kasaba

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 582-585
Author(s):  
Leslie Hakim-Dowek
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Modal Approach ◽  
History Of

As in Marianne Hirsch’s (2008) notion of ‘devoir de memoire’, this poem-piece, from a new series, uses the role of creation and imagination to strive to ‘re-activate and re-embody’ distant family/historical transcultural spaces and memories within the perspective of a dispersed history of a Middle-Eastern minority, the Sephardi/Jewish community. There is little awareness that Sephardi/Jewish communities were an integral part of the Middle East and North Africa for many centuries before they were driven out of their homes in the second half of the twentieth century. Using a multi-modal approach combining photography and poetry, this photo-poem series has for focus my female lineage. This piece evokes in particular the memory of my grandmother, encapsulating many points in history where persecution and displacement occurred across many social, political and linguistic borders.

Ancient and recent Middle Eastern maternal genetic contribution to North Africa as viewed by mtDNA diversity in Tunisian Arab populations

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. e23100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarra Elkamel ◽  
Sami Boussetta ◽  
Houssein Khodjet-El-Khil ◽  
Amel Benammar Elgaaied ◽  
Lotfi Cherni
Keyword(s):  
North Africa ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Genetic Contribution ◽  
Mtdna Diversity
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