Humanism in the Middle East

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Khurram Hussain
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
History Of ◽  
European Renaissance

This chapter is an exploration of the concept and practice of humanism in the Muslim Middle East, from the seventh-century Prophetic dispensation to the present times. Humanism has often been described as the peculiar fruit of the European Renaissance. The chapter challenges this claim by investigating the incidence of humanism in the Middle East around a three-tiered axis. First, humanism as a focus on this-worldly rather than other-worldly matters is not only compatible with the “worldliness” of an Islamic ethos but was historically encouraged by it. Second, modernist reformers portray humanism as an earlier “modern” age in the history of the Middle East that they now seek to renew. Finally, inasmuch as humanism is a form of anthropocentrism, theological ideas like al-insān al-kāmil, the perfect man, allow for such humanism to be embedded within a broader Islamic theocentrism. The chapter concludes with possible humanistic futures in the Middle East.

Dark Matter and the History of the Middle East

2018 ◽  
pp. 491-504
Author(s):  
Jack Tannous
Keyword(s):  
Dark Matter ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Small Subset ◽  
Literary Language ◽  
The People ◽  
Cultural Boundaries ◽  
Intercultural Exchange ◽  
History Of ◽  
Rich History

This concluding chapter argues that late Roman Syria was a place where linguistic frontiers did not translate into cultural boundaries. The Arab conquests of the seventh century did not change this; instead, the prestige their new scripture enjoyed added a third literary language, Arabic, to the mix of a region with an already rich history of intercultural exchange. Moreover, religious dynamics continued as they had for centuries—viewed against the background of post-Chalcedonian Christian–Christian interaction, the scope and nature of Christian–Muslim interaction looks very familiar. Ultimately, in trying to place the existence of the Middle East's population of simple Christians not just into this story, but at its center, this book has attempted to capture some of the excitement and interest of this process in a way that does justice to all of the people living there, not just a small subset of them.

Arabic in contact with English in Asia

English Today ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Azirah Hashim ◽  
Gerhard Leitner ◽  
Mohammed Al Aqad
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
East Asia ◽  
South Asia ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Trade Network ◽  
History Of ◽  
Global Language ◽  
The Impact

Arabic has a long history of contact with languages outside the Middle East (Lapidus, 2015; Beg, 1979). In Asia, the spread of Arabic began with the trade network that connected the Middle East with South Asia, South-East, East Asia and East Africa from the fifth century. It intensified with the rise of Islam from the seventh century onwards (Morgan & Reid, 2010; Azirah & Leitner, 2016). In this paper we investigate the impact of Arabic on today's English in the context of Asian Englishes. More specifically we ask if the contact of Arabic with English in Asia has led to the creation of an Arabic-Islamic layer of English in countries that have a majority or a significant minority of Muslims. Would such a layer add a new dimension to the texture of English and be integrative across national Englishes? Or would it be divisive inside individual countries? In order to explore such issues we created a corpus of Arabic loanwords in Asian Englishes. Such a database will contribute to a better coverage of the impact of Arabic in dictionaries and to the study of English as a (multiple) national, regional and global language.

scholarly journals A History of the Modern Middle East, 4th ed.

2010 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 122-124
Author(s):  
Amr G. E. Sabet
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Good Measure ◽  
Current Status ◽  
American Military ◽  
Military Involvement ◽  
History Of ◽  
Core Issues ◽  
The Continuum

This extensive and lucid book provides a laudable introduction to the politicalhistory of the Middle East, tracing its development from Islam’s rise inthe seventh century to the recent direct American military involvement inIraq and Afghanistan. While the opening chapters start with Islam’s “rise andexpansion,” however, the book’s main chronological focus centers on thelate eighteenth century onward. This only adds to its current status. The geographicalarea covered is from Egypt to Iran, and from Turkey to the ArabianPeninsula. Some omission, however, was necessary (e.g., western NorthAfrica, Sudan, and Afghanistan) in order to keep the book manageable (p.xiii). While extensiveness and generality frequently lead to unavoidable simplificationand superficiality, this book nevertheless contains an insightfulanalysis of the continuum of events and transformations that have helpedshape the region’s history and geography. The authors are to be praised fortheir grasp and clear conceptualization of core issues, as well as for theireffort to maintain a good measure of narrative neutrality and thus eschewingthe usual prejudices and biases ...

Press Propaganda and Subaltern Agents of Pan-Islamic Networks in the Muslim Mediterranean World prior to World War I

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Odile Moreau
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
World War I ◽  
North Africa ◽  
World War ◽  
Subaltern Studies ◽  
Resistance Movements ◽  
The Press ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
History Of

This chapter explores movement and circulation across the Mediterranean and seeks to contribute to a history of proto-nationalism in the Maghrib and the Middle East at a particular moment prior to World War I. The discussion is particularly concerned with the interface of two Mediterranean spaces: the Middle East (Egypt, Ottoman Empire) and North Africa (Morocco), where the latter is viewed as a case study where resistance movements sought external allies as a way of compensating for their internal weakness. Applying methods developed by Subaltern Studies, and linking macro-historical approaches, namely of a translocal movement in the Muslim Mediterranean, it explores how the Egypt-based society, al-Ittihad al-Maghribi, through its agent, Aref Taher, used the press as an instrument for political propaganda, promoting its Pan-Islamic programme and its goal of uniting North Africa.

The Making of the Medieval Middle East

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Tannous
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Religious History ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Conversion To Islam ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
The Middle Ages

In the second half of the first millennium CE, the Christian Middle East fractured irreparably into competing churches and Arabs conquered the region, setting in motion a process that would lead to its eventual conversion to Islam. This book argues that key to understanding these dramatic religious transformations are ordinary religious believers, often called “the simple” in late antique and medieval sources. Largely agrarian and illiterate, these Christians outnumbered Muslims well into the era of the Crusades, and yet they have typically been invisible in our understanding of the Middle East's history. What did it mean for Christian communities to break apart over theological disagreements that most people could not understand? How does our view of the rise of Islam change if we take seriously the fact that Muslims remained a demographic minority for much of the Middle Ages? In addressing these and other questions, the book provides a sweeping reinterpretation of the religious history of the medieval Middle East. The book draws on a wealth of Greek, Syriac, and Arabic sources to recast these conquered lands as largely Christian ones whose growing Muslim populations are properly understood as converting away from and in competition with the non-Muslim communities around them.

TRENDS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF ECONOMIC RELATIONS OF ISRAEL IN THE MIDDLE EAST

2019 ◽  
pp. 13-24
Author(s):  
Evgenii V. Palamarenko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
Trade Relations ◽  
Major Trading Partner ◽  
Economic Interaction ◽  
History Of ◽  
Close Cooperation ◽  
Economic Ties ◽  
Israeli Economy

The lack of Russian-language research on the features of the economic development of Israel as an OECD member state underlines the urgent need to identify new trends in the Israeli economy. Not taking into account the existing variety of humanitarian studies, and especially the concentration of studies on the political history of Israel and its modern component, we can recognize a clear lack of work that would cover Israeli economy. Current trends in Israeli trade relations, which have begun to make the mselves clear, require both consideration of effective trade and economic interaction between Israel and Palestine, and identification of the peculiarities of hidden regional trade and economic ties. Israel and Palestine are in close cooperation on the exchange of labor and goods, despite the lack of a political settlement. For Palestine, Israel is a major trading partner, and Palestine plays a key security role for Israel. The second important aspect in covering new trends in the Israeli economy may be the need to study the nascent format of cooperation between Israel and the Middle East. The article explores the specifics of economic relations between Israel and the countries of the Middle East, reveals the growing role of economic relations between Israel and the countries of the region.

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