scholarly journals Expectations and Realities in the Study of Enslavement in Muslim-Majority Societies

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 385-392
Author(s):  
Ehud R. Toldedano
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Arabian Peninsula ◽  
Cutting Edge ◽  
Innovative Research ◽  
Global Understanding ◽  
Muslim Majority

The global understanding of enslavement owes a great deal to the efforts of scholars who research its history in non-Atlantic societies, including Muslim-majority ones. In recent years, the study of enslavement in the Middle East and North Africa has achieved a volume, a dynamic, and a maturity that make it one of the leading, cutting-edge subfields in studies encompassing that part of the globe. Reilly’s Slavery, Agriculture, and Malaria in the Arabian Peninsula is a worthy contribution to this growing literature, covering a significant lacuna in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Arabia with extensive and often innovative research.

Islam and Economic Development: The Case of Non-Muslim Minorities in the Middle East and North Africa

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamed Saleh
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Absolute Number ◽  
Mena Region ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
Muslim Majority ◽  
Muslim Minorities

This chapter investigates a long-standing puzzle in the economic history of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region: why do MENA’s native non-Muslim minorities have better socioeconomic (SES) outcomes than the Muslim majority, both historically and today? Focusing on the case of Coptic Christians in Egypt, the largest non-Muslim minority in absolute number in the region, and employing a wide range of novel archival data sources, the chapter argues that Copts’ superior SES can be explained neither by Islam’s negative impact on Muslims’ SES (where Islam is defined as a set of beliefs or institutions) nor by colonization’s preferential treatment of Copts. Instead, the chapter traces the phenomenon to self-selection on SES during Egypt’s historical conversion from Coptic Christianity to Islam in the aftermath of the Arab Conquest of the then-Coptic Egypt in 641 CE. The argument is that the regressivity-in-income of the poll tax on non-Muslims (initially all Egyptians) that was imposed continuously from 641 to 1856 led to the shrinkage of (non-convert) Copts into a better-off minority. The Coptic-Muslim SES gap then persisted due to group restrictions on access to white-collar and artisanal skills. The chapter opens new areas of research on non-Muslim minorities in the MENA region and beyond.

Bat Ye’or and Eurabia

2019 ◽  
pp. 170-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sindre Bangstad
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Far Right ◽  
The Us ◽  
Muslim Majority

This chapter discusses the life and work of Bat Ye’or (Gisèle Littman), who is widely seen as the doyenne of “Eurabia”-literature. This comes in different varieties and formulations, but in Bat Ye’or’s rendering refers to an ongoing secretive conspiracy which involves both the European Union and Muslim-majority countries in North Africa and the Middle East, aimed at establishing Muslim control over a future Europe or “Eurabia.” Though Bat Ye’or did not coin the term “Eurabia,” she can be credited with having popularized the concept through quasi-academic titles such as Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis and Europe, Globalization and the Coming Universal Caliphate. Through its dissemination on various “counter-jihadist” websites and in the work of the Norwegian counter-jihadist blogger Fjordman, her work inspired the Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik. She also has long-standing relations with Serbian ultranationalists, the Israeli Far Right, and various radical Right activists in Western Europe and the US.

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.

Improvising Happiness

2019 ◽  
pp. 478-494
Author(s):  
Barbara Sellers-Young
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Belly Dance ◽  
Global Discourse ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Aesthetic Principle

Solo improvisational dance forms from North Africa and the Middle East, most commonly referred to as belly dance, have their roots in community celebrations in which dancers improvise to the accompaniment of a diverse set of local instruments. The movement vocabulary of these forms became part of popular global discourse in the twentieth century through the inclusion of the dances at transnational fairs. Later belly dance was adopted as part of dance studios and recreational centres in small towns and major urban centres on all continents. Despite its global transmission and performance, belly dance has maintained improvisation as a core aesthetic principle.

scholarly journals Why Islam (Properly Understood) Is the Solution

2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 137-145
Author(s):  
Nader Hashemi
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
Muslim Brotherhood ◽  
Transition To Democracy ◽  
Islamic World ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

This paper is a provocative play on the famous Muslim Brotherhood slogan al-Islām hūwa al-ḥāl (Islam is the solution). While critics of the Muslim Brothers rightly criticized them for the simplicity of their worldview in thinking that religion was a panacea for all of the problems confronting Muslim societies during the late twentieth century, an argument can be made that religion does profoundly matter in the context of the struggle for democracy in the Arab-Islamic world. In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, democratic transitions in North Africa and the Middle East will be dependent on democratically negotiating the question of religion’s role in politics. Here I provide some reflections on this topic with a focus on Tunisia’s transition to democracy.  

North Africa and the Middle East

2020 ◽  
pp. 194-206
Author(s):  
Sam Hellmuth ◽  
Mary Pearce
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Arabian Peninsula ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Horn Of Africa ◽  
Prosodic Phrasing ◽  
Word Prosody ◽  
Typological Variation

This chapter provides an overview of the prosodic systems of languages spoken in North Africa and the Middle East, taking in North Africa and the Horn of Africa, plus the Arabian Peninsula, and the Middle East (but excluding Kurdish). The survey sketches the nature and scope of typological variation—in respect to prosody—across the whole of the Afro-Asiatic and Nilo-Saharan language families, addressing, within the limits of the existing literature: word prosody, prosodic phrasing, melodic structure, and prosodic expression of meaning (sentence modality, focus, and information structure). The survey is organized around language sub-families, reporting what is known about the different aspects of prosody for each sub-family, together with a brief discussion of priorities for future research.

Enslavement and Freedom in Transition

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 100-121
Author(s):  
Ehud R. Toledano
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Persian Gulf ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Muslim Majority ◽  
Last Stage ◽  
Equal Citizenship

This article explores the transition from enslavement to post-emancipation realities in the Muslim-majority societies of the Middle East and North Africa during the last stage of empire and the first phase of nation-building. The main argument is that within enslavement, there were gradations of bondage and servitude, not merely a dichotomy between free and enslaved. The various social positions occupied by the enslaved are best understood as points on a continuum of social, economic, and cultural realities. In turn, these were reproduced after emancipation in the successor states that emerged following the demise of the Ottoman and Qajar empires, the Sharifian state in Morocco, and the various principalities of the Arab/Persian Gulf. Hence, post-emancipation did not create equal citizenship for all freed persons, but rather the inequality within enslavement transitioned into the post-imperial societies of the Middle East and North Africa.

scholarly journals The impact of Pacific Decadal Oscillation on springtime dust activity in Syria

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bing Pu ◽  
Paul Ginoux
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Optical Depth ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Pacific Decadal Oscillation ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Arabian Peninsula ◽  
Dust Storms ◽  
Near Surface ◽  
Deep Blue ◽  
The Impact

Abstract. The increasing trend of aerosol optical depth in the Middle East and a recent severe dust storm in Syria have raised questions as whether dust storms will increase and promoted investigations on the dust activities driven by the natural climate variability underlying the ongoing human perturbations such as the Syrian civil war. This study examined the influences of the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) on dust activities in Syria using an innovative dust optical depth (DOD) dataset derived from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Deep Blue aerosol products. A significantly negative correlation is found between the Syrian DOD and the PDO in spring from 2003–2015. High DOD in spring is associated with lower geopotential height over the Middle East, Europe, and North Africa, accompanied by near surface anomalous westerly winds over the Mediterranean basin and southerly winds over the eastern Arabian Peninsula. These large-scale patterns promote the formation of the cyclones over the Middle East to trigger dust storms and also facilitate the transport of dust from North Africa, Iraq, and Saudi Arabian to Syria, where the transported dust dominates the seasonal mean DOD in spring. A negative PDO not only creates circulation anomalies favorable to high DOD in Syria but also suppresses precipitation in dust source regions over the eastern and southern Arabian Peninsula and northeastern Africa. On the daily scale, in addition to the favorable large-scale condition associated with a negative PDO, enhanced atmospheric instability in Syria associated with increased precipitation in Turkey and northern Syria is also critical for the development of strong springtime dust storms in Syria.

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