“I Do Not Forgive!”

2021 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-221
Author(s):  
Alyssa Miller
Keyword(s):  
Structural Change ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Democratic Transition ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Media Analysis ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
Second Wave

Abstract Reconciliation is a central goal of transitional justice. Yet, its importance for democratization can give reconciliation a coercive edge, pressuring victims to abandon legitimate grievances for the good of the nation to come. This article considers struggles over popular sovereignty in Tunisia's democratic transition, by examining the anticorruption campaign Manish Msamah (“I do not forgive”). Manish Msamah was formed in 2015 to defeat the Project Law on Economic and Financial Reconciliation, legislation that proposed amnesty for crony capitalists who profited from the Ben Ali dictatorship. Drawing on participant observation, media analysis, and activist interviews, the author shows how Manish Msamah debunks the ruse of consent at the heart of reconciliation, and in doing so maintains fidelity to the ideals of the 2011 Revolution. The campaign is revealed as an early participant in the “second wave” of the Arab Spring, which has refused the lure of procedural democracy in favor of deeper structural change.

Peace Building Lessons From the Civilian Survival Strategy of Flight in Syria, 2011-2016

2019 ◽  
pp. 679-696
Author(s):  
Darlington Mutanda
Keyword(s):  
Arab Spring ◽  
Peace Building ◽  
Survival Strategy ◽  
Valuable Property ◽  
Global Nature ◽  
Local Solutions ◽  
To Come ◽  
Syrian Conflict ◽  
The Arab Spring

Syria is in a devastating war brought by the Arab Spring. The country witnessed perhaps the bulk of the brutalities of the Arab Spring evidenced by the massacre of civilians and obliteration of historical and valuable property. In view of the brutal and global nature of the Syrian conflict, this chapter examines the significance of flight as a survival strategy developed by the Syrians in the wake of the Syrian conflict which began in 2011. This approach is not only significant in appreciating the fact that civilians are not necessarily passive recipients of violence but also gives us an opportunity to reflect on how superpower involvement deprived Syrians of the chance to come up with home-grown solutions before the conflict degenerated into an all-out war. The civilian strategy of flight thus shows the vulnerability of civilians in conflict and the significance of local solutions and ownership of peacebuilding programmes.

Martyrdom in North Africa Following the Arab Spring and the Process of Transitional Justice

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas DeGeorges
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
Political Transformation ◽  
Security Forces ◽  
State Security ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The Arab Spring

In Chapter 7, Thomas DeGeorges argues that martyrdom has played an important role in the transitional justice processes both before and after the Arab Spring of Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. While martyrdom and transitional justice are not traditionally associated with one another, he makes the case that martyrs involve people who are victims of what may be framed as political violence, whether committed by state security forces or unknown perpetrators. In this context, martyrs may be understood in the frame of victims addressed by transitional justice, but also as icons for social or political transformation. Broadly speaking, claims regarding martyrdom were important in these countries insofar as martyrs were held up as symbols for whom reform must be pursued.

The Scope and Boundaries of Transitional Justice in the Arab Spring

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher K. Lamont
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
State Building ◽  
Mena Region ◽  
State Identity ◽  
The Arab Spring

Chapter 5, by Christopher K. Lamont, further elaborates on critical debates regarding the scope of transitional justice processes. Drawing upon the Tunisian transition, he observes that one of the important debates has been over the appropriate temporal and substantive scope of any transitional justice mechanisms. He argues that transitional justice literature may not understand these debates well, not only because it has not until recently engaged with the MENA region, but because the former literature has been driven by legalism, while debates in Tunisia (and perhaps other countries in the region) over transitional justice issues have been driven by state-building contestation. He suggests that this is partly to do with the fact that in this region justice is understood as more than legal justice, also encompassing Islamic conceptions of social justice, and because decisions relate to political contestations about state identity.

Linking Transitional Justice and Human Rights

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Waltz
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
International Treaties ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Universal Human Rights ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Human Rights Standards ◽  
Economic Injustice ◽  
The Arab Spring

Chapter 3, by Susan Waltz, addresses several of these challenges as well as other themes in a distinct way, drawing upon experiences before and after the Arab Spring from several countries in the region including Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia. She first draws attention to the apparent gaps between a set of universal human rights standards enshrined in international treaties, the practice of transitional justice with its focus on gross human rights abuses, and the expectations which have been raised of transitional justice, including of addressing questions of economic injustice. She then interrogates different facets of the problem of “impact” of transitional justice.

scholarly journals Is Indonesia a Model for the Arab Spring? Islam, Democracy, and Diplomacy

2013 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
James B. Hoesterey
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Transition ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
Asian Financial Crisis ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Economic Stability ◽  
Ideal Model ◽  
Authoritarian Rule ◽  
East Indies ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
The Ideal

As protestors filled Tahrir Square in Cairo in January 2011, Western diplomats, academics, and political pundits were searching for the best political analogy for the promise—and problems—of the Arab Uprising. Whereas neoconservative skeptics fretted that Egypt and Tunisia might go the way of post-revolutionary Iran, Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright praised Indonesia’s democratization as the ideal model for the Arab Spring. During her 2009 visit to Indonesia, Clinton proclaimed: “If you want to know whether Islam, democracy, modernity, and women’s rights can coexist, go to Indonesia.” Certainly Indonesia of May 1998 is not Egypt of January 2011, yet some comparisons are instructive. Still reeling from the Asian financial crisis of 1997, middle class Indonesians were fed up with corruption, cronyism, and a military that operated with impunity. On 21 May 1998 Soeharto resigned after three decades of authoritarian rule. Despite fits of starts and stops, the democratic transition has brought political and economic stability. Whereas academics and pundits have debated the merits of the Indonesia model for democratic transition, in this article I consider how the notion of Indonesia as a model for the Arab Spring has reconfigured transnational Muslim networks and recalibrated claims to authority and authenticity within the global umma.An increasing body of scholarship devoted to global Muslim networks offers important insights into the longue durée of merchant traders and itinerant preachers connecting the Middle East with Southeast Asia. In his critique of Benedict Anderson’s famous explanation of “imagined communities” as the result of print capitalism within national borders, historian Michael Laffan argued that Indonesian nationalism had important roots in global Muslim networks connecting the Dutch East Indies with Cairo’s famous al-Azhar University.

The “Arab Spring” as Seen through the Prism of the 1979 Iranian Revolution

2012 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Negin Nabavi
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
Arab World ◽  
New Order ◽  
Iranian Revolution ◽  
The Past ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
Arab Middle East

Revolutions are by nature unpredictable and unsettling. That the wave of revolutions in North Africa and the Arab Middle East began so unexpectedly and spread with such speed, leading to the fall of the governments of Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, has added to the concern regarding the “new order” that is to come after the initial euphoria. From the outset, the fear has been that these revolutions will follow the same trajectory as Iran did in 1979—in other words, that they will marginalize those who launched the revolutions and provide the grounds for the rise to power of the most savvy, purposeful, and best organized of the opposition groups, namely, the Islamists. Yet when one considers the recent uprisings in the Arab world through the prism of Iran's experiences in 1979, the parallels are not so evident. Mindful of the variations and distinctions between each of the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, it would appear that in broad terms, and beyond superficial similarities, there is little in common between the events of Iran in 1979 and what has happened in the past year in the Arab world.

scholarly journals Islamic Reform Movements after the Arab Spring

2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 169-172
Author(s):  
Jay Willoughby
Keyword(s):  
Arab Spring ◽  
International Institute ◽  
Reform Movements ◽  
Islamic Reform ◽  
Islamic Thought ◽  
Special Lecture ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
Algerian Civil War ◽  
Annual Summer

On June 24-July 3, 2013, the International Institute of Islamic Thought held its annual Summer Institute for Scholars. Given the number of presentations, only a few of them will be mentioned here. In his welcoming remarks, Abdul Aziz Sachedina (George Mason University) spoke eloquently about how change has to come from within, how politics still dominates values, and how the Qur’an and Sunnah are being read not for inspiration, but for putting down opposition and dissenters. The Arab Spring represents a challenge to undertake such an internal reform. Unfortunately, he said, cyberspace contains no serious conversation in this regard, just hostility and animosity, which only damages Muslims. He called for leaders to “moralize” the entire issue in order to achieve co-existence, mainly between Shi‘is and Sunnis, and wondered if the reformers could deal with this and other issues. John Voll (Georgetown University), who delivered the keynote address, “Pop-politics and Elections: Islam and Democracy after the Arab Spring,” raised the question as to whether the Arab Spring makes any difference, given that reform movements have been going on in the Muslim world since 1880. Are we, he asked, “looking at something moving forward/different, or just rehashing the same old arguments?” He opined that a new vocabulary is needed and that people have to move beyond “interfaith,” “tolerance,” and interreligious dialogue and speak to each other about “shared interests.” He then discussed earlier Muslim reform movements and how their goals have changed over the years. Yahya Michot (Hartford University) presented a special lecture entitled “Taymiyyan Thoughts for a Temperate Arab Summer.” He pointed out how different groups (e.g., those groups responsible for assassinating Sadat, the Algerian civil war, and 9/11) took Ibn Taymiyyah’s anti-Mongol fatwas out of context to justify their actions. Thus they ignored the underlying issues: The supposedly “Muslim” Mongols were still massacring Muslims; ...

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