scholarly journals Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arab World

2003 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 134-136
Author(s):  
Magnus T. Bernhardsson
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Arab Nationalism ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Important Study ◽  
The Status ◽  
Advantageous Position ◽  
Muslim Majority

1n this interesting and well-researched book, Bruce Masters analyses the historyof Chris tian and Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire's Arabprovinces and how they fared within a Muslim majority and hierarchy. Byand large, this important study is a story of modernization, identity, and ecclesiasticalpolitics that focuses primarily on Christian communities in Aleppo,Syria. The book's main themes are somewhat familiar: How Christian andJewish communities were in an advantageous position to benefit fromincreasing European influence in the Middle East, and how a secular politicalidentity (Arab nationalism) emerged in the Levant. The book's value liesnot in its overarching thesis, but rather in the details of the story and theimpressive research upon which this well-crafted narrative is based.Masters chronicles how the identities of Christians and Jews evolveddue to their increasing contact with western influences, or, as Masters labelsit, "intrusion." The status quo was forever transformed because manyChristians began to distance themselves, economically and socially, fromtheir Muslim neighbors. Masters, a historian who teaches at Connecticut'sWesleyan University, contends that the western intrusion altered Muslimattitudes toward native Christians. In the nineteenth century, local Christianswould serve for some Muslims as "convenient surrogates for the anger thatcould only rarely be expressed directly against the Europeans."Although the Arab provinces experienced serious sectarian strife in thenineteenth century, these antagonisms were, by and large, absent in the ...

Nasser's Gamble

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse Ferris
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Original Material ◽  
Egyptian Revolution ◽  
Arab Nationalism ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Arab Spring

This book draws on declassified documents from six countries and original material in Arabic, German, Hebrew, and Russian to present a new understanding of Egypt's disastrous five-year intervention in Yemen, which Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser later referred to as “my Vietnam.” The book argues that Nasser's attempt to export the Egyptian revolution to Yemen played a decisive role in destabilizing Egypt's relations with the Cold War powers, tarnishing its image in the Arab world, ruining its economy, and driving its rulers to instigate the fatal series of missteps that led to war with Israel in 1967. Viewing the Six Day War as an unintended consequence of the Saudi–Egyptian struggle over Yemen, the book demonstrates that the most important Cold War conflict in the Middle East was not the clash between Israel and its neighbors. It was the inter-Arab struggle between monarchies and republics over power and legitimacy. Egypt's defeat in the “Arab Cold War” set the stage for the rise of Saudi Arabia and political Islam. Bold and provocative, this book brings to life a critical phase in the modern history of the Middle East. Its compelling analysis of Egypt's fall from power in the 1960s offers new insights into the decline of Arab nationalism, exposing the deep historical roots of the Arab Spring of 2011.

Critical International Relations Theories and the Study of Arab Uprisings: A Critique

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-150
Author(s):  
Ahmed M. Abozaid
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
The Other ◽  
Arab Uprisings ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
Western Perspective

This study articulates that most of the critical theorists are still strikingly neglecting the study of the Arab Uprising(s) adequately. After almost a decade of the eruption of the so-called Arab Uprisings, the study claims that the volume of scholarly engaging of dominate Western International Relations (IR) theories with such unprecedented events is still substantially unpretentious. Likewise, and most importantly, the study also indicates that most of these theories, including the critical theory of IR (both Frankfurt and Habermasian versions), have discussed, engaged, analysed, and interpreted the Arab Spring (a term usually perceived to be orientalist, troubling, totally inappropriate and passive phenomenon) indicate a strong and durable egoistic Western perspective that emphasis on the preservation of the status quo and ensure the interests of Western and neoliberal elites, and the robustness of counter-revolutionary regimes. On the other hand, the writings and scholarships that reflexively engaged and represent the authentic Arab views, interests, and prospects were clearly demonstrating a strong and durable scarce, if not entirely missing. Keywords: International Relations, Critical Theory, Postcolonial, Arab Uprising(s), Middle East, Revolutions.

Israel in the Middle East the Aftermath of the Arab Spring (2010-2017)

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-36
Author(s):  
Eyal Zisser
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sense Of Security ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
The Arab Spring

This article describes how in the middle of the winter of 2010 the “Spring of the Arab Nations” suddenly erupted without any warning all over the Middle East. However, the momentum of the uprisings was impeded rather quickly, and the hopes held out for the “Spring of the Arab Nations” turned into frustration and disappointment. While many Israelis were focusing their attention in surprise, and some, with doubt and concern as well about what was happening in the region around them; suddenly, in Israel itself, at the height of the steamy summer of 2011, an “Israeli Spring” broke out. The protesters were young Israelis belonging to the Israeli middle class. Their demands revolved around the slogan, “Let us live in our land.” However, similar to what happened in the Arab world, the Israeli protest subsided little by little. The hassles of daily life and security and foreign affairs concerns once more became the focus of the public's attention. Therefore, the protesters' hopes were disappointed, and Israel's political, economic, and social order remained unshaken. Thus, towards the end of 2017, the memory of the “Israeli spring” was becoming faded and forgotten. However, while the Arab world was sinking into chaos marked by an ever deepening economic and social crisis that deprived its citizens of any sense of security and stability, Israel, by contrast, was experiencing years of stability in both political and security spheres, as well as economic growth and prosperity. This stability enabled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party to remain in power and to maintain the political and social status-quo in Israel.

scholarly journals The Politics of Christian Love: Shaping Everyday Social Interaction and Political Sensibilities Among Coptic Egyptians

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 105
Author(s):  
An Van Raemdonck
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Personal Narratives ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Divine Love ◽  
The Status ◽  
Christian Love ◽  
Muslim Majority ◽  
Theological Study ◽  
Political Dimensions

Christian love has historically been subject of extensive theological study but has rarely been studied within anthropology. Contemporary Coptic society receives growing attention over the last two decades as a minority in Egyptian Muslim majority society. An important bulk of this scholarship involves a discussion of the community’s sometimes self-defined and sometimes ascribed characterization as a persecuted minority. Particular attention has gone to how social and political dimensions of minority life lead tochanges in Christian theological understandings This paper builds on these insights and examines how Christian love is experienced, and shapes feelings of belonging, everyday morality and political sensibilities vis-à-vis Muslim majority society. It draws from ethnographic observations and meetings with Copts living in Egypt between 2014–2017. It focuses on three personal narratives that reveal the complex ways in which a theology of love affects social and political stances. An anthropological focus reveals the fluid boundaries between secular and religious expressions of Christian love. Love for God and for humans are seen as partaking in one divine love. Practicing this love, however, shapes very different responses and can lead to what has been described as Coptic ‘passive victim behaviour’, but also to political activity against the status-quo.

Nazis in the Middle East: Assessing Links Between Nazism and Islam

2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
MIA LEE
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Racial Ideology ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Arab Nationalism ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Muslim Brotherhood

Since the early-2000s there has been an increasing amount of research on connections between the Nazi regime and the Arab world largely spurred by scholars of Germany. One of the key contributions of this scholarship has been the argument that historic links between National Socialism and Islam, in particular the connection between National Socialist racial ideology and contemporary anti-Semitism in the Middle East, persisted into the post-war period and crucially shaped Middle Eastern politics and policies. This approach is represented in this review in the studies by Matthias Küntzel, Jeffrey Herf, Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers and Barry Rubin and Wolfgang Schwanitz, who all – in various ways – suggest that there is a direct line of continuity between National Socialism, the Muslim Brotherhood and the rise of al-Qaeda. By calling attention to the role of National Socialism, these studies challenge what has hitherto been the dominant historiography of the modern Middle East, which contextualises the rise of anti-Semitism in the region within a broader analysis of Arab nationalism, anti-imperialism and anti-Zionism. The debate on the importance of National Socialism in the Arab world continues to develop. Recent books by historians David Motadel and Stefan Ihrig return the focus from the Middle East to Nazi policy in the region allowing them to place the Nazi regime within a longer history of Western misapprehensions of the ‘Muslim’ world. Placing these two approaches side by side allows us to evaluate the historical evidence of collaboration between Nazism and radical Islam and thereby assess the extent to which Nazi racial ideology penetrated the Arab world.

Policy Gatekeepers in Latin American Legislatures

2006 ◽  
Vol 48 (03) ◽  
pp. 125-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduardo Alemán
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Agenda Setting ◽  
Steering Committee ◽  
Institutional Structure ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Status ◽  
Advantageous Position

Abstract Legislators who control the congressional agenda have a significant advantage over the membership at large. Policy gatekeepers can restrict change to outcomes they prefer over the status quo and can use this prerogative to keep a legislative party or coalition unified. This article examines agenda-setting rules in 26 Latin American chambers, shows why the institutional structure is theoretically relevant, and reveals some implications for policymaking with evidence from Argentina, Chile, and Mexico. Majority leaders in the Argentine and Chilean lower chambers have successfully blocked passage of legislation opposed by most of their fellow partisans despite the lack of codified gatekeeping rights. Since 1997, none of the major Mexican parties has benefited from the gatekeeping rights established in the rules. Instead, the benefits have come from the parties' advantageous position with respect to the other parties on the steering committee setting the plenary agenda.

scholarly journals Political elites of the Arab world and their influence

2020 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-115
Author(s):  
A. Sh. Abhari ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Arab Spring ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Factors Influencing ◽  
Foreign Intervention ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
The Military ◽  
Shed Light

The debate between political scientists about the "Arab Spring" revolutions is still escalating. Especially regarding the forces operating at the scene. Attempts by the military elite to retain power and try to maintain the status quo at any cost, leaving the doors wide open for foreign intervention The foreign interventions of countries that are trying to use the wave of the Arab spring to achieve their goals have especially complicated the situation in the Arab world. In this article I will try to shed light on some factors influencing the results of the “Arab Spring” revolutions.

scholarly journals The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt: Ideology vs. Pragmatism

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
David Schwartz ◽  
Daniel Galily
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Muslim Brotherhood ◽  
Theoretical Background ◽  
Islamic Movements ◽  
Western Model ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Muslim Brotherhood ◽  
The Masses

This study aims to present the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, its ideology and pragmatism. With progress and modernization, the Islamic movements in the Middle East realized that they could not deny progress, so they decided to join the mainstream and take advantage of technological progress in their favor. The movement maintains at least one website in which it publishes its way, and guides the audience. Although these movements seem to maintain a rigid ideology, they adapt themselves to reality with the help of many tools, because they have realized that reality is stronger than they are. The main points in the article are: The status of religion in the country; What is the Muslim Brotherhood? According to which ideology is the movement taking place? - Movement background and ideology; Theoretical background – The theory of Pragmatism; How is pragmatism manifested in the activity of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt? In conclusions: The rise of the Islamist movements as a leading social and political force in the Middle East is the result of the bankruptcy of nationalism, secularism and the left in the Arab world, which created an ideological vacuum, which is filled to a large extent by the fundamentalists, ensuring that Islam is the solution. It is not only about the extent of the return to religion, but about the transformation of religion into a major political factor both by the regimes and by the opposition. These are political movements that deal first and foremost with the social and political mobilization of the masses, and they exert pressure to apply the Islamic law as the law of the state instead of the legal systems taken from the Western model.

Arab Patriotism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Mestyan
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
National Belonging ◽  
Arab Nationalism ◽  
British Occupation ◽  
Patriotic Sentiment ◽  
Modern Nation State

This book presents the essential backstory to the formation of the modern nation-state and mass nationalism in the Middle East. While standard histories claim that the roots of Arab nationalism emerged in opposition to the Ottoman milieu, this book points to the patriotic sentiment that grew in the Egyptian province of the Ottoman Empire during the nineteenth century, arguing that it served as a pivotal way station on the path to the birth of Arab nationhood. The book examines the collusion of various Ottoman elites in creating this nascent sense of national belonging and finds that learned culture played a central role in this development. The book investigates the experience of community during this period, engendered through participation in public rituals and being part of a theater audience. It describes the embodied and textual ways these experiences were produced through urban spaces, poetry, performances, and journals. From the Khedivial Opera House's staging of Verdi's Aida and the first Arabic magazine to the ʻUrabi revolution and the restoration of the authority of Ottoman viceroys under British occupation, the book illuminates the cultural dynamics of a regime that served as the precondition for nation-building in the Middle East. A wholly original exploration of Egypt in the context of the Ottoman Empire, the book sheds fresh light on the evolving sense of political belonging in the Arab world.

The Arab World

1994 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 570-575
Author(s):  
Najib Ghadbian
Keyword(s):  
Resistance To Change ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Cultural Attitudes ◽  
Current State ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Status ◽  
Arab Politics ◽  
Linguistic Groups ◽  
Western Hegemony

This book has an ambitious and comprehensive goal: to analyzethe degenerate contemporary condition of the Arab nation and thenpresent a “theory of action,” a vision to transcend the current state ofdecline and continue the process of nahdah. Barakat’s proposedapproach to the analysis of Arab society is one that he characterizes asdynamic (treating society as changing rather than static), dialectical(emphasizing social contradictions and class struggle), and critical(aimed at transforming the status quo). He treats the Arab world as asingle unit rather than as a number of nation-states. The emphasis onsociety rather than political entity does not negate his cognizance thatthe Arab world has the potential for both unity and divisiveness.Barakat arranges his analysis into three sections: Arab identity andissues of diversity and integration, social structures and institutions(i.e., family, social classes, religion, and Arab politics), and thedynamics of Arab culture.In his diagnosis of the Arab world’s maladies, Barakat offersinteresting and useful insights. In making room for these insights, heblasts orientalist discourse for its “static and mosaic’’ portrait of theArab world and presents a more cogent analysis of Arab reality. Infact, most orientalists do not acknowledge the existence of the Arabworld, but speak rather of a “Middle East” that contains a dizzyingarray of religious, ethnic, and linguistic groups. They characterize theArab part of this region as hopelessly divided, culturally inferior, andunable to modernize. Barakat points out that orientalists contradictthemselves when they speak of both the divided nature of Arabsociety and the existence of an “Arab mind” or mentality. Moreover,most orientalist “scholarship” explains resistance to change amongArabs in terms of cultural attitudes, thereby ignoring the prevailingrelationship of dependency and the socioeconomic and political contextsof this resistance. Such assertions “reveal the animosity towardArabs (and especially toward Muslims) that underlies many scholarlypretensions” (p. 22). Barakat cleverly exposes the agenda behind suchscholarship: the justification of Israel’s existence and the preservationof the status quo under Zionist and western hegemony ...

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