Islamization vs. Islamophobia: A New Historicist Reading of Cold War Politics in Contemporary Pakistani Anglophone Fiction

Islamization and Islamophobia present two different narratives. Since Cold War, these two narratives have been influencing Muslims globally, especially Pakistan due to its support of Talibanization during the Soviet (communist) invasion of Afghanistan. Pakistan’s initial support of Talibanization in coalition with America, where the country yielded a religiously extremist status, provides a premise to suspect America and the West’s (capitalists) role in its development. The treatment of the very ‘Muslim identity in the pre-Cold War and the post-Cold War contexts reveals an interesting shift in the Western approach towards Muslims. The pre-Cold War era shows overt Western support for the narrative of Islamization in Muslim countries, whereas the post-Cold War era shows a sudden bounce of anti-Muslim sentiments in the West. This shift calls into question the role of power in the development of both narratives. Using Stephen Greenblatt’s critique of self-fashioning, subversion, containment, and power, we aim to explore both narratives concerning the selected Pakistani Anglophone fiction: Muhammad Hanif’s A Case of Exploding Mangoes (2008) and Hanif Kureishi’s The Black Album (1995). The current article concludes that Islamization and Islamophobia are both political policies that have been serving the interest of power to contain the subversions it encountered in different forms. We also suggest that both narratives exploit the discursive forms (literary and non-literary) of the particular era where they are recorded.

Democratic Struggles in Challenging Times: Insights from Mongolia and Around the World

This volume analyzes different facets of democratic struggles in these challenging times. Its first section addresses the democratization process in Mongolia, one of the least-studied cases of post-Cold War democratization. The second section broadens the analysis to cover democratic struggles in other parts of the world and considers in particular the governance of natural resources, which is a key concern for Mongolia and other countries that rely economically on the extractive sector. Its contributors are drawn from a range of different countries, disciplines and career stages. They use different approaches and methodologies in highly complementary ways to shed light on underexamined facets of democracy from a variety of perspectives.

International Order and the Access Problem of the Defeated Hegemon: the Case of Russia in the Post-Cold War Era

It has been evident that Russia as the heir of Soviet foreign policy, could neither achieve to integrate herself into the international order, nor could the international order achieve to find a solution to Russian foreign policy identity quest. As long as Russia cannot find a stable and permanent status for herself in the world politics, her foreign policy will signify a permanent instability on the behalf of the international order. The current hegemonic international order is far from residing technical capabilities in terms of satisfying Russia’s foreign policy expectations, because it is unprecedentedly rigid in terms of allowing or refusing the incorporation of hegemonic power like Russia. While it cannot return to multipolarity, it could not set a community based international order either. Since the current international order was founded upon liberal anti-Soviet values, it entered into a lightness of exposing Russia to make clear-cut choices in her foreign policy. As much as the current international order was founded upon liberal anti-Soviet values, its demands from the new members would much higher that especially Russia would not easily adapt herself to.

The Convention in Operation

Post–Cold War ocean diplomacy appeared promising, particularly in the Arctic. Countries in the region negotiated maritime boundaries and cooperated on environmental concerns. Globally, several new maritime organizations took shape, including a tribunal and an organization to manage the deep seabed. Many countries proved eager to get more undersea territory, and they assembled legal claims to large areas of the continental shelf. These developments were accompanied by increased tension in the South China Sea, where China asserted special rights. Its moves provoked tension with other countries, including the United States. A collision between US and Chinese military aircraft highlighted the risks. The new legal framework for the oceans was tested in other ways, including through boarding operations and moves by countries to keep dangerous vessels far away from their coasts. The effort to control fishing activities continued and featured both dramatic high-seas chases and quiet negotiations by regional organizations.

Kurdish Politics in the Global Context

Kurds are considered to be one of the largest ethnic groups in the world—with a population of more than 30 million people—who do not have their own independent state. In the Middle East, they are the fourth largest ethnic group after Arabs, Persians, and Turks. The statelessness of such a major group with an increasing ethnic and national consciousness in the post-Ottoman world led to their traumatic insecurities in the hands of majority-led nation-states that used modern technologies of social engineering including displacement, dehumanization, assimilation, and genocidal acts throughout the 20th century. With the memory of such traumatic insecurities, the driving force of contemporary Kurdish nationalism in the Middle East has primarily been the question of state or state-like entities. Yet, Kurds are not a homogeneous group with a collective understanding of security and self-government. Rather, there are political-organizational rivalries within Kurds across Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Iran. Thus, it is important to understand the multifaceted Kurdish politics in the Middle East within a global-historical perspective where global power rivalries, regional geopolitics, and intra-Kurdish organizational competition are interwoven together. While the opportunities for Kurdish self-determination were missed in the early 20th century, resilient Kurdish political organizations emerged within the bipolar international context of the Cold War. The American hegemony in the post–Cold War era transformed the Kurdish political status in the geopolitics of the Middle East, where the 1991 Gulf War, the 2003 Iraq War, and the broader war on terror provided the Kurds with many political opportunities. Finally, the shifting regional and global alliances in the post–Arab Spring era—where the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has become the global nemesis—created new political opportunities as well as significant threats for the Kurds.