 Tadween Publishing is happy to announce the 2017 Summer Sale! Today through July 12th, receive 15% off all Tadween Publishing titles with code TADSUMMER17! The Political Theology of ISIS: Prophets, Messiahs, & "the Extinction of the Grayzone" By Ahmad Dallal  More than any other actor on the contemporary Arab political landscape, ISIS represents the most expansive and potent threat to the territoriality of the modern Arab nation states, and it has exceeded the expectations of all observers in its expansiveness and resilience. While it is true that the rise of ISIS was enabled by a confluence of interests, it is now abundantly clear that ISIS has a dynamic project of its own and is not a mere proxy for such interests. ISIS entirely rejects the current order and its beneficiaries, and as such, it claims to carry the revolutionary project to its conclusion. The ISIS alternative to the failed Arab states is not just a normative Islamic cultural identity that guides the actions of the state, but an Islamic State that is itself the embodiment of the imagined new order. By examining the political theology of ISIS, this essay aims to understand the challenge posed by ISIS to the struggle for justice in the contemporary Arab and Muslim World. A Life in Middle East Studies Memoir by Roger Owen  Roger Owen’s first encounter with the Middle East was as a young soldier during his national military service in Cyprus from 1955-6. During this time, he visited Cairo, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Beirut before deciding to spend the rest of his academic and professional life at Oxford and Harvard Universities, where he taught, studied, made friends and tried to understand the region via its politics, economic life, history and popular culture. Providentially, he also decided to keep an almost daily journal recording his thoughts and feelings, as well as being fortunate to be asked to write a regular op-ed column for the London- and then Beirut-based Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat beginning in 1986. Hence this memoir, an attempt to record and to make sense of a life spent studying a culture very different from his own. NGOs in the Arab World Post-Arab Uprisings: Domestic and International Politics of Funding and Regulation Edited by Noura Erakat & Nizar Saghieh  NGOs in the Arab World Post-Arab Uprising is a collection of field-based research that contributes to the literature on the impact of the Arab Uprisings on civil society throughout the Middle East. It does so by examining the development of non governmental organizations in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, and Palestine. Critical Voices Edited by Ziad Abu-Rish & Bassam Haddad  Comprised of twenty-seven interviews with leading researchers, intellectuals, artists, and activists, Critical Voices explores the ways in which power and popular mobilizations manifest in the contemporary region, as well as the representation of key dynamics, experiences, and figures. Through their own unique perspectives and possibilities, the interviewees and interviewers challenge the ways in which the region is studied, discussed, and represented.
Contributors: Awad Abdel Fattah, Sarah Al Abdali, Talal Asad, George Azar, Asli Bali, Nar Photos Collective, Angela Davis, Wael Gamal, Justin Gengler, Nigel Gibson, Nile Green, Ahmad Habib, Bassam Haddad, David Harvey, Jim House, Sonallah Ibrahim, Matan Kaminer, Leila Khaled, Nancy Kricorian, Driss Ksikes, Haytham Manna', Nabeel Rajab, Eastern Province Revolution, Ella Shohat, Zaid Shuaibi, Tariq Tell
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Join the cohort of the 2017 Political Economy Summer Institute for two public events at George Mason University from June 10th - 13th:  Political Economy Summer Institute Two Public Events | GMU Keynote Lecture by Robert Vitalis OILCRAFT Sunday, 11 June, 6:45 PM Merten Hall 1201 ———————————————-- The Political Economy of the Arab Uprisings Monday, 12 June, 6 PM Merten Hall 1202 Sandra Halperin Reflections on Political Resistance & the Roots of Power Joel Beinin Labor Movements and Popular Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt Bassam Haddad Political-Economy and the Roots of the Syrian Uprising Shana Marshall The Military and the State Moderator: Sherene Seikaly Discussant: Samer Abboud These public events are presented by the Arab Studies Institute and Middle East and Islamic Studies Program and co-sponsored by Philosophy and Political Economy, Schar School of Policy and Government, Center for Global Islamic Studies, History Department, and Global Affairs. RSVP to [email protected] Issue 4.1 of Status/الوضع Audio Magazine is live on StatusHour.com! Read about the new issue below and visit the website to listen:  Status/الوضع Audio Magazine Issue 4.1
"With the Middle East and North Africa facing social and political convulsions resulting from a muscular resurgent authoritarianism, a mobilization of fractious divisive sectarianism, and a resistant revolutionary impulse that admonishes both, there is an urgent need to document and deliberate, archive and articulate. It is during these times, and in response to six years of impulsive reportage about the region which has eviscerated context and effaced complexity, that we must be committed to an unabashed anthropological sensitivity to lives forged under these circumstances in locales. That is why this issue of Status, more so than any previous one, was curated with a clear and present desire to situate abstract phenomena in local situations, localize the regional, locate the voices that speak to communities in flux, and see the local for what it is—simultaneously rooted and uprooted. For us in Status, understanding what is taking place in the region necessitates throwing away the broad brush altogether and instead using fine lines to dialogue with subnational, municipal, familial, solidaristic, and even solitary experiences. It is in the magnificence of minutia that we are able to truly appreciate the changes—simultaneously cataclysmic and exuberant--currently taking place in locales from besieged Yemeni mountain villages, politically disparaged Palestinian municipalities, and resistant Syrian archaeological communities to victimized Mosul families, embattled Turkish dissenters, and virtually-extinct Egyptian journalists. Yet one should not mistake commitment to amplifying locale with the dislocation of intersectionality nor with the absence of translocal commitments. To the contrary, we are convinced that solidarity must be grounded in a genuine commitment to locale. One can no longer discuss Syria’s catastrophic war without comprehending mass suffering in Yemen. One can longer discuss the calamitous experiences of First Nations communities of the Americas without contemplating the settler colonial project in Palestine. Poetry written by Arab Americans is at once located here, there, and in the interstitial spaces between them. We hope that you will take the time to peruse and be in dialogue with, not simply listen to, the expressive, informative and inspiring interviews that we carefully, painstakingly and meticulously curated in this most local of Status issues." Continue reading on Jadaliyya: STATUS/الوضع: Issue 4.1 is Live! Issue 4.1: Status/الوضع Issue 4.1 |
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