Search Results

This chapter addresses how Muslims and non-Muslims lived together, side-by-side and having a shared experience. This was the case in Syria from the earliest period of Muslim rule. Arab Muslim immigrants settled in preexisting towns and cities, and al-Jābiya and al-Ramla—two well-known Arab encampments—never took off as significant places of Muslim habitation. Outside Syria, one must also remember that the garrison cities in which Arab immigrants settled were themselves not hermetically sealed off from the populations around them. The chapter then considers some of the social milieux of exchange and vectors by which Muslims came into contact with non-Muslims—milieux where, through shared settings and shared experiences, non-Muslim ideas and practices came to be taken up by Muslims.

This chapter maps out the representational strategies used by television writers and producers after 9/11 to represent Arabs and Muslims as terrorists while avoiding Arab/Muslim terrorist stereotypes. It identifies a list of representational strategies used to illustrate how schematized they have become, and discusses the ideological work performed by them through “simplified complex representations”—the appearance of seemingly complex images and storylines that are in fact quite predictable and formulaic. While some of these strategies are used more frequently and more effectively than others, they all help to shape the many layers of simplified complexity. Simplified complex representations are the representational mode of the so-called post-race era, signifying a new era of racial representation. These representations appear to challenge or complicate former stereotypes and contribute to a multicultural post-race illusion or colorblindness.

The purpose of this chapter is to situate the Arab-Muslim paranoia narrative in relation to a common-sense understanding of conspiracy theory pervasive in American culture. A crucial starting point here is Richard Hofstadter’s paradigmatic account of ‘The Paranoid Style in American Politics’, which locates conspiracy theories on the periphery of pluralistic American democracy as the irrational pathology of angry extremists, and contrasts it with a rational political centre where sensible politics occurs. I identify a powerful dynamic of ideological reproduction embedded in the Arab-Muslim paranoia narrative, which delegitimises Arab-Muslims and affirms a particular Western liberal identity. I show how the paranoid style framework is reinforced by an influential orientalist narrative prominently forwarded by Bernard Lewis and likeminded Arabist scholars, which situates Arab-Muslim culture as fundamentally anti-modernist and points to a culture of bitterness, self-denial and blame as an explanation for resentment towards the West.

Morocco faces difficult foreign policy challenges. Saddled with serious security and territorial integrity concerns, it faces an uphill task to ensure that its existence is not threatened. However, Morocco's strong historical tradition as a monarchy is helpful in, and inextricably linked to, facing such policy challenges. Morocco can afford political pluralism and free competition because it has a monarchy that holds the political system together; the national integrity issue is the base on which the monarchy stands. Morocco can decree economic reform because the monarchy is the ultimate and unaccountable authority, but a failure in the returns on economic liberalization would suddenly make the monarchy dramatically accountable. More than in many countries, foreign policy and domestic stability are mutually dependent in Morocco.

The status of women and the issue of gender inequality have been among the most negotiated and controversial of questions relating to modern Arab-Muslim culture. By reviewing and comparing Islamist and modernist discourses, scholars have been able to work out their common undercurrent, often heavily gendered antagonization of East and West, progress and underdevelopment, acculturation and traditionality. Feminism and femininity were first polarized through the idea of female labor. The Nasserist period brought about a distinct, though not really dominant, politically committed cinema that voiced nationalist, socialist, and also feminist interests, in often contradictory ways. Female liberation and the prise de conscience are thus additionally mapped out as part of the nationalist agenda. The French Revolution leaders mobilized women in large numbers to create an “image of a national alliance of comrades in arms, mothers, sisters, and children.”

This concluding chapter traces the development of the relationship between the Church of the East and the Iranian Empire, which took shape over the course of two centuries. It details how Christians were the unwavering allies of Iran, even potentially more committed to the Sasanian dynasty than the Iranian aristocrats who had abandoned Yazdgird III, the last king of kings. It also discusses the integration of Christian elites and institutions into the imperial network during the reign of Husraw II; East Syrian elites' participation in Iranian political culture; and how East Syrians were as much the heirs of Iran as were their Zoroastrian peers.

This chapter focuses on the representation of women’s educational attainment as a development paradox in Jordan and the Middle East. The paradox is in keeping with a larger industry of defining Arab Muslim women in terms of development problems to be addressed through the expertise of development institutions. It is also clearly linked to a persistent and historical discourse about the Middle East, which characterizes its women as oppressed and powerless victims and its culture as retrograde. The global preoccupation with education in the region has figured strongly in such representations, with the state of education being linked to extremism, cultural backwardness, and even violence. Despite the important contributions of scholars studying women in the region over the past few decades, the popular image of Arab Muslim women continues to be that they are oppressed, weak, and passive victims.

The conclusion summarizes the findings of the books and then explores further avenues of research. This chapter explains how one needs to look at India’s Israel policy more like a segmented foreign policy-making process with different actors, levels of analysis, and niched interests. At the political-state level, there has always been an impression of policy continuity, because the Indian government followed its historical and principled pro-Palestine policy to satisfy historically-held ideological principles, domestic constituencies and its Arab and Muslim allies in the region. The new Israel policy compromise is now defined by an emerging ‘coalition’ of technical-military experts who appreciate the Israeli military industry’s unique expertise and assistance, and of domestic political and economic actors who benefit from specialised joint ventures (in irrigation technology for example) with Israeli private actors.