Taking on the many challenges to scholarship in the Arab world, the US and Europe

That plus a new book on the Gulf monarchies and a great crop of new journal articles in the MENA Academy Weekly Roundup #21

Welcome to the 21st weekly edition of the MENA Academy Weekly Review. It’s sometimes hard to focus on academic knowledge production in the midst of the relentless Israeli war on Gaza and the steady drumbeat of almost unbelievable horrifying news of starvation, death, and disease inflicted on the captive Palestinian population. But the persistent and mounting challenges to scholars in the US, Europe, and the Arab world are all too real. Many of us on the academic side of Middle East issues in the West

are also overwhelmed by the overbearing climate of repression, silencing and outright censorship of views about Palestine and Israel. I have heard so many stories of pressure, investigations, abuse and indignities faced by our academic colleagues in the U.S., Europe and beyond over their scholarship or their public statements rooted in that deep scholarly knowledge. Even those instances which are eventually resolved before becoming headlines take a tremendous emotional, mental and physical toll. The task force I’m leading for MESA is attempting to systematically collect as many of those incidents as possible — if you’ve seen or experienced anything, please tell us about it via this form, or if that seems too complicated just connect with me or one of the task force members via email, WhatsApp, or any other method that you prefer. Please share your experiences - it’s important.

On the Arab side, our feature article this week is the introduction to a special issue on the social sciences in the Arab world, authored by Lisa Anderson and Bassel Salloukh, dissecting “the institutional weakness of the enterprise, which is, in turn, an indication of the absence of the traditional audiences for social research: accountable governments and informed citizenries.” As their abstract explains:

In the Middle East and North Africa, where most states have their origins in colonial regimes that supplied research for their own imperial purposes, the utility of university-based social research in informing public policy has never been uncontested. Continuing ambiguity about the status of the region and of its constituent units in global affairs both reflects and shapes the conduct of social science research. The absence of a widespread notion of the public, the public interest, or the public good as a reference for governments—the absence, in other words, of citizenship rights and democratic accountability—contributes to the confusion about the audience for the research that is conducted. This collection showcases novel interpretations and approaches that transcend persistent challenges to social research in the Middle East and North Africa.

This is an important set of contributions for anyone trying to engage with scholars and scholarship from the Arab world, or the global South more broadly, with a particular eye to the contradictory impulses and outcomes of an array of initiatives (including POMEPS) which attempt to support, promote and build scholarship in the region.

Now, on to the weekly roundup of new MENA scholarship.

First, the book of the week: Cinzia Bianco’s The Gulf Monarchies After the Arab Spring (Manchester University Press, 2024). There has been an efflourescence of good, engaged scholarship on the Gulf over the last decade. What used to be something of a wasteland in the academic literature, with only a handful of key books to assign or read, has become a rich and rewarding terrain. I’m working on a review essay of some of those great new books so I won’t list them here, but I’m delighted to highlight one of them: Cinzia Bianco’s wonderful new discussion of threat perception and foreign policy across the six states of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Bianco, who has interviewed and engaged broadly across the GCC over the last decade, argues that far from responding to threats and opportunities in a unified fashion, the GCC states each have very distinct threat perceptions rooted in their domestic political conditions, geographic position, and broader political ambitions. She expertly reviews their diverse foreign policy choices and offers a coherent explanation rooted in a theory of ontological security which bridges the domestic and international.

I had the chance to talk to Bianco about her book for last week’s podcast. Listen here:

In the journals this week, we’ve got a rich set of articles for your attention on topics reanging from military veteran associations in Tunisia, the AKP and Islamization of the state in Turkey, Dutch policies governing the arming of Syrian rebel groups, Israel and the securitization of the Jewish disapora, Morocco’s religious outreach to West Africa, political party change in Lebanon, and the demand for rebel governance.

Holger Albrecht, “Veteran politics: institutional autonomy and social activism of retired military officer associations,” Contemporary Politics (February 2024). ABSTRACT: What are the driving forces behind the establishment of retired officer associations outside of the corporate military apparatus? This article presents novel insights into such autonomous retired military officer associations and makes a foundational contribution on a severely understudied topic in security studies. Drawing on qualitative field research in Tunisia, the article unpacks the emergence of retired military officer associations in that country and juxtaposes these findings with a comparative overview of veterans’ associations in the Global South. A global perspective supports insights from Tunisia: retired military officer associations enjoying institutional autonomy represent genuinely independent organisations for the representation of social group interests rather than extensions of the corporate military apparatus. Findings reveal how opportunities emerging from periods of political liberalisation explain the timing of the foundation of autonomous retired officer associations, while varied paths of officer socialisation during their military service explains these organisations’ different types of activities.

Sebnem Gumuscu, “The AKP and stealth Islamization in Turkey,” Turkish Studies (February 2024). ABSTRACT: This article argues that the AKP has dismantled secularism in Turkey through stealth Islamization. Defined as incremental and top-down Islamization of social and political life, this process entails four processes: (1) institutionalization of Turkish Islamist political imaginary; (2) redesigning the Diyanet and public education system to spread Islamic beliefs and practices (da'wa); (3) the privileging of Muslim identity at the expense of secular choices, whose costs have increased substantially; and (4) return of Islam to the public space through changes in the built environment. This article unpacks these four processes, which entails AKP's colonization of the state to Islamize society.

Tasniem Anwar, “The law and politics of funding armed groups in Syria: how states (fail to) counter terrorism,” European Journal of International Relations (February 2024). ABSTRACT: This article examines the political and legal controversies around a counterterrorism programme conducted by the Dutch government to support the so-called moderate groups in Syria between 2015 and 2018. The controversies centred around the question how the Dutch government was able to define and support armed moderate groups in Syria and distinguish them from terrorist organizations. The objective of the article is to take up this question and unpack how the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs constructed and justified their definition of material support for moderate groups deployed in this programme, against existing definitions of terrorism funding and terrorist groups embedded in European counterterrorism financing regulations. Connecting to the debates around materiality in both International Relations and International Law, this article follows the material-semiotic practices through which definitions of terrorism come into being. The empirical analysis draws on interviews with legal professionals, policy documents and court transcripts, and provides a detailed overview of how multiple and even conflicting definitions of terrorism and terrorism financing are constructed by the Dutch state. Taking this interdisciplinary approach to materiality and based on the empirical analysis, I propose that this controversy on defining terrorism and terrorism financing reflects a Eurocentric assumption about the knowledge and responsibilities of the Western state in the War on Terror. While the empirics are grounded in the Dutch context, my analysis is relevant for multiple European countries who engaged in similar operations between 2015 and 2018, as well as for future counterterrorism efforts targeting terrorist groups.

Yehonatan Abramson, “Securitizing the nation beyond the state: diasporas as threats, victims, and assets,” European Journal of International Relations (February 2024). ABSTRACT: Securitization theory has paid extensive attention to transnational issues, actors, and processes. Surprisingly, however, only little attention has been paid to the securitization of diaspora communities, defined as overseas citizens or co-nationals abroad. This article fills this gap by developing an analytical framework to study the securitization of diasporas, focusing on three discursive formations: diasporas as threatening actors, as objects under threat, or as security resources. Building upon the recent literature on state–diaspora engagement and drawing on an analysis of Israeli elite discourse (from 1948 to 2022), this article demonstrates how the securitization of diasporas serves as a discursive mechanism that naturalizes and legitimizes extra-territorial policies towards Jews abroad. Thus, the article complements structural and rational explanations of state–diaspora engagement by examining the intersubjective process that endows diaspora policymaking with meaning. Against the backdrop of extensive securitization scholarship that focuses on attempts to keep “foreigners” out, this article shows how securitization justifies bringing certain people in or governing their national identity abroad.

Salim Hmimnat, “Morocco’s religio-political project in Africa: historical narrative, knowledge production, and spiritual influence,” Journal of North African Studies (February 2024). ABSTRACT: This article explores the intricate relationship of influence and interaction between Moroccan Islam and African Islam by surveying the major historical narratives, knowledge production, and spiritual connections that continually shape this complex relationship. In contrast to the conventional understanding that consistently underlines Moroccan Islam’s static, one-way hegemonic endeavour over African Islam, empirical evidence shows that this endeavour evolves as a complex curve grounded in affinities, inclusiveness, and transculturation. Unlike other transnational Islam’s ventures in Africa, most often seen as ‘imported’ and ‘transgressive,’ the Mohammed VI Foundation for African ‘Ulama puts forward a religious model built upon a pan-African narrative that vouches for local traditions, religious diversity, and shared spiritual-security interests. In doing so, Morocco’s religious model is likely on the way to gaining further recognition and appeal throughout many sub-Saharan African countries. Nevertheless, broadening Moroccan Islam’s outreach beyond West Africa, Morocco’s traditional fief of influence, would conversely challenge the centric orthodoxy of Moroccan Islam reshaped in the wake of the 2003 Casablanca attacks.

Ibrahim Halawi, Bassel Salloukh and Janine Clark, “Radical movement-parties, political change and the epistemology of elections: evidence from Lebanon,” Democratization (February 2024). ABSTRACT: A growing literature seeks to bring agency into the study of movement-parties (M-Ps). Yet studies pay little attention to radical M-Ps which confront acute dilemmas when deciding to contest parliamentary elections in systems they deem illegitimate. This article problematizes radical M-Ps’ entry in elections and the meaning they attribute to the role and function of elections – their epistemology of elections. We examine three M-Ps – Beirut Madinati, LiHaqqi, and Muwatinun wa Muwatinat fi Dawla. We demonstrate that radical M-Ps with a coherent strategy for political change, one that includes an epistemology of elections, are more likely to mitigate and survive electoral dilemmas when entering elections. Radical M-Ps lacking such a strategy risk fragmentation and potential dissolution. Methodologically, we chose Lebanon because 1) during the period under study, it is a democracy and, consequently, a relevant case study for theories of party formation; and 2) it offers a controlled comparison of M-Ps in elections. Moreover, all three M-Ps emerged during a similar time-period, with similar social bases, and, at least originally, radical positions. Research is based on participation in, and observation of, protests and elections between 2011 and 2022, as well as primary and secondary source.

Elizabeth Perego, “Dark Humor and ‘Humor Talk’ in Algeria’s Hirak,” Middle East Critique (February 2024). ABSTRACT: Since February 2019, observers and activists alike have commented on the outpouring of humorous expression that Algeria’s ongoing Hirak (‘movement’) for political change has fostered. The present work evaluates the significance of this humor by situating it within longer traditions of political humor in the country. It will likewise do so by noting how humor has changed in response to trauma and how a focus on ‘dark humor’ can illuminate such shifts. By accounting for both changes in talk surrounding humor and its content, what I call ‘humor talk,’ I argue that humor can become a symbol of moving past trauma while transitions between uses and types of humor (in the case of the Hirak, from lighter to ‘dark humor’) can testify to wider changes in political climate or the needs of the populations employing humor. This finding is an important one for Middle Eastern and North African Studies given increasing scholarly attention allotted to humor in uprisings following the 2010–2011 ‘Arab Spring’ and similar movements in the region.

Adrian Florea and Romain Malejacq, “The Supply and Demand of Rebel Governance,” International Studies Review (February 2024). ABSTRACT: A recent wave of civil conflict scholarship examines rebel governance, the process through which insurgent groups organize local affairs in areas under their control. While current research predominantly focuses on the supply side of rebel governance, the attention given to the demand side has been relatively limited. In this study, we take stock of recent scholarship on the dynamic relationship between rebels and civilians to theoretically explore the supply side of rebel governance and develop a new demand-side typology that captures the key factors influencing civilian preferences regarding the nature of rebel rule. Specifically, we argue that demand for rebel governance is mainly shaped by the interaction between civilians’ perceptions of the state and civilian–rebel compatibility, which we define as civilians’ perceptions of the compatibility of the rebel group with their own values, ideology, identity, and preferred modes of socio-political organization. To illustrate our main theoretical points, we draw upon insights gleaned from multiple insurgencies. Our study significantly enhances our understanding of how rebel–civilian interactions mold the fabric of political order in civil war environments.