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1. Book Review: Sextarianism: Sovereignty, Secularism, and the State in Lebanon

Author:
Zara Lal
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Harvard Journal of Middle Eastern Politics and Policy
Institution:
The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Abstract:
In Sextarianism: Sovereignty, Secularism, and the State in Lebanon, Maya Mikdashi interrogates and redefines the core of the intersecting categories through which “lies … became bureaucracy” (15). The text opens with such a lie, told by a woman named Samera who was married in the Ottoman Empire, but, while living separately from her husband, claimed to be unmarried on the 1932 census conducted under the French mandate to escape her marriage. While this lie allowed her to escape her husband, it also led to a multitude of competing sets of documents, which implicated her son’s ability to receive his inheritance – even his existence was a legally contested question. This phenomenon represents what Mikdashi terms “sextarianism,” “how sex, sexuality, and sect structure legal bureaucratic systems” and shape the performance of citizenship and statecraft (2). Mikdashi’s conceptualization and theorization of the relationship between sex, sect, and the conditioning of state power is in dialogue with Joan Scott, Saba Mahmood, Carole Pateman, Audra Simpson, Hussein Ali Agrama, Lamia Rustum Shehadeh, Suad Joseph and Talal Asad’s contributions on secularity, sexual difference and the structures of state power. In Sextarianism, Mikdashi skillfully brings to light the relationship between state secularism and “evangelical secularism” in the stories of the Sameras appear throughout the chapters of Sextarianism, and particularly how they come into play in the construction of the private sphere through personal status law, and the ways personal status laws reproduce capital and wealth. As Mikdashi argues, all personal status laws, in states where political power is organized through sectarian governmental categories, are essentially “laws of sexual difference” (25), which produce and manage heterosexuality, and intertwine it with sectarian forms of control. In effect, the sextarian approach reveals how the concept of “sect” is structurally reproduced in the constitution of state power.
Topic:
Sovereignty, History, State, Sexuality, and Secularism
Political Geography:
Middle East and Lebanon

2. When Western media frames the Middle East in terms of sectarianism, not only does it do a grave disservice to its audience, but also to the people of this region, with far-reaching consequences

Author:
Abdullah Hamidaddin
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Cairo Review of Global Affairs
Institution:
School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, American University in Cairo
Abstract:
When Western media frames the Middle East in terms of sectarianism, not only does it do a grave disservice to its audience, but also to the people of this region, with far-reaching consequences
Topic:
Religion, Conflict, Sunni, Secularism, and Shiite
Political Geography:
Middle East

3. Different Theoretical Perspectives to Secularization and the Impact of Migration on Future Religiosity of Europe

Author:
Tugba Gurcel Akdemir
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Alternative Politics
Institution:
Department of International Relations, Abant Izzet Baysal University, Turkey
Abstract:
Secularization versus religious revival debate has been shifted to another dimension with the mass migration targeting Europe because of the conflicts in the Middle East. The literature concerning secularism was expecting a linear trend in line with the modernization and Europe was considered to be the nexus of both. This study delineates the secularization debate for evaluating the recent trend of migration within this rather neglected scope. The main argument is that among the secularization theories, religious market model and existential security paradigm have a greater explanatory power for the future state-religion relations in Europe. They indicate that as a result of migration, contrary to the expectation of classical secularism theories, the overall religiosity might increase in Europe due to the pluralization of the religious realm as well as the fact that Muslim migrants who are more religious also have higher fertility rate than Europeans. In that sense, Europe, which seemed to settle the dispute concerning religious realm for years now might be faced with a new challenge due to the migration phenomenon.
Topic:
Migration, Religion, Conflict, and Secularism
Political Geography:
Europe

4. Book Launch: Lineages of the Literary: Tibetan Buddhist Polymaths of Socialist China

Author:
Nicole Willock and Gray Tuttle
Publication Date:
10-2021
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
In the aftermath of the cataclysmic Maoist period, three Tibetan Buddhist scholars living and working in the People’s Republic of China became intellectual heroes and were renowned as the “Three Polymaths”: Tséten Zhabdrung (1910–1985), Mugé Samten (1914–1993), and Dungkar Lozang Trinlé (1927–1997). Lineages of the Literary, by Nicole Willock, reveals how the Three Polymaths negotiated the political tides of the twentieth century, shedding new light on Sino-Tibetan relations and Buddhism during this turbulent era. An interdisciplinary work spanning religious studies, history, literary studies, and social theory, Lineages of the Literary offers new insight into the categories of religion and the secular, the role of Tibetan Buddhist leaders in modern China, and the contested ground of Tibet.
Topic:
Religion, History, Leadership, Literature, Secularism, Buddhism, and Social Theory
Political Geography:
China, Asia, and Tibet

5. Boğaziçi University Demonstrations: Will Erdoğan be Able to Blow the Secular Bubble of Istanbul?

Author:
Hay Eytan and Cohen Yanarocak
Publication Date:
03-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies
Abstract:
In February issue of Beehive, Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak analyses the students’ protests at Boğaziçi University, which took place in January 2021, reflective of the polarization in Turkish society. During the last month, Turkish social media were busy with the mass protests that took place at the Boğaziçi University campus in Istanbul following the appointment of Prof. Melih Bulu, a close associate of President Erdoğan’s, to the post of rector of Boğaziçi. These protests occurred in the shadow of the public debate on the possibility of early elections and President Erdoğan’s recent statement regarding the need for a new constitution to replace the one currently in vigor – which was adopted in 1982 by the military junta that took power two years earlier. Boğaziçi University is considered among the most important educational institutions in Turkey and it is also known as one of the last secular bubbles of Istanbul.
Topic:
Youth, Protests, Secularism, Polarization, and Demonstrations
Political Geography:
Turkey and Middle East

6. “A World of Tomorrow”: Diaspora Intellectuals and Liberal Thought in the 1950s

Author:
Hilary Falb Kalisman
Publication Date:
06-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
This article contributes to Palestinian intellectual history by discussing the lives and writings of three diaspora intellectuals during the transitional period of the 1950s: Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, Abdul-Latif Tibawi, and Nicola Ziadeh. I argue that they fused a conservative acceptance of state authority and avoidance of radical politics with a liberal understanding of nationalism and scholarship, including freedom, secularism, and objectivity. Without a Palestinian nation-state, their participation in the imagined futures of Pan-Arabism and decolonization meant avoiding radical leftist political movements. Instead, they advanced literature and history, surviving in the diaspora as liberals during Pan-Arabism’s transition from a revolutionary goal to a state ideology.
Topic:
Nationalism, Intellectual History, Liberalism, Secularism, Academia, and Freedom
Political Geography:
Palestine

7. Secularism and the Religious Shift in Palestinian Chicago: Implications for Solidarity and Activism

Author:
Loren D. Lybarger
Publication Date:
06-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
This article analyzes transformations in Palestinian secularism, specifically in Chicago, Illinois, in response to the weakening of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the emergence of Islamic reformist structures since the late 1980s. Up until then, secular community organizations that aligned with the secular-oriented Palestinian political factions constituted the ideological center of this community. Beginning in the late 1980s, however, a discernible religious shift began to take place. The analysis draws from extensive fieldwork (2010–15) to show how secularism has not disappeared but rather transmuted into new, often hybrid forms whose lack of institutionalization reflect the attenuation of secularist structures and orientations. The weakening of the secularist milieu leaves individuals who have become disenchanted with the religious-sectarian shift (at the time of the fieldwork) with few alternatives for social connection, solidarity, and action. They forge their own idiosyncratic paths as a result.
Topic:
Islam, Secularism, and PLO
Political Geography:
United States and Palestine

8. Detecting the Ideological Position of Political Islam Towards Liberal Democracy in Muslim Countries

Author:
Nikola Gjorshoski and Goran Ilik
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Journal:
Journal of Liberty and International Affairs
Institution:
Institute for Research and European Studies (IRES)
Abstract:
The question of the correlation between Islam, political Islam, and liberal democracy has so far been the most exposed topic in exploring the democratic capacity of political Islam and Islamic societies in general. What is particularly intriguing about the relationship between political Islam and liberal democracy is the fact of its westernized triviality that has received a pejorative tone in Islamic political circles. Simplified, the triviality of liberal democracy for the Islamic political campus implies imposing a model of democracy that cannot be fully compatible with the original Muslim notion of society and government. Hence, the following paper analyzes exactly the relations of political Islam to specific inherent categories of liberal democracy such as the rule of law, representative government, the separation of powers, and secularism as diferenta specifica of liberal western democratic discourse. Through the methods of induction and deduction, the author will illustrate how appropriate tangent or divergence is illustrated and how this is reflected in the general ideological positioning of political Islam towards liberal democracy in Muslim countries through an axiological and praxeological perspective.
Topic:
Democracy, Rule of Law, Islamism, Liberalism, Secularism, and Sharia
Political Geography:
Middle East, North Africa, and Global Focus

9. Religion vs. Secularism in Contemporary World Politics

Author:
Cesare Merlini
Publication Date:
09-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Istituto Affari Internazionali
Abstract:
As mail-in voting begins for the US November elections, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has announced plans to visit Pope Francis in Rome. The intent was anticipated in a critical article penned by Pompeo himself in First Things, the authoritative US journal of conservative Catholics. In it, Pompeo explained his visit as aimed at pressing the Vatican to halt its entente with China about the naming of bishops in that country, leading to angry rebukes and a warning that the Pope may in fact refuse to meet the incoming Secretary of State. A couple of weeks earlier, two normalisation agreements involving Israel and the Middle Eastern states of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates were signed with much pomp and fanfare at the White House. The name given to the agreements: The Abraham Accords. This follows Trump’s transfer of the US embassy to Jerusalem in 2018. Donald Trump’s efforts to consolidate electoral support from religious groups is not surprising or new. This tactic was instrumental in his previous election in 2016. More recently, one can recall the photo-op at Christ Church, near the White House, with the Holy Bible in his right hand after having ordered the police to dispel Black-Lives-Matter protesters from the area. Or Trump’s decision to be the first sitting president to address the annual anti-abortion March for Life rally earlier this year.
Topic:
Politics, Religion, Elections, and Secularism
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

10. Hindutva in India: Rise of Bigotry against Muslims

Author:
Inayat Kalim, Hussain Shaheed Soherwordi, and Areeja Syed
Publication Date:
07-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
South Asian Studies
Institution:
Department of Political Science, University of the Punjab
Abstract:
The preface of the Indian Constitution declares India a sovereign, democratic, republic, and socialist state. Later on through the 42nd amendment, socialist and secular terms were incorporated into the constitution. Indian social order is known to be a multi-cultural and multi- religious society on account of an assortment of castes, religions, and cultures. Within all that disparities, Muslims form the main minority in the state. However, a clear-cut pluralistic discrepancy between the theory and practice of the Indian constitution is obvious. Indian Muslims are deprived of cultural, religious, and political rights due to the escalation of Hindutva policies throughout the Modi reign. The continued Kashmir dispute and the recent Pulwama attack intensified India- Pakistan animosity and the root cause seems to be the rise of Hindutva in India. For that reason, the authors delve into the matter and strive to present a descriptive analysis on the rise of Hindutva in India and the illicit silence of the international actors on this grave Indian fanaticism.
Topic:
Civil Society, Religion, Minorities, Discrimination, and Secularism
Political Geography:
India and Asia