In this Contemporary Islamic Studies seminar, Dr Haroon Bashir discusses his new book ‘Slavery, Abolition and Islam: Debating Freedom in the Islamic Tradition’ published in January 2025 by Oxford University Press Bio: Dr Haroon Bashir is Senior Lecturer in Islamic Studies at the Markfield Institute of Higher Education. He also serves as the Director of the Markfield Centre for Contemporary Islam. His research focuses on Islam's conversation with modernity and contemporary Islamic thought. His recent book, which he will be discussing today, was published in January 2025 by Oxford University Press and is entitled ‘Slavery, Abolition and Islam: Debating Freedom in the Islamic Tradition’.

Abstract: The abolition of slavery remains a relatively new concept in human history and scholars from all religious traditions have attempted to navigate the religious and ethical questions raised by the historical acceptance of the practice. In this seminar, Haroon Bashir explores how scholars promoting abolition in the name of Islam transformed the debate around Islam and slavery. The seminar explores how abolitionism became the hegemonic position within contemporary Islamic thought and provides a genealogy of ‘Islamic abolitionist’ thought. Abolitionist arguments were not simply accepted when originally articulated, with defenders of the slave trade using the weight of historical tradition to emphasise the legitimacy of slavery. The strongly contested debates that ensued had huge ramifications for understandings of authority, tradition, and modernity within Islamic thought that are as present as they are past.

In this joint seminar with the Asian Studies Centre, Dr Erin MB O’Halloran, University of Cambridge, presents her new book 'East of Empire' (2025 Stanford University Press). Chaired by Professor Faisal Devji (St Antony’s College). For many years, scholars, politicians and activists have drawn comparisons between the partitions of India-Pakistan and Israel-Palestine, two seismic events which took place mere months apart. Yet they were far more than comparable: the two partitions were in fact deeply interconnected, and share origins in the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. In ‘East of Empire’, Erin O’Halloran reveals how the crisis in British Mandate Palestine created a crucial bridge between the Indian Khilafat movement of the early 1920s and Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s demand, from March 1940 onward, that Muslims of the subcontinent be given a state of their own.

In this joint seminar with the Asian Studies Centre, Dr Erin MB O’Halloran, University of Cambridge, presents her new book 'East of Empire' (2025 Stanford University Press). Chaired by Professor Faisal Devji (St Antony’s College). For many years, scholars, politicians and activists have drawn comparisons between the partitions of India-Pakistan and Israel-Palestine, two seismic events which took place mere months apart. Yet they were far more than comparable: the two partitions were in fact deeply interconnected, and share origins in the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. In ‘East of Empire’, Erin O’Halloran reveals how the crisis in British Mandate Palestine created a crucial bridge between the Indian Khilafat movement of the early 1920s and Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s demand, from March 1940 onward, that Muslims of the subcontinent be given a state of their own.

In this joint seminar with Oxford University’s Refugee Studies Centre, Wendy Pearlman, Professor at Northwestern University, shares personal testimonies collected from displaced Syrians around the world. Abstract:

Over 13 years, Northwestern University Professor Wendy Pearlman has interviewed more than 500 displaced Syrians around the world about their lives under a brutal authoritarian regime, the popular uprising against it, and the subsequent war and refugee crisis. In this presentation, she shares and explores their stories collected in her two books, ‘We Crossed A Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria’ (2017) and ‘The Home I Worked to Make: Voices from the New Syrian Diaspora’ (2024). These personal testimonials offer a human lens on the stunning recent collapse of the Assad regime, while also offering broader lessons about migration, belonging, and the search for dignity.

Biography:

Wendy Pearlman is the Jane Long Professor of Arts and Sciences and professor of political science at Northwestern University, and Co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal ‘Perspectives on Politics’. A scholar of Middle East politics, social movements, conflict processes, and forced migration, she is the author of six books and more than 40 journal articles or book chapters.

This is a joint seminar with Oxford University’s Refugee Studies Centre. Chaired by Dawn Chatty, Emerita Professor of Anthropology and Forced Migration and former Director of the Refugee Studies Centre, 2011-2014.

In this Friday seminar, Jérôme Drevon discusses his book ‘From Jihad to Politics: How Syrian Jihadis Embraced Politics’ (OUP 2024). Bio

Jérôme Drevon is senior analyst on Jihad and Modern Conflict at the International Crisis Group (ICG). Jerome studies the evolution of non-state armed groups with a special emphasis on Jihadis, especially how they can become more pragmatic overtime. For the past few years, he has also focused more thoroughly on how other actors - including states and humanitarians - can engage some of these groups, who now rule millions of civilians worldwide. Jerome has conducted extensive field research in conflict zones, including Syria, where he interviewed hundreds of Jihadi militants and foreign fighters from their military, political, and religious leaders to their foot soldiers – to gain a deeper understanding of their changing political views in armed conflicts.

Abstract

The Syrian regime unleashed unprecedented violence to suppress large-scale non-violent protests amid the Arab uprisings. Hundreds of armed groups formed throughout the country to defend the protesters and fight back. However, in contrast to other conflicts previously dominated by al-Qaeda and Islamic State, the two largest Syrian Jihadi groups, Ahrar al-Sham and then Jabhat al-Nusra, rejected global jihad and began to cultivate new ties with the population, other armed opposition groups, and even foreign states. This strategic shift is a response to the Jihadi paradox--a realization that while Jihadis excel at leading insurgencies, they fail to achieve political victories.

In From Jihad to Politics, Jérôme Drevon offers an examination of the Syrian armed opposition, tracing the emergence of Jihadi groups in the conflict, their dominance, and their political transformation. Drawing upon field research and interviews with Syrian insurgents in northwestern Syria and Turkey, Drevon demonstrates how the context of a local conflict can shape armed groups' behavior in unexpected ways. Further, he marshals unique evidence from the Arab world's most intense conflict to explain why the trajectory of the transnational Jihadi movement has altered course in recent years.

On Tuesday 18 February 2025, the Middle East Centre hosted the launch for St Antony’s Emeritus Fellow, Professor Avi Shlaim’s, new book ‘Genocide in Gaza: Israel’s Long War on Palestine’ (Irish Pages Press, 2025). On Tuesday 18 February 2025, the Middle East Centre hosted the launch for St Antony’s Emeritus

Fellow, Professor Avi Shlaim’s, new book ‘Genocide in Gaza: Israel’s Long War on Palestine’ (Irish Pages Press,

2025). This is a recording of Avi Shlaim’s talk, chaired by MEC Director, Professor Eugene Rogan, and featuring

the Founder and Editor of Irish Pages, Chris Agee.

The book is a Times Literary Supplement book of the year 2024. Copies are available to purchase directly from

the publisher, The Irish Pages Press here:

irishpages.org/product/genocide-in-gaza

Book Abstract:

The brutal assault launched by Israel on the Gaza Strip in in response to the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023

was a major landmark in the blood-soaked history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This was the eighth Israeli

military offensive in Gaza since Operation Cast Lead of December 2008. But it was the most lethal and

destructive, making the enclave uninhabitable. In this book Avi Shlaim places Israel’s policy towards the Gaza

Strip under an uncompromising lens. He argues that these recurrent attacks — what Israeli generals chillingly call

“mowing the lawn” — are the inevitable result of Zionist settler colonialism whose basic objective is the

elimination of the native population. In this war, however, Israel has gone beyond land-grabbing and ethnic

cleansing to commit the crime of all crimes — genocide. Providing Israel with arms as well as diplomatic

protection at the UN, make America, Britain, and European Union not only complicit but partners in Israel’s war

crimes. Noam Chomsky observed that “Settler colonialism is the most extreme and vicious form of imperialism”.

There is no better illustration of this fundamental truth than Israel’s long and savage war against the Palestinian

people.

“Clear, forthright and cogent, Genocide in Gaza is essential reading for both those who understand little of

Palestine-Israel and those who have followed the unfolding horrors for decades. As a historian, Shlaim is

meticulous, thoughtful and robust. As a person who has lived in three worlds – Iraqi, Israeli and British, with a

Jewish religion and an Arab ethnicity – few understand it as well on a personal level. His political vision is clear-

sighted, his ideal humane.” Selma Dabbagh, novelist and human rights lawyer

A talk from Joseph Bahout, Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs (IFI) at the American University of Beirut (AUB) and Associate Professor of Practice in Political Studies. In this talk, Joseph Bahout, Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs (IFI) at the American University of Beirut (AUB) and Associate Professor of Practice in Political Studies, shares his analysis of the current political situation in Lebanon and Syria.

A launch event for ‘The Oxford Handbook of Religion in Turkey’ (OUP), jointly convened by the MEC and SEESOX, with panellists Caroline Tee, Fabio Vicini, Sertaç Sehlikoğlu, and Stefan Williamson Fa. A launch event for ‘The Oxford Handbook of Religion in Turkey’ (OUP), jointly convened by the Middle East Centre and South East European Studies at Oxford (SEESOX), with a panel from the Handbook’s editors and contributors: Professor Caroline Tee (University of Chester), Professor Fabio Vicini (University of Verona),Dr Sertaç Sehlikoğlu (University College London), and Dr Stefan Williamson Fa (University of Cambridge).

This comprehensive volume delves into the multifaceted landscape of religion in Turkey, examining its historical evolution, contemporary manifestations, and the complex interplay between religion, politics, and society. The handbook brings together contributions from leading scholars, offering diverse perspectives on topics such as secularism, religious movements, minority religions, and the role of religion in public life. By providing an in-depth analysis of Turkey’s religious dynamics, this work serves as an essential resource for understanding the country’s unique position at the crossroads of East and West, tradition and modernity.

https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197624883.001.0001

Sonja Mejcher-Atassi, author of ‘An Impossible Friendship’, Marilyn Booth, author of ‘The Career and Communities of Zaynab Fawwaz’, and Peter Hill, author of ‘Prophet of Reason’, discuss the writing of biography in modern Middle Eastern history. Book abstracts:

‘An Impossible Friendship: Group Portrait, Jerusalem Before and After 1948’ –

In Jerusalem, as World War II was coming to an end, an extraordinary circle of friends began to meet at the bar of the King David Hotel. This group of aspiring artists, writers, and intellectuals—among them Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, Sally Kassab, Walid Khalidi, and Rasha Salam, some of whom would go on to become acclaimed authors, scholars, and critics—came together across religious lines in a fleeting moment of possibility within a troubled history. What brought these Muslim, Jewish, and Christian friends together, and what became of them in the aftermath of 1948, the year of the creation of the State of Israel and the Palestinian Nakba?

Sonja Mejcher-Atassi tells the story of this unlikely friendship and in so doing offers an intimate cultural and social history of Palestine in the critical post-war period. She vividly reconstructs the vanished social world of these protagonists, tracing the connections between the specificity of individual lives and the larger contexts in which they are embedded. In exploring this ecumenical friendship and its artistic, literary, and intellectual legacies, Mejcher-Atassi demonstrates how social biography can provide a picture of the past that is at once more inclusive and more personal. This group portrait, she argues, allows us to glimpse alternative possibilities that exist within and alongside the fraught history of Israel/Palestine. Bringing a remarkable era to life through archival research and nuanced interdisciplinary scholarship, ‘An Impossible Friendship’ unearths prospects for historical reconciliation, solidarity, and justice.

‘The Career and Communities of Zaynab Fawwaz: Feminist Thinking in Fin-de-siècle Egypt’ –

Zaynab Fawwaz (d. 1914) emerged from an obscure childhood in the Shi’I community of Jabal ‘Amil (now Lebanon) to become a recognized writer on women’s and girls’ aspirations and rights in 1890s Egypt. This book insists on the centrality of gender as a marker of social difference to the Arabic knowledge movement then, or Nahda. Fawwaz published essays and engaged in debates in the Egyptian and Ottoman-Arabic press, published two novels, and the first play known to have been composed in Arabic by a female writer. This book assesses her unusual life history and political engagements—including her work late in life as an informant for the Egyptian khedive.

A series of thematically focused chapters takes up her views on social justice, marriage, divorce and polygyny, the ‘gender-nature’ debate in the context of local understandings of Darwinism, education, and imperialism and Islamophobia, attending also to works by those to whom Fawwaz was responding. Her role in the first Arabic women’s magazine, and her contributions to later women’s magazines, are part of the story, too. Further chapters consider her uses of history in fiction to criticize patriarchal control of young women’s lives, and her play as an intervention into reformist theatre, and the question of women’s access to public culture in 1890s Egypt. Questions of desirable masculinities are central to all of these. Fawwaz was also known for her massive biographical dictionary of world women. In that work as in her essays, Fawwaz articulated an ethics of social belonging and sociality predicated on Islamic precepts of gender justice, and critical of the ways male intellectuals had used ‘tradition’ to silence women and deny their aspirations.

‘Prophet of Reason: Science, Religion and the Origins of the Modern Middle East’ –

In 1813, high in the Lebanese mountains, a thirteen-year-old boy watches a solar eclipse. Will it foretell a war, a plague, the death of a prince? Mikha’il Mishaqa’s lifelong search for truth starts here. Soon he’s reading Newtonian science and the radical ideas of Voltaire and Volney: he loses his religion, turning away from the Catholic Church. Thirty years later, as civil war rages in Syria, he finds a new faith – Evangelical Protestantism. His obstinate polemics scandalise his community. Then, in 1860, Mishaqa barely escapes death in the most notorious event in Damascus: a massacre of several thousand Christians. We are presented with a paradox: rational secularism and violent religious sectarianism grew up together.

By tracing Mishaqa’s life through this tumultuous era, when empires jostled for control, Peter Hill answers the question: What did people in the Middle East actually believe? It’s a world where one man could be a Jew, an Orthodox Christian and a Sunni Muslim in turn, and a German missionary might walk naked in the streets of Valletta.

In this talk, Dr Elham Fakhro, a Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, launches her new book ‘The Abraham Accords: The Gulf States, Israel, and the Limits of Normalization’ Elham Fakhro is a Research Fellow at the Middle East Initiative, Belfer Center, at the Harvard Kennedy School. She previously acted as Senior Analyst with the International Crisis Group and held teaching and research roles at NYU Abu Dhabi and Exeter University. She holds an LLM from Harvard Law School and DPhil from St Antony's College, Oxford University.

‘The Abraham Accords: The Gulf States, Israel, and the Limits of Normalization’ book abstract:

In August 2020, Donald Trump announced that his administration had brokered a ground-breaking treaty between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, the first normalization agreement between Israel and an Arab state in more than twenty years. Soon afterward, Bahrain joined the agreements, known as the Abraham Accords. How were these treaties achieved, and why did the parties involved see normalization as in their interest? In what ways have the accords altered the Middle East’s political landscape, and how have they affected the question of Palestine?

This book is a ground-breaking in-depth analysis of the Abraham Accords, shedding new light on their causes and consequences. Elham Fakhro demonstrates how shared security concerns, economic interests, and regional political shockwaves led to a surprising strategic convergence between the Gulf states and Israel, setting the stage for covert relations to come out into the open. She examines the role of the Trump administration in negotiating the agreements and shows how the UAE and Bahrain have instrumentalized the accords to burnish their reputations in Western capitals. Fakhro underscores how Washington’s Middle East policy shifted toward expanding the agreements at the expense of attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—with profound costs. Offering a critical lens on a much-hailed agreement, this book argues that the pursuit of normalization in isolation from a lasting solution to the conflict has entrenched the conditions that continually plunge the Middle East into crisis.