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.

In this talk, Iraqi political analyst, Sajad Jiyad, discusses his new book ‘God’s Man in Iraq: The Life and Leadership of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani’. In his new book, ‘God’s Man in Iraq: The Life and Leadership of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani’, Century International fellow Sajad Jiyad draws on original sources and hundreds of interviews during decades of fieldwork inside Iraq to show how Sistani, as the revered senior Shia cleric in a Shia-majority country, commands the loyalty of millions of faithful. With quiet authority, Sistani has tried from behind the scenes to steer Iraq through a series of existential crises since the U.S. invasion and fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003. During decades of turmoil, war, and regime change in Iraq, Sistani has loomed above every other cleric and politician.

In the summer of 2014, as the Islamic State stormed across Iraq, an ascetic Shia cleric raised his voice and rallied the country to stop the extremists’ bloody march.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, at the time eighty-five years old, delivered a decree through a Friday prayer sermon on June 13, 2014: “Citizens who are able to bear arms and fight terrorists in defense of their country, people, and sanctities,” he said, “must volunteer to join the security forces.”

The decree, which came to be known as the jihad fatwa, successfully rallied Iraqis—across ethnic and sectarian backgrounds—to repel the Islamic State. The moment is but one of the starkest examples of Sistani’s decisive influence, not just in Iraq but in the wider world of Shia Islam. Sistani has done more to stabilize Iraq than any other figure, and has appealed to perhaps a majority of the world’s Shia Muslims with his indirect model of clerical authority—a stark contrast to the competing model of direct clerical rule advanced by his rivals in Iran.

Sistani is now ninety-four, and contenders have already begun positioning themselves to succeed him. Jiyad assesses the players and the complex selection process for Najaf’s leadership.

Observers of Iraq and of Shia power will find God’s Man in Iraq an incomparable appraisal of Sistani’s legacy—and an invaluable guide to the perilous transition that will follow his tenure.

Bio:

Sajad Jiyad is a fellow at Century International and director of the Shia Politics Working Group. An Iraqi political analyst based in Baghdad, he is the managing director of Bridge, an Iraqi nongovernmental organization and consultancy focused on development projects for young people. Sajad’s main focus is on public policy and governance in Iraq. He is frequently published and cited as an expert commentator on Iraqi affairs. Sajad’s educational background is in economics, politics, and Islamic studies.

Researcher and writer, Rusha Latif, gives a talk based on her new book ‘Tahrir’s Youth: Leaders of a Leaderless Revolution’ Abstract:

In this talk based on her new book ‘Tahrir’s Youth: Leaders of a Leaderless Revolution’, Rusha Latif will challenge the commonly held belief that the 2011 Egyptian revolution was spontaneous and leaderless, through a provocative new account of the revolutionaries—one that foregrounds their solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for liberation as a key catalyst behind their revolt. In fact, much like the war on Gaza is radicalizing legions of young people around the world today, it was the Second Palestinian Intifada in 2000 that first radicalized many of the Egyptian youth who drove the uprising ten years later, in the hope of emancipating themselves as well as their neighbours. Speaking to these interconnections, the presentation will follow the trajectory of the movement through its successes and defeats from the perspective of the Revolutionary Youth Coalition (RYC), the first and arguably most significant front born of the nationwide revolt. Timely and necessary, this talk will not only illuminate the Egyptian uprising’s leadership and organizing dynamics but also impart urgent lessons from the protagonists behind this historic movement—lessons for everyone hoping to achieve liberation and revolutionary change in the 21st century.

Bio:

Rusha Latif is a researcher and writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. A first-generation Egyptian American, she travelled to Cairo in 2011 to conduct ethnographic research on the uprising. Her interests include social movements and revolutions; the study of gender, class, and race/ethnicity; Islamic studies; and Middle Eastern studies. She is the author of ‘Tahrir’s Youth: Leaders of a Leaderless Revolution’ (AUC Press, 2022), an activist ethnography that explores the themes of leadership and organization in the Egyptian revolution.

Dr Ibrahim Al-Marashi reflects on the process of researching and writing the latest edition of his book, ‘A Concise History of the Middle East’. This book talk on ‘A Concise History of the Middle East’ will discuss history-in-the-making. Close to a year after 7 October 2023, the reverberations of these events will be felt for generations to come, yet are uncertain. Nevertheless, this ‘History’ textbook has documented the region’s past for more than four decades for thousands of students, the 13th edition’s conclusions do reveal a troubling future in terms of political conflicts and climate insecurity. The region has witnessed seismic events, literally, from earthquakes in Turkey and Syria to unprecedented Mediterranean hurricanes, and finally heat waves in the Gulf resulting in the highest temperatures in recorded history. This history demonstrates environmental changes and the conflicts in the Middle East, particularly in Gaza, are interconnected. Despite these political and environmental challenges, there are individuals in the ‘Concise History’ whose resilience and endurance deserves attention and discussion.

Journalist and scholar, Dr Ezgi Başaran, presents her book which traces the links between the AKP, Tunisia’s Ennahda, and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood after the Arab Spring. Since the fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Tunisian President Ben Ali, delegations from Turkey’s Justice and Development Party – the AKP, including parliamentarians and ministers, visited Cairo and Tunis. Similarly, representatives from the Muslim Brotherhood and Ennahda visited Istanbul and Ankara, engaging in activities and meetings with government officials. What were the goals of these meetings, kept from the public eye? What discussions took place among these Islamist actors after the Arab Uprisings?

These questions intrigued Dr Ezgi Başaran and became the driving force behind her recent book, The New Spirit of Islamism, which examines the relationships between the AKP and the Muslim Brotherhood, and the AKP and Ennahda from 2011 to 2013. The focus on Tunisian Ennahda, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, and the AKP was not to compare their strategies or practices but to unravel the details of their political confluence. This period also marked the first time the Muslim Brotherhood and Ennahda participated in free elections, established political parties, and assumed power; hence, a unique opportunity for analysis of the goals and aims of Islamist movements. Based on the findings regarding this political confluence, Dr Başaran aims to deliver insights into what she calls the “new spirit of Islamism.”

Ezgi Başaran is a journalist and political scientist from Istanbul, currently living in Oxford, UK. She began her career as a reporter, covering conflict zones and significant global events, and later became the youngest editor-in-chief of a major liberal left newspaper. She has written extensively on the Kurdish conflict, Turkish and Middle Eastern politics, human rights violations, and freedom of speech. Her investigative work has earned her several accolades, and her commentary has appeared in major international media. Her first English book, Frontline Turkey: The Crisis at the Heart of the Middle East (2017), explores Turkey’s Kurdish issue and its regional implications. Her second book, The New Spirit of Islamism, was published in June 2024 by I.B Tauris/Bloomsbury. Ezgi holds an MPhil and DPhil from the University of Oxford, St Antony’s College.

Professor Malika Zeghal (Harvard University) presents her new book 'The Making of the Modern Muslim State: Islam and Governance in the Middle East and North Africa', an innovative analysis that traces the continuity of the state’s custodianship of Islam. In The Making of the Modern Muslim State: Islam and Governance in the Middle East and North Africa (Princeton University Press, 2024), Malika Zeghal reframes the role of Islam in modern Middle East governance. Challenging other accounts that claim that Middle Eastern states turned secular in modern times, Zeghal shows instead the continuity of the state’s custodianship of Islam as the preferred religion. Drawing on intellectual, political, and economic history, she traces this custodianship from early forms of constitutional governance in the nineteenth century through post–Arab Spring experiments in democracy. Her detailed and groundbreaking analysis, which spans Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon, makes clear the deep historical roots of current political divisions over Islam in governance.

Malika Zeghal is the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professor in Contemporary Islamic Thought and Life in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University. She is the author of Gardiens de l’Islam, Les Oulémas d’al-Azhar dans l’Egypte Contemporaine and Islamism in Morocco: Religion, Authoritarianism, and Electoral Politics.

Chaired by Professor Raihan Ismail, H.H. Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani Professor in Contemporary Islamic Studies.

Ali Mirsepassi in conversation with Stephanie Cronin about his new book

Book Launch for "The Damascus Events: the 1860 Massacre and the Destruction of the Old Ottoman World" By Eugene Rogan, Published in hardback by Allen Lane, 2 May 2024. A watershed moment in the history and the making of the modern Middle East. Renowned Arab scholar, Eugene Rogan brilliantly recreates the lost world of the Middle East under Ottoman rule at a formative juncture that was to reshape the future of the region to the present day. The old Empire was under pressure from global economic change and European imperial expansion and tensions were raised – nowhere more so than in Damascus. LInked by caravan trade to Baghdad, the Mediterranean and Mecca, Damascus was a warily tolerant place until local diplomatic and trade reforms consistently favoured Christians over Arab Muslims, who came to see their Christian neighbours as an existential threat, such that the extermination of the Syrian Christians seemed like a reasonable solution.

The unprecedented violence that followed shocked the world, claiming more than 10k Christians in Mount Lebanon and 5k in Damascus. For Syria, Lebanon and the Arab states it remains a defining moment.

It would take a generation for the Ottoman government to rebuild the city and restore peace between the Muslims and Christians of Damascus, introducing far reaching administrative and financial reforms which would return stability not only to the Syrian capital but also shape the future of the newly emerging countries of the modern Middle East. That peace in Damascus would last 150 years, until the outbreak of civil war in 2011.

Eugene Rogan has been mulling over the pivotal importance of this massacre all his professional life. Drawing on the never-before-seen first hand reports of Dr Mishaqa, the Christian vice-Consul to the US, and other notable scholars of the time, he answers key questions: why did the Muslim of Damascus massacre the Christians of their city? and How did the Ottoman authorities bring the city back from that brink? He brings essential new material to the history of the moment, while building the most comprehensive survey to date of eye witness accounts from both the Christian and Muslim perspectives.

The Damascus Events offers a superb history of a moment of deeply divisive trauma that unmade a great city and examines the possibility, even after conflict and tragedy, of renewal.