Pub Date : 2022-08-23DOI: 10.1177/23477989221115917
Michael B. Bishku
This is an examination of the historical background and demographic composition of minorities in the three South Caucasus states—Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia—as well as a survey of their current status and limits to aspirations of those ethnic groups. It utilizes Sammy Smooha’s concept of ethnic democracy: “a system in which two contradictory principles operate: ‘the democratic principle,’ making for equal rights and equal treatment of all citizens, and ‘the ethnic principle,’ making for fashioning a homogenous nation-state and privileging the ethnic majority.” All of the countries examined fit that category in principle given their respective Constitutions, but Azerbaijan unlike its two neighbors has an autocratic system of government eliminating itself in terms of practice. Armenia is the most homogenous of the three states, while Georgia has the most diverse population. Yet all have numerous minorities living within their borders as well as having ethnic brethren in neighboring countries; dealing with those groups has been problematic to various degrees. Georgia has lost territory—Abkhazia and South Ossetia—to secessionist minorities aided by Russia, while Armenia and Azerbaijan have engaged in war over Nagorno-Karabakh, while driving out of their respective countries either Azerbaijanis or Armenians.
{"title":"The Status and Limits to Aspirations of Minorities in the South Caucasus States","authors":"Michael B. Bishku","doi":"10.1177/23477989221115917","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23477989221115917","url":null,"abstract":"This is an examination of the historical background and demographic composition of minorities in the three South Caucasus states—Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia—as well as a survey of their current status and limits to aspirations of those ethnic groups. It utilizes Sammy Smooha’s concept of ethnic democracy: “a system in which two contradictory principles operate: ‘the democratic principle,’ making for equal rights and equal treatment of all citizens, and ‘the ethnic principle,’ making for fashioning a homogenous nation-state and privileging the ethnic majority.” All of the countries examined fit that category in principle given their respective Constitutions, but Azerbaijan unlike its two neighbors has an autocratic system of government eliminating itself in terms of practice. Armenia is the most homogenous of the three states, while Georgia has the most diverse population. Yet all have numerous minorities living within their borders as well as having ethnic brethren in neighboring countries; dealing with those groups has been problematic to various degrees. Georgia has lost territory—Abkhazia and South Ossetia—to secessionist minorities aided by Russia, while Armenia and Azerbaijan have engaged in war over Nagorno-Karabakh, while driving out of their respective countries either Azerbaijanis or Armenians.","PeriodicalId":41159,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Review of the Middle East","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47414917","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-15DOI: 10.1177/23477989221116446
Irfan Nazir
{"title":"Gerasimos Tsourapas (2021). Migration Diplomacy in the Middle East and North Africa: Power, Mobility, and the State. Manchester, United Kingdom: Manchester University Press. Price: £85.00. 192 pp., ISBN: 978-1-5261-3209-3 (Hardback).","authors":"Irfan Nazir","doi":"10.1177/23477989221116446","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23477989221116446","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41159,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Review of the Middle East","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-08-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44477330","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-12DOI: 10.1177/23477989221115915
Javad Heiran‐Nia
{"title":"Nazli Kamvari (ed.) (2022), In the Middle, On the Edge: Essays on Iran’s Middle Class Poor. Amsterdam: Zamaneh Media, 254 pp. ISBN: 9789082919608 (e-Book).","authors":"Javad Heiran‐Nia","doi":"10.1177/23477989221115915","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23477989221115915","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41159,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Review of the Middle East","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46655873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-12DOI: 10.1177/23477989221118406
P. Kumaraswamy
{"title":"Looking at Israel beyond Political Instability","authors":"P. Kumaraswamy","doi":"10.1177/23477989221118406","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23477989221118406","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41159,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Review of the Middle East","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46649731","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-12DOI: 10.1177/23477989221115916
Prabhat Jawla
{"title":"Joseph Zeira (2021), The Israeli Economy: A Story of Success and Costs. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Price: $35.00, 408 pp., ISBN: 9780691199450 (Hardcover).","authors":"Prabhat Jawla","doi":"10.1177/23477989221115916","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23477989221115916","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41159,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Review of the Middle East","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48898639","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-12DOI: 10.1177/23477989221115293
G. Hitman
Since its establishment as an independent state, Israel has witnessed waves of protests, sometimes violence, from the Haredi (ultraorthodox) community. Focusing on clashes between Haredi protesters and the police from 2000 onward, this study suggests a new theoretical explanation for Haredi protests and violent activities. By using a mixture of the following three major theories—primordial, constructivism, and contingency—the article provides a new model for analyzing Haredi patterns of confrontation with the Israeli authorities. It concludes, inter alia, that the Haredi community is a permanent passive protest movement that responds, usually immediately, to official initiatives to change the status quo involving the state, politics, society, and religion in Israel.
{"title":"Haredi Anti-Zionist Ideology as the Driving Force Behind the Ultraorthodox Protests in Israel","authors":"G. Hitman","doi":"10.1177/23477989221115293","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23477989221115293","url":null,"abstract":"Since its establishment as an independent state, Israel has witnessed waves of protests, sometimes violence, from the Haredi (ultraorthodox) community. Focusing on clashes between Haredi protesters and the police from 2000 onward, this study suggests a new theoretical explanation for Haredi protests and violent activities. By using a mixture of the following three major theories—primordial, constructivism, and contingency—the article provides a new model for analyzing Haredi patterns of confrontation with the Israeli authorities. It concludes, inter alia, that the Haredi community is a permanent passive protest movement that responds, usually immediately, to official initiatives to change the status quo involving the state, politics, society, and religion in Israel.","PeriodicalId":41159,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Review of the Middle East","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48247826","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-26DOI: 10.1177/23477989221098213
M. Quamar
{"title":"Michael Christopher Low (2020). Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj. Columbia University Press. Paperback. ISBN: 9780231190770, Price: US$35.00, 392 pp.","authors":"M. Quamar","doi":"10.1177/23477989221098213","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23477989221098213","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41159,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Review of the Middle East","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42216233","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-03DOI: 10.1177/23477989221100616
E. Alwuraafi
The article examines Ihsan Abdel Quddous’s literary texts that deal with Egyptian Jewish women to explore how Egyptian Jewesses figure in these texts to disrupt, disturb, or offset prevailing historical and fictional discourses and explore his attitude toward Egyptian Jews in general and Jewish women in particular. Deploying post-colonial feminist theory, the article argues that in Quddous’ works, Jewish women represent a highly-educated and liberal community with fluid, transnational identities that serve to foil exclusionary discourses, and that Quddous increasingly has given Egyptian Jewish women, more than any other Arab writer of the period, a voice and an active role in his works. As a result, he has articulated their hopes, fears, and needs in a period dominated by political and social instability. The article aims at identifying and categorizing major tropes and characteristics pertaining to the portrayal of Jewish women in Ihsan Abdel Quddous’ fiction, and how these portrayals adhere to or play on the universal stereotypes of Jews.
{"title":"Construction of Jewish Women in Ihsan Abdel Quddous’s Fiction","authors":"E. Alwuraafi","doi":"10.1177/23477989221100616","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23477989221100616","url":null,"abstract":"The article examines Ihsan Abdel Quddous’s literary texts that deal with Egyptian Jewish women to explore how Egyptian Jewesses figure in these texts to disrupt, disturb, or offset prevailing historical and fictional discourses and explore his attitude toward Egyptian Jews in general and Jewish women in particular. Deploying post-colonial feminist theory, the article argues that in Quddous’ works, Jewish women represent a highly-educated and liberal community with fluid, transnational identities that serve to foil exclusionary discourses, and that Quddous increasingly has given Egyptian Jewish women, more than any other Arab writer of the period, a voice and an active role in his works. As a result, he has articulated their hopes, fears, and needs in a period dominated by political and social instability. The article aims at identifying and categorizing major tropes and characteristics pertaining to the portrayal of Jewish women in Ihsan Abdel Quddous’ fiction, and how these portrayals adhere to or play on the universal stereotypes of Jews.","PeriodicalId":41159,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Review of the Middle East","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43856474","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-02DOI: 10.1177/23477989221099162
J. Calabrese
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is often described as the cradle of the three Abrahamic faiths and Iraq as a land “where faith was born.” But the past two decades have dealt a severe, possibly fatal blow to religious communities that were once vibrant and integral parts of Iraq’s social fabric—and perhaps to the very idea of pluralism in the region. Ensuring the continued presence of religious minority communities is vital to preserving Iraq’s social diversity and nurturing a culture of pluralism. Iraq’s best hope to save its vanishing minorities from extinction and revive religious pluralism lies in the Iraqi Region of Kurdistan (IRK). Fully incorporating displaced non-Muslim components of Iraqi society into host communities in the IRK while preserving their distinctive collective identity would advance the prospects for the survival of religious minorities and the future of pluralism in the IRK, the country at large, and the wider region.
{"title":"Iraq’s Religious Minorities: On the Precipice","authors":"J. Calabrese","doi":"10.1177/23477989221099162","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23477989221099162","url":null,"abstract":"The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is often described as the cradle of the three Abrahamic faiths and Iraq as a land “where faith was born.” But the past two decades have dealt a severe, possibly fatal blow to religious communities that were once vibrant and integral parts of Iraq’s social fabric—and perhaps to the very idea of pluralism in the region. Ensuring the continued presence of religious minority communities is vital to preserving Iraq’s social diversity and nurturing a culture of pluralism. Iraq’s best hope to save its vanishing minorities from extinction and revive religious pluralism lies in the Iraqi Region of Kurdistan (IRK). Fully incorporating displaced non-Muslim components of Iraqi society into host communities in the IRK while preserving their distinctive collective identity would advance the prospects for the survival of religious minorities and the future of pluralism in the IRK, the country at large, and the wider region.","PeriodicalId":41159,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Review of the Middle East","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44259922","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-23DOI: 10.1177/23477989221100042
Fatih Oğuzhan İpek
This article examines the case of the Syrian Democratic Union Party (Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat or PYD) to explain the survival strategies of the non-state armed actor (NSAA). Although the Middle Eastern State System remarkably remained stable after the end of Mandates, the legitimacy of states has been eroded by a combination of colonial legacy, neo-patrimonialism, and authoritarianism, laying the seeds for the rise of non-state challengers to states. At the beginning of the Syrian uprising, the PYD did not fight against the Syrian regime but established its autonomy in northern Syria by taking advantage of the chaos. Using the process-tracing method, the article explains the survival of the PYD until the territorial defeat of the so-called Islamic State and offers parameters of the territorial logic, its organizational structuring, and relations with the states to explain the survival strategies of the PYD. Finally, the study concludes that while the territorial and organizational structuring logics of the NSAA shape its strategies, its complex relationship with states determines its survival.
{"title":"How to Survive as an Armed Non-state Actor? An Assessment of the Syrian Democratic Union Party","authors":"Fatih Oğuzhan İpek","doi":"10.1177/23477989221100042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23477989221100042","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the case of the Syrian Democratic Union Party (Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat or PYD) to explain the survival strategies of the non-state armed actor (NSAA). Although the Middle Eastern State System remarkably remained stable after the end of Mandates, the legitimacy of states has been eroded by a combination of colonial legacy, neo-patrimonialism, and authoritarianism, laying the seeds for the rise of non-state challengers to states. At the beginning of the Syrian uprising, the PYD did not fight against the Syrian regime but established its autonomy in northern Syria by taking advantage of the chaos. Using the process-tracing method, the article explains the survival of the PYD until the territorial defeat of the so-called Islamic State and offers parameters of the territorial logic, its organizational structuring, and relations with the states to explain the survival strategies of the PYD. Finally, the study concludes that while the territorial and organizational structuring logics of the NSAA shape its strategies, its complex relationship with states determines its survival.","PeriodicalId":41159,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Review of the Middle East","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49466598","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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