The following is an excerpt from The Struggle for Iran: Oil, Autocracy, and the Cold War, 1951–1954, by David S. Painter and Gregory Brew, available wherever books are sold. Beginning with the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry in spring 1951 and ending with its reversal following the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq in August 1953, the Iranian oil crisis… Continue Reading The Oil Issue in Iran
In August of 2021, twenty years after the US-led-invasion ousted them from power, the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan. In Us Versus Them: The United States, Radical Islam, and the Rise of the Green Threat, Second Edition acclaimed historian of U.S.–Middle East foreign relations, Douglas Little, examines how American presidents, policy makers, and diplomats dealt with the rise of Islamic… Continue Reading Looking Back: A Year After Taliban Regains Control in Afghanistan
Happy Women’s History Month! In celebration of this historical month, we’ll be sharing reading lists curated by our staff featuring all authors who identify as women. Today we’re sharing a list from Elaine Maisner, one of our Executive Directors. Click here to see the previously shared lists and learn more about how Women’s History Month came about. If you’re interested in purchasing any of… Continue Reading Women’s History Month 2022 Reading List (Curated by Elaine Maisner)
Visit our virtual booth for the Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting. You can browse our new and recent titles, connect with editor Elaine Maisner, and learn more about our Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks Series. New Titles in Middle East Studies Afropolitan Projects: Redefining Blackness, Sexualities, and Culture from Houston to Accra Anima Adjepong Planetary Specters: Race, Migration, and… Continue Reading 2021 Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting
Some of you may be fully aware of what’s going on in Afghanistan right now, but for those who aren’t or would like to learn more information about what lead up to the recent events in Afghanistan, we’ve created a recommended reading list detailing some events that shaped the country into what it is today. Two weeks before the U.S.… Continue Reading Understanding Afghanistan’s Past: A Reading List
Today we welcome a guest post from Alex Dika Seggerman, author of Modernism on the Nile: Art in Egypt Between the Islamic and the Contemporary, out now from UNC Press. Analyzing the modernist art movement that arose in Cairo and Alexandria from the late nineteenth century through the 1960s, Alex Dika Seggerman reveals how the visual arts were part of… Continue Reading Alex Dika Seggerman: A New Modernism for a New America
Today we welcome a guest post from David J. Neumann, author of Finding God through Yoga: Paramahansa Yogananda and Modern American Religion in a Global Age, just published by UNC Press. Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952), a Hindu missionary to the United States, wrote one of the world’s most highly acclaimed spiritual classics, Autobiography of a Yogi, which was first published in… Continue Reading David J. Neumann: What is Yoga? Who is a Yogi?
Today we welcome a guest post from Simon Wolfgang Fuchs, author of In a Pure Muslim Land: Shi’ism between Pakistan and the Middle East, publishing this April from UNC Press. Centering Pakistan in a story of transnational Islam stretching from South Asia to the Middle East, Simon Wolfgang Fuchs offers the first in-depth ethnographic history of the intellectual production of… Continue Reading Simon Wolfgang Fuchs: The Party Capitals of the Iranian Revolution
Today we welcome a guest post from Bruce B. Lawrence, who is co editor, with Carl W. Ernst, of the Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks series at UNC Press. This year marks the Fifteenth Anniversary of the series. You can find out more about the series and its books here. ### Celebrating the Fifteenth Anniversary of the Islamic Civilization and… Continue Reading Bruce B. Lawrence: Celebrating the Fifteenth Anniversary of the Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks Book Series at UNC Press
Today we welcome a guest post from Irfan Ahmad, author of Religion as Critique: Islamic Critical Thinking from Mecca to the Marketplace. Professor Ahmad is an anthropologist and senior research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Studies in Göttingen, Germany. In Religion as Critique, Irfan Ahmad makes the far-reaching argument that potent systems and… Continue Reading Irfan Ahmad: Beyond Trump’s Notion of the “Pathetic Critic”
Although the source of the 9/11 attacks was quite novel and although both the scale and the location of the harm “they” inflicted on “us” were unprecedented, the notion of a virtuous America endangered by wicked and violent enemies was not new at all. Indeed, from the moment that John Winthrop and the Puritans dropped anchor in Massachusetts Bay in 1630 and vowed to build a “City Upon a Hill,” Americans have tended to view the world in terms of “us versus them.” Continue Reading Excerpt: Us Versus Them, by Douglas Little
In the following video, Rizvi talks with Marilyn Wilkes about The Transnational Mosque in an episode of The MacMillan Report, produced by the MacMillan Center at Yale University. Continue Reading Video: Kishwar Rizvi on Islamic Architecture and Historical Memory
Malcolm’s transition would include rejecting the homegrown and Ahmadiyya-based, heterodox Islam practiced by the Nation of Islam and embracing the intellectual, moral, and political currents of orthodox Sunni Islam, African decolonization, and Arab nationalism. In this way, Malcolm’s political and moral commitments combined sometimes-contradictory political ideologies, including those of Muslim Brothers, secular pan-Africanists, and Nasserist pan-Arabists. Continue Reading Alex Lubin: Malcolm X’s Afro-Arab Political Imaginary
Much of the evidence now available suggests the Bush administration threats reinvigorated a moribund program. A Central Intelligence Agency report contended that Iran had abandoned its weapons program. But after the Bush administration scuttled diplomatic agreements regarding the Iranian program, hardliners took control and argued that Iran needed a nuclear weapon to deter a potential U.S. or Israeli military attack. They argued that Iraq had abandoned its nuclear ambitions under pressure from the West and reaped a brutal invasion for its efforts. North Korea, on the other hand, thwarted Western efforts to end its nuclear weapons program and avoided Baghdad’s fate. Arguments that at least the threat of a nuclear weapon was necessary took on greater persuasiveness given that U.S. military deployments sandwiched Iranian territory. Continue Reading Shane J. Maddock: Obama’s Course Correction on Iran
Yasser Arafat has meant many things to many people over the course of his life. To some he is a freedom fighter, and throughout the world he is often depicted in posters alongside Che Guevara. To others he is a terrorist. To the Nobel Prize Committee he is a peace-maker. Arafat has had many lives, and his reputation has been exhumed numerous times over his life and now, after his death.
What often gets overlooked about Arafat and the PLO is the impact he and his movement had on a global third-world movement in general, and on the Black freedom movement in particular. Continue Reading Alex Lubin: Exhuming Yasser Arafat
If you think the past week or so has not gone well for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, then what to say about the U.S. position in the Middle East? Washington’s attempt to remake or at least manage the region has suffered a string of blows that suggests the end is nigh. Continue Reading Michael H. Hunt: The American Project in the Middle East: The End Is Nigh!
For Muslims committed to social justice and feminism it is vital to highlight and expand on voices of dissent to patriarchy that exist in the plethora that is Islamic tradition. Continue Reading Sa’diyya Shaikh: Finding Voices of Dissent within Islamic Tradition
It is Cairo on a sweltering afternoon, and the faithful are streaming into a beautiful, simple mosque. The Friday (jumu‘a) prayers are about to begin. In the courtyard, people take their ablutions in the cool fountain water that provides welcome relief from the heat of the Cairene afternoon. A group of women sitting close together is silently reciting the Qur’ān. An old man, his face kissed gently by time, is sitting easily upright with eyes closed, meditating on the beautiful names of God. Two old friends, both returning to the city after years of travel, trade, and learning, are greeting each other with a tender embrace. A young man, hands raised in supplication, is softly murmuring his deepest yearnings into the hearing of the omniscient One. As the call to prayer is given, a hush falls over the crowd, with each person repairing to his or her private supplications before the sermon begins. Continue Reading Excerpt: Sufi Narratives of Intimacy, by Saʿdiyya Shaikh
The history of American empire building and warfare in one region speaks to the current imbroglio across the Middle East and Central Asia in a striking variety of ways. U.S. policymakers have ignored or have deliberately forgotten the lessons from the conflicts in eastern Asia. Continue Reading Excerpt: Arc of Empire, by Michael H. Hunt and Steven I. Levine
A historical and literary approach at least offers the prospect of a fair-minded and reasonable approach to other people’s religions, which is why such a method seems both attractive and necessary today. Continue Reading Excerpt: How to Read the Qur’an, by Carl W. Ernst
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