The meanings of oriental masquerade in T.E. Lawrence’s Arabian ventures

This article explores the changing trajectory of T.E. Lawrence’s interaction with the Arab East on the eve of modernity. It traces his pre-First World War scholarly interest in Levantine antiquities (his archaeological expeditions in Syria), through to his subsequent military engagement in the Arab Revolt (1916–1918). An analysis of Lawrence’s adoption of various forms of Middle-Eastern attire provides a narrative of the events that led to his metamorphosis from a passive scholar into an active soldier. The article examines the homoerotic strands in Lawrence’s assumption of Oriental disguise and highlights its metaphorical significance vis-à-vis the political marriage of British imperial interests and Arab nationalist ambitions in the Arab campaign. The article finally draws on the implications of the Anglo–Arab alliance and its impact on changing the region and altering the image of the ‘Unchanging East’.     

The British Mandate and the crisis of Palestinian landlessness, 1929–1936

This article examines landlessness among Palestinians as a facet of colonial policy in Mandate Palestine before the 1936 revolt. The growth of what was sometimes called a ‘landless class’ came into official view after the violence of 1929. Subsequent investigations indicated that landlessness was a significant problem and that it threatened to destabilize the Mandate. The effort to ameliorate the crisis of landlessness, however, clashed with the dominant colonial conception of settler developmentalism, the notion that Jews, not Arabs, were the agents of modern economic development in Palestine. The first part of this examination revisits the contest over the 1930 White Paper, focusing on its relationship to the advent of mass landlessness. The rapid defeat of the new policy via the MacDonald letter left the landlessness problem to fester while simultaneously obscuring it. As the situation in the Arab countryside continued to deteriorate, the onset of the fifth aliya temporarily reinforced erroneous assumptions about the potential to rectify the problem through the yishuv's development. By the time mass landlessness was ‘rediscovered’ and new land controls designed to protect Arab smallholders were on their way to promulgation in 1935–1936, the Palestinian countryside was just months away from determined revolt.     

Understanding Israel's Long Conflict in Lebanon: The Search for an Alternative Approach to Security During the Peace Process

The Arab‐Israeli peace process pointed to a resolution of the Middle East's most persistent conflict, as the Rabin and Peres governments developed a sensitivity to the Arab‐Israeli ‘security dilemma’, but by 1996 the process was deadlocked. Events stalled progress, but so did ingrained attitudes that continued to shape policy that was inconsistent with the peace process. The following article explains some of the Realist norms and values at the root of security thinking in Israel, and charts their inertia in Israeli policy during the peace process, focusing on its approach to Lebanon. The article gives an insight into why Rabin and his successors struggled to find an alternative policy towards Lebanon, and how this prolonged the Arab‐Israeli conflict. The efforts of the Netanyahu and Barak governments to find a solution to the policy problem of Lebanon are outlined.     

‘Saddam's Qadisiyyah’: Religion and History in the Service of State Ideology in Baʿthi Iraq

Rhetoric espoused by the Ba?thi regime of Iraq reflected a deliberate mix of nationalistic and religious elements, most clearly expressed in the discourse surrounding the war with Iran, termed ‘Saddam's Qadisiyyah’, after a battle during the Arab-Islamic conquests, which Saddam Husayn turned into a metaphor for Arab-Iranian relations. As the memory of the seventh century engagement was popularized in Iraq, Qadisiyyah nomenclature spread throughout the Arab world (and beyond) and Saddam's political paradigm found acceptance among Arab governments and western observers alike. Saddam used this propaganda campaign to three ends: (1) to portray the political conflict with Iran as an ancient ethnic clash; (2) to promote his cult of personality; and (3) to present a successful precedent for Arab victory over Iran. In doing so, Saddam forged a new ‘Arab-Islamist’ discourse, combining religious faith with nationalist sentiment, which he embraced with increasing reliance to the end of his rule. Today, radical Sunni Islamist groups have assumed the mantle of this rhetoric.     

The Martyrs' Revolutions: The Role of Martyrs in the Arab Spring

This article examines popular representations of modern martyrs in the Arab world, comparing national models of martyrdom representations prior to the Arab Spring, namely those from Iran, Palestine and Hizbullah in Lebanon, to portrayals of martyrs during and after the Arab Spring. It argues that the Arab Spring brought forth a new model for the martyr in the Arab world, which (a) moves the production of martyrs' images from the state to the citizen; (b) personalises portrayals of martyrs through stories of their personal lives; and, (c) transitions from portrayals of victimisation to empowerment and agency. In the Arab Spring model, the martyr is both a symbol and narrative framework used to galvanise opposition to state regimes. Unlike the pre-Arab Spring models, which portrayed the martyr's death as an honourable sacrifice for the larger national or religious community, the Arab Spring martyr is portrayed as a needless victim in the fight for the universal values of dignity and human rights, as both a product and producer of meaning associated with agency. As the meaning of the ‘martyr’ continues to evolve in the post-Arab Spring era, it has come to represent the power of the people more broadly.     

Mohamed Hassanein Heikal on the United States: The Critical Discourse of a Leading Arab Intellectual

The renowned Egyptian journalist and commentator Mohamed Hassanein Heikal (b. 1923) is arguably the doyen of Arab writers critical of the United States. Heikal's career as an author spans more than half a century and his access to regional and international audiences has been greatly enhanced in recent years by his regular appearances on the al-Jazeera television station. Drawing on Heikal's extensive published work, this paper offers a detailed treatment of his views on US politics, society and especially foreign policy in order to highlight the elements constituting the image of the United States that he projects. The article argues that Heikal’'s critical representation of the United States has been central to the discourse of Arab nationalists since the late 1950s and their reconstruction of Arab nationalist ideology along anti-American lines. It further argues that Arab nationalists and Islamists subscribe to essentially the same critical reading of the United States and its foreign policy, especially towards the Middle East. Because intellectuals help shape public opinion, this convergence of views between nationalists and Islamists represents a principal source of the negative image of the United States among Arab publics. Understanding the discourse of Arab intellectuals is thus instrumental for comprehending Arab views of the United States. The Arab Spring, with its tribulations and promises of change, brings an urgent need to properly understand and contextualize the discourse of Arab intellectuals, both nationalists and Islamists.     

Machiavelli’s Arab Precursor: Ibn Zafar al-Siqilli¯

Virtually unknown to contemporary Western scholars and most Arab intellectuals is the political thought of Ibn Zafar al-Siqille¯ , a distinguished Arab philosopher and political activist of the twelfth century. First discovered in mid-nineteenth century by an Italian Arabist, Ibn Zafar was considered a worthy precursor to Machiavelli by Gaetano Mosca. This paper presents an analysis of Ibn Zafar's theories of power and leadership and draws relevant parallels between Ibn Zafar's magnum opus, Sulwa¯n al-Muta¯, and Machiavelli's Prince. Written in the genre of 'advice to the prince', Ibn Zafar's book offers an empirical analysis of power and a set of maxims and strategies to be used by a virtuous ruler in order to preserve his power and secure his realm. It will be shown that Ibn Zafar's maxims, like Machiavelli's, transcended his historical milieu and therefore, deserve attention by modern students of Arab political thought.     

RETHINKING AFRICAN SEXUALITIES IN THE CONTEXT OF HIV AND AIDS: THE LIFE AND DEATH DISCOURSE OF ‘MODERNISED POLYGAMY’ IN SUE NYATHI'S THE POLYGAMIST

ABSTRACT

This article is a study of Sue Nyathi's novel The Polygamist as a cultural production dealing with African modern polygamy1 in the context of HIV and AIDS. What is termed ‘modern polygamy’ in this article is a practice where men have several ‘wives’ but not in the African traditional sense, especially within the Shona culture, but in the sense of what is popularised as a ‘small house’ phenomenon. Nyathi's novel is discussed within the following frameworks corresponding to the three distinct parts of the article. In the first part of the discussion, the dichotomy between economic/ social status and ‘modern polygamy’ is explored. The second part of the discussion is a gendered perspective of ‘modern’ polygamy and particularly highlights gender constructions in Nyathi's representation of ‘modern’ polygamy. In the last section, multiple sexual relations and HIV and AIDS are discussed. Significantly, the article demonstrates that imaginative literature is a cultural site that can help us understand human behaviour and HIV and AIDS; particularly in what in religious terms would be referred to as ‘old testament’ polygamy that poses a danger to health and the social fabric in its new form in modern Zimbabwean society.     

A Tale of Two Galloways: Notes on the Early History of UNRWA and Zionist Historiography

A famous quote, ‘Arab leaders don't give a damn whether the refugees live or die’, attributed to an UNRWA official called ‘Ralph Galloway’, is examined. The real author was Lt. General Sir Alexander Galloway, who was briefly an UNRWA official in Jordan during 1951–52. Galloway's career is reviewed along with the circumstances of his brief tenure with UNRWA. He clashed with the Jordanian government over control of the organization during a period of economic crisis and was eventually fired at their request. Galloway's statement was made to visiting American clergy but Zionist writers recopying earlier sources lost Galloway's identity. The historiography of the quote is discussed along with the implications of Galloway's true identity for understanding the history of UNRWA.     

Bemerkungen zur reform des Reichsjustizwesens in der Zweiten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts

Summary

Voltaire and the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688

From the start of his career Voltaire was pro‐English. Britain was for him the country of a ‘sage liberté’ which was the beneficial result of the civil wars. His contacts with the British community in Paris and the exiled Lord Bolingbroke help explain why he sought refuge in London after his imprisonment and his subsequent passion for English institutions. Voltaire's view of institutions was not always very accurate; he only saw the positive side and, intentionally or not, concealed a great deal. The religious foundation of the English character escaped him, as did the agrarian problems. For him the regime of 1689 constituted a constitutional ideal; the balance it achieved was a perfection to whose defects he was blind.

Voltaire had always been split between his admiration for the English system and his respect for the ‘enlightened’ work of Frederick the Great and Catherine Il. He inclined, especially towards the end of his life, towards England. He was one of the originators of a current, still very much alive in France, of an anglophilia of the left’. But the undeniable weakness in Voltaire's thought was his failure ever to ask how far the representative government he so admired was capable of being practised by the French.     

The Demise of the Kurdish Emirates: The Impact of Ottoman Reforms and International Relations on Kurdistan during the First Half of the Nineteenth Century

Since the West's very early flirtations with the modern Near East, and especially in the past 100 years of East–West relations, there has been considerable difficulty in understanding and defining the Middle East, the Arab world, pan-Arabism, Arab nationalism, and Middle Eastern identities in general. The Western impulse of conflating national identity with language, state, and ethnicity – often subsuming Arabic language into Arab ethnicity – has contributed to this misunderstanding and misreading of the region. For, while the Middle East can be accurately referred to by way of the generic ‘Arab world’ label, the appellation itself is a misleading oversimplification that conceals an inherent diversity and multiplicity of Middle Eastern cultures, ethnicities, languages, and nationalities. And while there is certainly a dominant Arab ethnos, there are also significant numbers of Middle Eastern peoples and nationalities with historical memories and ethno-cultural bonds that challenge the dominant Arabist paradigm. This article proposes a new reading of modern Middle Eastern history and attempts to bring back to the foreground of Middle East Studies the issue of language as a key factor in shaping (and misshaping) the region, with the hope of rediscovering a broader, more honest, and less ideologically tainted discussion on the Middle East and Middle Eastern identities.     

Living in the Marikana world: The state,capital and society

Abstract

The ‘Marikana massacre’ that happened on 16 August 2012 at Lonmin mine near Rustenburg in the North-West province of South Africa, in which the South African police shot dead 34 mineworkers for protesting against low wages and other unbearable employment and/or living conditions, cannot be understood as merely an accidental event. It may therefore be useful to view the massacre as one of those tragedies that dramatises, in visible ways, the generally hellish conditions which the peoples of the non-Western world have come to endure ever since the advent of Western modernity. The ‘voyages of discovery’ undertaken by figures such as Christopher Columbus after 1492 marked the commencement of a world system characterised by a Western-centred modernity whose ‘darker side’ inflicted hellish conditions on the non-Western subject, while its ‘brighter side’ in the West saw positive developments – from the 16^th-century ‘rights of people’ to the 18^th-century ‘rights of man’, up to the late-20^th-century ‘human rights’. This article is a decolonial critique on the Marikana massacre and seeks to explain how the modern world system has, since its advent in 1492 as global power structure, been producing a series of ‘Marikana-like’ conditions and events on the part of the non-Western subject that underlies its hierarchical arrangement. The article's point of departure is that rather than understand the Marikana massacre as a unique event or accident, it can better be characterised as a sign of the non-Western subject's subjection to Western-centred modernity. The article explicates how the modern South African state and capital are part of the same ‘colonial power matrix’ (Quijano 2000a), hence the two were bound to be on the same side against labour during the Marikana massacre.     

Britain and the abdication of Reza Shah

On the eve of the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran in the Second World War, Sir Reader Bullard, the British minister in Tehran, urged on his government the desirability of removing the Iranian ruler, Reza Shah, from office. Association with the ‘universally detested’ shah, whom he described as a ‘greedy ignorant savage’, was detrimental to Britain's interests and its war effort. In the weeks that followed the Anglo-Soviet occupation of Iran, Bullard continued to press for and to shape the ultimate British decision to force Reza Shah to abdicate and go into exile. Yet, this was not always Bullard's view of Britain's relationship with the Iranian ruler. When he presented his credentials 20 months earlier, Bullard described it as his ‘urgent duty’ to win Reza Shah's favour. Nor did Bullard's insistence that Britain depose the Shah initially find favour with the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, his Middle East staff at the Foreign Office, or with Churchill. This article traces the evolution of Bullard's own view of Reza Shah and the developments that led the Foreign Office, initially eager to win Reza Shah's favour and even ready to offer Reza Shah a ‘substantial bribe’ for his cooperation, to take steps to topple Reza Shah from the throne.     

Italian Involvement in the Arab Revolt in Palestine, 1936–1939

Italian involvement in the Arab Revolt in Palestine (1936–1939) was perhaps the most explicit example of Rome's attempt to destabilize London's position in the Middle East, prior to Italy's entry to the Second World War. This article examines the mechanisms of Fascist Italy's assistance to the rebels in Palestine, focusing on the secret contacts between Italian officials and the Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husayni. It describes the financial support given by Italy as well as the attempts to smuggle arms to Palestine. The article also analyses Rome's diplomatic manoeuvres in connection with Palestine and its pro-Arab propaganda. It is argued that Italian policy in Palestine was governed by, and subordinate to, wider considerations of Italian policy such as imperial competition with Great Britain and a desire to increase Italy's influence in the Middle East. In fact, Fascist involvement in the ‘first Intifada’ teaches us more about Italian foreign policy than it does on the course of events in Palestine during the Arab rebellion.     

The French invasion of the Spanish Netherlands and the Provincial Assemblies in the Dutch Republic 1667–1668

Summary

This article examines the role defence provision played in the relations between a prince and his estates in early modern Europe. Using the Duchy of Wurttemberg as an example, it illustrates why the question of defence proved so significant in shaping prince‐estate relations, and how the attitudes that it forced each to adopt reveal much about their differing aims and general outlook. The dominant group within the Wurttemberg estates rejected the duke's preferred solution to the defence question, a standing army, out of fear that its adoption would alter the duchy's traditional political structure. Maintenance of this traditional structure was essential to the defence of the dominant group's vested social and economic interests. The dukes considered a standing army an essential prerequisite to the achievement of their dynastic and political goals. The estates’ rejection of it made conflict unavoidable. Though the estates were successful in opposing ducal policies, their lack of an alternative solution illustrates the general point that estates were unable to develop their own concept to rival their ruler's ‘modernizing’ pretensions. Instead, they remained entrenched in their traditional values and were not able to develop into modern parliaments. In contrast to the princes, however, their outlook was essentially peaceful, because war meant change and change was to be avoided.     

Fragments of lives arrested; a memoir of Lebanon's Jewish community

This article mines an early history of modern Lebanon by placing a special focus on the country's Jewish community and examining inter-Lebanese relations where Lebanese Jews take centre stage. Like Lebanon's Christians – Maronites in the main – Lebanon's Jews reveal themselves to have played an important role in the establishment of the Lebanese republic as a ‘confederation of minorities’. But the role of Lebanese Jews was a discreet, low-pitched one, and their ‘voices’ and ‘stories’ seem to have been left out of traditional history books. This article is an attempt at correcting a lacuna of exclusion vis-à-vis Lebanese Jews, mending their memory and restoring them to their rightful place as a foundational element of modern Lebanese history and socio-cultural production.     

Power in Transition in Marcelo Cohen's ‘La ilusión monarca’

This article examines the changing nature of power relations engendered by the Argentine transition to democracy, as reflected in Marcelo Cohen's short story ‘La ilusión monarca’ (1992). By examining contextual markers dispersed throughout the story, Cohen is shown to problematise Foucault's conception of ‘disciplinary society’ as a means to criticise the legacy of corruption bequeathed by the military dictatorship of 1976–1983. Subsequently, the work of Gilles Deleuze is deployed to demonstrate that Cohen's story philosophically examines the change in power and resistance concomitant with the transition from ‘disciplinary’ to ‘control society’ precipitated by the adoption of neoliberal economics in Argentina.     

Remarks on Al-Niffarī's Neglect in Early Sufi Literature

This short article seeks to re-evaluate the unique case of al-Niffarī and the sophisticated framework of his total omission in the great Sufi compendiums of the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries. Among the well-known explanations of this omission provided by modern scholarship are al-Niffarī himself neglecting to collect his writings, the obscurity of his shocking sayings, and the historical fact that he was not affiliated with any mystical school or Sufi sheikh of his time. A significant question should be inserted here: if the writings of al-Niffarī were really shocking for his contemporaries, why do we not come across any evidenced attempts to confront him or accuse him of heresy as was the case with other controversial Sufi figures? In order to answer this question, comparing al-Niffarī's case with the cases of other controversial figures from the same phase might be useful and interesting. Besides al-Niffarī's asocial temperament, the ‘silent’ and ‘personal’ tone of his writings had nothing to do with the Sufi reality that followed his death, a new reality that witnessed a rapid process of institutionalising the Sufi spirituality, where the controlling tone became communalised par excellence.     

Orientalism and binary discursive representations of Tunisia’s democratization: the need for a “continuity and change” paradigm

ABSTRACT

Mainstream analyses of Tunisia’s post-2011 democratic transition have been largely divided along two mutually exclusive narratives. There are those hailing the country as ‘the Arab Spring’s only success story’ on the one hand and those sounding sensationalist alarms about the country’s democratization failure and return to authoritarianism on the other. This is consistent with, and perpetuates, a problematic zero-sum binary in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) scholarship between either a linear democratization process or authoritarian resilience. Furthermore, these reductionist representations highlight the failure of predominant democratization theories to account for the nuances and complexities of democratic transition. This paper critically examines the binary discursive representations of Tunisia’s democratization and explores their underpinning in two competing Orientalisms: the classic Orientalism underscoring an ontological difference (and inferiority) of the ‘Arab world’ to the West, and a liberal civilizing Orientalism which, while acknowledging an ‘essential sameness’ between the West and the ‘Arab world’, places the West as the temporal pinnacle of democracy and the normative monitor of democratic success. This paper thus rejects the binary discursive representations of Tunisia’s transition and advocates for a more nuanced narrative which accounts for the patterns of continuity with and change from authoritarian structures within the democratization process.