Selected by Fred Rhodes

By The Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research (ECSSR)

ISBN 0 86372 260 1 price £20.00 hardback

This volume is based on the proceedings of a two-day conference held in London, on 20-30 April, 1998 which was organised jointly by the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research (ECSSR) and the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies (RUSI). ECSSR’s second annual conference on Gulf security brought together defence policy makers from Britain and the Gulf to analyse different aspects of British policy and its repercussions on Gulf security.

Seeking to nurture defence and security dialogue, the conference highlighted both immediate and potential threats to Gulf security and underlined the need for the Gulf countries to develop a greater range of consultative mechanisms. While this publication is not intended to be a comprehensive study of Gulf security, this selection of conference presentations offers valuable perspectives on some of the more critical issues involved and provides interesting insight on the views held by prominent decision makers.

CONTEMPORARY TURKISH FOREIGN POLICY

By Yasemin Celik published by Praeqer Publishers

ISBN 0 275 96590 2 price £44.95 hardback

Contemporary Turkish Foreign Policy examines Turkish foreign policy in a comparative perspective — during the cold war and post-cold war period — to ascertain patterns of change as well as patterns of stability. The cold war era is defined as the period between 1945 and 1989, and the post-cold war era as the period between 1989 and March 1998.

The book examines Turkey’s domestic environment, its geography, social structure and population, economic capability, military capability, and political structure. It looks at foreign policy objectives and strategies as well as the decision-making process in the early years of the Turkish Republic: the period of neutrality (1923-1945) and alliance with the West (1945-1960). The same issues are discussed in the context of the periods of the cooling off with the United States (1960-1980) and the third Turkish Republic during the cold war (1980-1990).

Turkey’s post-cold war foreign policy objectives and strategies toward the United States are examined, as are those with western Europe. Also explored are the former Soviet republics and the Middle East as new arenas for Turkish foreign policy.

ISLAM AND THE WEST IN THE MASS MEDIA

Edited by Kai Hafez published by Hampton Press

ISBN 1 57273 267 9 price £48.50 hardback

ISBN 1 57273 268 7 price £19.95 paperback

This book is written by authors of different convictions, ranging from conservative essentialism and cultural relativism to post-modernist views of trans-cultural integration. Quite naturally, they propose different strategies for improving the information flow and news coverage between Islam and the West. Some want to enhance the media criticism of civil society, others prefer strategies whereby national images are cultivated by the state.

International coverage in the mass media is characterised by fragmented perceptions. Images of the West in Middle Eastern and Islamic mass media or images of Islam and the Middle East in western media systems are often confined to “fanatic fundamentalists”, “anti-western terrorists”, “crusading neo-imperialists”, or “immoral materialists”. Despite its undoubtedly enlightening effects, modern mass communication seems susceptible to selective perception mechanisms often based on historical prejudice. This is true not only for mass media operating within the national and local media systems, but also for the big transnational networks like CNN, whose foreign reports often display a US bias when the United States is involved, while maintaining a critical distance in the coverage of regional conflicts. More than anything else, the Gulf war of 1990-1991 has revealed that the media are a factor to be reckoned with in politics, society and culture, and that the future of international relations and multicultural societies is very likely to be influenced by the media presentation of the West, the Middle East and Islam.

STATE AND SOCIETY IN IRAN

The Eclipse of the Qajars and the Emergence of the Pahlavis

By Homa Katouzian published by IB TAURIS

ISBN 1 86064 359 0 price £39.50 hardback

In State and Society in Iran Homa Katouzian provides the most comprehensive version of the theory of arbitrary rule in Iran so far. Using this as his basis for a detailed analysis of the chaotic events from the end of the 19th Century to late 1941, this vital new study gives insight into the country’s present situation and the alternative prospects for its future.

Iran was the first country of the Middle East to experience (in 1905-1906) a popular revolution that demanded the rule of law and parliamentary government. But the democratic constitution established by the revolution plunged the country into a period of turmoil and, despite subsequent popular democratic movements, most notably in the early 1950s and during the Iranian revolution of 1978-1999, the country has for most of the century lived under arbitrary rule.

Drawing on British documents and primary Persian evidence, Katouzian offers a blow-by-blow account and analysis of the 1919 agreement and the coup d’etat of 1921 — something that few have attempted. His theoretical framework for the study of Iranian history, state and society is expertly applied to Iran’s social and political developments from the Constitutional Revolution to the fall of the Qajar state.

RELIGION AND WAR IN REVOLUTIONARY IRAN

By Saskia Gieling published by IB TAURIS

ISBN 1 86064 407 4 price £39.50 hardback

How did Iran’s clergy justify their country’s devastating eight-year war with Iraq?

Religion and War in Revolutionary Iran is a closely argued and extensively documented study of the rationalisation of Iran’s war in Islamic theological terms. Examining Iran’s conduct up until the cease-fire and acceptance of UN Resolution 598 in 1988, it shows how the clerical leaders of Iran justified their policy and actions with reference to the Koran, theological writings and tradition, as well as Islamic historical precedent. The concepts of nationalism and the Islamic nation state, pan-Islamism and international relations are all explored in the context of Iran’s policy of total war.

Iran’s clergy included in their theological discourse every individual member of the state — of any age or gender, combatants or non-combatants, even non-Muslims — and every act of war was justified by scripture and a tradition where the faithful would, if necessary, joyfully accept martyrdom. The Islamic state of Iran is seen as the forerunner of a universal state of the Muslim faithful — a truly pan-Islamic order — and this vision, shared by Khomeini and his clerical brothers, is vividly interpreted by the author.

This book is essential to students of Islamic political thought and philosophy, especially those studying the Khomeini era. It provides a unique insight into the culture and thinking of Iran’s clerical leaders and their zeal during a time of acute national crisis.

CONTEMPORARY DEBATES IN ISLAM

An Anthology of modernist and Fundamentalist Thought

Edited by Mansoor Moaddel and Kamran Talattof

published by Macmillan

ISBN 0 333 75474 3 price £35.00 hardback

This book presents a series of articles, treatises, and exposés on historically significant issues written by prominent theologians, scholars, and academics in the Islamic world from the last quarter of the 19th century to the late 20th century. These works constitute only a small sample of the vast array of intellectual products of Muslim scholars in this period. They display those diversities in theme and orientation that demonstrate the dynamic nature of the religion of Islam, far from its image in certain media as a monolithic and stagnated system of ideas.

A remarkable development occurred in the Islamic world during the second half of the 19th century. A group of prominent Muslim theologians began to critically examine classical conceptions and methods of jurisprudence and devised a new approach to Islamic theology. This new approach was nothing short of an outright rebellion against Islamic orthodoxy, displaying an astonishing compatibility with 19th century enlightenment-era thought. In the 20th century, this modernist movement declined to be replaced by another cultural episode, characterised by the growing power of Islamic fundamentalism. This volume looks at these two very different approaches to Islam, illustrating how Islamic modernism and fundamentalism were diverse discourses on a set of historically significant issues that Islamic societies have faced since the 19th century.

ALIENATION OR INTEGRATION OF ARAB YOUTH

Between Family, State and Street

Edited by Roel Meijer published by CURZON

ISBN 0 7007 1248 8 price £40.00 hardback

ISBN 0 7007 1255 0 price £14.99 paperback

It is within the triangle of the family, the state and the street that modern Arab young people are growing up. This triangle determines to a large extent the process of integration and alienation. Massive changes in the Middle East and North Africa have rapidly eroded the traditional extended family and have chipped away at the authority of the father and the family.

While, in the post-colonial era, the state has intervened in the socialisation of children by introducing general education and enforcing conscription, the market economy has turned the family into a unit of consumption rather than a productive one, and western youth culture has provided alternatives in lifestyles and different norms and values from traditional ones. Today western media exerts a considerable influence on Arab youth, offering a host of alternatives to choose from, and to compare their own situation with, perhaps unfavourably, leading them to criticise their surroundings. Although most young people piece their identity together by taking elements from their own and western backgrounds as they see fit, the amount of information and the conflicting alternative role models and modes provided by the street are also a source of confusion and frustration, and form the ingredients of an identity crisis.

The increasingly repressive political climate of the 1990s, after some hopeful signs of democratisation in the 1980s, has alienated many young people from official politics. The rise of the Islamic movement is one expression of this development, the rise of a counter youth culture, the increasing use of drugs and involvement of young people in criminal activities another. Arab youth is on the move, looking for new ways of finding meaning for their lives. They are looking for new forms of integration and community.

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