Selected by Fred Rhodes

VISIBLE ISLAM IN MODERN TURKEY

By Adil Ozdemir and Kenneth Frank

published by MACMILLAN

ISBN 0 333 77670 4 price £42.50 hardback

This book looks with a new eye at the colourful spectrum of Islamic practices in contemporary Turkey. The authors, a Muslim and a Christian, introduce the reader to the diversity of Turkish Islamic piety and observances. The book is also a model for Muslims world-wide, for it interprets the foundations of Islam for the contemporary mind and explores the tensions involved in the confrontation of the traditional Islamic experience with modernising, humanist, democratic, pluralist and secular movements within Turkey.

The authors’ perspective challenges both traditional and nationalist dogma, treating orthodox and folk religion in a non-apologetic, non-defensive, but critical manner. They also describe the frustrations posed by the nationalisation of religion. Enriched with data and insights, this book appeals to a variety of circles, both secular and traditional, and offers a platform on which to have dialogue and reconciliation.

NEVER MIND: TWENTY POEMS AND A STORY

By Taha Mohammed Ali

Translated By Peter Cole, Yahya Hijazi, and Gabriel Levin

published by IBIS EDITIONS

ISBN 965 90 125 1 9 price £7.95 paperback

Taha Mohammed Ali is one of the leading poets on the contemporary Palestinian literary scene. Born in 1931 in the Galilee village of Saffuriya, he fled to Lebanon, together with most of the inhabitants of his village, during the Arab-Israeli war of 1948. A year later he slipped across the border with his family and settled in Nazareth, where he has lived ever since. The Saffuriya of his childhood has, in essence, served as the nexus of his poetry and fiction, which is grounded in every-day experience and driven by a story teller’s vivid imagination. Taha Mohammed Ali writes in a forceful and direct style, with disarming humour and unflinching, at times painful, honesty — the poetry’s apparent simplicity and homespun truths concealing the subtle grafting of classical Arabic and colloquial forms of expression. In Israel, in the West Bank and Gaza, and in Europe, festival audiences have been powerfully moved by Taha Mohammed Ali’s poems of political complexity and humanity. Never Mind is the poet’s first collection to appear in English.

 

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SECULARISM, GENDER AND THE STATE IN THE MIDDLE EAST

The Egyptian Women’s Movement

by Nadje Al Ali published by Cambridge University Press

ISBN 0 521 78504 9 price £14.95

ISBN 0 521 78022 5 price £40.00

A considerable amount of literature has been devoted to the study of activism amongst Islamist groups. By contrast, Nadje Al Ali’s book explores the anthropological and political significance of secular-oriented women’s activism by focusing on the women’s movement in modern Egypt. In so doing it challenges stereotypical images of Arab women as passive victims and demonstrates how they fight for their rights and confront conservative forces. The arguments are constructed around interviews with some 80 women activists, who offer fascinating insights into the history of the women’s movement in Egypt, the goals and priorities of different groups and individual activists, and how the Egyptian state and Islamist constituencies have impacted on women’s activism generally. In this way, the author defines one of the central themes of the book, the reconceptualisation of secularism in the Middle East and Muslim world. This book will appeal to students, as well as to scholars in the field.

MIDDLE EAST MONARCHIES

The Challenge Qf Modernity

Edited by Joseph Kostiner published by Lynne Rienner Publishers

ISBN 1 55587 862 8 price £44.95 hardback

The monarchical legacy of earlier Middle East empires — the Arab and Ottoman Empires — inherited by their 20th-century successors can be summarised by two main characteristics. First, monarchical principles were applied without official Islamic legitimacy. The title malik (king) was regarded as non-Islamic and therefore unlawful and corrupt. Until the 20th century, Islamic rulers did not assume this title. A ruler’s emphasis was rather on fulfilling the task of a khalifa (the prophet’s substitute, ruling over a community of believers, or umma), claiming his right to rule according to the shari’a (holy law). However, throughout all of Islamic history, Muslim rulers have practised at least two fundamentals of monarchic rule: individual-absolutist and dynastic-hereditary.

A social system based on kin, ethnic, religious, and other solidarities was arrayed in hierarchical divisions. They also adopted additional monarchical facets, such as royal entourages and households. The ruler wielding these prerogatives in hereditary fashion within a family or a dynasty. Second, without an official religious sanction, adoption and exercise of these qualities did not develop into a desired norm or into an oficial doctrine of monarchical rule. Monarchical principles in the Arab and Ottoman Empires evolved more haphazardly, typical of a regime created by a forceful seizure of govemment following Persian, Greek, and Byzantine examples as well as local practices and arbitrary rulers’ interests. Eight active, quasi-absolutist monarchical regimes prevail in the Middle East. Several others that existed by the mid-20th century have since collapsed. Understanding of Middle East monarchies — the failure of some and prevalence of others — merits a special study, which is the focus of this volume.

THE RULE OF LAW IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND THE ISLAMIC WORLD

Human Rights and the Judicial Process

Edited by Eugene Cotran and Mai Yamani published by IB TAURIS

ISBN 1 86064 562 3 price £65.00 hardback

Can notions of ‘the rule of law’, ‘human rights’ and ‘judicial process’ as understood in the West be made to work in the Middle East and the rest of the Islamic world? Since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, much attention has been focused on an international standard on human rights applicable to all cultures. But is this standard observed by Middle Eastern and Islamic governments and enforced by their judiciaries? This book examines the predicament of the Muslim world. Are Islamic principles compatible with ‘the rule of law’ and human rights’ as defined by the West?

In this country by country survey a range of distinguished scholars, practitioners and judges explore how the concepts of ‘the rule of law’ and ‘human rights’ are being debated and applied in the changing social and political climates of Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan, Palestine, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

RECOGNIZING ISLAM

Religion and Society in the Modern Middle East

Michael Gilsenan published by IB TAURIS

ISBN 1 86064 409 0 price £14.95 paperback

Recent crises in the Middle East have flooded the media with sensationalist and inaccurate portraits of Islam. Offering an original and much needed understanding of the role of religion in this turbulent region, Michael Gilsenan shows that Islam covers a multitude of forms and practices which are woven into daily existence in complex and sometimes almost invisible ways. All the western stereotypes of Islam and Muslims need to be treated with considerable scepticism.

Drawing extensively on his own fieldwork in cities, villages and tribal communities in the Middle East, Gilsenan explores a variety of social worlds all claiming Islamic affiliation: the feudal aristocracy of northern Lebanon, the working class Sufi brotherhoods of Egypt and the new bourgeoisie of Algeria and Morocco. In each, he shows how Islam evolves in relation to shifting social, political, economic and class structures. The impact of colonialism is also discussed, and reformist and radical Islamic movements are analysed in relation to changes in Middle Eastern society as a whole.

RELIGIOUS MINORITIES IN IRAN

by Eliz Sansarian published by Cambridge University Press

ISBN 0 521 77073 4 price £37.50 hardback

Eliz Sanasarian’s book explores the political and ideological relationship between non-Muslim religious minorities in Iran and the state from the formative years of the Islamic Republic to the present day. Her analysis is based on a detailed examination of the history and experiences of the Armenians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Jews, Zoroastrians, Bahais, and Iranian Christian converts, and describes how these communities have responded to state policies regarding minorities. Many of her findings are derived from personal interviews with members of these communities as well as careful analysis of primary documents. While the book is essentially an empirical study, it also highlights more general questions associated with exclusion and marginalisation and the role of the state in defining these boundaries. This is an important and original book which will make a significant contribution to the literature on minorities.

UNHOLY WARS

Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism

By John K Cooley published by Pluto Press

ISBN 0 7453 1691 3 price £12.99 paperback

ISBN 0 7453 1692 1 price £40.00 hardback

For the United States, the protection of strategic regions and defending sea and air access routes are linked to defending the vast reservoirs of oil and natural gas in and around the Arabian peninsular and Gulf, which the industrial world has exploited and is dependent upon. In addition to these concerns, though often incompatible with them, is defending the security of Israel.

To oppose the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the United States formed an extraordinary anti-Communist alliance with militant Islamic forces in South Asia In this controversial and acclaimed book, John Cooley provides the first behind- the-scenes account of this alliance and of how the CIA planned and ran the ‘holy war’ in Afghanistan. This new edition brings the subject up to date with a description of the Bin Laden-linked terrorist conspiracy network uncovered in the US and Canada since December 1999. Cooley covers the important events that have taken place in Algeria, the impact of Pakistan’s military coup of October 1999 on Indo-Pakistani relations, and the political destabilisation of the Philippines through the Muslim separatist uprising which began in 1998, and concentrates especially on the orgy of kidnapping for profit by the former Afghan Abu Sayyaf group in 2000.

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