MER Article

Understanding the Diversity of Political Islam

The complex phenomenon of political Islam has inspired much sensational and alarmist writing, both popular and scholarly. Since the early 1980s, however, MERIP contributors have provided an antidote with in-depth and nuanced analyses of the impact Islamic movements have had on popular struggles for democracy and women’s rights and

Francesco Cavatorta • 4 min read

Current Analysis

Understanding the Diversity of Political Islam

Francesco Cavatorta examines MERIP's 50 years of covering the complex phenomenon of political Islam and finds that much of it is based on field research, participant observation, interviews and ethnography. The result has been a rich diversity of approaches that comprehend the plural nature of Islam

Francesco Cavatorta • 4 min read

MER Article

The Importance of Mauritanian Scholars in Global Islam

The North African nation of Mauritania may be peripheral in global affairs, but its robust network of Islamic scholars is central to transnational Islamic movements and ideas. Zekeria Ould Ahmed Salem traces the influential political economy of Mauritanian Islamic scholarship that has both bolstered

Zekeria Ould Ahmed Salem • 11 min read

Current Analysis

The Importance of Mauritanian Scholars in Global Islam

The North African nation of Mauritania may be peripheral in global affairs, but its robust network of Islamic scholars is central to transnational Islamic movements and ideas. Zekeria Ould Ahmed Salem traces the influential political economy of Mauritanian Islamic scholarship that has both bolstered

Zekeria Ould Ahmed Salem • 11 min read

Current Analysis

Ahmed Mohamed, Liberal Rhetoric and Obama Administration Propaganda

Most readers will know by now that a 14-year-old kid named Ahmed Mohamed was recently arrested in Irving, Texas [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/17/us/texas-student-is-under-police-investigation-for-building-a-clock.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=2] for, well, for making a clock while Muslim. Ahme

Leili Kashani • 6 min read

Current Analysis

Life and Death in the Graves of Mecca and Medina

On September 1 The Independent published a piece by Andrew Johnson [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudis-risk-new-muslim-division-with-proposal-to-move-mohameds-tomb-9705120.html] detailing plans by the Saudi state to move the final resting place of the Prophet Muhammad from th

John M. Willis • 4 min read

MER Article

Hadi al-`Alawi, Scion of the Two Civilizations

In the 1950s, the People’s Republic of China began to host a small community of Arab scholars and journalists, recruited mostly through “revolutionary” channels like the FLN, the PLO, and the Iraqi and Sudanese Communist Parties. These experts were brought to China with the explicit purpose of editi

Mohammed al-Sudairi • 6 min read

MER Article

Muslim Activist Encounters in Meiji Japan

As one of the political, commercial and intellectual centers of Asia, Japan at the turn of the twentieth century was an important arena for the intersection of ideas about modernism, nationalism and anti-colonial politics. Though Cairo, Istanbul and Mecca had long been the capitals of scholarship an

Shuang Wen • 4 min read

Current Analysis

Chez Vous, Gitmo to Guangzhou

We at MERIP are excited about the issue of Middle East Report on China and the Middle East coming out next week, featuring the work of two of my mentors, Engseng Ho [http://www.merip.org/author/engseng-ho] and MER editor Cemil Aydın [http://history.unc.edu/people/faculty/cemil-ayden/]. The issue wil

Darryl Li • 4 min read

MER Article

The Grand (Hip-Hop) Chessboard

In November 2006, the film The Making of a Kamikaze by Nouri Bouzid, a respected Tunisian director, was screened to great fanfare at the Carthage Film Festival. The film, a collaboration between the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Tunisian Ministries of Interior, Defense and Culture, examines the grievances

Hisham Aïdi • 46 min read

Current Analysis

Lawfare and Wearfare in Turkey

With war on its eastern borders, and renewed turmoil inside them, Turkey is transfixed by something else entirely: the desire of university-age women to wear the Muslim headscarf on campus, a seemingly innocent sartorial choice that has been forbidden by the courts, off and on, since 1980. At public

Hilal Elver • 18 min read

Current Analysis

Is Time on Iranian Women Protesters’ Side?

In early June, Zanestan—an Iran-based online journal—announced a rally in Haft Tir Square, one of Tehran’s busiest, to protest legal discrimination suffered by Iranian women. The demonstration was also called to commemorate two landmark events in women’s struggle for equality in Iran. The first was the

Ziba Mir-Hosseini • 16 min read