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Viewing Iraq from the outside is made easier by compartmentalising its people (at least the Arabs among them) into Shi'as and Sunnis. But can such broad terms, inherently resistant to accurate quantification, description and definition, ever be a useful reflection of any society? If not, are we to discard the terms 'Shi'a' and 'Sunni' in seeking to understand Iraq? Or are we to deny their relevance and ignore them when considering Iraqi society? How are we to view the common Iraqi injunction tha...

This interdisciplinary volume offers a range of studies spanning the various historical, political, legal, and cultural features of social justice in Iran, and proposes that the present-day realities of life in Iran could not be farther from the promises of the Iranian Revolution. The ideals of social justice and participatory democracy that galvanized a resilient nation in 1979 have been abandoned as an avaricious ruling elite has privatized the economy, abandoned social programs and subsidy pa...

Leyla Pervizat argues that honour killings are a form of extrajudicial execution which can only be challenged by looking at its socio-political and economic contexts. Focusing on honour crimes in Turkey, she provides an holistic, interdisciplinary analysis of a large number of legal and non-legal cases, international human rights mechanisms, and initiatives to combat the issue. This study is essential to furthering understanding of honour killings in indigenous and diaspora communities around th...

This book tells how Israel became a secret nuclear power, recounting Israel's clandestine nuclear mission: from the building of the Dimona reactor site in the remote Negev desert during the late 1950s, to the establishment by the late 1970s of a nuclear capability that targeted and threatened the USSR. The author tells of Israel's many secret agreements with America over the years, including the KH-11 satellite agreement which aided the bombing of Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981, and the recruitme...

The True Dream is a Persian satirical drama set in Isfahan in the lead up to Iran’s Constitutional Revolution of 1905-11. Although its three authors hail from the clerical class, they criticize the arrogance, corruption and secularity of the Iranian ruling dynasty and clergy, taking Isfahan as their example. The work blends fact and fiction by summoning the prominent men of the city to account for themselves on the Day of Judgement. God speaks offstage, delivering withering judgements of their b...

The street protests that erupted in Tunisia in December 2010 and spread quickly throughout the Middle East surprised not only the entrenched dictators of the region but also international observers who collectively had taken for granted the durability of Middle Eastern authoritarianism. Specifically, the Arab Spring uprisings debunked the prevailing notion that youth were disengaged from political life by their economic exclusion and tight regime control of their mobilization. Indeed, the one co...

This volume examines the process of democratization in Turkey after 1980 in light of the shifting balance between the emphasis on prudent political leadership and on political participation that has characterized Turkish politics for decades. Contributors focus on the withdrawal of the military from politics, the role of the political and civil elites in the consolidation of democracy, liberalization and privatization of the economy, the emergence of Islam as a secular religion, and internationa...

This book studies values and attitudes in the Gulf region. In light of global power shifts, the threatening collapse of internal security in the West, and uncertainty about the current leadership vacuum in world society, this book explores a future leading role of the Gulf countries in such institutions as the G-20 and the OECD. Based on rigorous analysis of macro-level data and opinion surveys with relevance for the Gulf region, it analyzes the global macro-factors shaping the Gulf's future at...

Nonie Darwish lived for thirty years in a majority Muslim nation. Everything about her life?family, sexuality, hygiene, business, banking, contracts, economics, politics, social issues, everything?was dictated by the Islamic law code known as Sharia.But Sharia isn't staying in majority Muslim nations. Darwish now lives in the West and brings a warning; the goal of radical Islam is to bring Sharia law to your country. If that happens, the fabric of Western law and liberty will be ripped in two. U...

A rising economic power, Abu Dhabi, the capital city of the United Arab Emirates, is poised to become a major player in the fortunes of both Third and First World countries. Abu Dhabi owns more than 8 percent of the world's oil reserves, has close to one trillion dollars to invest in sovereign wealth funds, and is about to implement a masterful set of economic initiatives that will yield even greater returns. Abu Dhabi has begun to eclipse its partner city, Dubai, in terms of sheer wealth and c...

This edited volume is an open access title and assembles both the historical consciousness and transformation of the MENA region in various disciplinary and topical facets. At the same time, it aims to go beyond the MENA region, contributing to critical debates on area studies while pointing out transregional and cultural references in a broad and comparative manner.

This book reveals the inside story of the formulation and implementation the United States' and United Kingdom's counter narcotics policies in Afghanistan. Western counter narcotics policies in Afghanistan failed dismally after opium poppy cultivation surged to unprecedented levels. The Anglo-American partnership at the centre of this battleground was divided by competing and opposing views of how to address the opium problem, which troubled the well-established Anglo-American relationship. Thro...

Premier foreign correspondent Michael Petrou treks through the Middle East and Central Asia, from Pakistan and Afghanistan to Syria and Egypt, and bring backs blistering stories of turmoil and the people who are driving significant changes.

In this book the author seeks to understand the political causes and psychological effects of the conflicts in the Middle East. He sketches the prelude to the troubles, and places the events of 1979 to 1988 in their historical context while examining the course and meaning of the Lebanese civil wars, the Syrian self-mutilation at Hama, the refugee-camp massacres at Sabra and Shatila, and all the other terrible episodes in this apparently endless war. Thomas Friedman won two Pulitzer Prizes for h...

Turkey stands at the crossroads of the Middle East--caught between the West and ISIS, Syria and Russia, and governed by an increasingly forceful leader. Acclaimed writer Kaya Genc has been covering his country for the past decade. In Under the Shadow he meets activists from both sides of Turkey's political divide: Gezi park protestors who fought tear gas and batons to transform their country's future, and supporters of Erdogan's conservative vision who are no less passionate in their activism. H...

This book argues that Armenians around the world - in the face of the Genocide, and despite the absence of an independent nation-state after World War I - developed dynamic socio-political, cultural, ideological and ecclesiastical centres. And it focuses on one such centre, Beirut, in the postcolonial 1940s and 1950s. Tsolin Nalbantian explores Armenians' discursive re-positioning within the newly independent Lebanese nation-state; the political-cultural impact (in Lebanon as well as Syria) of t...

This book explains why the Iraq War took place, and the war's impacts on Iraq, the United States, the Middle East, and other nations around the world. It explores conflict's potential consequences for future rationales for war, foreign policy, the United Nations, and international law and justice.

A major common misconception in scholarship on Kurdish journalistic discourses is that Kurdish intellectuals of the late Ottoman period cannot be portrayed as Kurdish nationalists. This theory prevails because of the belief that they not only endorsed and promoted Pan-Islamism and Ottoman nationalism instead of Kurdish ethnic nationalism, but also because they allegedly eschewed political demands and instead concerned themselves with ethno-cultural issues to articulate forms of "Kurdism" rather...