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Social Science Middle Eastern Studies

The Myth of Middle East Exceptionalism

Unfinished Social Movements

edited by Mojtaba Mahdavi

contributions by Peyman Vahabzadeh, Abigail B. Bakan, Yasmeen Abu-Laban, Navid Pourmokhtari, Juan Cole, Mariam Georgis, Tariq Ali, Bessma Momani, Melissa Finn, Michael Frishkopf, Guilnard Moufarrej, George Mürer, Carolyn Ramzy, Jonathan Shannon, Nermeen Youssef, Iman Mersal, Ramin Jahanbegloo, Roozbeh Safshekan Esfahani, Paul Rowe, amina wadud, Poyraz Kolluoglu, Victoria Tahmasebi-Birgani, Nermin Allam & Mark Muhannad Ayyash

afterword by Khaled Abou El Fadl

Publisher
Syracuse University Press
Initial publish date
Feb 2023
Category
Middle Eastern Studies, Middle Eastern, Egypt
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780815637929
    Publish Date
    Feb 2023
    List Price
    $60.95
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780815637998
    Publish Date
    Feb 2023
    List Price
    $121.95

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Description

More than a decade after the birth of contemporary social movements in the Middle East and North Africa scholars are asking what these movements have achieved and how we should evaluate their lasting legacies. The quiet encroachments of MENA counterrevolutionary forces in the post-Arab Spring era have contributed to the revival of an outdated Orientalist discourse of Middle East exceptionalism, implying that the region’s culture is exceptionally immune to democratic movements, values, and institutions. This volume, inspired by critical post-colonial/decolonial studies, and interdisciplinary perspectives of social movement theories, gender studies, Islamic studies, and critical race theory, challenges and demystifies the myth of “MENA Exceptionalism?.
Composted of three sections, the book first places MENA in the larger global context and sheds light on the impact of geopolitics on the current crises, showing how a postcolonial critique better explains the crisis of democratic social movements and the resilience of authoritarianism. The second section focuses on the unfinished projects of contemporary MENA social movements and their quest for freedom, social justice, and human dignity. Contributors examine specific cases of post-Islamist movements, the Arab youth, student, and other popular non-violent movements.
In the final section, the book problematizes the exceptionalist idea of gender passivity and women’s exclusion, which reduces the reality of gender injustice to some eternal and essentialized Muslim/MENA mindset. Contributors address this theory by placing gender as an independent category of thought and action, demonstrating the quest for gender justice movements in MENA, and providing contexts to the cases of gender injustice to challenge simplistic, ahistorical and culturalist assumptions.

About the authors

Mojtaba Mahdavi's profile page

Peyman Vahabzadeh is a professor of sociology at the University of Victoria. He is the author of several books, including The Art of Defiance: Dissident Culture and Militant Resistance in 1970s Iran; Violence and Nonviolence: Conceptual Excursions into Phantom Opposites; and A Rebel’s Journey: Mostafa Sho‘aiyan and Revolutionary Theory in Iran. He is also editor of Iran’s Struggles for Social Justice: Economics, Agency, Justice, Activism and co-editor, with Samir Gandesha, of Crossing Borders: Essays in Honour of Ian Angus. He has published nine books of poetry, fiction, literary criticism and memoir in Persian and his works have appeared in English, Persian, German, Kurdish, French and Spanish.

Peyman Vahabzadeh's profile page

Contact WLU Press for information about this author.

Abigail B. Bakan's profile page

Yasmeen Abu-Laban is Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Alberta. She has published widely on issues relating to the Canadian and comparative dimensions of gender, ethnicity and racialization processes, border and migration policies, and citizenship theory. She is the co-editor of Surveillance and Control in Israel/Palestine: Population, Territory, and Power (with Elia Zureik and David Lyon); co-editor of Politics in North America: Redefining Continental Relations (with Radha Jhappan and François Rocher); and editor of Gendering the Nation-State: Canadian and Comparative Perspectives. She is also the co-author (with Christina Gabriel) of Selling Diversity: Immigration, Multiculturalism, Employment Equity and Globalization.

Yasmeen Abu-Laban's profile page

Navid Pourmokhtari's profile page

Juan Cole's profile page

Mariam Georgis' profile page

Tariq Ali was a leading light of the New Left in the 1960s. His eloquent denunciations of American imperialism in southeast Asia were to be found in the pages of The New Left Review, which he helped to found. Since then, he has had an ever-changing career as an activist, essayist, filmmaker, editor, historian, and novelist.

Tariq Ali's profile page

Bessma Momani is an associate professor at the University of Waterloo and Senior Fellow at CIGI, specializing on the Middle East and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). She is the author of Twentieth-Century World History (2007), IMF–Egyptian Negotiations (2005), the CIGI–CIC Special Report: The Future of International Monetary Fund: A Canadian Perspective (2009), and is the co-editor of Canada and the Middle East (WLUP, 2007). Dr. Momani has also published a dozen scholarly articles in numerous political and economic academic journals.

Bessma Momani's profile page

Melissa Finn's profile page

Michael Frishkopf's profile page

Guilnard Moufarrej's profile page

George Mürer's profile page

Carolyn Ramzy's profile page

Jonathan Shannon's profile page

Nermeen Youssef's profile page

Iman Mersal's profile page

The winner of the Peace Prize from the United Nations in Spain and an advisory board member of PEN Canada, Ramin Jahanbegloo is an internationally celebrated philosopher and currently York-Noor Visiting Chair in Islamic Studies and Associate Professor in Political Science at York University in Toronto.

Ramin Jahanbegloo's profile page

Roozbeh Safshekan Esfahani's profile page

Paul Rowe is an actor and writer who lives in St. John's. His first novel The Silent Time, published in 2007 by Creative Book Publishing was inspired by his mother's experience as a deaf child growing up and being educated in early 20th century Newfoundland. The Silent Time was short-listed for the Winterset Award, the Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage and History Award, and long-listed for the Re-Lit Awards. His first feature-length drama To Dare Mighty Things was produced by Rising Tide Theatre in 2003. During the summer of 2010 Paul performed in his own stage adaptation of The Silent Time at Rising Tide Theatre's Trinity Festival. He was also a founding member of Teatro, Newfoundland's only French language theatre company. He has performed with the Resource Centre for the Arts, Tramore Theatre Company, Perchance, Artistic Fraud and, in 2015, with the Stratford Festival of Canada.

Paul Rowe's profile page

amina wadud's profile page

Poyraz Kolluoglu's profile page

Victoria Tahmasebi-Birgani is a Women and Gender Studies Assistant Professor in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Toronto, Mississauga.

Victoria Tahmasebi-Birgani's profile page

Nermin Allam's profile page

Mark Muhannad Ayyash's profile page

Khaled Abou El Fadl's profile page

Editorial Reviews

A timely and invaluable contribution to the understanding of the post-Islamism, modern Islamic political thought, and recent social and civil rights movements in the MENA region.

Elhum Haghighat, author of Demography and Democracy: Transitions in the Middle East and North Africa

Middle East exceptionalism suggests this region cannot be analyzed in terms of general socio-economic and political processes due to an unchanging cultural essence rooted in Islamic traditions. This book demolishes this idea. Historically grounded and comprehensive in its scope, it is essential reading on the topic.

Nader Hashemi, University of Denver

In this timely and well-crafted volume Mahdavi has pulled out the top gun scholars and critical thinkers collectively concerned with the fate of democratic aspirations in Arab and Muslim world to reflect back at the revolutionary uprisings of 2010s from the vantage point of 2020s. The prose and politics of this very volume are the clearest indication that Arab revolutions have spectacularly succeeded to alter our critical consciousness of the world.

Hamid Dabashi, author of Arab Spring: The End of Postcolonialism

This fascinating volume speaks to a burgeoning literature that has challenged essentialist explanations of politics in the Middle East and the Islamic World while highlighting the historical, cultural, and political features of the regions.

Ammar Shamaileh, Doha Institute for Graduate Studies

The Myth of Middle East Exceptionalism takes stock of the unfinished social movements more than a decade after their birth in the Middle East. A must-read.

Fawaz A. Gerges, professor of International Relations, London School of Economics

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