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From Empathy to Denial is the first comprehensive investigation of Holocaust denial in the Arab world, and is based on years of painstaking historical research of mostly Arabic language sources. The authors explore how Holocaust denial emerged after the Second World War, how it paralleled the wider Arab-Israeli conflict after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 and how it subsequently became entangled with broader anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic sentiment. In particular Litvak and Webman look at the role of leading intellectuals, the media and other cultural forms in Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and among the Palestinians and how their representation of the Holocaust has evolved in the last sixty years.
In the nineteenth century, the shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala in Ottoman Iraq emerged as the most important Shi'i centres of learning. In a major contribution to the study of pre-modern Middle Eastern religious institutions, Meir Litvak analyses the social and political dynamics of these communities. Tracing the historical evolution of Shi'i leadership, he explores the determinants of social status amongst the ulama, the concept of patronage, the structure of learning, questions of ethnicity, and financial matters. He also assesses the role of the ulama as communal leaders who, in the face of a hostile Sunni government in Baghdad, were often obliged to adopt a more quietest political stance than their counterparts in Iran. This is an important book which sheds light on the formation of contemporary Shi'ism and the surrounding debates.
In Know Thy Enemy, Meir Litvak analyzes the evolving attitudes towards various internal and external collective “others”, in post-revolutionary Iranian Shiʿism as a novel way to examine the formulation of Shiʿi self-perception and its place in the world.
This book analyzes the evolution and cultivation of modern Palestinian collective memory and its role in shaping Palestinian national identity from its inception in the 1920s to the 2006 Palestinian elections.
Nationalism has played an important role in the cultural and intellectual discourse of modernity that emerged in Iran from the late nineteenth century to the present, promoting new formulations of collective identity and advocating a new and more active role for the broad strata of the public in politics. The essays in this volume seek to shed light on the construction of nationalism in Iran in its many manifestations; cultural, social, political and ideological, by exploring on-going debates on this important and progressive topic.
This publication discusses the development of Shiite Islam since the 18th century in its various aspects. Its 21 contributions focus on the transformation of theological traditions, the role of internal criticism and ideological and political tendencies in the 20the century.
The book examines the Hezbollah movement from a multidisciplinary, comprehensive, historical, and systematic perspective to explain how it has evolved since its inception in the early 1980s to the present.
The Making of Shia Ayatollahs is a uniformly balanced and scholarly but empathetic portrayal of the appearance, construction, and dynamism of Shia hawzas, aytollahs’ attitudes and scholarship, and the meeting of faith, knowledge, and popularity in Shia Islam.
A highly original new history of Muslim political culture across the Indian Ocean from 1739 to 1857. Examining South Asian connections with the Middle East, Rishad Choudhury draws on research in multilingual sources and archives to reveal the imperial entanglements of the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.
Seventeen essays by scholars examining the links between anti-Semitism and attitudes toward Israel in the current political climate. How and why have anti-Zionism and antisemitism become so radical and widespread? This timely and important volume argues convincingly that today’s inflamed rhetoric exceeds the boundaries of legitimate criticism of the policies and actions of the state of Israel and conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism. The contributors give the dynamics of this process full theoretical, political, legal, and educational treatment and demonstrate how these forces operate in formal and informal political spheres as well as domestic and transnational spaces. They offer significant historical and global perspectives of the problem, including how Holocaust memory and meaning have been reconfigured and how a singular and distinct project of delegitimization of the Jewish state and its people has solidified. This intensive but extraordinarily rich contribution to the study of antisemitism stands out for its comprehensive overview of an issue that is both historical and strikingly timely.