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A preoccupation with the subject of freedom became a core issue in the construction of all modern political ideologies. Here, Wael Abu-'Uksa examines the development of the concept of freedom (hurriyya) in nineteenth-century Arab political thought, its ideological offshoots, their modes, and their substance as they developed the dynamics of the Arabic language. Abu-'Uksa traces the transition of the idea of freedom from a term used in a predominantly non-political way, through to its popularity and near ubiquity at the dawn of the twentieth century. Through this, he also analyzes the importance of associated concepts such as liberalism, socialism, progress, rationalism, secularism, and citizenship. He employs a close analysis of the development of the language, whilst at the same time examining the wider historical context within which these semantic shifts occurred: the rise of nationalism, the power of the Ottoman court, and the state of relations with Europe.
An examination of the concept of freedom in nineteenth-century Arabic political thought, and how it relates to other modern ideologies.
Re-imagining Democracy looks back to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and argues this era marked the beginnings of modern democracy in the Mediterranean. These essays, from some of the leading scholars in the field, expose readers to new research and ideas regarding the complex and variegated history of democracy.
The invention of modern freedom—the equating of liberty with restraints on state power—was not the natural outcome of such secular Western trends as the growth of religious tolerance or the creation of market societies. Rather, it was propelled by an antidemocratic backlash following the Atlantic Revolutions. We tend to think of freedom as something that is best protected by carefully circumscribing the boundaries of legitimate state activity. But who came up with this understanding of freedom, and for what purposes? In a masterful and surprising reappraisal of more than two thousand years of thinking about freedom in the West, Annelien de Dijn argues that we owe our view of freedom not ...
Since the uprisings of 2010 and 2011, it has often been assumed that the politics of the Arab-speaking world is dominated, and will continue to be dominated, by orthodox Islamic thought and authoritarian politics. Challenging these assumptions, Line Khatib explores the current liberal movement in the region, examining its activists and intellectuals, their work, and the strengths and weaknesses of the movement as a whole. By investigating the underground and overlooked actors and activists of liberal activism, Khatib problematizes the ways in which Arab liberalism has been dismissed as an insignificant sociopolitical force, or a mere reaction to Western formulations of liberal politics. Instead, she demonstrates how Arab liberalism is a homegrown phenomenon that has influenced the politics of the region since the nineteenth century. Shedding new light on an understudied movement, Khatib provokes a re-evaluation of the existing literature and offers new ways of conceptualizing the future of liberalism and democracy in the modern Arab world.
The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (AJISS) is a double-blind, peer-reviewed interdisciplinary and international journal that publishes a wide variety of scholarly research on all facets of Islam and the Muslim world: anthropology, economics, history, philosophy and metaphysics, politics, psychology, and law.
Empires of Antiquities is a history of the rediscovery of the imperial civilizations of the ancient Near East in a modern imperial order that evolved between the outbreak of the First World War and the decolonization of the British Empire in the 1950s. It explores the ways in which near eastern antiquity was redefined and experienced, becoming the subject of imperial regulation, modes of enquiry, and international and national politics. Billie Melman follows a series of globally publicized spectacular archaeological discoveries in Iraq, Egypt, and Palestine, which made antiquity material visible and accessible as never before. She demonstrates that the new definition and uses of antiquity an...
This volume presents a fresh picture of the historical development of “conservatism” from the late 17th to the early 20th century. The book explores the broader geographies and transnational dimensions of conservatism and counterrevolution. The contributions show how counterrevolutionary concepts did not emerge in isolation, but resulted from the interplay between ideas, media, networks, and institutions. Like 19th-century liberalism and socialism, conservatism was the product of traveling ideas and people. This study describes how exile, mobility, and international sociability shaped counterrevolutionary identities. The volume presents case studies on the intersection of political philo...
The examination of literary genres in the Middle East opens the possibility of gaining new insights into the intellectual universe of Middle Eastern societies, the question of production of meaning, what “literature” meant in different historical periods, and the underlying epistemology of producing knowledge, and how this epistemology has changed over time. This book comprises 12 case studies from the three major Middle Eastern languages – Arabic, Persian, and Turkish – written by experts in the field. It brings together a wide range of approaches – from the study of epics to an analysis of travelogues, and from classical poetry to novels. Instead of focusing on one period or juxtaposing the classical genres and the West-induced development of “modern genres,” the studies in their totality apply a broad diachronic and synchronic perspective, with the potential to create a comparative framework for the study of the sociocultural and narratological dimensions of genre in the Middle East.
Mandatory Madness offers an unprecedented social and cultural history of colonial psychiatry in Palestine under British rule before 1948.