A talk with a focus on the contemporary militant group referred to by the acronym ISIS (or ISIL) and its views on the “caliphate.” As this group sees it, its so-called Islamic State represents the resurrection of the historical office of the caliph after its abrogation in 1923. ISIS anchors this position in the concept of “the creed of Abraham” (millat Ibrahim) mentioned in Qur’an 2:124 in order to derive a scriptural and theological mandate for their project. The lecture analyzes how...

Professor Mohammad Khalil scrutinises the claim by New Atheists like Richard Dawkins that Islam is a fundamentally violent religion Is Islam fundamentally violent? For influential New Atheists such as Sam Harris, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Richard Dawkins, the answer is an emphatic yes, largely because of the Islamic doctrine of jihad. According to this view, when al-Qaeda plotted 9/11 or ISIS planned any one of its recent terrorist attacks, they were acting in accord with Islamic scripture. In...

How historians can gain new insights from global history, and how historians and histories of Iran can contribute Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Annual Lecture - Centres, Peripheries and New Histories of the Left in Iran What can historians working on Iran gain from new insights generated in sprawling fields associated with global history such as global urban history and global intellectual history; and what can historians and histories of Iran contribute to these fields? With examples from...

Prof. Esther Hertzog gives a talk on the vulnerable situation of motherhood in the Israeli welfare state. This talk will examine the role of state authorities, especially the welfare system and the courts, in undermining disadvantaged women's motherhood. State authorities undermine mothers' custodial rights over their offspring, especially through the discourse on 'child's wellbeing' and 'parental capability', blaming mothers for physically endangering and neglecting their children. It will...

Helen Lackner speaks about Yemen’s enduring crisis. Helen Lackner updates the seminar on the Yemeni war, providing a brief analysis of the origins of the conflict and addressing the main constraints and perspectives for the future. While focusing on the domestic aspects of the situation, she puts them in the regional context and also address the role of the international allies of the major parties involved. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales;...

Professor Joseph Sassoon in conversation with Dr Michael Willis about his recent book, The Global Merchants: The Enterprise and Extravagance of the Sassoon Dynasty (Allen Lane, Penguin Group, 2022). Emeritus Professor Avi Shlaim joins them. Abstract: The influential merchants of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries shaped the globalization of today. The Sassoons, a Baghdadi-Jewish trading family, built a global trading enterprise by taking advantage of major historical developments...

Dr Raphaël Lefèvre in conversation with Dr Neil Ketchley about his recent book, 'Jihad in the City: Militant Islamism and Contentious Politics in Tripoli' (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Militant Islamists are often assumed to be driven by global goals and transnational networks. But this narrative misses a crucial point: from Tawhid during the Lebanese civil war to Tahrir al-Sham in the current Syrian conflict, Islamist armed groups often seek to recruit and mobilize local communities...

Marilyn Booth speaking on her new book. This book is an intellectual biography of early Arabic feminist Zaynab Fawwaz (c.1850-1914) and a study of her life in Ottoman Syria and Egypt, in the context of Arabophone debates on gender, modernity and the good society, 1890s-1910. Chapters take up her writing and debates in which she participated, concerning social justice, girls’ education, marriage, divorce and polygyny, the question of ‘Nature’ and Darwinist notions of male/female, and...

Dr Neil Ketchley in conversation with Professor Walter Armbrust about his current research. The post-WWII era saw coups and “revolutions from above” break out across the Middle East and North Africa. How did these events transform colonial-era state elites? We theorize that post-colonial regimes had to choose between purging perceived opponents and delivering key state functions, leading to important variation in individual turnover and survival. To illustrate our argument, we trace the...

Join us as we listen to Dr Usaama al-Azami (Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford) in conversation about his new book, 'Islam and the Arab Revolutions, the Ulama between Democracy and Autocracy'. Dr Michael Willis (St Antony’s College) is chairing the webinar. The live webinar took place on 21st January 2022 as part of the Middle East Centre webinar series. The book is available for purchase in the UK from Hurst Publishers, quote the discount code ISLAMARAB35 at check-out for 35%...

This is a recording of a live webinar held on Friday 3rd December 2021 for the Middle East Centre Like many parts of the world, the environment in the Middle East is in crisis. Climate change, biodiversity loss and unsustainable material extraction will have the same detrimental consequences for life as elsewhere on the planet. In recent years, however, the state of the environment in the Middle East has been framed in a sensationalistic manner; with little evidence, it is blamed for conflict...

This is a recording of a live webinar held on Thursday 25th November 2021 for the Middle East centre. Dr Ibrahim al-Marashi (Associate Professor of Middle East history at California State University San Marcos and Visiting Professor at the IE University School of Global and Public Affairs in Madrid, Spain) and Kate Clark (Co-Director and Senior Analyst, Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN), https://www.afghanistan-analysts.org ) present ‘Afghanistan and the Middle East’. Dr Michael Willis (St...

This is a recording of a live webinar held on Friday 19th November 2021 for the MEC. Dr Michael Mason, Director of the Middle East Centre, London School of Economics and Political Science presents “Failing Flows: The Politics of Water Management in Southern Iraq”. Dr Michael Willis (St Antony’s College, Oxford) chairs this webinar. In July 2018 massive protests erupted in Basra city as residents demanded improvements in public services. Failings in water management were at the heart of local...

This is a recording of a live webinar held on Friday 12th November 2021 for the MEC. Dr Mattin Biglari (SOAS, University of London) presents “Air Pollution, Toxicity, and Environmental Politics in the History of Iranian Oil Nationalisation”. Dr Stephanie Cronin (Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford) chairs this webinar. As we witness the increasingly visible effects of the global climate emergency, it is paramount that the study of the environment is better integrated into the...

On 25 July 2021 Tunisian President Kais Saied dismissed the government and suspended parliament, subsequently employing the army and security forces around government buildings to thwart any opposition to his power grab. How did Tunisia – long hailed as a democratic model in the region – reach such a stage? Who is President Saied and what does he plan on doing? What are his sources of power and support, both within Tunisia and internationally? And does his power grab mean the end of Tunisian...

Oil price volatility and accelerated energy transitions away from hydrocarbons to meet climate change mitigation measures have presented existential threats to the economies of hydrocarbon-dependent welfare states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). These state rely on oil and gas not only in their exports to fund welfare distributive measures, but also domestically for highly-subsidized energy and water consumption. In response, each GCC state announced economic development plans...

This is a recording of a live webinar held on 29th October 2021 for the MEC Friday Seminar Michaelmas Term 2021 series on the overall theme of The Environment and The Middle East. Dr Jamie Furniss (Institut de recherche sur le Maghreb contemporain (Tunis) / Department of Social Anthropology, University of Edinburgh) presents: The blue-clad fennec: authoritarian environmentalism in Tunisia, and its afterlives. Professor Walter Armbrust (St Antony’s College, Oxford) chairs this webinar,...

Dr Hussam Hussein investigates the construction of the discourse of water scarcity in Jordan, and the political economy of the water sector. This is a recording of a live webinar held on 22nd October 2021 for the MEC Friday Seminar Michaelmas Term 2021 series on the overall theme of The Environment and The Middle East. Dr Hussam Hussein (Lecturer in International Relations at DPIR, Oxford Martin School Fellow in Water Diplomacy, and Fulford Junior Research Fellow at Somerville College)...

MEC Friday Webinar. This is a recording of a live webinar held on 15th October 2021 for the first episode of the MEC Friday Seminar Michaelmas Term 2021 series on the overall theme of The Environment and The Middle East. MEC Friday Webinar. This is a recording of a live webinar held on 15th October 2021 for the first episode of the MEC Friday Seminar Michaelmas Term 2021 series on the overall theme of The Environment and The Middle East. Oxford academics Dr Michael Willis, Professor Walter...

Dr Orkideh Behrouzan (SOAS University of London), gives a talk for the Middle East Centre seminar series on 21st May 2021, chaired by Edmund Herzig (Faculty of Oriental Studies). Discussant: Dr Maziyar Ghiabi (University of Exeter). Iran has been one of the worst hit countries by the Coronavirus pandemic, while its pandemic response has been shaped by the politicization of the outbreak and the securitization of information about it. This landscape of suspicion reveals a particular form of...

Professor Marie Ladier-Fouladi (CNRS)/ CETOBaC) gives a talk for the MEC Women's Rights Research Seminars. Chaired by Soraya Tremayne (Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology). Marie Ladier-Fouladi is a senior Researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS)/ CETOBaC (Centre d’Études Turques, Ottomanes, Balkaniques et Centrasiatiques) and professor of Political Sociology and Population Studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in...

Hamid Dabashi (Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York), gives a talk for the Middle East Studies Centre. The first comprehensive social and intellectual biography of Jalal Al-e Ahmad, this book explores the life and legacy of Jalal Al-e Ahmad (1923-69), arguably the most prominent Iranian public intellectual of his time and contends that he was the last Muslim intellectual to have articulated a vision of Muslim worldly...

Gillian Mosely (Film Director and Producer) joins Dr Anne Irfan, Professor Eugene Rogan and our Middle East Centre webinar audience to talk about her documentary film, The Tinderbox - Israel and Palestine: time to call time? Dr Anne Irfan (Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford) and Professor Eugene Rogan (St Antony’s College, Oxford). Extract from British Council Film website: Knowledge is power, but lack of knowledge keeps power where politicians want it... From BAFTA-award-winning producer...

Professor Irene Schneider (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen), gives a talk for the MEC Women's Rights Research Seminars. Chaired by Professor Marilyn Booth (Magdalen College, Oxford) Irene Schneider is Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies. She received her PhD from Tuebingen University in 1989 and published her Dissertation under the title "Das Bild des Richters in der adab al-qadi-Literatur". In 1996 she finished her habilitation at the University of Cologne with a Study published under...

A webinar that explores the complex history binding Iraq and the U.K. from the First World War through the mandate and creation of the Hashemite monarchy, and Britain’s role in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and its aftermath. With Eugene Rogan, Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History, University of Oxford, and author of The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East, 1914-1920 Dina Rizk Khoury, Professor of History and International Affairs at George Washington University and...