Arab Digest podcasts

Sitting at number six in the top ten countdown is Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula: down but not out with Elisabeth Kendall. Her conversation with William Law was podcast on 17 September, 2021. Dr Kendall is a Senior Research Fellow in Arabic and Islamic Studies at Oxford University's Pembroke College and an expert on Yemen and on Jihadist movements. In October she takes up her appointment as Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge. Her article, “The Jihadi threat and the Arabian Peninsula”  on which their conversation was based was published in a 9/11 CTC Sentinel special issue. (CTC Sentinel is West Point's Combating Terrorism Center Journal.) Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & podcasts.

Our podcast Cairo and Ankara: a new axis? ranks number 7 in the Arab Digest top ten podcast list. It was released 18 June 2021 and features Ali Bakir, a research assistant professor at Ibn Khaldoon center for Humanities and Social Sciences in Doha. Ali is an analyst following geopolitical and security trends in the Middle East, and especially those between Turkey and the Arab world. His conversation with Digest editor William Law focussed on the thaw in relations between Cairo and Ankara. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & podcasts.

We spoke with Chris 11 June 2021. His new book From Sheikhs to Sultanism: Statecraft and Authority in Saudi Arabia and the UAE had just been published by Hurst. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & podcasts.

Coming in at number nine in our all-time Arab Digest top ten is Annelle Sheline’s podcast The Weaponisation of Moderate Islam, first broadcast 30 July 2021. Annelle is a Research Fellow in the Middle East program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and an expert on religious and political authority in the Middle East and North Africa. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & podcasts.

This podcast conversation aired 14 May 2021 as violence flared in the wake of Israeli security forces actions at Al Aqsa mosque and the attempted eviction of Palestinians from their homes in the East Jerusalem quarter of Sheikh Jarrah. Jordan’s Prince Hassan has long advocated on behalf of interfaith and humanitarian issues with particular stress on the human dimension of conflicts. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & podcasts.

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the European Council on Foreign Relations' Tarek Megerisi. Tarek considers the crisis that Putin's invasion has plunged the Middle East and North Africa into and he calls for fresh thinking and urgent action on the part of Europe, acting in concert with international bodies such as the IMF, to avert a human catastrophe on a scale that is unthinkable. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & podcasts.

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the editor in chief of The International Interest, Sami Hamdi. Sami looks beyond the headlines in the Western media about that fist bump. He argues instead that President Joe Biden's trip to Jeddah to meet with the Saudi crown prince had almost nothing to do with human rights and was much more about his own domestic political challenges, his efforts to reinforce relations with Israel and the attempt to keep alive his hopes for a deal with Iran. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & podcasts.

Writer and journalist Elias Jahshan is Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week. Their conversation focus on the LGBTQ+ Arab community in the Middle East and the diaspora in a powerful new book of 18 essays, This Arab is Queer, which Elias edited. As he says in his introduction: "These writings assert our existence and agency as a community, and also celebrate our varied experiences.This is a space where the microphone is entirely the writer’s own." Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & podcasts.

Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the Egyptian political analyst and commentator Maged Mandour. Their conversation deals with Egypt's growing economic crisis and how President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is managing it. He may believe that with good friends in the neighbourhood, among them Israel, he has time to spend his way out of economic collapse. But the military-economic dictatorship he has assiduously built leaves him less and less room in which to manoeuvre. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & podcasts.

Author and analyst Matthew Hedges is this week's podcast guest as he joins Arab Digest editor William Law to discuss his recently published book, an analysis of how Mohammed bin Zayed, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, has assiduously built a military, digital and economic power base while remaining largely in the shadows. Matthew talks, too, about his detention and abuse at the hands of the UAE's State Security Department while he was in the country doing research for the book. Sign up NOW at ArabDigest.org for free to join the club and start receiving our daily newsletter & podcasts.