Middle East Centre

Maha Yahya (PhD, Director, Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Centre) Maysoon Pachachi (Film director) give a talk for the Middle East Studies Centre. Chaired by Professor Eugene Rogan (St. Antony's College, Oxford). Iraq and Lebanon: When the Arab world rose up against failed governance in 2011, Lebanon and Iraq stood out as exceptions to the regional trend. Yet by the end of the decade, massed popular demonstrations would demand the fall of the regime in both countries. With their electoral systems, the Iraqis and Lebanese did not confront deeply entrenched dictators. Rather, protestors rose against sectarian politics and called for a new order based on citizenship without reference to religion. Speaker biographies: Maha Yahya is director of the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center, where her work focuses broadly on political violence and identity politics, pluralism, development and social justice after the Arab uprisings, the challenges of citizenship, and the political and socio-economic implications of the migration/refugee crisis. Prior to joining Carnegie, Yahya led work on Participatory Development and Social Justice at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UN-ESCWA). She was previously regional adviser on social and urban policies at UN-ESCWA and spearheaded strategic and inter-sectoral initiatives and policies in the Office of the Executive Secretary which addressed the challenges of democratic transitions in the Arab world. Yahya has also worked with the United Nations Development Program in Lebanon, where she was the director and principal author of The National Human Development Report 2008–2009: Toward a Citizen’s State. She was also the founder and editor of the MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies. Yahya has worked with international organizations and in the private sector as a consultant on projects related to socioeconomic policy analysis, development policies, cultural heritage, poverty reduction, housing and community development, and postconflict reconstruction in various countries including Lebanon, Pakistan, Oman, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. She has served on a number of advisory boards including the MIT Enterprise Forum of the Pan Arab Region and the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies. Yahya is the author of numerous publications, including most recently Unheard Voices: What Syrian Refugees Need to Return Home (April 2018); The Summer of Our Discontent: Sects and Citizens in Lebanon and Iraq (June 2017); Great Expectations in Tunisia (March 2016); Refugees and the Making of an Arab Regional Disorder (November 2015); Towards Integrated Social Development Policies: A Conceptual Analysis (UN-ESCWA, 2004), co-editor of Secular Publicities: Visual practices and the Transformation of National Publics in the Middle East and South Asia (University of Michigan Press, 2010) and co-author of Promises of Spring: Citizenship and Civic Engagement in Democratic Transitions (UN-ESCWA, 2013). MAYSOON PACHACHI is a London-based filmmaker of Iraqi origin, who was educated in Iraq, the USA and the UK. She studied Philosophy at University College London (BA Hons) and Filmmaking at the London Film School (MA) and worked for many years as a documentary film, TV drama and feature film editor in the UK. Since 1994 she has worked as an independent documentary film director and has just completed a fiction feature film, ‘Our River…Our Sky’ (Arabic title: Kulshi Makoo), which was shot in Iraq in 2019. The project was awarded the IWC Gulf Filmmaker Award for the script, at the Dubai International Film Festival in December 2012. Maysoon has also taught film directing and editing in Britain and Palestine (Jerusalem, Gaza and Ramallah). In 2004, with Londonbased Iraqi director and cameraman, Kasim Abid, she co-founded INDEPENDENT FILM & TELEVISION COLLEGE, a free-of-charge film-training centre in Baghdad, which ran for 10 years and whose students produced 18 short documentary films, which were shown internationally and received 14 festival prizes. Documentary Films VOICES FROM GAZA (52 mins) Channel 4 (UK) 1990 (producer/editor) Red Ribbon Award, American Film and Video Festival, San Francisco IRAQI WOMEN - VOICES FROM EXILE (52 mins) Channel 4 (UK) 1994 (director/producer) A broad range of Iraqi women, of different ages, religions and political backgrounds, living in London recount their experiences – creating a sense of the modern history of Iraq as experienced by the country’s women. SMOKE 1997 (director/producer/editor) Part of an art installation by prize-winning artist, UK/Brazilian artist Lucia Nogueira. The film is now in the permanent collection of the Tate Modern Gallery, London IRANIAN JOURNEY (83 mins) ZDF/Arte 2000 (director) (First Prize, Kalamata International Documentary Festival, 2000) A documentary road-movie about a 24-hour bus trip with the only woman longdistance bus driver in the Islamic world. LIVING WITH THE PAST: People and Monuments in Medieval Cairo, (52 mins) ECHO Productions (USA) 2001 (director) A portrait of Cairo’s Darb Al Ahmar, a neighborhood in the heart of the old city facing a process of radical change. BITTER WATER, (76 mins) (Legend Productions/Oxymoron Films) 2003 (co-director/producer) Feature-length documentary about 4 generations of refugees in a Palestinian camp in Beirut. RETURN TO THE LAND OF WONDERS (88 mins) 2004 ZDF/Arte (director/producer/camera/editor) Made in 2004 on the first trip back to Baghdad in more than 35 years. OUR FEELINGS TOOK THE PICTURES OPEN SHUTTERS IRAQ (102 mins) (2008) (director/producer/camera/editor) (Jury Special Mention, Arab Film Festival Rotterdam, 2009) 12 women and a 6 year-old girl, travel to Damascus from 5 cities in Iraq. They live together for a month, during which they tell their life stories and learn to take photographs. The remarkable photo-stories they produced about their lives at a difficult and dangerous time in Iraq, were exhibited internationally and were also the subject of a book.

Ece Temelkuran, author of How to Lose a Country: the Seven Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship (2019) gives a talk for the Middle East Centre Friday Seminar series. Chaired by Dr Laurent Mignon (St Antony's College, Oxford). A certain political and moral insanity seems to be taking over the world. Both the political and the moral consensuses are under the consistent attack of rightwing populist leaders using authoritarian tools. Although in each country this attack is perceived as an independent chaos specific to the local political and social conditions, it in fact has a pattern repeating exactly the same way regardless of the national differences. Democracies are destroyed through seven political steps to pave the way to the new form of fascism. Unless the peoples of the world agree on the fact that the matter is global, the planet will lose its political triangulation points. Ece Temelkuran is one of Turkey’s best-known novelists and political commentators, and her journalism has appeared in the Guardian, New York Times, New Statesman, Der Spiegel etc. She won PEN Translate Award with Women Who Blow On Knots (2013) and with her political long essay Turkey: The Insane And Melancholy (2016) she received New Ambassador Of Europe Prize from Poland. Her latest book How To Lose A Country: The Seven Steps From Democracy to Dictatorship (2019) was internationally acknowledged. Her new book Together is coming out in May 2021.

Dr Lina Khatib, Director, Middle East and North Africa Programme, Chatham, Jeremy Bowen (Middle East Editor, BBC News) give a talk on Syria and it's current political situation. Chaired by Professor Eugene Rogan (St Antony's College, Oxford). After nine years of civil war, the prospects for regime change in Syria seem more remote than ever. Its society dispersed and its economy shattered, Syria remains a central state in the Middle East. Regional stability cannot be restored while Syria’s conflict rages, yet the gulf separating the warring sides seems unbridgeable so long as Bashar al-Asad remains in power. In this webinar, Dr Lina Khatib, Director of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House, and Jeremy Bowen, BBC Middle East Editor, will discuss the contemporary struggle for Syria and Assad’s survival Speaker biographies: Jeremy Bowen (Middle East Editor, BBC News) I have been with the BBC since 1984 and have reported extensively from the Middle East since 1990. For the purposes of this session on Syria - I did the last major interview of Bashar al Assad in 2015, the third time I interviewed him. I've done many reporting assignments in Syria before the war and since it started, on both sides of the front line. My reporting of the Syria war won various journalism awards, including interview of the year from the Royal Television Society for the Assad interview - also in the US I received an Emmy and a Peabody award for Syria reporting. Dr Lina Khatib Dr Lina Khatib leads the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House. She was formerly director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut and co-founding Head of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. Her research focuses on the international relations of the Middle East, Islamist groups and security, political transitions and foreign policy, with special attention to the Syrian conflict. She is a research associate at SOAS, was a senior research associate at the Arab Reform Initiative and lectured at Royal Holloway, University of London. She has published seven books and also written widely on public diplomacy, political communication and political participation in the Middle East. She is a frequent commentator on politics and security in the Middle East and North Africa at events around the world and in the media.

Walter Armbrust (St Antony’s College, Oxford), author of Martyrs and Tricksters: An Ethnography of the Egyptian Revolution (2019), gives a talk for the Middle East Centre Friday Seminar Series on 20th November 2020. Chaired by Dr Michael Willis (St Anthony's College, Oxford) Professor Walter Armbrust is a Hourani Fellow and Professor in Modern Middle Eastern Studies. He is a cultural anthropologist, and author of Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt (1996); Martyrs and Tricksters: An Ethnography of the Egyptian Revolution (2019); and various other works focusing on popular culture, politics and mass media in Egypt. He is editor of Mass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond (2000). Abstract: When the Covid-19 pandemic began many people thought that a virus-induced apocalypse, while painful, provided a chance to rethink and fix everything from school funding to global warming. Yet as the initial effervescence of our entry into the liminality of lockdown dragged into a dreary limbo, darker possibilities emerged. The rich grew richer; once laughable conspiracy theories became politically weaponized; the environment became less important than economic recovery; and in this country, Covid-induced economic distress has provided perfect cover for getting the hardest of Brexits done. A crisis, real or perceived, produces real change - just not the sort of change progressive activists may have envisioned, as the Egyptian revolutionaries I wrote about in Martyrs and Tricksters discovered to their dismay. Indeed, crisis provides ideal conditions for the flourishing of tricksters in mainstream politics, and many a trickster politician harbours the kernel of an authoritarian. My talk explores links between crisis and authoritarianism in the Middle East, but also more widely, and not only in the context of Covid (though it provides an excellent point of entry to my topic), but also in longer historical and social contexts. There may well be a “dictatorship syndrome,” as Dr al-Aswany’s book suggests, but the institutionalization of dictators and the habituation of populations to their rule is only part of the story. Dictators are often born from crisis as tricksters. Hitler started as a trickster. Donald Trump is perhaps the clearest instantiation of a trickster politician in history. Some crises are unforeseeable - earthquakes, pandemics, revolutions for example. Others are increasingly structured, economically and by communication technologies. We tend not to think of the economy as intrinsically crisis-prone, though perhaps we should, given the dominance of capitalism and its requirement for constant disruptive change and expansion. The crisis potential of media technologies is easier to imagine when we have so close at hand the wreckage of whiplashing from hopeful “Facebook Revolutions” to propagandistic “Fake News” in the space of a decade. In the end the notion of a dictatorship syndrome in the Middle East perhaps distracts us from the much greater danger of an authoritarian virus spreading throughout the world.

Benjamin Dubrulle (Maison Française d'Oxford), gives a seminar for the MEC Women's Rights Research Seminars. Chaired by Dr Soraya Tremayne (School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford) on 18th November 2020. ‘God Does not Discriminate’: Inclusive Mosques Politics in France and the United Kingdom In the last ten years, mosques welcoming believers regardless of their gender and sexuality have been established in France and the United Kingdom. Known as ‘inclusive mosques’, these spaces are managed by both heterosexual and queer women who aim at practicing Islam outside of patriarchal constraints. Based on recent ethnographic data, this seminar will explore the different forms of pastoral care provided by Muslim women in these spaces for their community. Islamic feminism is a major component of pastoral care in the British context. Through various events -monthly feminist discussion groups, Jumma, conferences- queer Muslim women in the United Kingdom produce and share religious knowledge relevant to their experiences and struggles. Taking into account their specific vulnerability enables them to design relevant emancipatory practices. In France, a new inclusive mosque reclaims the French tradition of laïcité. Staying away from identity politics enables these women to focus on the universal values of justice in Islam. Despite material and spiritual obstacles that will be examined, these women seek to fight existing discriminations within local communities through radical inclusivity. Their theological work based on the Quran aims at promoting gender justice and recognition of sexual diversity. Ultimately, these projects seek to protect the local community against both queer-phobia and islamophobia, and unify the oumma. Bio: Benjamin Dubrulle is currently a PhD candidate in sociology at the EHESS (School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences) in Paris, under the supervision of Dr. Céline Béraud. He is also a member of the CéSor (Centre for Studies in Social Sciences of Religion) at the CNRS and is currently in residency at the Maison Française d’Oxford. Benjamin Dubrulle is a member of the Jewish-Muslim Research Network. His research is situated at the intersection of social sciences of religion, gender studies and queer studies. It focuses on initiatives designed by Muslim communities to promote gender equality and sexual diversity within an Islamic framework. Dubrulle has a particular interest in democracy and secularism, and the way politics impact lived experiences of Muslim minorities on the ground.

Professor Sami Zemni (Ghent) gives a talk on the Tunisian Revolution on its 10 year anniversary. Part of the Middle East Centre Friday Seminar Series, chaired by Dr Michael Willis (St Anthony's College). On the eve of its ten year anniversary, Sami Zemni reflects on the outcomes of the Tunisian Revolution. Touted as the only success story of the Arab Uprisings, Tunisia is facing a major economic crisis, social instability and political paralysis while nostalgia for authoritarian rule seems on the rise. Is there anything to celebrate? Sami Zemni is professor of Political and Social Sciences at Ghent University (Belgium) where he heads the Middle East and North Africa Research Group (MENARG). His research focuses on issues of political change in North Africa (Morocco and Tunisia), more specifically he currently focuses on processes of marginalization and uneven development leading to different forms of urban and rural resistance.

Madawi Al-Rasheed (KCL and LSE), author of Salman’s Legacy: The Dilemmas of a New Era in Saudi Arabia (2018) and Ben Hubbard (The New York Times), author of MBS: The Rise to Power of MBS (2020) give a talk for the Middle East Centre Friday Seminar Series. Chair ed by Dr Usaama Al-Azami (Faculty of Oriental Studies, Oxford) The seminar discusses the simultaneous phenomena of reform and repression in Saudi Arabia under Crown Prince Muhammad ibn Salman. In recent years, Saudi Arabia has seen swift social and economic changes, including women being granted the right to drive and efforts to diversify the economy. The same period has also seen waves of detention, heightened restrictions on free speech and the flight of Saudis abroad. How will these changes interact as Saudi Arabia moves forward?

Dalia Fahmy (Long Island University) editor of Egypt and the Contradictions of Liberalism: Illiberal Intelligentsia and the Future of Egyptian Democracy (2017), gives a talk for the Middle East Centre Friday Seminar Series. This talk will address the dictatorship syndrome specifically through the lens of liberalism in Egypt. It will seek to address why a particular denomination of Egyptian liberalism, despite at face value being wholly opposed to dictatorship, ultimately proved susceptible to the allures of the dictatorship syndrome in the aftermath of the events of 2013 in Egypt. Also on the panel is Daanish Faruqi (Duke), editor of Egypt and the Contradictions of Liberalism: Illiberal Intelligentsia and the Future of Egyptian Democracy (2017) Chaired by Dr Usaama Al-Azami (Faculty of Oriental Studies, Oxford) Dr. Dalia Fahmy Bio: Dr. Dalia Fahmy is Associate Professor of Political Science at Long Island University and Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Global Policy in Washington DC. Dr. Fahmy's books: “The Rise and Fall of The Muslim Brotherhood and the Future of Political Islam” (undercontract), and co-edited volumes “Arab Spring: Modernity, Identity and Change,” “Illiberal Intelligentsia and the Future of Egyptian Democracy,” and “International Relations in a Changing World”, cover her research areas. Daanish Faruqi Bio: Daanish Faruqi is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights (CGHR) at Rutgers University, and a doctoral candidate (ABD) in History at Duke University. A scholar of Middle Eastern and Islamic history, with a particular emphasis on Islamic political thought, he had previously spent several years in the Arab Middle East as a researcher and journalist, which gave rise to two books, most recently Egypt and the Contradictions of Liberalism: Illiberal Intelligentsia and the Future of Egyptian Democracy (co-edited with Dalia F. Fahmy). His work straddles between classical and contemporary Islamic thought, with a particular emphasis on the Maghrib region on the one hand and on the Levant on the other hand. Most recently his work investigates transnational politically activist strands of Sufi mysticism, tracing their diasporic origins in the colonial Maghrib to their ultimate migration to late-Ottoman Syria, to their most recent role in the 2011 Syrian revolution. A recognized subject matter expert, Faruqi has given talks and symposia on his research at the UCLA Law School, Georgetown University, the National Press Club, and other institutions. Additionally, he is a frequent journalist and commentator on the politics of the Middle East, having published in Al Jazeera English, Foreign Policy, CommonDreams.org, USC-Annenberg/Religion Dispatches, among other media outlets.

Part of the Middle East Centre Women's Rights Research Seminars. With Dr Mine Yildirim Chair: Dr Nazila Ghanea (Department for Continuing Education,University of Oxford). The place of women in the religious space of mosques in Turkey has been a long debate- more so recently. The Women in Mosques Movement’s challenge of the quality of space allocated for women in mosques led to strong criticism but also aroused genuine discussion about the deeply held beliefs underlying the place given to women as well as the space women carve out for themselves. The seminar will explore the implications of international human rights law, particularly women’s right to freedom of religion or belief, for the key demands of the Women in Mosques Movement. Bio – Dr. Mine YILDIRIM is the Head of the Norwegian Helsinki Committee’s Freedom of Belief Initiative project and Member of the OSCE/ODIHR Panel of Experts on Freedom of Religion or Belief. She a scholar of human rights law and an expert on international protection of freedom of religion or belief. She is the founder of the Freedom of Belief Initiative, and works with the Norwegian Helsinki Committee on this Initiative monitoring and reporting on freedom of religion or belief in Turkey. Yildirim is a member of the OSCE/ODIHR Panel of Experts on Freedom of Religion or Belief. Her work covers different facets of religious freedom, including the collective dimension of freedom of religion or belief, gender dimension of freedom of religion or belief, religious minorities and freedom of religion or belief in education. She was the co-recipient of the Stefanus Prize in 2016. She received her doctoral degree at AAbo Akademi Institute for Human Rights with her thesis on the collective dimension of freedom of religion or belief. Her doctoral thesis is published as a book entitled The Collective Dimension of Freedom of Religion: A Case Study on Turkey. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the academic journal Religion & Human Rights and has published extensively in academic journals and contributes to Forum 18. She has served as a consultant on numerous international projects.

Maryam Alemzadeh (Princeton) Siavush Randjbar-Daemi (St Andrews), author of The Quest for Authority in Iran: a history of the presidency from revolution to Rouhani (2017), give a talk for the Middle East Centre Friday Seminar Series. Chaired Professor Edmund Herzig (Faculty of Oriental Studies, Oxford) Scholars have shown the dictatorial function of the parallel political system of the Islamic Republic: although the authoritarian office of supreme leadership and the security apparatuses strictly limit the quasi-democratic institutions (i.e. the presidency and the parliament), they avert any criticism of the government’s malfunction to the latter, thereby saving ideological face among dedicated supporters. In this functionalist explanation of the dual system of power, the qualitative difference of the two sides’ working mechanisms goes unnoticed. In this talk I address the organizational dynamics of the nonconventional section of state in Iran, with a special focus on the Islamic Revolutionary Guards. I demonstrate that behind the security apparatus Panopticon and its capillary power lies a “revolutionary” institution—one that tolerates and encourages revolutionary direct action, thereby sustaining a sizable popular base over the years. The popular base is not necessarily brainwashed to serve the state. Rather, I argue, institutions of power keep it committed and interested by authorizing spontaneous, direct action, even though revolutionary times are long passed. Maryam Alemzadeh-Bio Maryam Alemzadeh is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton University's Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies. She earned her PhD in sociology at the University of Chicago in 2018, and has previously worked as the Grinspoon Junior Research Fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University. Maryam is a historical and cultural sociologist of revolutions, state building, and grassroots militias, specializing on Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Based on detailed historical findings, she writes about cultural practices as a sociologist, and about contemporary US-Middle East politics as an Iran expert. Her work has appeared in the British Journal of Middle East Studies and Foreign Affairs, among other places.