Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Usman Butt
-
The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, The United States And The Middle East, 1979-2003
The 2003 US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq is one of the most analysed events in the history of armed conflict. Although the US achieved a military victory against the regime of Saddam Hussein, few today regard the war to be a success. Indeed, it has come to represent...
-
On Muslim Democracy: Essays and Dialogue
According to Tunisian politician Rached Ghannouchi, “The Islamic system is closer to a parliamentary one and is not an executive authority.” The leader of Tunisia’s Ennahda movement explains to Andrew March, an American political philosopher and translator of Ghannouchi’s works. “So, the government is a tool for implementing that...
-
Empire of Refugees: North Caucasian Muslims And The Late Ottoman State
The period between 1850 to the start of the First World War saw an unprecedented refugee crisis strike the Ottoman Empire. An estimated North Caucasian Muslims, which included Circassians, Chechens, Dagestanis, Tartars and others sought refuge in Ottoman lands from the expanding Russian Empire. The story of how Istanbul...
-
Bedeviled: Jinn Doppelgangers in Islam & Akbarian Sufism
Doppelgangers are the stuff of fantasy, folklore and tradition and are an integral part of popular culture; one only has to think of Jake Gyllenhaal’s 2014 film, Enemy, where a depressed history teacher discovers he has an exact look-alike who works as an extra in films, to see how...
-
The City in Arabic Literature
Historically, the Arab world has always been deeply urbanised and cities have always been at the forefront of politics, society and economics. Given its importance, writers, thinkers, intellectuals, rulers, lawmakers and religious figures have always had a lot to say about cities and life in urban environments. Understanding the...
-
Tahrir's Youth: Leaders of a Leaderless Revolution
The 25th of January has become something of a sombre date for many of us, memories of the euphoria, the youthful energy and excitement at a once in a generation revolutionary change have been replaced with a regret at what could have been. It was a day that began...
-
Alexandria: The City that Changed the World
“Alexandria,” said Napoleon Bonaparte of the ancient Egyptian city, “more so than Rome, Constantinople, Paris, London, Amsterdam; would have been, and was meant to be, the head of the universe.” A glimpse of the splendour, grandeur and momentous history of the Mediterranean city is captured in Islam Issa’s new...
-
The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium
For most people, the Roman Empire collapsed in 476 AD after the Barbarian statesman Odoacer declared himself ruler of Italy. The fact that the Eastern Roman Empire continued with its centre in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) has often been treated as a mere footnote of history and not particularly important;...
-
Sufis in Medieval Baghdad
There is a tendency to think about public spheres as modern socio-political innovations. German philosopher Jurgen Habermas, who coined the idea of public sphere in the 1960s, said it was a place that lies between state and civil society, where common people critically and rationally debate matters of common...
-
France: The Long Goodbye
The end of French rule over Algeria came to an end on 5 July 1962 and is often seen as the symbolic end of the French Empire. However, since the 1962 withdrawal, France has militarily intervened in Africa over 50 times and, since 2011, has attempted to shape events...
-
We are your soldiers: How Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser remade the Arab world
‘Seven decades since his coup, and more than half a century since his death, the Arab peoples have scarcely begun to shake off the legacy of “Father” Gamal Abdel Nasser,’ as the sweeping regional history of Egypt’s former president concludes. Nasser was certainly an iconic figure whose persona shaped...
-
I Cannot Write My Life: Islam, Arabic, and Slavery in Omar Ibn Said's America
The transatlantic slave trade was the largest and one of the most horrifying crimes in human history, between 1525 and 1866, 12 million Africans were taken and transported from Africa to the Americas. The conditions were appalling for the enslaved in the ‘new world’, but for many, slavery was...
-
Imagining Palestine: Cultures of Exile and National Identity
Tahrir Hamdi’s new book Imagining Palestine: Cultures of Exile and National Identity explores the variety and complex ways that Palestinian writers, thinkers, activists and intellectuals have connected their memories to both the present and the future. If anyone is exiled, they are robbed of the chance to form new...
-
Sea of Troubles: The European Conquest of the Islamic Mediterranean and the origins of the First World War
Can the origins of the First World War be traced back to European imperial rivalries and growing influence in the Mediterranean from the 18th century onwards? This is the question that Ian Rutledge seeks to answer in Sea of Troubles: The European Conquest of the Islamic Mediterranean and the...
-
The Ottoman Scientific Heritage
The Ottoman Scientific Heritage is a three-volume tour de force that will prove to be a key reference point for historians of science and Ottomanists alike. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, a former Secretary-General of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, has spent a lifetime dispelling a common trope that, after the sacking...
-
Memory Makers
Historical memory is at the forefront of Russia’s wars in Ukraine, Syria and elsewhere. However, this historical memory is not about things in the past that actually happened, or real history, it is a constructed past to fit the Kremlin’s objectives. Memory serves in place of ideology to give...
-
George Orwell and Russia
The 20th century had no more prolific writer on the dangers of authoritarianism than Eric Arthur Blair, better known by his pen name, George Orwell. Orwell’s writings continue to impact us today and, in Russia, his works continue to have a special resonance as Masha Karp explores in her...
-
Disenchanting the Caliphate: The Secular Discipline of Power in Abbasid Political Thought
Did secularism in the Arab world only really begin in the 20th century after European colonisation? Historians in both the Arab World and the West have long argued that secularism is a uniquely European phenomenon that was exported to the rest of the world through empires. There is no...
-
Authoritarian Century
Could the end of liberalism be the end of diverse multi-ethnic states, from Indonesia to the United States? Azeem Ibrahim seems to think so and aims to make the case that a post-liberal world is not only authoritarian, but also dangerous to the internal harmony of many countries throughout...
-
Discover Cappadocia, Turkiye
Located at the heart of the Tarus Mountains Cappadocia offers visitors stunning views and ancient history...
-
Taming the Messiah: The Formation of an Ottoman Political Public Sphere, 1600-1700
“Arabic is eloquence, Persian is wittiness, Turkish is abomination, and the rest is filth,” Evliya Celebi, the 17th century Ottoman travel writer, is reported to have remarked. The high regard for Persian was not merely linguistic appreciation, but also speaks to a school of thought, culture, belief system and...
-
In the Shadow of the Prophet: Essays in Islamic History
Few can claim to have produced a wealth of scholarship and achieved mastery over Middle Eastern history, but Roy Mottahedeh’s insatiable curiosity for the past has left us with a treasure trove of works. Reading essays that he has written over the past fifty years and collected together in...
-
Unknowing and the Everyday: Sufism and Knowledge in Iran
A group of men and women have gathered with an instructor to partake in a religious ceremony which, aside from worship, represents something broader in their lives: how to take the experiences from the session and apply them to everyday life. “I was in another world during Fana [a...
-
The Neoconservatives who paved the road to invading Iraq
For Neoconservatives, Iraq was about a vision for a new world based on aggressive and interventionist US foreign policy...
