January 11, 2021 |
Usman Butt Deep Knowledge: Ways of Knowing in Sufism and Ifa, Two West African Intellectual Traditions by Oludamini Ogunnaike is a sweeping and ambitious book that operates on multiple levels with...
Middle East Monitor takes a look at some of the biggest stories from the Middle East and North Africa in 2020
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US December 14, 2020 |
Ramona Wadi Identity and war are themes explored in Inaam Kachaci's novel, The American Granddaughter (Interlink Books, 2020). The main character is Zeina, an Iraqi-born US citizen, who is thoroughly immersed...
December 9, 2020 |
Anjuman Rahman Muslims have become a convenient focus for the rage that the world feels after every terrorist act around the world. However, for the contributors to I Refuse to Condemn:...
November 17, 2020 |
Usman Butt It is almost a year since Iranian Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani (11 March 1957 – 3 January 2020) was killed in a US drone attack near Baghdad International...
November 16, 2020 |
Elif Selin Calik Life in a Country Album is a collection of poetic essays that are philosophical, spiritual, and above all, inspirational. Nathalie Handal's musings are divided into four regional parts: Album...
November 12, 2020 |
Nasim Ahmed On the very day that Jerusalem came under Israeli occupation in 1967 "exile became a central reality in my life," recollects Kamal Boullata in the opening passages of the...
November 11, 2020 |
Usman Butt Social anthropologist Madawi Al-Rasheed's new book The Son King: Reform and Repression in Saudi Arabia looks at the conflicts taking place in the desert Kingdom both historically and under...
November 11, 2020 |
Amelia Smith The Nahr we meet some way into Susan Abdulhawa's "Against the Loveless World" is a different one we imagine to the figure who sits in an Israeli jail cuffing her own...
The winners of this year’s Palestine Book Awards (PBA) were announced yesterday following another year of strong submissions
November 5, 2020 |
Usman Butt Ulrike Freitag's A History of Jeddah: The Gate to Mecca in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries is a seductively charming urban history of the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah,...
November 2, 2020 |
Usman Butt Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi's Revolution and Its Discontents: Political Thought and Reform in Iran takes us on an intellectual tour of post-Islamism and Islamic left thought in Iran. The early 1990s...
October 30, 2020 |
Omar Ahmed Recent events in France have once again pushed the notion of a clash of civilisations between Islam and the West onto centre stage. Last month the satirical magazine Charlie...
October 29, 2020 |
Usman Butt Arzoo Osanloo's Forgiveness Work: Mercy, Law and Victims' Rights in Iran takes us through a little discussed feature of the Iranian legal system, which has implications beyond the country...
October 23, 2020 |
Ramona Wadi Haim Bresheeth Žabner's detailed study of the origins and role of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) are based on one main observation: Israel is defined by its military. An...
October 12, 2020 |
Muhammad Hussein Rashid Khalidi's telling of the story of the loss of his homeland and its gradual invasion is a deeply personal one, and is unlike other more detached accounts I...
October 6, 2020 |
Lauren Lewis Translated 30 years after it was originally published in Arabic as Bab al-Saha, Sahar Khalifeh's Passage to the Plaza is a fast-paced novel that follows a multi-generational cast through...
September 28, 2020 |
Omar Ahmed Whilst literature on Israel's state violence against Palestinian children is nothing new, there are apparent limitations on the current discourse which tends not to extend beyond theories of childhood...
September 25, 2020 |
Usman Butt "Under these circumstances, talking to a Western reporter could be a death sentence. And yet here in Douma, as soon as people saw that I was a journalist, they...
September 21, 2020 |
Anjuman Rahman The Black Lives Matter protests have brought to the fore the issue of slavery upon which many British fortunes were built. This has led to calls for schools to...
September 15, 2020 |
Usman Butt Li Guo's Arabic Shadow Theatre 1300-1900: A Handbook is a sweeping survey and interesting introduction to all things shadowy and theatrical. It is rare to say that an academic...
September 14, 2020 |
Omar Ahmed Most people would agree that it is important for parents to instil a sense of national and cultural identity in their children in order to preserve their heritage for...
The Centre for Middle East and Africa (CMEA) in collaboration with Middle East Monitor organised a webinar entitled "Kashmir & Palestine: The destruction of Indigenous Cultural Heritage" on 10...
August 26, 2020 |
Ramona Wadi It is rare that we come across writings of how people identify with Palestine. Zionist colonisation has created both a displaced population and a contradiction in terms of affinity...
August 16, 2020 |
Omar Ahmed When one thinks of contemporary political Shia Islam the Islamic Republic of Iran tends to spring to mind, a theocracy which those familiar with the subject know is based...
August 1, 2020 |
Ramona Wadi In the aftermath of the 1948 Nakba, Palestinians have had to contend with different forms of erasure and fragmentation of Palestinian identity, while acquainting themselves, without choice, with a...
July 30, 2020 |
Haian Dukhan Tribes and Global Jihadism edited by Virginie Collombier and Olivier Roy is the collaborative work of scholars seeking to explore and explain the relationships between the tribal communities of...
July 27, 2020 |
Usman Butt Ulf Laessing's book Understanding Libya Since Gaddafi is published at a time when it has never been so important to know what is happening in Libya, but few outside...
July 21, 2020 |
Lauren Lewis "Boom, boom, boom, boom," says Sergeant Rudy Reyes, a former US recon marine, as he stares down the camera lens in the first episode of the BBC Two documentary...
July 19, 2020 |
Anjuman Rahman This is an important book with an ambitious theme: the blockade of Gaza and the Egyptian government’s significant role in perpetuating it.
July 4, 2020 |
Nasim Ahmed Supporters of Israel would have breathed a sigh of relief when the Zionist state postponed its 2 July annexation of the West Bank, in what was a humiliating about-turn....
June 29, 2020 |
Ramona Wadi International donors have influenced and shaped narratives on Palestine, to the point that to speak about Palestine without reflection is an exercise in disseminating global perceptions and intent. Nadia...