Review – Books

Somdeep Sen's introductory observation in his book Decolonising Palestine: Hamas Between the Anticolonial and the Postcolonial (Cornell University Press, 2020) is a telling statement that also reflects on the...

I've read several books on Islam's Sunni-Shia split, with each having provided informative insights on this ancient schism steeped in both theology and politics. The latter is the primary...

"Occupation is akin to an earthquake, and so are immigration and desolation and everything people leave behind." This rumination by Nidal, the protagonist in Sahar Khalifeh's literary novel, My...

There is a common assumption that the Islamic Republic of Iran's strategic thinking and foreign policy are fundamentally different from those of the pre-revolution era. The theocratic government's worldview...

"The two-state solution has always been merely a cynical tool of conflict management never intended to actually resolve the conflict." Jeff Halper's succinct statement regarding international diplomacy over the...

"I had a politically active life and enjoyed a large circle of friends who, like me, came from other parts of the Arab world to be in Beirut, the...

"It's about time we realised that dictatorships are not responsible global partners and, if given space, will only create more instability," warn Iyad El-Baghdadi and Ahmed Gatnash in their...

This book provides an original angle on the politics and character of Hamas by its focus on the movement's foreign policy from the early 1990s to the present through...

Zana Gulmohamad's new book, The Making of Foreign Policy in Iraq: Political Factions and the Ruling Elite, takes on the mammoth task of exploring and explaining how Iraq has...

A review of a ‘fascinating’ political evolution

A look at Israeli colonisation from the inside requires a thorough reckoning. In Hagar Kotef's recent study, The Colonising Self: Or, Home and Homelessness in Israel/Palestine, settlement narratives are...

Kelly A. Hammond's book China's Muslims and Japan's Empire: Centering Islam in World War II is published at a time when Islam in China is under intense scrutiny with...

Michael Christopher Low's book Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj is a fascinating account of the Hajj pilgrimage to Islam's holiest city of Makkah ("Mecca") during...

Laleh Khalili's book Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula is a surprisingly seductive read. A cross between history, geopolitics and economics, with a...

The history of the Arabian Peninsula before the rule of the Al-Saud royal family is rich, diverse, cosmopolitan and largely forgotten. Rosie Bsheer's new book Archive Wars: The Politics...

The media plays a key role, and not only in liberal democratic regimes. Ruling elites use media as a tool for propaganda to reproduce the dominant ideology in authoritarian...

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...

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...

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:...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...