Download or read book Copts at the Crossroads written by Mariz Tadros and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the light of the escalation of sectarian tensions during and after Mubarak's reign, the predicament of the Arab world's largest religious minority, the Copts, has come to the forefront. This book poses such questions as why there has been a mass exodus of Copts from Egypt, and how this relates to other religious minorities in the Arab region; why it is that sectarian violence increased during and after the 2011 Revolution, which epitomized the highest degree of national unity since 1919; and how the new configuration of power has influenced the extent to which a vision of a political order is being based on the principles of inclusive democracy. The book examines the relations among the state, the Church, Coptic citizenry, and civil and political societies against the backdrop of the increasing diversification of actors, the change of political leadership in the country, and the transformations occurring in the region. An informative historical background is provided, and new fieldwork and statistical data inform a thoughtful exploration of what it takes to build an inclusive democracy in post-Mubarak Egypt.

Download or read book Copts at the Crossroads written by Mariz Tadros and published by American University in Cairo Press. This book was released on 2013-06-01 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the light of the escalation of sectarian tensions during and after Mubarak's reign, the predicament of the Arab world's largest religious minority, the Copts, has come to the forefront. This book poses such questions as why there has been a mass exodus of Copts from Egypt, and how this relates to other religious minorities in the Arab region; why it is that sectarian violence increased during and after the Egyptian revolution, which epitomized the highest degree of national unity since 1919; and how the new configuration of power has influenced the extent to which a vision of a political order is being based on the principles of inclusive democracy. The book examines the relations among the state, the church, Coptic citizenry, and civil and political societies against the backdrop of the increasing diversification of actors, the change of political leadership in the country, and the transformations occurring in the region. An informative historical background is provided, and new fieldwork and statistical data inform a thoughtful exploration of what it takes to build an inclusive democracy in post-Mubarak Egypt.

Download or read book Religious Difference in a Secular Age written by Saba Mahmood and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-03 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How secular governance in the Middle East is making life worse—not better—for religious minorities The plight of religious minorities in the Middle East is often attributed to the failure of secularism to take root in the region. Religious Difference in a Secular Age challenges this assessment by examining four cornerstones of secularism—political and civil equality, minority rights, religious freedom, and the legal separation of private and public domains. Drawing on her extensive fieldwork in Egypt with Coptic Orthodox Christians and Bahais—religious minorities in a predominantly Muslim country—Saba Mahmood shows how modern secular governance has exacerbated religious tensions and inequalities rather than reduced them. Tracing the historical career of secular legal concepts in the colonial and postcolonial Middle East, she explores how contradictions at the very heart of political secularism have aggravated and amplified existing forms of Islamic hierarchy, bringing minority relations in Egypt to a new historical impasse. Through a close examination of Egyptian court cases and constitutional debates about minority rights, conflicts around family law, and controversies over freedom of expression, Mahmood invites us to reflect on the entwined histories of secularism in the Middle East and Europe. A provocative work of scholarship, Religious Difference in a Secular Age challenges us to rethink the promise and limits of the secular ideal of religious equality.

Download or read book Coptic Culture and Community written by Mariam F. Ayad and published by American University in Cairo Press. This book was released on 2024-01-16 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wide-ranging exploration of the daily lives of ordinary Coptic Christians, from late Antiquity until today This volume brings together leading experts from a range of disciplines to examine aspects of the daily lived experiences of Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority from late Antiquity to the present. In doing so, it serves as a supplement and a corrective to institutional or theological narratives, which are generally rooted in studying the wielders of historical power and control. Coptic Culture and Community reveals the humanity of the Coptic tradition, giving granular depth to how Copts have lived their lives through and because of their faith for two thousand years. The first three sections consider in turn the breadth of the daily life approach, perspectives on poverty and power in a variety of different contexts, and matters of identity and persecution. The final section reflects on the global Coptic diaspora, bringing themes studied for the early Coptic Church into dialog with Coptic experiences today. These broad categories help to link fundamental questions of socio-religious history with unique aspects of Coptic culture and its vibrant communities of individuals. Contributors: - Nicola Aravecchia, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, USA - Mariam F. Ayad, The American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt - Renate Dekker, Leiden, the Netherlands - Lois M. Farag, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA - Ihab Khalil, Coptic Museum of Canada, Scarborough, Ontario, Canada - A.D. MacDonald, Sydney, Australia - Ash Melika, California Baptist University, Riverside, California, USA - Samuel Moawad, Institute of Egyptology and Coptology, Münster, Germany - Helene Moussa, Coptic Museum of Canada, Scarborough, Ontario, Canada - Alanna Nobbs, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia - Carolyn Ramzy, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada - Christina Thérèse Rooijakkers, Leiden University, Oegstgeest, the Netherlands - Youhanna Nessim Youssef, Sankt Ignatios College, University College Stockholm, Sweden

Download or read book In the Eye of the Storm written by Mitri Raheb and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2023-06-23 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The situation of Christians in the Middle East has become an important topic of international discussion as well as an important theme covered in the media, as several CBS Sixty Minutes programs have highlighted the plight of Christians in Palestine, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt. In the Eye of the Storm tells the story of the plight of twenty-first-century Middle Eastern Christians in five countries (Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt) in the context of the so-called Arab Spring and within a destabilized region that is a geopolitical triangle shaped by Israeli hegemony and Arab-Iranian tensions. The book places the situation of the Christians within the wider sociopolitical context of the Middle East in the twenty-first century. A unique feature of this book is that it is written mainly by native Christians who have spent their entire lives in the region and continue to live there. In the Eye of the Storm, therefore, provides an insider perspective rather than a hegemonic and colonial outsider perspective. This book hopes to offer a sociopolitical framework for the Christians of the Middle East, thus allowing them to tell their own story as they see it and not one that has been projected onto them by outside forces.

Download or read book Surviving Jewel written by Mitri Raheb and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2022-05-24 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Christian church was born in the Middle East and grew there for centuries. Its interaction with Islam turned Christianity in this once predominantly Christian region into a marginalized jewel, surviving at great peril within a difficult, even sometimes hostile, political and religious climate. Of course, the story of Christianity over the last 1,300 years is not solely one of conflict, marginalization, and persecution but is also about accommodation, interchange, and cooperation. This introductory book details the history of the church in its Middle Eastern birthplace through the past two thousand years. It is a story described as “a lost history” by Philip Jenkins, but it is here uncovered and placed on display. For those with eyes to see, the church of the Middle East is here revealed as a precious jewel, still catching the light.

Download or read book Egypt beyond Tahrir Square written by Bessma Momani and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-26 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First-person accounts by scholars and journalists of the Arab Spring and the revolution that ended Mubarak’s presidency. On January 25, 2011, the world’s eyes were on Egypt’s Tahrir Square as millions of people poured into the city center to call for the resignation of president Hosni Mubarak. Since then, few scholars or journalists have been given the opportunity to reflect on the nationwide moment of transformation and the hope that was embodied by the Egyptian Revolution. In this important and necessary volume, leading Egyptian academics and writers share their eyewitness experiences. They examine how events unfolded in relation to key social groups and institutions such as the military, police, labor, intellectuals, Coptic Christians, and the media; share the mood of the nation; assess what happened when three recent regimes of Egyptian rule came to an end; and account for the dramatic rise and fall of the Muslim Brotherhood. The contributors’ deep engagement with politics and society in their country is evident and sets this volume apart from most of what has been published in English about the Arab Spring. The diversity of views brought together here is a testament to the contradictions and complexities of historical and political changes that affect Egypt and beyond.

Download or read book From the 1919 Revolution to the 2011 Arab Spring written by Uzi Rabi and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-05-08 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focused on three Egyptian revolutions—in 1919, 1952, and 2011—this edited book argues that each of these revolutions is a milestone which represents a meaningful turning point in modern Egyptian history. Revolutions are typically characterized by a fundamental change in political and social infrastructures as well as in the establishment of new values and norms. However, it should be noted that this may not be entirely applicable when examining the context of the three Egyptian revolutions: the 1919 revolution failed to liberate Egypt from British colonial hegemony; the 1952 revolution failed to rework the country’s social and economic systems and unify the Arab world; and the "Arab Spring" revolution of 2011 culminated in a chaotic economic and social catastrophe, thus failing to solve the young generation’s crisis. Nevertheless, by revisiting and re-defining these revolutions through diverse theoretical frameworks, the book proposes that each of them played a significant role in shaping Egypt’s political, social, and cultural identity. This book is specifically of interest for students, historians, and social scientists with a keen interest in Egyptian history and the Middle East, offering fresh perspectives and insights into these transformative moments in Egypt’s history.

Download or read book The Crisis of Citizenship in the Arab World written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-04-24 with total page 557 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Crisis of Citizenship in the Arab World provides crucial insights into the current political, social and cultural crisis in the Middle East and North Africa by analysing histories, concepts, and practices of citizenship and the mechanisms that undermined them.

Download or read book Religion and World Civilizations 3 volumes written by Andrew Holt and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2023-06-30 with total page 1679 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An indispensable resource for readers investigating how religion has influenced societies and cultures, this three-volume encyclopedia assesses and synthesizes the many ways in which religious faith has shaped societies from the ancient world to today. Each volume of the set focuses on a different era of world history, ranging through the ancient, medieval, and modern worlds. Every volume is filled with essays that focus on religious themes from different geographical regions. For example, volume one includes essays considering religion in ancient Rome, while volume three features essays focused on religion in modern Africa. This accessible layout makes it easy for readers to learn more about the ways that religion and society have intersected over the centuries, as well as specific religious trends, events, and milestones in a particular era and place in world history. Taken as a a whole, this ambitious and wide-ranging work gathers more than 500 essays from more than 150 scholars who share their expertise and knowledge about religious faiths, tenets, people, places, and events that have influenced the development of civilization over the course of recorded human history.

Download or read book Diasporic Social Mobilization and Political Participation during the Arab Uprisings written by Claire Beaugrand and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Arab protest movements of 2010-2011 gave momentum and inspiration to unprecedented political mobilisations of migrants of Arab origin, whether first generation, second generation, or more, in Europe, North and South-America. This book analyses the essential yet understudied role of Arab diasporas during the Arab revolutions, dissecting the new forms of diasporic mobilisations that emerged during the ‘Arab Spring’ and that were borrowed as much from the home countries’ repertoire of innovations as from global movements’ tactics from Wall Street to Sao Paulo. This collection is a very timely and much-welcome contribution to our understanding of the nexus between immigration and integration. At a time when the engagement of European youth in faraway violent conflicts is hitting the headlines all over Europe, this book offers balanced and renewed academic perspectives on migrants belonging, analysing how migrants use political engagement to assert their belonging in newly-imagined home countries and, conversely, how they get involved in the politics of their origin countries to bolster their identity in host nations. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies.

Download or read book Routledge Handbook of Minorities in the Middle East written by Paul S Rowe and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-09-20 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Handbook of Minorities in the Middle East gathers a diverse team of international scholars, each of whom provides unique expertise into the status and prospects of minority populations in the region. The dramatic events of the past decade, from the Arab Spring protests to the rise of the Islamic state, have brought the status of these populations onto centre stage. The overturn of various long-term autocratic governments in states such as Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, and the ongoing threat to government stability in Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon have all contributed to a new assertion of majoritarian politics amid demands for democratization and regime change. In the midst of the dramatic changes and latent armed conflict, minority populations have been targeted, marginalized, and victimized. Calls for social and political change have led many to contemplate the ways in which citizenship and governance may be changed to accommodate minorities – or indeed if such change is possible. At a time when the survival of minority populations and the utility of the label minority has been challenged, this handbook answers the following set of research questions.What are the unique challenges of minority populations in the Middle East? How do minority populations integrate into their host societies, both as a function of their own internal choices, and as a response to majoritarian consensus on their status? Finally, given their inherent challenges, and the vast, sweeping changes that have taken place in the region over the past decade, what is the future of these minority populations? What impact have minority populations had on their societies, and to what extent will they remain prominent actors in their respective settings? This handbook presents leading-edge research on a wide variety of religious, ethnic, and other minority populations. By reclaiming the notion of minorities in Middle Eastern settings, we seek to highlight the agency of minority communities in defining their past, present, and future.

Download or read book Sex in the Middle East and North Africa written by L. L. Wynn and published by Vanderbilt University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-31 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sex in the Middle East and North Africa examines the sexual practices, politics, and complexities of the modern Arab world. Short chapters feature a variety of experts in anthropology, sociology, health science, and cultural studies. Many of the chapters are based on original ethnographic and interview work with subjects involved in these practices and include their voices. The book is organized into three sections: Single and Dating, Engaged and Married, and It's Complicated. The allusion to categories of relationship status on social media is at once a nod to the compulsion to categorize, recognition of the many ways that categorization is rarely straightforward, and acknowledgment that much of the intimate lives described by the contributors is mediated by online technologies.

Download or read book Copts and the Security State written by Laure Guirguis and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-30 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Copts and the Security State combines political, anthropological, and social history to analyze the practices of the Egyptian state and the political acts of the Egyptian Coptic minority. Laure Guirguis considers how the state, through its subjugation of Coptic citizens, reproduces a political order based on religious identity and difference. The leadership of the Coptic Church, in turn, has taken more political stances, thus foreclosing opportunities for secularization or common ground. In each instance, the underlying logics of authoritarianism and sectarianism articulate a fear of the Other, and, as Guirguis argues, are ultimately put to use to justify the expanding Egyptian security state. In outlining the development of the security state, Guirguis focuses on state discourses and practices, with particular emphasis on the period of Hosni Mubarak's rule, and shows the transformation of the Orthodox Coptic Church under the leadership of Pope Chenouda III. She also considers what could be done to counter the growing tensions and violence in Egypt. The 2011 Egyptian uprising constitutes the most radical recent attempt to subvert the predominant order. Still, the revolutionary discourses and practices have not yet brought forward a new system to counter the sectarian rhetoric, and the ongoing counter-revolution continues to repress political dissent.

Download or read book The Egyptians written by Jack Shenker and published by New Press, The. This book was released on 2012-07-31 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The award-winning journalist and longtime Cairo resident delivers a “meticulous, passionate study” of the ongoing battle for contemporary Egypt (The Guardian). On January, 25, 2011, a revolution began in Egypt that succeeded in ousting the country’s longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak. In The Egyptians, journalist Jack Shenker uncovers the roots of the uprising and explores the country’s current state, divided between two irreconcilable political orders. Challenging conventional analyses that depict a battle between Islamists and secular forces, The Egyptians illuminates other, equally important fault lines: far-flung communities waging war against transnational corporations, men and women fighting to subvert long-established gender norms, and workers dramatically seizing control of their own factories. Putting the Egyptian revolution in its proper context as an ongoing popular struggle against state authority and economic exclusion, The Egyptians explains why the events since 2011 have proved so threatening to elites both inside Egypt and abroad. As Egypt’s rulers seek to eliminate all forms of dissent, seeded within the rebellious politics of Egypt’s young generation are big ideas about democracy, sovereignty, social justice, and resistance that could yet change the world. “I started reading this and couldn’t stop. It’s a remarkable piece of work, and very revealing. A stirring rendition of a people’s revolution as the popular forces that Shenker vividly depicts carry forward their many and varied struggles, with radical potential that extends far beyond Egypt.” —Noam Chomsky

Download or read book The Rowman Littlefield Handbook of Christianity in the Middle East written by Mitri Raheb and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-12-15 with total page 711 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work represents the current and most relevant content on the studies of how Christianity has fared in the ancient home of its founder and birth. Much has been written about Christianity and how it has survived since its migration out of its homeland but this comprehensive reference work reassesses the geographic and demographic impact of the dramatic changes in this perennially combustible world region. The Rowman & Littlefield Handbook of Christianity in the Middle East also spans the historical, socio-political and contemporary settings of the region and importantly describes the interactions that Christianity has had with other major/minor religions in the region.

Download or read book Making the New Middle East written by Valerie J. Hoffman and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-28 with total page 503 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Demands for freedom, justice, and dignity have animated protests and revolutions across the Middle East in recent years, from the Iranian Green Movement and the Arab Spring uprisings to Turkey’s March for Justice and the ongoing struggle in Palestine. Although expectations raised by the Arab Spring were largely disappointed and protests that toppled entrenched rulers unleashed vicious counterrevolutionary forces, there is no doubt that the landscape of the Middle East has changed. Drawing from diverse disciplines, this volume offers critical perspectives on these changes, covering politics, religion, gender dynamics, human rights, media, literature, and music. What ultimately has changed in “the new Middle East”? Who are the actors pushing the direction of change? How are aspirations for change being expressed through media and the arts? With extensive analysis and thoughtful reflection, this book gives readers an in-depth portrayal of a modernizing Middle East.