Political Islam and Democracy Crisis in North Africa

Tuesday, November 2, 2021

Ramzy Baroud When the news circulated that Morocco’s leading political group, the Development and Justice Party (PJD), has been trounced in the latest elections, held in September, official…

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Arab Spring: The End of Political Islam as We Know It

Monday, February 15, 2021

Abdullah Al-Arian Last month, Tunisia’s parliamentary speaker and head of the Ennahda Party, Rached Ghannouchi, came under fire for comments he made following a meeting with the French ambassador.  Following a recent string…

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Arab Spring: The end of political Islam as we know it

Saturday, December 26, 2020

Abdullah Al-Arian Last month, Tunisia’s parliamentary speaker and head of the Ennahda Party, Rached Ghannouchi, came under fire for comments he made following a meeting with the French ambassador.  Warning…

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Turkey’s Continued Care For ISIS Will End Badly

Thursday, November 7, 2019

Eight and a half years ago when the war on Syria began, Turkey played the most important role. Weapons were smuggled from Libya through Turkey to be delivered…

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Aziz Al-Azmeh in conversation: Part III Women, democracy and political Islamisms

Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Concluding part of dialogue: Political Islamism, women and democracy Ardeshir Mehrdad: As you have probably observed, amongst the authors dealing with feminist-Islamism some place their emphasis on the…

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Aziz Al-Azmeh in conversation Part 2: Political Islamisms the labour movement and women

Friday, December 7, 2018

This is the second part of a three-part conversation carried out with the Syrian academic Aziz Al-Azmeh. Here Professor Al-Azmeh addresses the various forms that political islams take…

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Aziz Al-Azmeh in conversation Part 1: political Islams, modernities and conservative-populist ideologies

Wednesday, December 5, 2018

This is the first part of a three-part conversation carried out with the Syrian academic Aziz Al-Azmeh. Here Aziz Al-Azmeh addresses the relation of contemporary political islams and…

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Israel: Netanyahu’s flirtation with the far right

Thursday, October 25, 2018

Domunique Vidal. As the extreme right continues its rise across Europe, Israel’s prime minister has decided to get closer. This decision, in the name of the fight against…

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Squeezing Iran: Part two the Iranian perspective

Friday, September 28, 2018

Interview with Ardeshir Mehrdad. Mehdi Kia: In the first part of the interview[1]http://www.middleast4change.org/squeezing-iran-part-1-trumps-project-in-the-middle-east/we talked of the evolving line-ups in the Middle East in the backdrop of recent massive…

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Women are at the forefront of challenging extremism in Idlib

Friday, July 6, 2018

Leila Al Shami. Posted on Leila’s Blog July 5, 2108. This was originally published at Chatham House. Here is a longer, un-edited version. In May, SMART News Agency,…

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Why Are We Still Talking About Iran In The World Cup?

Monday, July 2, 2018

Sophia Akram. Posted on the Iranian June 30 2018. While it may not have been an all out win for Iran this World Cup, there were nonetheless still…

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Erdogan has used same techniques as Trump to de-democratize Turkey

Monday, June 25, 2018

Juan Cole. Posted on Informed Comment 25th June 2018. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey, began his legitimate political career at the turn of this century with…

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Erdoğan’s ‘new’ Turkey: Purges and Paranoia

Saturday, June 2, 2018

Ella George. Published by London Review of Books Vol. 40 No. 10 · 24 May 2018 The elections due to be held on 24 June, brought forward abruptly…

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The Shia Shift: Why Iran and Hezbollah Abandoned Suicide attacks

Thursday, May 31, 2018

Zachary Keckand Matthew Sparks. Posted on The National Interest May 28, 2018. Thirty-five years ago last month, a Hezbollah suicide bomber drove a delivery van packed with explosives…

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Why Mike Pompeo’s ‘Severest Sanctions’ on Iran Will Backfire

Sunday, May 27, 2018

Juan Cole. Posted on TruthDig May 23, 2018. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s speech on new sanctions on Iran lays out a wide range of Iranian behavior he would…

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Exclusive emails show how the White Helmets tried to recruit Roger Waters with Saudi money

Thursday, April 26, 2018

Max Blumenthal.  Posted on MRonline (April 22, 2018). Originally published: Gray Zone (April 19, 2018). During a Barcelona concert on April 13, Roger Waters denounced the Syrian White Helmets…

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Syria’s war of ethnic cleansing: Kurds threatened with beheading by Turkey’s allies if they don’t convert to extremism

Saturday, March 17, 2018

Patrick Cockburn. Posted on the Independent and on ZCommunications 17 March 2018. Syrian Arab militiamen leading the Turkish attack on Afrin in northern Syria are threatening to massacre…

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Sara R. Farris, In the Name of Women’s Rights: The Rise of Femonationalism – Book Review

Friday, March 16, 2018

Catherine Rottenberg. Posted on Jadaliyya on February 12, 2018. Farris’ new book In the Name of Women’s Rights: The Rise of Femonationalism illuminates the particular ways in which…

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The Story Behind the Rise of Turkey’s Ulema

Friday, February 16, 2018

Ceren Lord. Posted by MERIP on February 4, 2018. At the heart of the controversy over Islamization in Turkey has been the accelerated rise and visibility of the…

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Hejab, Islamic totalitarianism and the opposition in Iran

Sunday, February 11, 2018

Jaleh Ahmadi. This article was first published in Iran Bulletin-Middle East Forum number 1,  2004. We are posting it in Middleast4Change because of its relevance in the current…

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Iran: Observations on the protests of December 2018: Part 1, the watershed moment

Wednesday, January 17, 2018

Ardeshir Mehrdad. 1 The wave of protest and demonstrations began at the end of last December and enveloped most of Iran’s towns and cities will be recorded as…

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Protesters in Iran express outrage at economic conditions, a testament to a failed domestic agenda of neoliberalism and privatization

Wednesday, January 10, 2018

Mohammad Tootkaboni. Posted on Left Voice, January 8, 2018. Over the past week, protests have erupted in the streets of Iranian cities. This might not be surprising for…

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A War Within a War: Chechnya’s Expanding Role in Syria

Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Neil Hauer. Posted on Souciant on December 4, 2017. TBILISI – International actors have been positioning themselves to exploit new realities in Syria and solidify their involvement in…

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Last ditch democracy

Saturday, December 9, 2017

Karam Hilo. Posted on Al Jadalyyah and Qantara.de 2017. In this essay, Lebanese journalist Karam Hilo asks whether it is possible to apply the Western concept of democracy…

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Tukey’s New Left

Monday, November 27, 2017

Cengiz Gunez. Posted by New Left Review 107, September-October 2017. In the Turkish general election of June 2015, the left-wing Peoples’ Democratic Party (hdp) won 13 per cent…

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On the Concatenation in the Arab World: Editorial in New Left Review

Saturday, November 25, 2017

Perry Anderson Published in New Left Review March-April 2011 The Arab revolt of 2011 belongs to a rare class of historical events: a concatenation of political upheavals, one…

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Book review: War of All Against All

Friday, November 24, 2017

Lindsey Hilsom Posted on New York Review of Books, 23 November 2017 The Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of the Syrian Tragedy by Yassin al-Haj Saleh, with a foreword…

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Revolution, counterrevolution, and imperialism in Syria: Interview with Yassin al-Haj Salah

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

Yassin al-Haj Saleh interviewed by Ashley Smith. Posted on International Socialist Review, Issue 107 Yassin al-Haj Saleh is one of the pivotal figures in the Syrian Revolution. He…

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Egypt and the Contradictions of Liberalism: Illiberal Intelligentsia and the Future of Egyptian Democracy

Friday, November 3, 2017

Dalia Fahmy and Daanish Faruqi. Book review: Posted on Jadalyya on October 20, 2017. Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book? Daanish Faruqi (DF): As preface, it’s…

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Revolution without revolutionaries: Asef Bayat

Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Asef Bayat Posted by Stanford University Press: excepts from chapter one Revolutions of Wrong Times ……… Novel Revolutions? Why did the revolutions of 2011 turn out to be…

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