My colleagues at The Talmud Blog asked me to provide a guest post about my research interests.
Thoughts on Near Eastern legal culture
Middle East
Avitabile’s handwriting
Pietro della Valle. Pietro della Valle was a highly sociable geek with an interest in all things Middle Eastern, c.…
Debating the Muslim Brotherhood
A few days ago, the Al-Jazeera program Empire assembled a high-profile panel to discuss the future prospects of the Muslim Brotherhood…
Have the jihadis lost the moral high ground to the rebels?
It has been a season of earthquakes, and the political ones in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, and elsewhere in the Middle…
Asecular revolution
Why have I chosen the term “asecular,” and not, say, “non-secular” or “post-secular,” to describe the power manifested by these…
Missed signals
At Muftah, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd reflects on how American observers may have overlooked the potential for political uprising, and eventual revolution,…
Religion and the emerging transnational Arab public
In the SSRC's Transformations of the Public Sphere essay forum, Seyla Benhabib considers the recent and ongoing uprisings in the…
Arab and American revolutions in history
Thomas Farr, in his recent post, links the mass protests in the Arab world, combined with the persecution of Christian…
The power of a new political imagination
The Tunisian revolution, as a revolution of ordinary people, inspired the demonstrations in Egypt, leading to Mubarak’s fall. It has…
Egyptian revolution round-up
For the eighteen days that tens of thousands of Egyptians were rallying to push strongman Hosni Mubarak ever closer to…