Issue 30, summer/fall 2020 https://doi.org/10.70090/OMR29RMA Scroll down for the Arabic abstract. Turkey’s Council of State, the highest Turkish administrative court, handed down its decision on July 10, 2020 regarding Hagia Sophia. The council reversed the monument’s status from a museum back into a mosque as from July 24, sparking heated …

Issue 25, winter/spring 2018 https://doi.org/10.70090/DB18BRTE Seib, P. (2017). As Terrorism Evolves: Media, Religion and Governance. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. USC journalism professor Philip Seib has done a great service for those who follow media-driven events connected with terrorism inspired by Middle East- and Africa-based terror groups that have, for …

Issue 25, winter/spring 2018 https://doi.org/10.70090/RH18SRPI Patience. [The member] should have plenty of patience for enduring afflictions if the enemies overcome him. He should not abandon this great path and sell himself and his religion to the enemies for his freedom. He should be patient in performing the work, even if …

Most American journalists probably know little about covering Islam accurately, fairly, ethically and contextually amid rising levels of xenophobia, hate speech and “fake news” in the U.S., but help is on the way. In 1980, I arrived in Beirut as CBS News Middle East correspondent. My qualifications for covering this complex …

Issue 23, winter/spring 2017 https://doi.org/10.70090/HA17PCME On November 21, 2016, the Middle East Centre of St Antony’s College, Oxford hosted the roundtable and launch of Public Culture and Islam in Modern Egypt: Media, Intellectuals and Society (London: I.B.Tauris, 2016) with myself and Morgan Clarke (Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Oxford) …

August 15, 2016—Activists expressed anger on social media today in response to stickers spread throughout Tripoli slandering Libya's Grand Mufti, Sheikh Sadiq al-Gharyani. The stickers appeared under the cover of dark late last night. Posts defending the Mufti flooded Facebook with the hashtag "Sheikh Sadiq Al-Gharyani represents me."

One way of getting to the “root causes” of terrorism and religious extremism in the Middle East is to examine the thinking of the mother organization of all groups and movements espousing violence and terrorism. Fortunately, the history of the Muslim Brothers is well researched. The revelations of the organization reflect a great deal of inconsistencies between the general and the specific: public pronouncements and specific documents, theory and practice, English and Arabic.

The rise of the Islamic State group (which will be referred to as ISIS), from the perspective of those in the Middle East drawn to it, rather than Europe where the French scholar Olivier Roy has proposed the idea of the “Islamization of radicalism,” can be discussed within the framework of a number of deeper phenomena in Arab societies since the mid-twentieth century.

Issue 22, spring 2016 https://doi.org/10.70090/RH16TTAJ On December 28th, 2015, when the Iraqi army felt confident enough of the military situation around Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, it invited the world’s media to witness the raising of the national flag atop a central administration building. For the Iraqi government, the …

December 29, 2015—An Egyptian appeals court announced its decision to reduce the jail sentence of controversial religious researcher and television host Islam al-Beheiry today. Convicted in absentia last May for contempt of religion, al-Beheiry had lost an earlier appeal attempt in October.