{"title":"Boom Cairo: Egypt in Disaster, 1787","authors":"Alan Mikhail","doi":"10.1017/s0020743824000448","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0020743824000448","url":null,"abstract":"During the month of Ramadan, on Tuesday, June 26, 1787, two hours after the afternoon prayer, or about 5:30 p.m., an “alarmingly dreadful event” (ḥāditha mahūla muz‘ija) occurred in Cairo. An explosion ripped through the heart of the city's commercial district, sparking a massive fire, toppling buildings, killing dozens, and pulsing buckling ripples and emotional shockwaves through the city. Late 18th-century urbanization produced countless such disasters around the world. This one occurred at a particularly trying time for Cairo, and Egypt generally, and serves as a barometer of Egyptian society and the economy in this period.","PeriodicalId":510177,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Middle East Studies","volume":"20 14","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141271306","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Arabic Exile Literature in Europe: Defamiliarizing Forced Migration Johanna Sellman (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022). Pp. 280. $110.00 hardback. ISBN: 9781399500128","authors":"Astrid Ottosson al-Bitar","doi":"10.1017/s0020743824000096","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0020743824000096","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":510177,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Middle East Studies","volume":"33 10","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139783283","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Arabic Exile Literature in Europe: Defamiliarizing Forced Migration Johanna Sellman (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022). Pp. 280. $110.00 hardback. ISBN: 9781399500128","authors":"Astrid Ottosson al-Bitar","doi":"10.1017/s0020743824000096","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0020743824000096","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":510177,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Middle East Studies","volume":"59 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139843195","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On Earth or in Poems: The Many Lives of al-Andalus Eric Calderwood (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2023). Pp. 345. $45.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780674980365","authors":"Jonathan Shannon","doi":"10.1017/s0020743824000072","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0020743824000072","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":510177,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Middle East Studies","volume":"2 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139782873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On Earth or in Poems: The Many Lives of al-Andalus Eric Calderwood (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2023). Pp. 345. $45.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780674980365","authors":"Jonathan Shannon","doi":"10.1017/s0020743824000072","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0020743824000072","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":510177,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Middle East Studies","volume":"145 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139842911","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Politics of Vengeance in Iranian Diaspora Communities","authors":"N. Rahimieh","doi":"10.1017/s0020743823001423","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0020743823001423","url":null,"abstract":"The death of the young Kurdish Iranian woman, Mahsa Jina Amini, on September 16, 2022 following her arrest by Iran's now-suspended Gasht-i Irshad (guidance patrol or morality police) for apparent lax conformity to the Islamic dress code ignited protests across Iran. The protests, known as Women, Life, Freedom (Zan, Zendegī, Azadi) quickly spread to Iranian diaspora communities across North America, Europe, and Australia. Initially, diasporic Iranians organized their protests to support and amplify their compatriots’ calls for justice. As the protests continued in Iran and the demands for change grew louder, some members of the Iranian diaspora shifted their focus from the Islamic Republic to the public shaming of Iranians living outside Iran for their purported support of the Iranian regime. Some of the tactics employed by those engaged in public humiliations of suspected regime supporters recalled Gasht-i Irshad's methods of trapping and accosting individuals for perceived infractions. These public confrontations were aimed at isolating, shaming, and silencing perceived allies of the Islamic Republic and, by extension, denouncing the regime for its abrogation of women's and human rights. I refer to this phenomenon among diasporic Iranians as gasht-i intiqām, roving avengers, which reflects a frustration with the absence of justice in Iran and targets purported proxies for the regime. There have been many instances and types of denunciations aimed at silencing and ostracizing individuals, academics, and institutions. As Daniel Block points out in his analysis, “The attacks overwhelmingly target women, most notably in North America and Europe. The victims include gender equality activists, journalists, foreign policy analysts and a historian, each of whom has been accused of colluding with the authoritarian Islamist regime in Tehran.” Block further points out that many of the attacks are anonymous or originate from fake social media accounts. The common denominator he finds among those who target individuals is opposition to “Western-Iranian diplomacy or reporting information that adds subtlety to the debate over how the United States and its allies should handle the Islamic Republic.”1 Often those deemed regime collaborators are Iranian American individuals, journalists, or institutions that supported the 2015 the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, otherwise known as the nuclear deal.","PeriodicalId":510177,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Middle East Studies","volume":"48 15","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139533979","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Woman, Life, Freedom, and the Question of Multiculturalism in Iranian Studies","authors":"Y. Hamidi","doi":"10.1017/s0020743823001411","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0020743823001411","url":null,"abstract":"The vast uprisings across Iranian cities in the fall of 2022 caught many of Iranian studies scholars and academic feminists in the diaspora off guard. My first confrontation was with trauma. Like many others, I worried about the lives and safety of my loved ones, political dissidents and prisoners from different ethnic backgrounds, feminists and queer activists on the ground, and, of course, the millennials and Gen Z, who unexpectedly emerged as the new revolutionaries. However, with the first wave of emotional encounters settled, the uprising unlocked another level of cognitive puzzlement critical to my academic life. I struggled to find comprehensive theoretical frameworks and supporting scholarship within Iranian studies or Iranian academic feminism to help my media and scholarly audiences grasp what was unfolding. In this reflective piece, I discuss how the scholarship of Iranian studies and feminism/s formulated the question of gender in liberal and radical essentialist multiculturalism and argue that Woman, Life, Freedom (Zan, Zendegi, Azadi; WLF) urges us to adopt an antiracist and radical democratic approach, deconstructing the imagined Iran in the scholarship, and reconstructing it as a welcoming and inclusive discursive space for racialized and queer Iranians.","PeriodicalId":510177,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Middle East Studies","volume":"6 15","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139438372","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Jin, Jiyan, Azadi and the Historical Erasure of Kurds","authors":"Faranghis Ghaderi","doi":"10.1017/s002074382300137x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s002074382300137x","url":null,"abstract":"Following the murder of Jîna (Mahsa) Amini on September 16, 2022, her parents decided—despite the threats and intimidation by security forces—to hold a public funeral. Protests were ongoing outside Kasra Hospital in Tehran as word spread across the capital of Jîna's murder.1 The family transferred her body to their hometown of Saqez the next day. Hundreds of people traveled to the Ayçî cemetery within hours of the announcement of the public funeral on social media. There, they helped bury Jîna among Kurdish chants and songs. Kurdish women threw their scarves in the air and chanted Jin, Jiyan, Azadî (Woman, Life, Freedom), among other slogans. In addition to the initial print reports about Jîna's murder by journalists Niloofar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi—both of whom remain imprisoned for their work— social media participated and propelled the protests. Photos, videos, and other types of testimony circulated online. The funeral, solidarity demonstrations in Kurdish cities, towns, and villages, and the observation of mass strikes in the following days captured the attention of Iranians all over the country.","PeriodicalId":510177,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Middle East Studies","volume":"11 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139438732","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Internal Colonialism in Iran: Gender and Resistance against the Islamic Regime","authors":"Sarah Eskandari","doi":"10.1017/s002074382300140x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s002074382300140x","url":null,"abstract":"Appraising the roots of the Woman, Life, Freedom (Zan, Zendegi, Azadi) movement requires a different framework of power: internal colonialism. Mexican sociologist Pablo Gonzalez-Casanova argues that internal colonialism results when the direct domination of foreigners over natives disappears, and the domination and exploitation of natives by natives emerges.1 This process, I contend, has occurred in the Islamic Republic of Iran, where the forty-year rule of Iranian clerical elites has subjugated a dissenting populace, especially women. The repressive gender practices of the theocracy in Iran have over the course of the past year prompted a unique internal anticolonial protest.","PeriodicalId":510177,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Middle East Studies","volume":"24 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139438662","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introduction: Activism, Scholarship, and Shaping History","authors":"Neda Bolourchi, F. Kashani-Sabet","doi":"10.1017/s0020743823001368","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0020743823001368","url":null,"abstract":"The idea for this roundtable emerged from a special session held at the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) in Denver in December 2022. As nationwide protests swept over Iran, many MESA members voiced support for organizing a public conversation that addressed various aspects of the Woman, Life, Freedom (WLF, Zan, Zendegi, Azadi) uprising. We thank MESA president, Eve Troutt Powell, for supporting this last-minute addition to the program. We are also very grateful to IJMES editor, Joel Gordon, for publishing these essays and enabling ongoing conversations about the WLF movement.","PeriodicalId":510177,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Middle East Studies","volume":"27 17","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139534349","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}