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Lessons from Scottish Schools
Read more: Lessons from Scottish SchoolsLindsay Paterson discusses Scotland’s educational decline and the social inequality of attainment.
How to Get Banned from Teaching the Quran: Medieval Cairo Edition
by Shuaib Ally, McGill University Around the turn of the 15th century in Cairo, a hadith scholar named Salah al-Din al-Aqfahsi heard Salah al-Din al-Kalai, a scholar associated with the Sufi Shadhili order, teaching the Quran. Part of his teaching…
Journalism under hybrid politics
by Kjetil Selvik, Jacob Høigilt Only a few years ago, Tunisia was the freest country in the Arab world, with a flourishing media scene. Journalists were scrambling to reinvent their role in the public sphere that emerged after the Jasmine…
Writing about the People of Iraq
by Catherine Cobham and Fabio Caiani 23 March 2023 marked the twentieth anniversary of the attack on Iraq. Predictably, western mainstream media made little or no reference to contemporary Iraqi culture. Recently, however, there has been a growing interest in…
The Egyptian Social Contract – Q&A With The Author
by Relli Shechter Tell us a bit about your book The Egyptian Social Contract discusses the long-term history of the social contract in Egypt since partial independence from the British (1922) and until the Arab Uprising (2011). It focuses on…
The Archaeology of Southwest Afghanistan: The Book that Took 50 Years to Write
by Mitchell Allen Bill outlined his vision for our book almost half a century ago as we sat at the foldup dinner table in a domed room of the compound of Hajji Nafaz Khan, ruler of the village Khwaja ‘Ali…
Literary Representations of the Palestine/Israel Conflict After the Second Intifada: Q&A with Ned Curthoys and Isabelle Hesse
In this interview, Ned Curthoys and Isabelle Hesse, editors of Literary Representations of the Palestine/Israel Conflict After the Second Intifada, discuss their new book. Tell us a bit about your book. Our edited collection Literary Representations of the Palestine/Israel Conflict…
Introducing From Rumi to the Whirling Dervishes
by Walter Feldman Love is the Way and the Path of our Prophet. We are Love’s children, and Love is our Mother. Rumi These words echo down through the ages from when Mevlana (”Our Master”) Jalaluddin Rumi (d. 1273), first…
What are Tribes? Do They Still Matter?
by Scott Weiner What is a tribe? Social scientists have long been interested in tribes, but political science has struggled to talk about them. Tribes exist on every inhabited continent and are as foundational to many states as political parties,…
The destruction of ‘un- Islamic’ edifices by ISIS and the Taliban
by Shivan Mahendrarajah The Taliban are back in power, ushering in renewed fears of destruction of cultural heritages. Their first time in office (1996–2001), the Taliban destroyed edifices on the basis that they were ‘un-Islamic’ and/or ‘beacons’ for polytheists (mushrikin).…