Why Yemen Now? Reassessing South Arabia's Recent Past

Streaming video requires RealPlayer to view.The University Archives has determined that this item is of continuing value to OSU's history.Isa Blumi is assistant professor of Middle East and East European history and Middle East studies at Georgia State University. His primary fields of research and publication are modern Balkan history including Kosova, Albania and identity politics; Islam in Europe and Southeast Asia; modern imperialism in the Ottoman, Italian, French and Austro-Hungarian Empires; the Middle East from 1800; and migration, comparative state systems and the dynamics of state/society interactions. Blumi is the author of Political Islam Among the Albanians: Are the Taliban Coming to the Balkans? (Kosovar Institute for Policy Research and Development, 2005), now in its second edition, and Rethinking the Late Ottoman Empire: A Comparative Social and Political History of Albania and Yemen, 1878-1918 (ISIS Press, 2003). He is also the author, editor, or co-editor of a number of edited volumes, chapters and journal articles. He is currently working on Chaos in Yemen: Societal Collapse and the New Authoritarianism (forthcoming from Routledge), which address current events in Yemen. Blumi’s research has been supported by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, American Council of Learned Societies, American Research Institute of Turkey, Fulbright-Hayes, the Social Science Research Council, American Institute of Yemeni Studies, and Foreign Languages and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship. Before joining the faculty at Georgia State University, Blumi taught at Central European University in Tirana, Albania, Prishtina University in Kosovo, New York University, Yeshiva University, New School University, Trinity College, and American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. He received his Ph.D. in the joint program in History and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University.The Ohio State University. Department of HistoryThe Ohio State University. Department of Near Eastern Languages and CulturesThe Ohio State University. Center for Slavic and East European StudiesOhio State University. Mershon Center for International Security StudiesEvent Web page, streaming video, event photo

Post‐socialist language ideologies in action: Linking interview context and language ideology through stance

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136334/1/josl12225_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136334/2/josl12225.pd

‘Albania: €1’ or the story of ‘big policies, small outcomes’: how Albania constructs and engages its diaspora

Since the fall of the communist regime in the early 1990s, Albania has experienced one of the most significant emigrations in the world as a share of its population. By 2010 almost half of its resident population was estimated to be living abroad – primarily in neighbouring Greece and Italy, but also in the UK and North America. This chapter discusses the emergence and establishment of the Albanian diaspora, its temporal and geographical diversity, and not least its involvement with Albania itself. Albania’s policymaking and key institutions are considered, with a focus on matters of citizenship; voting rights; the debate on migration and development; and not least the complex ways in which kin-state minority policies – related to ethnic Albanians living in Kosovo, Montenegro, southern Serbia, Macedonia and Greece – are interwoven with Albania’s emigration policies

Negotiating Globalization: The Challenges of International Intervention Through the Eyes of Albanian Muslims, 1850-2003.

Since the attacks on New York and Washington DC in 2001, the US public has become actively engaged in what the White House has coined a 'war on terrorism.' While the adversaries are becoming increasingly clear to the larger public, regional experts have known for years that significant threats have been cultivated from countries like Saudi Arabia which has used religious intolerance and endless supplies of petrol dollars to indoctrinate impoverished and vulnerable populations throughout the world. Indeed, the identification of the Taliban in late 2001 as a central threat to US security has been looked upon by specialists with a sense of irony. After all, it was Saudi Arabia that was the primary source of both financial and ideological support for the Taliban movement. This paper studies another case of aggressive Saudi indoctrination. The war-torn region of Kosova has, since the end of war in mid-1999, been flooded by organizations linked to the same educational and humanitarian agencies that helped turn a portion of the Afghan refugee community in the 1980s into a factionalized and highly antagonistic population. There is a tragic irony in Western governments neglecting the rural poor in Kosova, ostensibly leaving this population at the mercy of Islamic organizations bent on homogenizing a traditionally tolerant and diverse community. In the past, other attempts to impose theological rigidities on society failed, cases that this paper highlights to emphasize that it is not inevitable that a segment of the Kosovar Albanian population become linked to Saudi Wahhabi doctrine. That said, as Western aid agencies and governments have neglected the communities most destroyed by war and thus most in need of assistance, the monopolization of that aid by Saudi organizations may result in exactly what post September 11th policy-makers want to avoid

Indoctrinating Albanians Dynamics of Islamic Aid

Albanians have been Muslims for more than 500 years and they do not need outsiders [Arabs] to tell them what is the proper way to practise Islam.' Mufti of Kosova, Rexhep Boja's recent retort to the efforts of Arab NGOs to impose their Salafi practices on Kosovar Albanians reflects a largely unappreciated phenomenon in the post-communist Balkans. The following exposes the questionable manner in which Western powers have compartmentalized their priorities in the region and how Saudi-based humanitarian agencies have filled in the vacuum. At issue is how Western policies of 'conflict resolution' have left 'ethno-religious' communities at the mercy of international, 'faith-based' organizations that, in turn, exploit the poverty and fragmented social conditions of - in our case here - Albanians