The Islamic economic option (IEO) and the challenge of faith to the New World Order.

Islam is an ever-present reality in the political, economic and social life throughout the Arab-Islamic world. In this region, there exists a pervasive notion that Islam should be an integral part of all economic and political aspects of the state. At present, many nations across the Arab-Islamic world face political and economic instability and uncertainty. Since the legitimacy of many regimes in the region is consistently called into question, and since Islamic movements and political parties often form the strongest opposition, the emergence of an Islamic government is a strong possibility. Overall, the purpose of this thesis is to examine the concept of an Islamic Economic Option. This thesis looks at what extent Islamic economic concepts differ from Western economic models. It asks whether or not an IEO could serve as a practical alternative to Western models and form a program that is compatible with the global order. Given an Islamic opposition movement\u27s hypothetical rise to power, this thesis also asks what sort of economic strategy the group would follow and if it would retreat or remain involved in the global economy. (Abstract shortened by UMI.) Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 44-03, page: 1215. Thesis (M.A.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 2005

Kafala and Social Reproduction: Migration Governance Regimes and Labour Relations in the Gulf

With its roots in a system of imperial labour governance that ‘delegated responsibility over the conduct of individuals to other parties’ (AlShehabi 2019), kafala has often been understood as a policy by which states in the Gulf regulate, police, and exploit migrant labour. This chapter instead works to develop a concept of kafala as a migration governance regime, a way for states to integrate citizens as actors in the migration governance complex and, in doing so, obfuscate questions of accountability, transparency, and regulation. This is most keenly seen in the case of domestic workers who stand to benefit the least from recent reforms to kafala across the region. By focusing on the ways that kafala integrates individual households into the migration governance complex, this chapter aims to foreground the importance of the socially reproductive work done by migrant labourers to the Gulf, and attempts to explain the mechanisms through which their work sits outside the purview of the state’s governance of migrant labourers to the Gulf. The chapter attempts to explain the mechanisms through which domestic work is often excluded from wider considerations regarding migrant labour, even as domestic work is the most common form that migrant labour takes

The Ontological (In)security of Similarity: Wahhabism versus Islamism in Saudi Foreign Policy

It has long been argued that identity matters in international relations. Yet, how identity impacts enmity and conflict among states remains the subject of debate. The existing literature asserts that differences in identity can be a source of conflict, whereas convergence and similarity lead to cooperation. Nevertheless, empirical evidence from the Middle East has long defied this hypothesis. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which prides itself on being an Islamic model and claims Islamic leadership, has opposed the rise to power of Islamist movements in the Middle East. To address this paradox, this article builds on the growing literature on ontological security to propose a theoretical framework explaining how similarity can generate anxiety and identity risks. This framework, I argue, moves beyond traditional regime‐security approaches to reveal that security is not only physical but also ontological. I then illustrate the argument through a comparison of Saudi identity risks in the wake of the Iranian revolution (1979) and the ascendance of the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt (2012). Ultimately, these cases provide intriguing insights into foreign policy behaviour during critical situations