Making Sense of the Arab State

Book abstract: No region in the world has been more hostile to democracy, more dominated by military and security institutions, or weaker on economic development and inclusive governance than the Middle East. Why have Arab states been so oppressively strong in some areas but so devastatingly weak in others? How do those patterns affect politics, economics, and society across the region? The state stands at the center of the analysis of politics in the Middle East, but has rarely been the primary focus of systematic theoretical analysis. Making Sense of the Arab State brings together top scholars from diverse theoretical orientations to address some of the most critically important questions facing the region today. The authors grapple with enduring questions such as the uneven development of state capacity, the failures of developmentalism and governance, the centrality of regime security and survival concerns, the excesses of surveillance and control, and the increasing personalization of power. Making Sense of the Arab State will be a must-read for scholars of the Middle East and of comparative politics more broadly. Source: Publisherhttps://scholarworks.smith.edu/mes_books/1000/thumbnail.jp

Changing warscapes, changing Islamists?: religion, organization, strategic context and new approaches to armed Islamist insurgencies

This framing essay to the Special Issue on Islamists in Warscapes argues for the value of engaging with the concept of warscapes, developed primarily by anthropologists of violence in Africa, for theorizing about armed Islamist groups in protracted conflict situations. The warscapes concept better captures the nature of many of the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, Africa, and beyond by focusing on its protracted but intermittent nature, temporal and spatial variability, international and transnational dimensions, and production of wartime orders. Within this framework, this article and Special Issue focus on armed Islamist groups, asking whether and why they perform differently than non-Islamist groups and how they evolve through embeddedness in warscapes. The article reviews literature on protracted conflict and warscapes, armed Islamist groups and jihadists, and the study of religion in conflict. It concludes by arguing that the warscapes literature can significantly add to our understanding of armed Islamist groups, and that focusing on armed Islamist groups can enrich the study of warscapes

Hairy Tongue

Hairy tongue (lingua villosa) is a commonly observed condition of defective desquamation of the filiform papillae that results from a variety of precipitating factors. [1] The condition is most frequently referred to as black hairy tongue (lingua villosa nigra); however, hairy tongue may also appear brown, white, green, pink, or any of a variety of hues depending on the specific etiology and secondary factors (eg, use of colored mouthwashes, breath mints, candies). [2, 3] See the images below

The Arab Uprising

Streaming video requires Flash Player, RealPlayer, or Windows Media Player to viewMarc Lynch is associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, where he is the director of the Institute for Middle East Studies and of the Project on Middle East Political Science. He is also a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, and edits the Middle East Channel for ForeignPolicy.com.Ohio State University. Middle East Studies CenterOhio State University. Department of Political ScienceOhio State University. Honors and ScholarsOhio State University. Mershon Center for International Security StudiesEvent Web page, streaming video, event photo

Introduction – Rentierism in Middle East migration and refugee politics

No abstract available

The Politics of Islam in Europe and North America

There has traditionally been a wide divide between the study of the politics of Islam in the Middle East and in the West. Middle East-focused research in American political science has focused in great depth on issues such as political mobilization, social service provision, electoral performance, and Islamist ideologies. American research on Islam in the West, by contrast, has often focused on cultural conflicts, immigration, terrorism, and anti-Islamic campaigns. Today’s European scholarship on Islam distinguishes itself by a wide spectrum of methods, topics, and fieldworks, with a trend toward strong ethnographic research. Over the last two decades, a prolific and pluralist field of scholarship on Islam and Muslims in Europe and the U.S. has emerged and brought to the fore innovative perspectives and understudied topics. On June 28, 2018, POMEPS and Sciences Po CERI convened a workshop with a dozen scholars of Islam and politics in Europe and North America to engage with these various perspectives. Their work in POMEPS Studies 32: The Politics of Islam in Europe and North America illustrates the richness of the field of the politics of Islam in Europe and the U.S.Introduction, Marc Lynch, Nadia Marzouki French Muslim authorities as social troubleshooters, Margot Dazey What makes “Muslim representatives” representative? The public policy attempts to build a representative Muslim organization in France, Fatima Khemilat The Hajj from a French perspective: The effects of the pilgrimage on collective identities, Leila Seurat Constraining Muslim Mobilizations in France. Symbolic Repression and Disqualification as Demobilization Practices, Julien Talpin Mosques and Political Engagement in Europe and North America, Aubrey Westfall The Politics of ‘Tradition’ and the Production of Diasporic Shia Religiosity, Avi Astor, co-authors Victor Albert Blanco, Rosa Martínez Cuadros The Islamic Deathscapes of Germany, Osman Balkan “Do We Need a Minaret?”: Challenging Urban Contexts and Changing Islamic Theologies, Sultan Tepe Approaching the Security-Integration Nexus, Andrew Aguilar Towards an autonomization of Jihadism? The ideological, sociological and political permeability between contemporary quietist Salafism and Jihadism in France, Mohamed-Ali Adraoui Sunni Jihadism and Religious Authority: Its Transformative Character and Effects, Tore Hamming The Effects of Discrimination on European Muslim Trust in Governmental Institutions, Mujtaba Ali Isani He’s Not an Imam, lol He’s a Postal Worker: Locating the Imam in the USA, Nancy Khalil Trust and Giving for the Sake of God: The Rise of the Bureaucratic Non-Profit in American Muslim Charity, Katherine Merriman Art and activism of the ‘war on terror’ generation: British Muslim youth and the politics of refusal, Bogumila Hal

Application of tandem two-dimensional mass spectrometry for top-down deep sequencing of calmodulin

Two-dimensional mass spectrometry (2DMS) involves simultaneous acquisition of the fragmentation patterns of all the analytes in a mixture by correlating their precursor and fragment ions by modulating precursor ions systematically through a fragmentation zone. Tandem two-dimensional mass spectrometry (MS/2DMS) unites the ultra-high accuracy of Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance (FT-ICR) MS/MS and the simultaneous data-independent fragmentation of 2DMS to achieve extensive inter-residue fragmentation of entire proteins. 2DMS was recently developed for top-down proteomics (TDP), and applied to the analysis of calmodulin (CaM), reporting a cleavage coverage of about ~23% using infrared multiphoton dissociation (IRMPD) as fragmentation technique. The goal of this work is to expand the utility of top-down protein analysis using MS/2DMS in order to extend the cleavage coverage in top-down proteomics further into the interior regions of the protein. In this case, using MS/2DMS, the cleavage coverage of CaM increased from ~23% to ~42%