Empowering Women or Dislodging Sectarianism?: Civil Marriage in Lebanon

In this article, I reflect on the proposed Lebanese civil marriage law, which initiated a political crisis in Lebanon in March of 1998 and was followed by an indefinite shelving of that proposed law. Many Westerners assume that women in today\u27s Middle East passively submit to extreme male chauvinism and glaring legal inequalities. In fact, Middle Eastern women have been actively engaged in a quest for empowerment and equity through legal, educational, political, and workplace reforms for many decades, and through publication of their writings in some countries for over a century. Although women\u27s rights were at stake in the proposed law, it is curious that many failed to perceive the connection between legal reform and women\u27s empowerment. Those who understand this linkage only too well are the most frequent opponents of such legal reform, arguing that it will destroy the very fabric of society and its existing religious and social divisions

Saudi Arabia: Islamic Threat, Political Reform, and the Global War on Terror

This monograph examines the convergence of the war on terror on Saudi soil, calls for and modest programs of political reform, and heightened post-9/11 tensions with the United States. Saudi Arabia has been condemned for its Wahhabist version of Islam, and linked to the growth of salafist extremism operating locally, regionally, and internationally. This monograph more clearly defines the background and nature of today\u27s Islamic threat in Saudi Arabia, and argues for continuing counter- and anti-terrorist measures but also for political reform and development.https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1753/thumbnail.jp

A Hundred Osamas: Islamist Threats and the Future of Counterinsurgency

This monograph takes its title from President Hosni Mubarak\u27s prediction that American involvement in Iraq would give rise to a hundred Osamas. The author explores the new jihad and the regeneration of Islamist insurgencies and extremist movements in the context of religious and political movements throughout the Muslim world. It describes the contributions of various Islamist leaders to this discourse of extremism and how their strategies of recruitment, retention and engagement function. In contrast, various U.S. responses to extremists are critiqued, and new elements of a counterstrategy are proposed.https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1723/thumbnail.jp

Islamic Rulings on Warfare

The global war on terror (GWOT) and the battles with specific Islamist groups is, to some degree, a war of ideas. With a better understanding of Islamic concepts of war, peace, and Muslim relations with non-Muslims, those fighting the GWOT may gain support and increase their efficacy. The authors explain the principles of jihad and war and their conduct as found in key Islamic texts, the controversies that have emerged from the Quranic verses of war and peace, and the conflict between liberal or moderate Islamic voices and the extremists on matters such as the definition of combatants, treatment of hostages, and suicide attacks.https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1762/thumbnail.jp

Making muslim babies: Ivf and gamete donation in sunni versus shi’a islam

Medical anthropological research on science, biotechnology, and religion has focused on the “local moral worlds” of men and women as they make difficult decisions regarding their health and the beginnings and endings of human life. This paper focuses on the local moral worlds of infertile Muslims as they attempt to make, in the religiously correct fashion, Muslim babies at in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics in Egypt and Lebanon. As early as 1980, authoritative fatwas issued from Egypt’s famed Al-Azhar University suggested that IVF and similar technologies are permissible as long as they do not involve any form of third-party donation (of sperm, eggs, embryos, or uteruses). Since the late 1990s, however, divergences in opinion over third-party gamete donation have occurred between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims, with Iran’s leading ayatollah permitting gamete donation under certain conditions. This Iranian fatwa has had profound implications for the country of Lebanon, where a Shi’ite majority also seeks IVF services. Based on three periods of ethnographic research in Egyptian and Lebanese IVF clinics, this paper explores official and unofficial religious discourses surrounding the practice of IVF and third-party donation in the Muslim world, as well as the gender implications of gamete donation for Muslim marriages

Voices and Silences: Problems in the Study of Women, Islamism, and Islamization

This chapter provides an overview of the effects of research on women and gender in the Islamic world, as it relates to the study of Islamism (Muslim fundamentalism, or political Islam), and Islamization. Most of the literature on this phenomenon overlooks women altogether, or reduces their import to the question of modesty and Islamic dress. The gendering of the "political" sphere continues, while the scholars of women and gender in the region debate other issues and develop new research agendae in their own intellectual ghetto

Hamas and Israel: Conflicting Strategies of Group-Based Politics

This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as define

A hundred Osamas : Islamist threats and the future of counterinsurgency

Sherifa ZuhurParallel als Buch-Ausg. erschiene

Saudi Arabia: Islamic threat, political reform, and the global war on terrorism

Sherifa ZuhurParallel als Buch-Ausg. erschiene