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Begin New Search Political Geography Middle East Content Type Book Publishing Institution Columbia University Press

11. Under Siege: PLO Decisionmaking During the 1982 War

Author:
Rashid Khalidi
Publication Date:
01-2014
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
Under Siege is Rashid Khalidi's firsthand account of the 1982 Lebanon War and the complex negotiations for the evacuation of the P.L.O. from Beirut. Utilizing unconventional sources and interviews with key officials and diplomats, Khalidi paints a detailed portrait of the siege and ensuing massacres, providing insight into the military pressure experienced by the P.L.O., the war's impact on Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, and diplomatic efforts by the United States. A new preface by Khalidi considers developments across the Middle East in the thirty years since the conflict. The preface also cites recently declassified Israeli documents to offer surprising new revelations about the roles and responsibilities of both Israeli leaders and American diplomats in the tragic coda to the war, the Sabra and Shatila massacres.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Human Rights, War, and Territorial Disputes
Political Geography:
Middle East and Lebanon
Publication Identifier:
9780231061865
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN

12. The Impossible State: Islam, Politics, and Modernity's Moral Predicament

Author:
Wael B. Hallaq
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
Wael B. Hallaq boldly argues that the "Islamic state," judged by any standard definition of what the modern state represents, is both impossible and inherently self-contradictory. Comparing the legal, political, moral, and constitutional histories of premodern Islam and Euro-America, he finds the adoption and practice of the modern state to be highly problematic for modern Muslims. He also critiques more expansively modernity's moral predicament, which renders impossible any project resting solely on ethical foundations. The modern state not only suffers from serious legal, political, and constitutional issues, Hallaq argues, but also, by its very nature, fashions a subject inconsistent with what it means to be, or to live as, a Muslim. By Islamic standards, the state's technologies of the self are severely lacking in moral substance, and today's Islamic state, as Hallaq shows, has done little to advance an acceptable form of genuine Shari'a governance. The Islamists' constitutional battles in Egypt and Pakistan, the Islamic legal and political failures of the Iranian Revolution, and similar disappointments underscore this fact. Nevertheless, the state remains the favored template of the Islamists and the ulama (Muslim clergymen). Providing Muslims with a path toward realizing the good life, Hallaq turns to the rich moral resources of Islamic history. Along the way, he proves political and other "crises of Islam" are not unique to the Islamic world nor to the Muslim religion. These crises are integral to the modern condition of both East and West, and by acknowledging these parallels, Muslims can engage more productively with their Western counterparts.
Topic:
Islam, Post Colonialism, Fragile/Failed State, and Governance
Political Geography:
Middle East and Arab Countries
Publication Identifier:
9780231162579
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN

13. Islam Through Western Eyes: From the Crusades to the War on Terrorism

Author:
Jonathan Lyons
Publication Date:
01-2014
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
Despite the West's growing involvement in Muslim societies, conflicts, and cultures, its inability to understand or analyze the Islamic world threatens any prospect for East-West rapprochement. Impelled by one thousand years of anti-Muslim ideas and images, the West has failed to engage in any meaningful or productive way with the world of Islam. Formulated in the medieval halls of the Roman Curia and courts of the European Crusaders and perfected in the newsrooms of Fox News and CNN, this anti-Islamic discourse determines what can and cannot be said about Muslims and their religion, trapping the West in a dangerous, dead-end politics that it cannot afford. In Islam Through Western Eyes, Jonathan Lyons unpacks Western habits of thinking and writing about Islam, conducting a careful analysis of the West's grand totalizing narrative across one thousand years of history. He observes the discourse's corrosive effects on the social sciences, including sociology, politics, philosophy, theology, international relations, security studies, and human rights scholarship. He follows its influence on research, speeches, political strategy, and government policy, preventing the West from responding effectively to its most significant twenty-first-century challenges: the rise of Islamic power, the emergence of religious violence, and the growing tension between established social values and multicultural rights among Muslim immigrant populations. Through the intellectual "archaeology" of Michel Foucault, Lyons reveals the workings of this discourse and its underlying impact on our social, intellectual, and political lives. He then addresses issues of deep concern to Western readers--Islam and modernity, Islam and violence, and Islam and women--and proposes new ways of thinking about the Western relationship to the Islamic world.
Topic:
Islam, Post Colonialism, Political Theory, and Culture
Political Geography:
Middle East and Arab Countries
Publication Identifier:
9780231158954
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN

14. Nuclear Nightmares: Securing the World Before It Is Too Late

Author:
Joseph Cirincione
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
There is a high risk that someone will use, by accident or design, one or more of the 17,000 nuclear weapons in the world today. Many thought such threats ended with the Cold War or that current policies can prevent or contain nuclear disaster. They are dead wrong--these weapons, possessed by states large and small, stable and unstable, remain an ongoing nightmare. Joseph Cirincione surveys the best thinking and worst fears of experts specializing in nuclear warfare and assesses the efforts to reduce or eliminate these nuclear dangers. His book offers hope: in the 1960s, twenty-three states had nuclear weapons and research programs; today, only nine states have weapons. More countries have abandoned nuclear weapon programs than have developed them, and global arsenals are just one-quarter of what they were during the Cold War. Yet can these trends continue, or are we on the brink of a new arms race--or worse, nuclear war? A former member of Senator Obama's nuclear policy team, Cirincione helped shape the policies unveiled in Prague in 2009, and, as president of an organization intent on reducing nuclear threats, he operates at the center of debates on nuclear terrorism, new nuclear nations, and the risks of existing arsenals.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, Terrorism, War, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Middle East, and East Asia
Publication Identifier:
9780231164054
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN

15. Decoding Al-Qaeda's Strategy: The Deep Battle Against America

Author:
Michael W. S. Ryan
Publication Date:
08-2013
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
By consulting the work of well-known and obscure al-Qaeda theoreticians, Michael W. S. Ryan finds jihadist terrorism strategy has more in common with the principles of Maoist guerrilla warfare than mainstream Islam. Encouraging strategists and researchers to devote greater attention to jihadi ideas rather than jihadist military operations, Ryan builds an effective framework for analyzing al-Qaeda's plans against America and constructs a compelling counternarrative to the West's supposed "war on Islam." Ryan examines the Salafist roots of al-Qaeda ideology and the contributions of its most famous founders, Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, in a political-military context. He also reads the Arabic-language works of lesser known theoreticians who have played an instrumental role in framing al-Qaeda's so-called war of the oppressed. These authors readily cite the guerrilla strategies of Mao, Che Guevara, and the mastermind of the Vietnam War, General Giap. They also incorporate the arguments of American theorists writing on "fourth-generation warfare." Through these texts, readers experience events as insiders see them, and by concentrating on the activities and pronouncements of al-Qaeda's thought leaders, especially in Yemen, they discern the direct link between al-Qaeda's tactics and trends in anti-U.S. terrorism. Ryan shows al-Qaeda's political-military strategy to be a revolutionary and largely secular departure from the classic Muslim conception of jihad, adding invaluable dimensions to the operational, psychological, and informational strategies already deployed by America's military in the region.
Topic:
Islam, Terrorism, Military Strategy, and Counterinsurgency
Political Geography:
Middle East and Arab Countries
Publication Identifier:
9780231533270
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN

16. Voices from Iraq: A People's History, 2003-2009

Author:
Mark Kukis
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
Featuring the testimony of close to seventy Iraqis from all walks of life, Voices from Iraq builds a riveting chronological history unmatched for its insight and revelations. Here is a history of the war in Iraq as told entirely by Iraqis living through the U.S. invasion and occupation. Beginning in 2003, this intimate narrative includes the experiential accounts of civilians, politicians, former dissidents, insurgents, and militiamen. Iraqis offering firsthand stories range from onetime Prime Minister Ayad Allawi to resistance fighters speaking on the condition of anonymity. Divided into five parts, these interviews recount the 2003 invasion; Iraq's gradual slide into chaos from 2004 to 2005; the start of a new order in 2006; the rise of open sectarian violence over the next two years; and the effort since 2008 to reconstruct a society from relative calm. Each section includes interviews grouped into themes, with brief epilogues for the participants. Not since Studs Terkel's The Good War has a book captured so acutely the human consequences of a conflict we are still struggling to understand. Voices from Iraq makes utterly vivid the meaning and legacy of America's campaign in Iraq.
Topic:
War, Reconstruction, and Domestic Politics
Political Geography:
Iraq and Middle East
Publication Identifier:
9780231527569
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN

17. The Israeli Secret Services and the Struggle Against Terrorism

Author:
Ami Pedahsur
Publication Date:
02-2009
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
While Mossad is known as one of the world's most successful terrorist-fighting organizations, the state of Israel has, more than once and on many levels, risked the lives of its agents and soldiers through unwise intelligence-based intervention. An expert on terror and political extremism, Ami Pedahzur argues that Israel's strict reliance on the elite units of its intelligence community is fundamentally flawed. A unique synthesis of memoir, academic research, and information gathered from print and online sources, Pedahzur's complex study explores this issue through Israel's past encounters with terrorists, specifically, hostage rescue missions, the first and second wars in Lebanon, the challenges of the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinian terrorist groups, and Hezbollah. He brings a rare transparency to Israel's counterterrorist activities, highlighting their successes and failures and the factors that have contributed to these results. From the foundations of this analysis, Pedahzur ultimately builds a strategy for future confrontation that has relevance not only for Israel but also for other countries that have adopted Israel's intelligence-based model.
Topic:
Intelligence, Military Affairs, and Counter-terrorism
Political Geography:
Middle East and Israel
Publication Identifier:
9780231511612
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN

18. Jewish Terrorism in Israel

Author:
Ami Pedahsur and Arie Perlinger
Publication Date:
10-2009
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
Two world experts on the study of terror and security propose a theory of violence that contextualizes not only recent acts of terror but also instances of terrorism that stretch back centuries. Beginning with ancient Palestine and its encounters with Jewish terrorism, the authors analyze the social, political, and cultural factors sponsoring extreme violence, proving that religious terrorism is not the fault of one faith, but flourishes within any counterculture adhering to a totalistic ideology. Conducting interviews with former Jewish terrorists, political and spiritual leaders, and law-enforcement officials, and culling information from rare documents and surveys of terrorist networks, Pedahzur and Perliger construct an extensive portrait of terrorist aggression while also describing the conditions behind the modern rise of zealotry.
Topic:
Terrorism, Military Affairs, and Counter-terrorism
Political Geography:
Middle East and Israel
Publication Identifier:
9780231520751
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN