Academic literature on the topic 'Radicalism Middle West'

In 2019, protests in the streets of Algeria and Sudan, Lebanon and Iraq brought back the fragrance of the Jasmine revolution. Can the pendulum swing back towards democracy and human rights in the Middle East and North Africa region – and in Europe? What will it take to endure? I argue three points. First, I maintain that the human rights aspirations of the Arab Spring rippled across the West in 2011 as disenfranchised groups reacted to increasing social and economic grievances. Second, I contend that the failure to counter these problems has fed a vicious cycle of religious radicalism and right-wing nationalism. Third, I argue that despite widespread Western exhaustion and an inclination to disengage from turmoil in the Middle East, current circumstances make possible new international human rights initiatives, drawn from history, to advance civil liberties, economic progress, security and gender equality in the Middle East, the West and beyond.

The May Fourth Movement of 1919 occupies a special position in scholars’ consideration of modern China as a result of the convergence of two sets of historical constructions. In China, according to official textbooks explaining the rise of the People's Republic that were first promulgated by the new socialist state in the 1950s, 1919 was identified as the very moment of origin when cultural iconoclasm was joined to a political activism of the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal struggle: the watershed affecting the flow of all subsequent revolutionary history. In the West, as presented in Chow Tse-tsung's highly influential 1964 volume, May Fourth was singled out as the time of patriotic awakening reached as a result of intellectual exposure to such Western liberal values as science, democracy, liberty and individualism. The May Fourth Movement has since been characterized variously as a response to Western liberal influence; as a product of education abroad in Japan, Europe or America; as an awakening to the call of international Bolshevism; and as an evaluative rejection of traditional Confucianism as the primary source of authority. Whether liberal or revolutionary, these intellectual developments were then seen as the inspiration for a unified national political movement that spread outward from Beijing and Shanghai into the provinces.

The recent rise of Islamic Radicalism in the Middle East is generally associated with anti-Western sentiment and interpreted as a continuation of the traditional conflict between Christian and Islamic civilizations. It is thought to reflect a traditionalist opposition to the modernization process which originated in the West and then was introduced to the Islamic countries (for an example of this literature, see Youssef, 1985). But this view cannot explain the historical timing and specificity of the current Islamic political revival. In this paper I suggest that Islamic radicalism is not a traditionalist plea to return to a pre-modern era. Quite the contrary, it is a product of the contradictions of Third World modernization and represents a post-modern reaction to the specific form of modernization experienced by the Islamic Third World. In the Islamic countries, where modernization has been synonymous with westernization, the response to the contradictions of modernization has taken the form of a “politics of identity.”

In the period 2014-2015, the European Union was shaken by the influx of migrants from the Middle East, North Africa, and the Balkans (Eastern Europe) who increasingly flooded the western region of the white continent. In a March 2015 report, UNHCR said the conflicts in Iraq and Syria brought the number of asylum seekers in Western countries in 2014 to the highest level in 22 years. There were an estimated 866,000 asylum seekers in 2014. That number is a 45 percent increase compared to 2013. And, during the 2014-16 refugee crisis from the Middle East and Africa, millions of refugee flows from the Middle East and Africa were rejected. In this regard, Olivier Roy sees that in Europe itself there is a danger of radical Islamism, a Muslim terrorism movement that undermines European peace and undermines Western trust on Muslim communities and political Islam. This paper explains Roy's perspective and Islamic radicalism in Europe which does not benefit the position and image of Muslims in Europe and the West in general.

This book analyzes core issues of Islamic thought in the modern era byexamining Islam as both the dominant religion in the Middle East and aminority religion in the West. By considering a wide range of ideological, spiritual, and non-violent or violent events, Roy posits that contrary to popular(and erroneous) assumptions, Islamic fundamentalism derives fromglobalization, not from a clash of civilizations or religions.Roy claims that both liberalism and fundamentalism arise from globalizationand deterritorialization (i.e., the spread of Muslims and Islam beyondthe traditional Muslim world). He views neo-fundamentalists, Islamists,born-again Muslims, and radical violent groups as bit players in Islam’s continuingefforts to come to terms with western values. For example, Islamicmovements in Europe seem to be fundamentalist on the surface; but uponcloser examination, they display western values (e.g., individualization, selfrealization,spirituality, and the weakening of traditional ties and sources ofauthority). With one-third of all Muslims living outside Muslim-majoritylands, Roy believes that modern manifestations of Islam in the West (e.g.,radicalism, neo-fundamentalism, Sufism, nationalism, re-Islamization, neo-Islamic brotherhoods, and anti-westernism) evolve from globalizationinstead of a desire to return to orthodox religious practices or the allegedly“pure” Islam of an earlier time. He tells us that Islam is no longer only thetraditional faith of the Salaf (i.e., the three first and most pious generationsof Muslims), but also a mixture of modern sociological and cultural – evenwestern – elements, regardless of what modern-day Salafis claim ...

The author of this brief study on the political aspects of Southeast AsianIslam is a former State and Defense Department official who originally specializedin Latin American affairs before turning his attention to SoutheastAsia. Rabasa now works for the RAND Corporation, a think tank withclose links to the American national security community.The publisher’s target audience is security policy makers. Therefore,the studies it commissions are part analysis and part policy recommendations,whereby the former is often reduced to the bare essentials. It must besaid that, in this case, Rabasa has succeeded in presenting a reasonably balancedpicture in the space of a mere 80 pages. Already in his introductionthe author observes that, apart from a sharpening divide between militantIslam and the West, the antagonism between radicals and moderates withinthe Muslim world has increased as well, and that strengthening moderateand tolerant tendencies within Islam should be supported.Rabasa sees both external and internal influences contributing to therise of Islamic radicalism. In response to the intrusion of western culture, aheightened sense of Muslim self-awareness has found expression in identity-driven politics. A further polarizing element in Southeast Asian Islam isthe Arabization process carried out by Wahhabi-inspired movements andwith financial support from the Middle East. Other auxiliary factors to theformation of transnational networks connecting Muslim radicals are theIranian revolution, the Afghan war, disillusion over the lack of progress insolving the Palestinian issue, and the eruption of ethnic conflicts involvingMuslims in such areas as Bosnia, Chechnya, and Kashmir.Shifting to internal factors, Rabasa identifies different sets of causesfor each Muslim country and Muslim-dominated region in SoutheastAsia. In the case of Indonesia, the vacuum left by an imploding statestructure following Suharto's fall led to a sharpened political competitionin which some saw Islam as a suitable vehicle to power. Malaysia witnessedincreased rivalry between the ruling UMNO coalition and the Pan-Malay Islamic Party (PAS) for the vote of rural Malays, while in theMuslim-dominated southern regions of Thailand and the Philippines ...

Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work, by Edwidge Danticat (reviewed by Colin Dayan) Gordon K. Lewis on Race, Class and Ideology in the Caribbean, edited by Anthony P. Maingot (reviewed by Bridget Brereton) Freedom and Constraint in Caribbean Migration and Diaspora, edited by Elizabeth Thomas-Hope (reviewed by Mary Chamberlain) Black Europe and the African Diaspora, edited by Darlene Clark Hine, Trica Danielle Keaton & Stephen Small (reviewed by Gert Oostindie) Caribbean Middlebrow: Leisure Culture and the Middle Class, by Belinda E dmondson (reviewed by Karla Slocum) Global Change and Caribbean Vulnerability: Environment, Economy and Society at Risk, edited by Duncan McGregor, David Dodman & David Barker (reviewed by Bonham C. Richardson) Encountering Revolution: Haiti and the Making of the Early Republic, by Ashli White (reviewed by Matt Clavin) Red and Black in Haiti: Radicalism, Conflict, and Political Change, 1934-1957, by Matthew J. Smith (reviewed by Robert Fatton Jr.) Cuba in the American Imagination: Metaphor and the Imperial Ethos, by Louis A. Pérez Jr. (reviewed by Camillia Cowling) Seeds of Insurrection: Domination and Resistance on Western Cuban Plantations, 1808-1848, by Manuel Barcia (reviewed by Matt D. Childs) Epidemic Invasions: Yellow Fever and the Limits of Cuban Independence, 1878-1930, by Mariola Espinosa (reviewed by Cruz Maria Nazario) The Cuban Connection: Drug Trafficking, Smuggling, and Gambling in Cuba from the 1920s to the Revolution, by Eduardo Sáenz Rovner (reviewed by IvelawLloyd Griffith) Before Fidel: The Cuba I Remember, by Francisco José Moreno, and The Boys from Dolores: Fidel Castro’s Schoolmates from Revolution to Exile, by Patrick Symmes (reviewed by Pedro Pérez Sarduy) Lam, by Jacques Leenhardt & Jean-Louis Paudrat (reviewed by Sally Price) Healing Dramas: Divination and Magic in Modern Puerto Rico, by Raquel Romberg (reviewed by Grant Jewell Rich) Puerto Rican Citizen: History and Political Identity in Twentieth-Century New York City, by Lorrin Thomas (reviewed by Jorge Duany) Livestock, Sugar and Slavery: Contested Terrain in Colonial Jamaica, by Verene A. Shepherd (reviewed by Justin Roberts) Daddy Sharpe: A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Samuel Sharpe, a West Indian Slave Written by Himself, 1832, by Fred W. Kennedy (reviewed by Gad Heuman) Becoming Rasta: Origins of Rastafari Identity in Jamaica, by Charles Price (reviewed by Jahlani A. Niaah) Reggaeton, edited by Raquel Z. Rivera, Wayne Marshall & Deborah Pacini Hernandez (reviewed by Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier) Carriacou String Band Serenade: Performing Identity in the Eastern Caribbean, by Rebecca S. Miller (reviewed by Nanette de Jong) Caribbean Visionary: A.R.F. Webber and the Making of the Guyanese Nation, by Selwyn R. Cudjoe (reviewed by Clem Seecharan) Guyana Diaries: Women’s Lives Across Difference, by Kimberely D. Nettles (reviewed by D. Alissa Trotz) Writers of the Caribbean Diaspora: Shifting Homelands, Travelling Identities, edited by Jasbir Jain & Supriya Agarwal (reviewed by Joy Mahabir) Queen of the Virgins: Pageantry and Black Womanhood in the Caribbean, by M. Cynthia Oliver (reviewed by Tami Navarro) Notions of Identity, Diaspora, and Gender in Caribbean Women’s Writing, by Brinda Mehta (reviewed by Marie-Hélène Laforest) Authority and Authorship in V.S. Naipaul, by Imraan Coovadia (reviewed by A shley Tellis) Typo/Topo/Poéthique sur Frankétienne, by Jean Jonassaint (reviewed by Martin Munro) Creoles in Education: An Appraisal of Current Programs and Projects, edited by Bettina Migge, Isabelle Léglise & Angela Bartens (reviewed by Jeff Siegel) Material Culture in Anglo-America: Regional Identity and Urbanity in the Tidewater, Lowcountry, and Caribbean, edited by David S. Shields (reviewed by Susan Kern) Tibes: People, Power, and Ritual at the Center of the Cosmos, edited by L. Antonio Curet & Lisa M. Stringer (reviewed by Frederick H. Smith)

Gilles Kepel is a French political scientist and Arabist with a global reputationfor understanding Islam as an ideological, political, and social force.Among his books are Muslim Extremism in Egypt: The Prophet andPharaoh (1985), Allah in the West: Islamic Movements in America and Europe(1996), Jihad: The Trial of Political Islam (2003), The Roots of RadicalIslam (2005), Al Qaeda in Its Own Words (2006; co-edited with Jean-PereerMilelli), The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West (2006), and BeyondTerror and Martyrdom: The Future of the Middle East (2010). In Terror in France: The Rise of Jihad in the West, his latest and bestsellingbook for 2016, he makes the case that this phenomenon has passedthrough two phases and recently entered a third one. The first phase began inthe 1990s with Mohamed Kelkal and was related to the Algerian civil war.Terrorism was used as a tool to force France to end its support for the coupthat had negated the Islamists’ electoral victory. The second phase began in2012 with the Toulouse and Montauban shootings that were linked to al-Qaeda. Globalization now enabled a network of jihadists linked to Afghanistanto serve the Muslim cause. The (posited) third phase, which would developafter the Arab Spring was launched, would see French jihadists sent to fight ...

In an October 1861 letter to Charles Sumner, the prominent Republican Senator from Massachusetts, William Howard Russell, The Times’ correspondent in America, explained England’s attitude toward the American Civil War: “In England we are threatened with Americanization which to our islands would be anarchy & ruin, & the troubles in America afford our politicians & writers easy means of dealing deadly blows at Brightism which is often attacked under the guise of war & the troubles in America.” Indeed, as Russell claimed, the conflict allowed those who identified the radicalism of John Bright with Americanization and disorder to present a plausible case to the English public. Americans, so this argument went, were but Englishmen transformed by Americanization, a social and political process that fostered a licentious individualism and a pernicious egalitarianism. This transformation had not only precipitated disorder in America, but the deterioration of civilization. England could also succumb to Americanization if it allowed Brightism to achieve dominance by extending the suffrage and introducing a radical, middle-class Parliament. The consequent implementation of free trade and destruction of privilege would lead to political and social democracy, making Americans of the English in England. From this perspective, Bright was an American in the most pejorative sense of the word.

Since Arab Spring gobbled the Middle East region, Islam Trans-National Radicalism has flourished in Indonesia with the spirit of religious puritanism. This movement supports ISIS and has proclaimed themselves as an affiliate of Ansharul Khalifah in Irak and Syria. The presence of global injustice and inequality which are easily seen in television, internet network, and social media accumulates the rapid growth of this movement. The revolution in information technology and communication has finally formed trans-national network society. Using the approach of network society, Manuel Castells said that the changes in information technology have resulted in revolution in many aspects of life including idiology (religion). In the middle of homeless of personal identity in this era, the political identity and religious puritanism have become the pushing power to fight back the western domination in social, economical, political and cultural aspects of life. The birth of ISIS supporters in Indonesia is the society movement that resists the west world that performs the global injustice. Basically the ISIS label is only new identity based on fanaticism of the radical Islam group that has already existed in Indonesia.

This chapter argues that Union soldiers from the Lower Middle West fought primarily to preserve the Union, rather than primarily for black liberation. Yet despite the refusal of many Lower Middle Western volunteers to embrace or even accept liberal war aims, conservative Unionism in the region proved flexible throughout 1863 and 1864 just as it was eroding in Kentucky. Inasmuch as many Union soldiers pushed emancipation, abundant dissenters, especially in the Lower Middle West, used both rhetorical and active means to pull the revolution backward and rein in its perceived radicalism. Countless “pullers”—conservatives who often had roots in the slaveholding South—never accepted the war’s liberalizing measures, and revealed their discontent by a spectrum of means, from personal protest to mass desertion.