The Saudi Export of Ultra-conservatism in the Era of MbS – an Update

Edited remarks at The Middle East and the Geopolitics of Religious Soft Power, Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University and the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, Washington DC 18-19 April 2018 There has long been debate about the longevity of the Saudi ruling family.

Incidents of Anti-Shiism in March, 2018 – Shia Rights Watch

Incidents of Anti-Shiism in March 2018 February’s lower turnout of anti-Shiism did not last long, as March totaled an additional 113 incidents of anti-Shiism to last month’s 359, amounting to 472. The spike in occurrences can be attributed mainly to a mass number of arrests in Bahrain and a sharp increase in Shia casualties in …

Inside the US war in Yemen – 48 hills

One of the most important US Senate votes in decades took place recently, and few people know it happened. On March 20, Senators voted on whether to stop US support for Saudi Arabia’s vicious war in Yemen by invoking the War Powers Act.

An interview with Abdulaziz Sachedina on His Life and Scholarship – Maydan

The following interview with Professor Abdulaziz Sachedina was conducted in 2016 and presented here after his editorial interventions for purposes of accuracy. We hope that scholars of all age cohorts will benefit from this interview on Professor Sachedina’s life and scholarship. Ahmet Selim Tekelioglu (AT): Thank you, Professor Sachedina for agreeing to speak to Maydan.

Saudi Prince Mohammed’s religious moderation unlikely to change Asian realities

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman may be seeking to revert his kingdom to an unspecified form of moderate Islam but erasing the impact of 40 years of global funding of ultra-conservative, intolerant strands of the faith is unlikely to be eradicated by decree.

Iremam – Colloque

Comité scientifique : Denise Aigle (directrice d’études émérite, EPHE/UMR Orient et Méditerranée) Mohammad-Ali Amir-Moezzi (directeur d’études, EPHE/LEM) Michele Bernardini (professeur, Universita’ Degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale) Anna Caiozzo (professeur, Université Bordeaux-Montaigne/Ausonius) Guy Le Thiec (professeur, AMU/TELEMME) Yannick Lintz (conservateur, directrice du Département des Arts de l’Islam au Louvre) Yves Porter (professeur, AMU/LA3M) Maria Szuppe (directrice de recherches, CNRS/Mondes iranien et indien)

Pakistan struggles to get a grip on militancy and ultra-conservatism

Seventy years after its birth, Pakistan is struggling to get a grip on Sunni Muslim ultra-conservatism and its militant offshoots that were aided and abetted by successive governments as well as Saudi Arabia and at times the United States. The stakes for Pakistan are high as it confronts mounting international pressure that includes China, its closest ally, to crackdown on militancy.

The FRONTLINE Interview: Vali Nasr

In this interview for the FRONTLINE documentary “Bitter Rivals: Iran and Saudi Arabia,” Middle East scholar Vali Nasr talks about the history driving today’s wars in the Middle East, whether these conflicts can be solved, and the parallels between ISIS and the nightwalkers from “Game of Thrones.”

The February 2018 PBS documentary ‘Bitter Rivals: Iran and Saudi Arabia’, for which this interview was conducted, can be accessed here.

DYNTRAN Symposium: Paris 2018

Symposium of the DYNTRAN Project (ANR-DFG): Dynamics of Transmission: Families, Authority and Knowledge in the Early Modern Middle East (15th-17th centuries) 7-9 March 2018 Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3 Maison de la Recherche, 4 rue des Irlandais, 75005 Paris Salle Athéna Following the three previous workshops held in Marburg (2015), Cairo (2016) and Naples …

Interactions between Twelver Shiites and Christians: history, theology, literature

International conference with the participation of Rudi Matthee (University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware) and Francis Richard (CNRS, Paris), in Paris, France, Wednesday, April 11, through Friday, April 13, 2018 The interactions and exchanges between Twelver Shiites and Christians, Catholics as well as Protestants, have rarely been studied in detail.However, there were intensive mutual contacts, as indicated by numerous travelogues, missionary reports, theological and polemical works, diplomatic correspondence, etc.