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Welcome to Middle East Centre Book Talk. The Oxford podcast on new books about the Middle East.

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These are some of the books written by members of our community or the books our community are talking about.

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My name is a of Azami and I teach contemporary slimey studies. My guest today is David Warren.

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David completed his APHC at the University of Manchester before spending stints as a researcher at Harvard, Brandeis and the University of Edinburgh.

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He's currently a postdoctoral research associate at Washington University in St. Louis.

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A scholar of contemporary land, David's research analyses the politics and discourse of the Muslim scholarly elite,

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the Obama with a particular focus on the Arab Spring and its aftermath.

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Besides many journal articles, David is the author of the recently released monograph Rivals in the Gulf,

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Peaceful Columbia and A Bull of India and the Qatar UAE Contest of the Arab Spring and the Gulf Crisis.

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Very long title MASC published by Routledge this January.

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This fascinating book will be the subject of today's discussion. And with that, I'd like to welcome you to book talk, David.

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Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here with you. It's wonderful to catch up again, beaming from across the pond, as it were.

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Absolutely. So let's stop by something more, general, about your book.

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Tell us about how you went about writing your book. When did you start?

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What sort of sources you used and where the travels may have taken you with this book?

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Thank you so much. So just in general, I think the actual writing of the book started not so long ago in September 2019,

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although the idea had been germinating for a long time,

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I think since the Arab Spring, there's been this revitalisation of interest in studying the aftermath,

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particularly examining the role in countries such as Egypt and Syria.

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And so what I want to do in this book was bring that new emphasis into conversation with these new studies of the Gulf region,

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particularly focussing on Qatar and the UAE.

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So in terms of those sources and things like that, new sources, I think one of the things about studying very recent events like the Arab Spring,

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its aftermath, is that the sources that you're reading were often countering new kinds of sources,

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using YouTube videos, online lectures and things like that.

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So I focussed primarily on public statements, these and that have made interviews and Al Jazeera, things like that.

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Just thinking about more broadly, about other interesting sources I had counted.

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They were planning to or inspecting was, for example, in the first chapter of the book,

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I talk a little bit about the history of the Erdem in Qatar to just gauge how called always influence in Paris 961 when he arrived,

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and that involved reading some very old early man biographies of scholars in the Arabian Peninsula early 20th century.

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These life stories of scholars circulating at the time, which I wasn't willing to spacing looking at when I first started the project.

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So on the other side, we're talking about Bombay and Mauritania for a second.

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Similarly, when looking at his relationship with the UAE and the Mafia family, I also found myself reading sources.

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I wasn't expecting you looking at old French studies of Emirati aid policies towards mortality in 1970s in a way that again stopped.

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You write this book, I wasn't expecting to be taken. And just lastly, the fieldwork made contact with Dabi.

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I'm just thinking about how the question the book is how to think about these two cities.

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What ways we think about it. Places alongside centres, just Cairo, Madina on Damascus.

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And is there a way of thinking about the site that you talk about?

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Sort of the I think you used the 10 long geography's drawing on to integrate.

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Well, and thinking about these as make major nodes in the international sort of network of Islamic learning, Islamic knowledge, Islamic culture.

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And I think that's actually probably what these centres are aspiring to become,

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that I guess it's going to be a question for us to assess how successful they are,

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as you, in a sense, take a stab at it within this country sort of discourse.

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But thank you very much, I mean, and of course, you also travelled extensively in that region as well as for your HDTV.

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You're very well travelled over the past decade or so. And I think a lot of that was because you APHC, of course, focuses a lot on useful following.

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So a lot of that was in there, but also in Abu Dhabi. You spent a lot of time so fascinating to get some of that background I had.

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I mean, there are always so many angles to take when looking at a book like this.

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And this is going to reflect my own sort of biases. And inevitably. But I'm very interested in this sort of dialogue, in a sense,

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a dialogue or a comparison that you undertake between sort of the two scholars who are on the cover of this book are useful following.

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And I'm pulled up in there and I'm just curious.

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You speak of the way in which the two scholars you are concerned with have shaped you kind of

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used the term shaped the understanding of Islam with the ruling families of Doha and apathy,

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respectively. Why do you say this? And if you can perhaps elaborate.

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Yes. Thank you. I used the word shaped when I use that word.

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I'm thinking about the state of the field and the study of the that and the states we often think about.

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So two polls, either the Erlend that are being co-opted by the states as corporatist or whatever existing.

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Right. And this particular states just trying to think a bit more nuance about what is the actual vote.

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All the earn on that, particularly in Qatar and the UAE in this case.

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And so it is not as if at all we open they are actually advising and debating policy.

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Then what is their influence? Right. And so, as I say in the book.

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Think about Qatar only for a second. Whose influence and time and cost us much longer, stretching back to sixty one.

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The main point I'm making is that one key element of his larger project, as I see it,

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is the idea of making sonic lore a popular discourse, making it relevant and meaningful in the lives of everyday believers.

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The lawful under pay, which is in Islam being a major example of that.

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And the point as it pertains to Qatar is the idea that if Islamic law is relevant

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and meaningful in every aspect to the believers life and clean politics, then the idea of political Islam, the Brotherhood,

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things like that is less threatening intrinsically in the mind and the in the general sense of the Cosby family.

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I'm not sure policy. Right. The contrast, of course, with NBA.

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I talk about shaking because I feel that or in my analysis,

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the key point I drew out in this book is a trip of chaos and chaos that justifies

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and in been based vision or in his view or its assessments of the region.

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But the chaos that its discourse is a key cause or a prime cause of conflict and turmoil.

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Thinking perhaps shapes that trope of chaos,

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then becomes taken up and repeated by Emirati members of the royal family and diplomats as a justification for that, for those policies.

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Even if they themselves is not influencing Iraqi policy towards, say, Yemen, for example.

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Right. Right. I mean, one of the things that I found interesting and perhaps, you know, I would want to push back against slightly is that.

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In many respects, in the modern period that we're residing in, the states really have overwhelmingly the upper hand in this.

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And you make this very clear in, for example, the case of probably where you point out in a sense there's a kind of threat of or you say in general,

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there's this threat of deportation that hangs over all non-resident sort of scholars some years from Mauritania.

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He resides in get there. And he he's an official for the Upper Darby State or the UAE state in which Abu Dhabi forms the most powerful emirate,

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although is domiciled in Cupper. But he's Egyptian originally.

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And in a sense, the states can discipline their scholars, but not vice versa.

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Right. And so that's why, in a sense, I think. That aspect is kind of a signal throughout your work,

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but I kind of felt that describing them as shaping the understanding of Islam

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might be putting a stronger on the summit than they actually can in the case.

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Although I do agree that given the length of time he spent there,

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certainly with the current and his father and grandfather, that seems to have been sort of a fairly robust relationship.

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And now he's, in a sense, far too old to really do very much, probably.

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And I think you've also signalled how the current Amir seems a lot less invested in the sort of projects that his father was invested in,

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for example, which were in many respects quite radical.

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I think this is a really important points, and I definitely agree the earldom that are innately vulnerable in the modern day.

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And I guess it brings back the question of why are they there? Why does.

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Why would the court read and write? Well, finally have an interest in them.

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If they don't matter. Right. Right. So it's again, thinking about creatively through officer.

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If been they called, I'd be gone tomorrow. Right.

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Right. If they are no longer useful, then what is going on here?

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So that's kind of why I want to introduce the concept of state branding and

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bringing it in the forms of international relations of the Gulf to think about.

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Well, they have a U.S. Importance, not so much, again, influencing policy or changing policy, but how these states are branded on the global stage.

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Because, again, we sometimes forget that got on the UAE and also Kuwait, Bahrain are innately vulnerable states.

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All of those states have either been occupied had territory claimed. Or being threatened by the much larger neighbours in the recent few decades.

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And so the reason I used state branding and talk about Colombo and Bombay, its role in that is to highlight that they have a wall.

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For engendering for Qatar, the UAE in Gendry outside powers interest in preserving their security footprint,

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bay'ah branding the UAE his role in branding the UAE as a centre of desirable it's like before the eyes of the U.S.

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That, in turn, ensures continued American interest in Emirati security,

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which is where his influence is useful and where he does add value, as it were, to the UAE brand.

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And I think that's a very important point, that in the sense that these people are extremely valuable assets in soft power projection of seven kinds.

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Although I think and we can come back to this perhaps later on in the discussion that the way in which the countries have historically deployed,

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you could keep the kind of army as a figure in the media landscape.

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And of course, the media landscape encompasses the world in a sense through Al-Jazeera.

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This is the way in which Abu Dhabi has done the same with the NBA.

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You know, quantitatively, very significantly different, in my view,

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in a way that I think is not sort of highlighted quite as much, but we can potentially discuss later on.

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That's right. And I had a couple of other questions. These podcasts are very short, so key to as much as we can in the 25 minutes or so that we have.

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I wanted to ask one question.

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And then after that, something that so you discuss certain problems that Obama has failed to work through in his conception of democracy,

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that leave it wanting as a sexual principal, a principal of sexual organisation.

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Could you outline these in brief and then hopefully we can discuss them briefly as well.

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Thank you. I think the first thing is, you know, there's always critiques or tensions that any social fair or any political theory.

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So, Claude, always very, very far from unique in that regard.

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And I think I use the phrase in the books as imprecise, but sincerely Democratic in his vision of democracy.

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I'm absolutely a Democrat and believes in democracy as a political theory.

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I think I approached I felt the need to include critiques, of course, always vision of democracy,

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because I thought there were two instances in particular that made that helpful to think with.

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One of which call it always a failure.

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That's what led up to not support the uprising in Bahrain and talk about it as a sectarian uprising in Iran and plot.

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And also to think about the initial his initial response, the opposition to President Morsi in early 2013, of course.

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So dismissing this as a manufactured articles, we do now know that he would lead the party right in that statements.

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But also, I think it's important to think about his initial response and to the critics I included,

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were drawing on a credit Ibro Fuddle, which was the idea that when called,

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I think about democracy,

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he did not fully account for the nature of the modern state and the qualitative difference between a modern state as of a premodern.

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So Pandit doesn't were and didn't fully account for the need to protect the individual from the power of the modern state.

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The other critique of Fuddle included, I thought was useful,

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is his idea that there are times and called how he describes the Moxey as ineffective in giving effect to the will of the majority.

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And Kardos vision that the citizen, the Muslim citizen,

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is innately desired as the faithful citizen is innately desirous of some kind of Islamic state.

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And if you have your favourite system, as that said, true desire, that's not problematic when other desires are being voiced.

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Right. Right. So, I mean, this is really something which I I didn't spend as much time as I should in you know,

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I'm, of course, working on a similar project to what you've just published.

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And hopefully if people forgive the self plug, speak and hopefully have a book coming out in the summer on this thing as well.

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I'm very excited to read it. Yes. Thank you. And with respect to the sort of notion of democracy, you're quite right.

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I think in describing him as in a sense, a committed Democrat of sorts.

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And I'm very interested to engage high level those critique in future in a sense.

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My main concern with that critique is that it seems to foreground a certain conception of democracy, which is, you know, the liberal democracy.

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So liberal liberalism and democracy, of course, they start off as distinct ideas.

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They come from slightly different sort of backgrounds, but they have merged.

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By the end of the 20th century, but beginning with the 21st as inescapable concomitant of each other.

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And I think what liberal democracy does is place liberal values is a limit to democracy and full karbo.

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He is developing Islamic democracy, which is placing Islamic values as a limited democracy.

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And I think that that needs to be and I hope to engage this at some point in the future.

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But I think that that aspect of it is not sort of engaged sufficiently in a bloodless critique, as I've read it so far.

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But this is something which, you know, our into the oxygen we breathe is liberal, so to speak, in the Western discussion context.

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And so yet we're going to have to be very self reflexive to be able to get to that point.

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It's not necessarily saying that, you know, people have missed something very obvious.

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It's it's precisely because it's so concealed that we want to miss it, as it were.

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Yeah, absolutely. There's definitely a lot of food for thought in that point you're making.

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And I was thinking about that, too, while reading about Paul's critique.

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And I felt that the thing I want to draw out. Again, so much one good thing, too, I, I just the power of the states.

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And that's where I felt there was something going on here. But of course, it's very much type liberalism, as you said.

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I think also one thing that it also brings to mind is when we're thinking about the early map,

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Middle East politics is the limit to which idea of massive. I think they are useful.

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I think I think again today, I also felt it was interesting, important to include discussions and spending time with court, always staff.

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I'm thinking about Bahrain, for example. I felt it was important to include the fact that whatever he thought about democracy,

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there was this great fear being expressed at the time as it was put to me at least.

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Right, that Bahrain what success will be like Iraq all over again in terms of their vision?

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It's not as was put to me as a foreign researcher. You'll be like Rwanda.

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This evocative image of Sunni's being held at checkpoints or so on.

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And so fascinating listening. And so I think that idea about a history of ideas is very important.

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But they take a step back and so many also, again, whether call it Alwi and the Brotherhood in general.

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What they think about democracy pales in comparison to that very determined, counter-revolutionary effort in 2013.

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Right. Right. Ideas only go so far thinking about these things. Absolutely.

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Absolutely. I mean, yes, that's fascinating. And, you know, this is a helpful reminder.

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Remember, I don't think it's mentioned this book in your other writings as well.

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You sort of speak about your direct engagements with the office of this little fellow.

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And I believe you add that during this period. Is that fair to say?

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If I remember, it was Drew a long time ago. Yes, it's a few periods.

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I'm not during the coup itself doing the barring any sort of special in the aftermath

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of something that I think when I first was able to spend time that tweet early 2012,

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I think it was probably right. It was something I was interested in asking about.

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And there are some which would make it into this book. Very interesting dynamics about what it's like being an interview amongst the.

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Yeah, that was a very exciting time. Integration's Chicago. It's time for that for sure.

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So, I mean, again,

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there are sort of really interesting points that you bring up and on being conscious of the time intensive move on to the NBA question.

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So I've kind of set this up as is followed by a first and second as a question kind of following the sequence of your book.

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So you discuss Green Bay and to a more limited extent.

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Green Bay is most noted student in the West and in a sense that the reason the bay is known in the West to use it.

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And you describe them both as we're looking again at the concept of democracy.

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They kind of adhere to this belief that democracy, at least in the Middle East, could be a source of chaos and civil war.

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And I mean, I'm sort of using your term of chaos, which you also talk about the context of religious discourse as well.

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So I want you to just perhaps elaborate and perhaps evaluate their assessment of democracy as this potentially problematic force in the region.

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Well, yes. The word chaos is the following. Well, do it fold off from using leadership.

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Can could be translated differently, perhaps. But using conveyers language, no doubt.

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Yes. The starting point for thinking about that is that both called Alwi End and they

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recognise the importance of consultation or shoura as part of Čunek conceptual universe.

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Where they differ is that while Corbo always seems to moxey in particular,

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I think a particular more good Ben Bay'ah so sees Moxey as one form of consultation amongst many, which has no particular or additional value.

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And so for bimbette, the idea is, of course, rulers should consult their people and rulers should consult representatives of their people.

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But those representatives need not be elected.

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And it does not add legitimacy to them, which makes them legitimate is that they know the desires and needs of that people innately.

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Right. And offer a composite of that. That's his understanding. But the idea that he talks about is in his vision or the region explanation of

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what's happening between right now is he uses this phrase lack of common ground,

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oftentimes for why, in his view, democracy will not work.

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That's partly based on his assessment of recent historical events.

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He cites the Algerian civil war. He cites the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq.

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For one thing. So saying that because it is lack of common ground,

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those who lose in elections are those who are in the minority are so fearful of what happens if they lose an election that they,

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in turn, will inevitably fear that democracy by fighting so viciously against it, out of fear of a.

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And then the idea, of course, in his assessment of the Syrian civil war is that because ruling regime is so fearful

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of democracy and what happened to them because of this lack of common ground,

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they will fight so viciously against it. Right.

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So his views of the desire for democracy and time brings about comfort and anticipate in his justification.

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The other point that he makes is this idea. Of course, he uses this force of peace.

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By which he means the absence of violence. Right.

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And for him, the term peace takes centre stage in his discourse because it's the basic condition from which any other rights can flow.

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Right. Of course, the critique of that is that he has this view of peace without justice and peace without accountability.

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Right. As being preferred. And this idea that he's in his discourses, that justice and accountability are postponed indefinitely.

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Right. I mean, yeah, that's I think your concluding description of him as sort of seeking peace without justice is quite apt because,

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you know, he's relatively explicit about, hasn't he? And it's it's fascinating.

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It's kind of like a discourse I've not really heard anywhere before, perhaps have not been paying attention.

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I mean, I'd I'd be interested to see if there's reflection in political theory at all, because it doesn't seem terribly sustainable,

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except in the context of these all powerful modern states that are able to engage in surveillance and

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mass repression on the scale that no one witnesses through in the present revolutionary context.

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Yes.

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So that takes us back to the again, the value of Apollo photos critique in general of the power of the state and the way these contemporary thinkers,

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I'm not necessarily accounting for that could, of course, be in there, as is, of course, incredibly well for us in the classical tradition.

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Use this concert,

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this binary between the deed NCSA should Schreier as a way of sort of distinction between the purview of the art and that the purview of the ruler.

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But of course one need not be an expert in classical Islamic thought to see the difference

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between the announcements alternate or the FARC caliphate's brands of hyper authoritarian state.

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That is the modern U.A.E with all the power and technology that we really need in that vision is not necessarily accounted for.

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So this is where in a sense, my interpretation differs slightly from yours, perhaps.

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I mean Motin slightly in the sense that I actually disagree with that.

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Befuddle this one, because I actually think there is a cognisance on the part of anybody of any,

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you know, just the all encompassing nature of the authoritarian state. And that that is a problem as well, although in a sense.

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And so I'm thinking of his book. Adina's Assessors Publish 2006 Adoration by the European Council for Research.

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And you know that he has a passage or a page, page and a half where he talks about how in the mediaeval era,

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the sort of the state was this provincial effect, which didn't really have an impact on the vast majority of Muslim lands.

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You know, aside from the provincial capital cities, I mean, the the the ostensible Metropol,

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which didn't really have enough power to be able to assert its authority in the way that

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modern technology just allows the bureaucratic state Mungo Party set to take over everything.

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And in a sense, his argument is that is why the state is so important and needs to be brought within the control of the populace,

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because historically the Lama would have, you know,

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managed through their own institutions and that of the administration of the law, the administration of education,

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the administration of managing all sorts of legal disagreements through that and so on.

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Even if the is very you know, the major parties are very often appointees of the state, but in a sense and other scholars about this as well.

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Noah Feldman talks about the sort of independence of the Allama from the state system.

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So whereas whereas Bean Bay, on the other hand, you know, gives you no sense of that, he's in my estimation,

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you know, a brilliant jurist who is using his intellectual brilliance to basically justify what he wants.

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And that's that's my reading. I'm not saying that they're telling. This is what you have to do.

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But this just this concord in the way that they see the world and the rulers then and he himself,

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that it's going to sort of give rise to that, in my estimation. I suppose time is running short.

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Yes. So is a very important point.

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I think I'm for sure your point, but Ken Baker is interested in this kind of a concordance one can see with perhaps read him a cadre of benevolent,

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authoritarian and saltshakers aides. And the way I say, I think in this book of talking about going back to the 70s, when Sheikh Zayed,

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the founder of the UAE, makes a number of high-Profile visits to the Mauritania a major one more time, you're sorry,

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it's the largest donor to Mauritania, building infrastructure in a way and one can so appreciate without wishing to get too technical,

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thinking about how he might, of course, be a kind of figure desirous of humanitarian rule, of humanitarian day.

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If so, Paul, the Emirati brand of Shakeri as well.

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I think also just the last point, I think about your point about the authoritarian states green card, always recognition of that.

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I think it's really interesting. I think it makes you think about the kind of theoretical literature that I'm drawing on

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in this book based on people like the second a Grandma MODIS Shelke seven Mahmoody and.

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Well, a lot more definitely. This idea about how it's not it it's been an authoritarian state and an authoritarian

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state is just the modern nation state as a whole and shapes kind of possibility.

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And again, that is a that's more theoretical debates about where you stand and how what kind of theoretical do you find useful and convincing?

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So for me, I find that kind of literature, the state of farmers, we show a slight loss.

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So Timothy Mitchell looks like. I think that kind of [INAUDIBLE] about this, the state in general.

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So it just depends a bit better to find useful one.

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I must admit, I've not read much in his book. I mean, I've read some of these articles, but his book had just sort of skimmed very quickly.

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And I'm going to sort of dig three footnotes and try and inform myself of that sort of theoretical universe a bit more deeply.

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But this has been a wonderful conversation. It's really been informative.

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Eye-Opening And I've had the opportunity to sort of go into and get my teeth into some very interesting questions.

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I've been having and I'm sure we'll continue this conversation. Thank you so much for having me.

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Thank you. So I've been speaking to the author, David Warren, about his book, Rivals in the Gulf.

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And this has been nearly sent since a book talk. Thank you for listening and goodbye from Oxford.