Welcome to Middle East Centre Book Talk. The Oxford podcast on new books about the Middle East.
These are some of the books written by members of our community or the books our community are talking about.
My name is a of Azami and I teach contemporary slimey studies. My guest today is David Warren.
David completed his APHC at the University of Manchester before spending stints as a researcher at Harvard, Brandeis and the University of Edinburgh.
He's currently a postdoctoral research associate at Washington University in St. Louis.
A scholar of contemporary land, David's research analyses the politics and discourse of the Muslim scholarly elite,
the Obama with a particular focus on the Arab Spring and its aftermath.
Besides many journal articles, David is the author of the recently released monograph Rivals in the Gulf,
Peaceful Columbia and A Bull of India and the Qatar UAE Contest of the Arab Spring and the Gulf Crisis.
Very long title MASC published by Routledge this January.
This fascinating book will be the subject of today's discussion. And with that, I'd like to welcome you to book talk, David.
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.
Absolutely. So let's stop by something more, general, about your book.
Tell us about how you went about writing your book. When did you start?
What sort of sources you used and where the travels may have taken you with this book?
Thank you so much. So just in general, I think the actual writing of the book started not so long ago in September 2019,
although the idea had been germinating for a long time,
I think since the Arab Spring, there's been this revitalisation of interest in studying the aftermath,
particularly examining the role in countries such as Egypt and Syria.
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,
particularly focussing on Qatar and the UAE.
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,
its aftermath, is that the sources that you're reading were often countering new kinds of sources,
using YouTube videos, online lectures and things like that.
So I focussed primarily on public statements, these and that have made interviews and Al Jazeera, things like that.
Just thinking about more broadly, about other interesting sources I had counted.
They were planning to or inspecting was, for example, in the first chapter of the book,
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,
and that involved reading some very old early man biographies of scholars in the Arabian Peninsula early 20th century.
These life stories of scholars circulating at the time, which I wasn't willing to spacing looking at when I first started the project.
So on the other side, we're talking about Bombay and Mauritania for a second.
Similarly, when looking at his relationship with the UAE and the Mafia family, I also found myself reading sources.
I wasn't expecting you looking at old French studies of Emirati aid policies towards mortality in 1970s in a way that again stopped.
You write this book, I wasn't expecting to be taken. And just lastly, the fieldwork made contact with Dabi.
I'm just thinking about how the question the book is how to think about these two cities.
What ways we think about it. Places alongside centres, just Cairo, Madina on Damascus.
And is there a way of thinking about the site that you talk about?
Sort of the I think you used the 10 long geography's drawing on to integrate.
Well, and thinking about these as make major nodes in the international sort of network of Islamic learning, Islamic knowledge, Islamic culture.
And I think that's actually probably what these centres are aspiring to become,
that I guess it's going to be a question for us to assess how successful they are,
as you, in a sense, take a stab at it within this country sort of discourse.
But thank you very much, I mean, and of course, you also travelled extensively in that region as well as for your HDTV.
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.
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.
I mean, there are always so many angles to take when looking at a book like this.
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,
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.
And I'm pulled up in there and I'm just curious.
You speak of the way in which the two scholars you are concerned with have shaped you kind of
used the term shaped the understanding of Islam with the ruling families of Doha and apathy,
respectively. Why do you say this? And if you can perhaps elaborate.
Yes. Thank you. I used the word shaped when I use that word.
I'm thinking about the state of the field and the study of the that and the states we often think about.
So two polls, either the Erlend that are being co-opted by the states as corporatist or whatever existing.
Right. And this particular states just trying to think a bit more nuance about what is the actual vote.
All the earn on that, particularly in Qatar and the UAE in this case.
And so it is not as if at all we open they are actually advising and debating policy.
Then what is their influence? Right. And so, as I say in the book.
Think about Qatar only for a second. Whose influence and time and cost us much longer, stretching back to sixty one.
The main point I'm making is that one key element of his larger project, as I see it,
is the idea of making sonic lore a popular discourse, making it relevant and meaningful in the lives of everyday believers.
The lawful under pay, which is in Islam being a major example of that.
And the point as it pertains to Qatar is the idea that if Islamic law is relevant
and meaningful in every aspect to the believers life and clean politics, then the idea of political Islam, the Brotherhood,
things like that is less threatening intrinsically in the mind and the in the general sense of the Cosby family.
I'm not sure policy. Right. The contrast, of course, with NBA.
I talk about shaking because I feel that or in my analysis,
the key point I drew out in this book is a trip of chaos and chaos that justifies
and in been based vision or in his view or its assessments of the region.
But the chaos that its discourse is a key cause or a prime cause of conflict and turmoil.
Thinking perhaps shapes that trope of chaos,
then becomes taken up and repeated by Emirati members of the royal family and diplomats as a justification for that, for those policies.
Even if they themselves is not influencing Iraqi policy towards, say, Yemen, for example.
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.
In many respects, in the modern period that we're residing in, the states really have overwhelmingly the upper hand in this.
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,
there's this threat of deportation that hangs over all non-resident sort of scholars some years from Mauritania.
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,
although is domiciled in Cupper. But he's Egyptian originally.
And in a sense, the states can discipline their scholars, but not vice versa.
Right. And so that's why, in a sense, I think. That aspect is kind of a signal throughout your work,
but I kind of felt that describing them as shaping the understanding of Islam
might be putting a stronger on the summit than they actually can in the case.
Although I do agree that given the length of time he spent there,
certainly with the current and his father and grandfather, that seems to have been sort of a fairly robust relationship.
And now he's, in a sense, far too old to really do very much, probably.
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,
for example, which were in many respects quite radical.
I think this is a really important points, and I definitely agree the earldom that are innately vulnerable in the modern day.
And I guess it brings back the question of why are they there? Why does.
Why would the court read and write? Well, finally have an interest in them.
If they don't matter. Right. Right. So it's again, thinking about creatively through officer.
If been they called, I'd be gone tomorrow. Right.
Right. If they are no longer useful, then what is going on here?
So that's kind of why I want to introduce the concept of state branding and
bringing it in the forms of international relations of the Gulf to think about.
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.
Because, again, we sometimes forget that got on the UAE and also Kuwait, Bahrain are innately vulnerable states.
All of those states have either been occupied had territory claimed. Or being threatened by the much larger neighbours in the recent few decades.
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.
For engendering for Qatar, the UAE in Gendry outside powers interest in preserving their security footprint,
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.
That, in turn, ensures continued American interest in Emirati security,
which is where his influence is useful and where he does add value, as it were, to the UAE brand.
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.
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,
you could keep the kind of army as a figure in the media landscape.
And of course, the media landscape encompasses the world in a sense through Al-Jazeera.
This is the way in which Abu Dhabi has done the same with the NBA.
You know, quantitatively, very significantly different, in my view,
in a way that I think is not sort of highlighted quite as much, but we can potentially discuss later on.
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.
I wanted to ask one question.
And then after that, something that so you discuss certain problems that Obama has failed to work through in his conception of democracy,
that leave it wanting as a sexual principal, a principal of sexual organisation.
Could you outline these in brief and then hopefully we can discuss them briefly as well.
Thank you. I think the first thing is, you know, there's always critiques or tensions that any social fair or any political theory.
So, Claude, always very, very far from unique in that regard.
And I think I use the phrase in the books as imprecise, but sincerely Democratic in his vision of democracy.
I'm absolutely a Democrat and believes in democracy as a political theory.
I think I approached I felt the need to include critiques, of course, always vision of democracy,
because I thought there were two instances in particular that made that helpful to think with.
One of which call it always a failure.
That's what led up to not support the uprising in Bahrain and talk about it as a sectarian uprising in Iran and plot.
And also to think about the initial his initial response, the opposition to President Morsi in early 2013, of course.
So dismissing this as a manufactured articles, we do now know that he would lead the party right in that statements.
But also, I think it's important to think about his initial response and to the critics I included,
were drawing on a credit Ibro Fuddle, which was the idea that when called,
I think about democracy,
he did not fully account for the nature of the modern state and the qualitative difference between a modern state as of a premodern.
So Pandit doesn't were and didn't fully account for the need to protect the individual from the power of the modern state.
The other critique of Fuddle included, I thought was useful,
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.
And Kardos vision that the citizen, the Muslim citizen,
is innately desired as the faithful citizen is innately desirous of some kind of Islamic state.
And if you have your favourite system, as that said, true desire, that's not problematic when other desires are being voiced.
Right. Right. So, I mean, this is really something which I I didn't spend as much time as I should in you know,
I'm, of course, working on a similar project to what you've just published.
And hopefully if people forgive the self plug, speak and hopefully have a book coming out in the summer on this thing as well.
I'm very excited to read it. Yes. Thank you. And with respect to the sort of notion of democracy, you're quite right.
I think in describing him as in a sense, a committed Democrat of sorts.
And I'm very interested to engage high level those critique in future in a sense.
My main concern with that critique is that it seems to foreground a certain conception of democracy, which is, you know, the liberal democracy.
So liberal liberalism and democracy, of course, they start off as distinct ideas.
They come from slightly different sort of backgrounds, but they have merged.
By the end of the 20th century, but beginning with the 21st as inescapable concomitant of each other.
And I think what liberal democracy does is place liberal values is a limit to democracy and full karbo.
He is developing Islamic democracy, which is placing Islamic values as a limited democracy.
And I think that that needs to be and I hope to engage this at some point in the future.
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.
But this is something which, you know, our into the oxygen we breathe is liberal, so to speak, in the Western discussion context.
And so yet we're going to have to be very self reflexive to be able to get to that point.
It's not necessarily saying that, you know, people have missed something very obvious.
It's it's precisely because it's so concealed that we want to miss it, as it were.
Yeah, absolutely. There's definitely a lot of food for thought in that point you're making.
And I was thinking about that, too, while reading about Paul's critique.
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.
And that's where I felt there was something going on here. But of course, it's very much type liberalism, as you said.
I think also one thing that it also brings to mind is when we're thinking about the early map,
Middle East politics is the limit to which idea of massive. I think they are useful.
I think I think again today, I also felt it was interesting, important to include discussions and spending time with court, always staff.
I'm thinking about Bahrain, for example. I felt it was important to include the fact that whatever he thought about democracy,
there was this great fear being expressed at the time as it was put to me at least.
Right, that Bahrain what success will be like Iraq all over again in terms of their vision?
It's not as was put to me as a foreign researcher. You'll be like Rwanda.
This evocative image of Sunni's being held at checkpoints or so on.
And so fascinating listening. And so I think that idea about a history of ideas is very important.
But they take a step back and so many also, again, whether call it Alwi and the Brotherhood in general.
What they think about democracy pales in comparison to that very determined, counter-revolutionary effort in 2013.
Right. Right. Ideas only go so far thinking about these things. Absolutely.
Absolutely. I mean, yes, that's fascinating. And, you know, this is a helpful reminder.
Remember, I don't think it's mentioned this book in your other writings as well.
You sort of speak about your direct engagements with the office of this little fellow.
And I believe you add that during this period. Is that fair to say?
If I remember, it was Drew a long time ago. Yes, it's a few periods.
I'm not during the coup itself doing the barring any sort of special in the aftermath
of something that I think when I first was able to spend time that tweet early 2012,
I think it was probably right. It was something I was interested in asking about.
And there are some which would make it into this book. Very interesting dynamics about what it's like being an interview amongst the.
Yeah, that was a very exciting time. Integration's Chicago. It's time for that for sure.
So, I mean, again,
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.
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.
So you discuss Green Bay and to a more limited extent.
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.
And you describe them both as we're looking again at the concept of democracy.
They kind of adhere to this belief that democracy, at least in the Middle East, could be a source of chaos and civil war.
And I mean, I'm sort of using your term of chaos, which you also talk about the context of religious discourse as well.
So I want you to just perhaps elaborate and perhaps evaluate their assessment of democracy as this potentially problematic force in the region.
Well, yes. The word chaos is the following. Well, do it fold off from using leadership.
Can could be translated differently, perhaps. But using conveyers language, no doubt.
Yes. The starting point for thinking about that is that both called Alwi End and they
recognise the importance of consultation or shoura as part of Čunek conceptual universe.
Where they differ is that while Corbo always seems to moxey in particular,
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.
And so for bimbette, the idea is, of course, rulers should consult their people and rulers should consult representatives of their people.
But those representatives need not be elected.
And it does not add legitimacy to them, which makes them legitimate is that they know the desires and needs of that people innately.
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
what's happening between right now is he uses this phrase lack of common ground,
oftentimes for why, in his view, democracy will not work.
That's partly based on his assessment of recent historical events.
He cites the Algerian civil war. He cites the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq.
For one thing. So saying that because it is lack of common ground,
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,
in turn, will inevitably fear that democracy by fighting so viciously against it, out of fear of a.
And then the idea, of course, in his assessment of the Syrian civil war is that because ruling regime is so fearful
of democracy and what happened to them because of this lack of common ground,
they will fight so viciously against it. Right.
So his views of the desire for democracy and time brings about comfort and anticipate in his justification.
The other point that he makes is this idea. Of course, he uses this force of peace.
By which he means the absence of violence. Right.
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.
Right. Of course, the critique of that is that he has this view of peace without justice and peace without accountability.
Right. As being preferred. And this idea that he's in his discourses, that justice and accountability are postponed indefinitely.
Right. I mean, yeah, that's I think your concluding description of him as sort of seeking peace without justice is quite apt because,
you know, he's relatively explicit about, hasn't he? And it's it's fascinating.
It's kind of like a discourse I've not really heard anywhere before, perhaps have not been paying attention.
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,
except in the context of these all powerful modern states that are able to engage in surveillance and
mass repression on the scale that no one witnesses through in the present revolutionary context.
Yes.
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,
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.
Use this concert,
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.
But of course one need not be an expert in classical Islamic thought to see the difference
between the announcements alternate or the FARC caliphate's brands of hyper authoritarian state.
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.
So this is where in a sense, my interpretation differs slightly from yours, perhaps.
I mean Motin slightly in the sense that I actually disagree with that.
Befuddle this one, because I actually think there is a cognisance on the part of anybody of any,
you know, just the all encompassing nature of the authoritarian state. And that that is a problem as well, although in a sense.
And so I'm thinking of his book. Adina's Assessors Publish 2006 Adoration by the European Council for Research.
And you know that he has a passage or a page, page and a half where he talks about how in the mediaeval era,
the sort of the state was this provincial effect, which didn't really have an impact on the vast majority of Muslim lands.
You know, aside from the provincial capital cities, I mean, the the the ostensible Metropol,
which didn't really have enough power to be able to assert its authority in the way that
modern technology just allows the bureaucratic state Mungo Party set to take over everything.
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,
because historically the Lama would have, you know,
managed through their own institutions and that of the administration of the law, the administration of education,
the administration of managing all sorts of legal disagreements through that and so on.
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.
Noah Feldman talks about the sort of independence of the Allama from the state system.
So whereas whereas Bean Bay, on the other hand, you know, gives you no sense of that, he's in my estimation,
you know, a brilliant jurist who is using his intellectual brilliance to basically justify what he wants.
And that's that's my reading. I'm not saying that they're telling. This is what you have to do.
But this just this concord in the way that they see the world and the rulers then and he himself,
that it's going to sort of give rise to that, in my estimation. I suppose time is running short.
Yes. So is a very important point.
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,
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,
the founder of the UAE, makes a number of high-Profile visits to the Mauritania a major one more time, you're sorry,
it's the largest donor to Mauritania, building infrastructure in a way and one can so appreciate without wishing to get too technical,
thinking about how he might, of course, be a kind of figure desirous of humanitarian rule, of humanitarian day.
If so, Paul, the Emirati brand of Shakeri as well.
I think also just the last point, I think about your point about the authoritarian states green card, always recognition of that.
I think it's really interesting. I think it makes you think about the kind of theoretical literature that I'm drawing on
in this book based on people like the second a Grandma MODIS Shelke seven Mahmoody and.
Well, a lot more definitely. This idea about how it's not it it's been an authoritarian state and an authoritarian
state is just the modern nation state as a whole and shapes kind of possibility.
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?
So for me, I find that kind of literature, the state of farmers, we show a slight loss.
So Timothy Mitchell looks like. I think that kind of [INAUDIBLE] about this, the state in general.
So it just depends a bit better to find useful one.
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.
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.
But this has been a wonderful conversation. It's really been informative.
Eye-Opening And I've had the opportunity to sort of go into and get my teeth into some very interesting questions.
I've been having and I'm sure we'll continue this conversation. Thank you so much for having me.
Thank you. So I've been speaking to the author, David Warren, about his book, Rivals in the Gulf.
And this has been nearly sent since a book talk. Thank you for listening and goodbye from Oxford.