1 00:00:05,290 --> 00:00:11,560 Well, good evening and welcome, welcome to the Middle East Centre here in Oxford. 2 00:00:11,560 --> 00:00:16,000 My name is Michael Willis. I'm the director of the Middle East Centre, 3 00:00:16,000 --> 00:00:23,530 and it's my great pleasure to welcome you to the Friday seminar series from the Middle East Centre for Hillary Turn. 4 00:00:23,530 --> 00:00:32,560 This is the first of our series in the eight week series to Hillary of the seminal series. 5 00:00:32,560 --> 00:00:40,030 We had hope, but we will be holding all of its term seminars in person, as has been the tradition of the Middle East Centre. 6 00:00:40,030 --> 00:00:48,820 However, the vagaries of the COVID virus, notably the recent McCrum variant, which paid me a little visit last week. 7 00:00:48,820 --> 00:00:51,670 But I'm feeling much better as I'm sure it's paid. 8 00:00:51,670 --> 00:01:01,930 A lot of people on this call in recent weeks has unfortunate Blige's to run the first two weeks of the seminar series online. 9 00:01:01,930 --> 00:01:05,920 We are currently waiting to see if we need to run the rest of the series online, 10 00:01:05,920 --> 00:01:13,950 but it currently leaves me hopeful that we'll be able to run a substantial part of the latter part of the series in person, 11 00:01:13,950 --> 00:01:25,090 but we will keep you posted on that. However, holding the series online does allow us to invite friends and attendees, both old and new. 12 00:01:25,090 --> 00:01:33,250 We might not normally be able to come to Oxford itself, so we're delighted that many of you are able to join us from farther afield. 13 00:01:33,250 --> 00:01:43,600 Welcome to you. Now, the last few terms in the centre, we have had an overarching theme for the seminar series. 14 00:01:43,600 --> 00:01:47,950 We looked at the Middle East in the environment last term michaelmas term. 15 00:01:47,950 --> 00:01:57,340 We looked at authoritarianism and we looked at the 10th anniversary of the Arab Spring or Arab revolutions last year. 16 00:01:57,340 --> 00:02:02,920 This time we won't be running. This is because for a number of reasons. 17 00:02:02,920 --> 00:02:11,080 Firstly, it allows us to address a wider and more diverse array of subjects and issues throughout the term of sticking to one particular fate. 18 00:02:11,080 --> 00:02:18,940 And more specifically, it allows. Firstly, in detail at some of the regrettably ongoing crisis in the region, 19 00:02:18,940 --> 00:02:29,150 we will be having sessions and later in the series in the seventh and eighth week on the crises in Syria, then on Yemen. 20 00:02:29,150 --> 00:02:37,280 More broadly, it gives us the opportunity also to have a forum for introducing and discussing recent research on the region, 21 00:02:37,280 --> 00:02:40,700 particularly a number of books that have appeared in recent months. 22 00:02:40,700 --> 00:02:47,780 Specifically, ones written by members of our own academic community here at the Middle East Centre and in Oxford. 23 00:02:47,780 --> 00:02:57,980 More generally. Now, while this may seem like blatant self-promotion by the Middle East Centre, which indeed it is, it does, 24 00:02:57,980 --> 00:03:04,040 I think, answer a complaint that has been occasionally raised by publicly by students at the centre. 25 00:03:04,040 --> 00:03:10,880 But we never, never get to hear much about the work in the search of the actual members of the academic team in Oxford, 26 00:03:10,880 --> 00:03:19,130 and I'm hoping that this term's Friday seminar series will hopefully answer this criticism by giving a platform to research of a number of people. 27 00:03:19,130 --> 00:03:25,100 Firstly, three of the fellows at the centre itself, Lawrence, meanwhile, Neil Critchley, 28 00:03:25,100 --> 00:03:30,410 unless some Alhazmi, one of the members of the advisory board at the centre, 29 00:03:30,410 --> 00:03:41,840 Joseph Sassoon and also two members of the wider community at Oxford, Marilyn Booth Malkovich and Rafael Lefevre of New College. 30 00:03:41,840 --> 00:03:48,050 And therefore, delighted to be beginning the series of one of my colleagues here in the Middle East and to some allies of me. 31 00:03:48,050 --> 00:03:58,790 Osama is lecturing contemporary Islamic studies at the Faculty of Oriental Studies, a position he's held since 2019. 32 00:03:58,790 --> 00:04:06,490 Summer completed his Ph.D. at Princeton, having studied Arab and Islamic studies at Oxford undergraduate. 33 00:04:06,490 --> 00:04:13,540 And The Sun has been a truly wonderful addition to our community, bringing in great new energy and a host of new ideas. 34 00:04:13,540 --> 00:04:16,960 He's also contributed hugely to our teaching here. 35 00:04:16,960 --> 00:04:25,270 Previous courses he has taught on on modern Islamic thought and Islam and politics, and also for a relatively young scholar. 36 00:04:25,270 --> 00:04:28,720 He has already a very impressive research record. 37 00:04:28,720 --> 00:04:36,160 And I'm very, therefore very pleased to have the opportunity to discuss this in the form of his new book, just published by Hearst. 38 00:04:36,160 --> 00:04:40,300 When did it actually come out this summer? Is it? It's out? Is it this month or last month? 39 00:04:40,300 --> 00:04:45,190 It was out with Hearst in November? You know, this month, this month, right? 40 00:04:45,190 --> 00:04:51,940 So it's out of its out. So it's been out a couple of months, and the book is entitled Islam and the Arab Revolutions. 41 00:04:51,940 --> 00:04:58,010 The Dilemma Between Democracy and Autocracy, Osama. Thank you very much for joining us this evening. 42 00:04:58,010 --> 00:05:01,850 Thank you so much for having me and for your very generous introduction, 43 00:05:01,850 --> 00:05:13,220 it's really delightful to be able to present at the Middle East Centre amongst friends, colleagues, students who I also consider colleagues. 44 00:05:13,220 --> 00:05:21,290 And it's really an honour to be able to do this in your company because much of this book was also written 45 00:05:21,290 --> 00:05:28,700 in your company as it was set to share it with friends who with whom conversations have taken place, 46 00:05:28,700 --> 00:05:32,600 that have informed the writing of this book as well. 47 00:05:32,600 --> 00:05:43,780 So this is this is a book which I have in a sense, been writing since 2013 in some form, although it really took off from 2019 onwards, 48 00:05:43,780 --> 00:05:55,430 and it's always wonderful to see one of these long projects come to fruition in this way and in the interest of both self-promotion. 49 00:05:55,430 --> 00:05:59,240 But also, I hope the benefit of viewers. 50 00:05:59,240 --> 00:06:04,340 I've got a couple of codes on the screen which, when this is shared on YouTube, 51 00:06:04,340 --> 00:06:09,880 hopefully will also be easily accessible and it'll also be on the final screen. 52 00:06:09,880 --> 00:06:17,870 And if you're beaming in from across the Atlantic, what you'll be concerned about is the global one on the bottom and first. 53 00:06:17,870 --> 00:06:27,470 For anyone based in the UK, you'll be able to get 30 to 35 percent off, which is always handy with these expensive academic books. 54 00:06:27,470 --> 00:06:36,830 So this is a book which really looks at the way in and in my view, a relatively understudied dimension of the Arab revolutions, 55 00:06:36,830 --> 00:06:42,530 sometimes referred to as the Arab Spring, sometimes referred to as the Arab uprisings. I'm not particularly committal on that. 56 00:06:42,530 --> 00:06:51,050 I didn't spend a bit of time explaining the word, but this dimension is basically the role that religious scholars had to play. 57 00:06:51,050 --> 00:06:58,130 And I think the sort of role is significant, you know, to a certain extent, 58 00:06:58,130 --> 00:07:04,400 sometimes scholars perhaps are overly preoccupied with the role of intellectuals in these sorts of activities. 59 00:07:04,400 --> 00:07:13,100 And a lot of the time it's, I think, justifiably the case that people have focussed on the underground actors and the political actors. 60 00:07:13,100 --> 00:07:22,070 But I wanted to sort of pay attention to a set of actors who are not just somewhat neglected in the literature, 61 00:07:22,070 --> 00:07:26,760 but also with whom I share a certain affinity. 62 00:07:26,760 --> 00:07:35,870 And this, you know, by this, I'm referring to the fact that I am myself a seminary trained as well as academically trained. 63 00:07:35,870 --> 00:07:44,600 And so, you know, some of these scholars are people I've met personally or have studied under or teachers of my teachers. 64 00:07:44,600 --> 00:07:49,040 So it's a really interesting sort of type of exercise writing a book like this. 65 00:07:49,040 --> 00:07:54,260 And I reflect on my position pretty briefly in the introduction and the epilogue at the left. 66 00:07:54,260 --> 00:08:00,310 But the overall sort of structure of the work is one that looks at. 67 00:08:00,310 --> 00:08:04,220 It's more of a descriptive intellectual history and to a certain extent, 68 00:08:04,220 --> 00:08:12,800 I guess the sociopolitical history that looks at the ways in which the scholars responded to the Tunisian revolutions of 2011, 69 00:08:12,800 --> 00:08:26,420 followed by the Egyptian revolution of twenty eleven. And then as that transitioned into sort of the maelstrom of activism and recrudescence, 70 00:08:26,420 --> 00:08:34,580 you could say, of the old regime within Egypt and the focus of the book really direct it. 71 00:08:34,580 --> 00:08:44,150 I do most of my attention to Egypt, and I look to 2013 as the major moment, of course, in Egypt, with the Egyptian coup and its aftermath, 72 00:08:44,150 --> 00:08:54,050 and a lot of people don't realise the extent to which religious actors were implicated deeply in legitimising the aftermath of the coup, 73 00:08:54,050 --> 00:09:03,770 including indeed, there are massacre, which is kind of the the the darkest moment in Egypt in 2013. 74 00:09:03,770 --> 00:09:15,710 And so, you know, my chapters go over this and I'll be in in what follows presenting, hopefully unless I have any glitches presenting sort of, 75 00:09:15,710 --> 00:09:20,930 in a sense, the Arab revolutions through the eyes of the ulema, through the eyes of these Islamic clerics. 76 00:09:20,930 --> 00:09:30,830 And in the book, which is, you know, a fairly lengthy about 400 pages just just shy of work, 77 00:09:30,830 --> 00:09:37,790 I dive quite deeply into the religious arguments and I can't really, you know, go into these in any great detail. 78 00:09:37,790 --> 00:09:43,890 But I hope that I can give a flavour of what comes up in the book and perhaps in the Q&A session. 79 00:09:43,890 --> 00:09:47,840 We can sort of explore some of these if anyone's interested. 80 00:09:47,840 --> 00:09:54,050 So my first slide and I should be going through these slides reasonably quickly as I understand it, 81 00:09:54,050 --> 00:09:57,850 and I've got about 20 minutes or so to go through this. 82 00:09:57,850 --> 00:10:07,540 Twenty five, twenty five minutes, half an hour. So I my first line is basically reflecting on the first two chapters you could say, 83 00:10:07,540 --> 00:10:13,720 and the first two chapters after the introduction are looking at useful following this fascinating figure. 84 00:10:13,720 --> 00:10:26,860 Egyptian based in that a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and a graduate of the asset, perhaps the US has most recognisable scholar in recent decades. 85 00:10:26,860 --> 00:10:34,090 He's now retired, so he's not really in the public eye anymore, and he is a figure born in 1926. 86 00:10:34,090 --> 00:10:47,290 So in 2011, he's already well into his 80s. But someone who is, you know, becomes a very forceful religious voice advocating for the Arab revolutions. 87 00:10:47,290 --> 00:10:58,060 For the most part, I say in most places because come March 2011, and although he is remarkably reticent about Bahrain. 88 00:10:58,060 --> 00:11:02,850 OK. And so that's something that is noteworthy. 89 00:11:02,850 --> 00:11:07,810 And there are, you know, interesting discussions that we had about that. 90 00:11:07,810 --> 00:11:13,660 But what's also interesting is his advocacy, his kind of tenacious advocacy of quote, 91 00:11:13,660 --> 00:11:21,430 peaceful revolutions and what he calls a Mubarak is, to me, a peaceful protest. 92 00:11:21,430 --> 00:11:29,380 And his opposition to any kind of engaging in violence in places like Egypt and Tunisia. 93 00:11:29,380 --> 00:11:36,340 We can talk later on about the way in which that shifts for Syria and Libya and why that is the case. 94 00:11:36,340 --> 00:11:44,050 You know, my in a telescope for my, I would say that although it perceives those as cases of self-defence rather than cases 95 00:11:44,050 --> 00:11:49,840 of initiating any kind of violence and after the success of the Tunisian revolution. 96 00:11:49,840 --> 00:12:00,790 And he's he has a show on Al Jazeera, which he dedicates entire episodes week on week to supporting these revolutions on religious grounds, 97 00:12:00,790 --> 00:12:08,680 saying that these are legitimate from on the basis of, you know, religious and scriptural justifications. 98 00:12:08,680 --> 00:12:19,760 And he does the same for the Egyptian revolution. Of course, Egypt is the most populous state in the Arab world and the region as a whole. 99 00:12:19,760 --> 00:12:29,260 And it's, you know, it's falling. Quote-unquote to the revolutions was an immensely significant sort of event. 100 00:12:29,260 --> 00:12:42,520 And although he was fully behind the protesters, you know, ahead of the Muslim Brotherhood, ahead of the US, her as an institution and you know, 101 00:12:42,520 --> 00:12:50,230 his sort of religious reasoning very much is based on a Koranic concept known as a little bit not often 102 00:12:50,230 --> 00:13:00,220 that he had a look at commanding or in joining the good and forbidding what's wrong or forbidding evil. 103 00:13:00,220 --> 00:13:06,010 And on the flip side, you have the Egyptian religious establishment. 104 00:13:06,010 --> 00:13:11,600 So moving to my second slide, you have these two figures. 105 00:13:11,600 --> 00:13:16,210 The chap on the left is Ahmed, the grand imam of the lesser jump. 106 00:13:16,210 --> 00:13:22,930 On the right was the former. He's the former now the former grand mufti of Egypt and Gomorrah. 107 00:13:22,930 --> 00:13:29,860 And both these scholars to differing degrees sort of expressed the disquiet at the protests, 108 00:13:29,860 --> 00:13:42,860 but both of them are quite unequivocal that the protests should be considered haram or, you know, from an Islamic legal standpoint, prohibited. 109 00:13:42,860 --> 00:13:48,650 And as I will discuss in later slides, 110 00:13:48,650 --> 00:13:54,110 Ali Gomaa becomes particularly vociferous in his advocacy of an aggressive crackdown 111 00:13:54,110 --> 00:14:01,490 against the Muslim Brotherhood once that is possible after the coup of 2013. 112 00:14:01,490 --> 00:14:10,280 Now these figures, I explore their reasoning and their justifications in chapter three of my Chapter two of my book Sorry, 113 00:14:10,280 --> 00:14:14,150 Sorry, Chapter three of my book too many chapters to keep track of apologies, 114 00:14:14,150 --> 00:14:25,130 and a lot of it's based on notions of stability order, and they're not very they're not as rigorously grounded in my estimation, 115 00:14:25,130 --> 00:14:30,830 within the Koran or within the sort of hadith literature, the juristic tradition. 116 00:14:30,830 --> 00:14:38,810 But the echoes of that, and they certainly can generate certain types of arguments in religious sort of language. 117 00:14:38,810 --> 00:14:42,980 Another set of scholars, I describe them here, eventually counter-revolutionary. 118 00:14:42,980 --> 00:14:47,720 They start off by the sort of quiet Newt as it were. 119 00:14:47,720 --> 00:14:53,090 Or indeed, the chap on the left is an interesting figure because he's actually an American. 120 00:14:53,090 --> 00:14:58,880 What's he doing in the midst of the maelstrom of Middle Eastern revolution, 121 00:14:58,880 --> 00:15:06,260 but from America, who is writing enthusiastically about the Egyptian revolution? 122 00:15:06,260 --> 00:15:14,960 And you know, I explore part of the reason he's included here is he's a reasonably influential 123 00:15:14,960 --> 00:15:21,140 Islamic scholar in the West who is probably amongst the Islamic scholars in the West. 124 00:15:21,140 --> 00:15:32,540 One of the most recognised in the Middle East, particularly as he's now a political appointee in the United Arab Emirates. 125 00:15:32,540 --> 00:15:38,030 He's the vice president of something which I'll talk about a bit later for the forum for promoting peace in Muslim societies. 126 00:15:38,030 --> 00:15:47,450 So this is humza Yousaf and the other chap here being kissed on the forehead by another none other than Mohammed bin Zayed, 127 00:15:47,450 --> 00:15:50,750 the de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates. 128 00:15:50,750 --> 00:15:58,400 This chap is Abdullah bin Be, a very eminent scholar who worked closely with his father for well over a decade. 129 00:15:58,400 --> 00:16:05,890 But someone who sort of soon finds himself in the midst of the Arab revolutions on the 130 00:16:05,890 --> 00:16:13,700 the side of the those opposing these revolutions of the sort of the status quo states, 131 00:16:13,700 --> 00:16:18,530 most notably perhaps the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. 132 00:16:18,530 --> 00:16:24,320 So I explore sort of their arguments and their reasoning and and with respect and Bayer, 133 00:16:24,320 --> 00:16:28,100 whose ideas I think, you know, far more significant in many respects. 134 00:16:28,100 --> 00:16:32,660 I explore this in the latter half of the potentially in greater detail. 135 00:16:32,660 --> 00:16:33,650 I live in Bayer. 136 00:16:33,650 --> 00:16:45,890 I think in a way that is unprecedented in Islamic history basically justifies, you know, executive absolutism over and above any Sharia dissent. 137 00:16:45,890 --> 00:16:51,110 So this is an interesting case of a religious scholar who basically says that 138 00:16:51,110 --> 00:16:58,790 my role in society should be sort of subordinated to the role of the ruler. 139 00:16:58,790 --> 00:17:09,680 This is something which is kind of the opposite of the way in which scholars saw themselves in much of history and certainly in pre-modern times. 140 00:17:09,680 --> 00:17:13,460 So, you know, I think there's interesting work, 141 00:17:13,460 --> 00:17:19,940 and I hope to explore a bit of India's work and future in my own future writings, just philosophically and theologically. 142 00:17:19,940 --> 00:17:30,140 Perhaps I am going to rush on to the next slide, which kind of jumps to 2013 through 2011. 143 00:17:30,140 --> 00:17:37,550 Some of my treatment of Philip and Violet set know discussions that he engages in in 2012 and 2013, 144 00:17:37,550 --> 00:17:43,370 and indeed the chapter where I'm going to start forgetting the numbers, the relevant numbers. 145 00:17:43,370 --> 00:17:47,580 But the chapter where I start to look at the, you know, 146 00:17:47,580 --> 00:17:55,750 the Egyptian coup also up at the lead up to it from 2012 onwards and looks particularly at the activities of an income. 147 00:17:55,750 --> 00:18:06,710 I know the theme is particularly significant in the coup of 2013 because he is someone who is, as you can see, present during now president. 148 00:18:06,710 --> 00:18:12,380 Then General al-Sisi is a constitutional declaration, so annulling the Constitution in 2013. 149 00:18:12,380 --> 00:18:23,540 And and so, you know, he actually functions as someone who is offering religious legitimation to the Egyptian coup 2013. 150 00:18:23,540 --> 00:18:30,830 And I don't think it's an accident that these religious figures, the pope and the Coptic pope, is actually seated next to him. 151 00:18:30,830 --> 00:18:39,620 If I recall correctly, I've obviously sort of cropped the image behind him is a figure who is associated with the Latino Party. 152 00:18:39,620 --> 00:18:49,280 I don't think it's an. These religious figures are there to confer a certain degree of legitimacy upon the act of the coup. 153 00:18:49,280 --> 00:18:57,800 Yet as I say here, the rabbi massacre takes place the following month. 154 00:18:57,800 --> 00:19:02,150 In July, you will have the coup and in the middle of August we have the rabbi massacre. 155 00:19:02,150 --> 00:19:11,780 And Human Rights Watch calls it somewhat notoriously one of the world's largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent history. 156 00:19:11,780 --> 00:19:17,180 And the thing it shows the limits of his support for the Egyptian regime, 157 00:19:17,180 --> 00:19:25,610 something that really transpires and far more interesting in successive years, even though he is instrumental in bringing about the massacre. 158 00:19:25,610 --> 00:19:29,270 That's right, bringing about the Egyptian coup, which needs to the utmost care. 159 00:19:29,270 --> 00:19:35,930 He expresses his disquiet at the massacre at Rabat. Now I'm going to talk more specifically about Rabat in a moment. 160 00:19:35,930 --> 00:19:44,540 But I've taken this image from the website. It's noon post and someone who's obviously quite a person to Ali. 161 00:19:44,540 --> 00:19:52,940 But what it says on the screen is Mufti Laska, the the mufti of the Army. 162 00:19:52,940 --> 00:19:58,880 And in many respects, I think it's an accurate portrayal of the role that this person at this point. 163 00:19:58,880 --> 00:20:01,490 He was the former prime minister. 164 00:20:01,490 --> 00:20:11,630 It seems that the Muslim Brotherhood, in the short stint in power, arranged for alcona not to be retired, shall we say. 165 00:20:11,630 --> 00:20:22,190 And so he was now former Grand Mufti, but he became this vociferous supporter behind the scenes initially and eventually out in the open, 166 00:20:22,190 --> 00:20:29,840 you know, as some of these recordings are eventually leaked. He's someone who basically privately, as I say, 167 00:20:29,840 --> 00:20:36,440 privately incites the killing of protesters in religious terms to the army specifically and the security services. 168 00:20:36,440 --> 00:20:46,910 And and then also subsequent to their attempts to privately celebrates, you know, I actually have a chapter celebrating the rather. 169 00:20:46,910 --> 00:20:57,140 I view him as actually engaged incidents, ratification, justifying and celebrating the success of the Egyptian army against this horrible enemy, 170 00:20:57,140 --> 00:21:04,130 et cetera, that is constituted by the the protesters at Rabaa. 171 00:21:04,130 --> 00:21:13,340 And I perhaps should have mentioned this much earlier. I mean, Rabaa was basically the epicentre for a major protest after the Egyptian coup of 2013, 172 00:21:13,340 --> 00:21:21,020 where a large number of people it was, I think, largely organised and supported by the Muslim Brotherhood. 173 00:21:21,020 --> 00:21:29,660 But people who are opposed to the coup, whether they're members of the Muslim Brotherhood or they were people who were opposed to be a sort 174 00:21:29,660 --> 00:21:36,740 of reversion to a pre democratic era in Egypt had come together and they were protesting the coup. 175 00:21:36,740 --> 00:21:48,530 And this persisted for weeks on end until the military and security forces came together on the 14th of August and engaged in this massacre. 176 00:21:48,530 --> 00:22:00,380 And I think, you know, on screen, I have two books what a book and a report that I draw on in writing about the massacre that went 177 00:22:00,380 --> 00:22:07,720 according to plan as Human Rights Watch is and a forensic treatment of what actually happened. 178 00:22:07,720 --> 00:22:18,420 And Human Rights Watch basically estimates estimates that likely over 1000 people were killed on the 14th of August by the security forces in Egypt. 179 00:22:18,420 --> 00:22:26,450 And I actually sort of explore using to a certain extent the data that Human Rights Watch has brought forward, 180 00:22:26,450 --> 00:22:29,870 and I suggest it may well be higher than over a thousand. 181 00:22:29,870 --> 00:22:36,330 It could be as much as 2000 or even higher and into the hands of the soldiers. 182 00:22:36,330 --> 00:22:45,520 Is David Kirkpatrick's really penetrating and reflective city's extensive narrative? 183 00:22:45,520 --> 00:22:50,870 And I mean, David is a journalist for The New York Times. 184 00:22:50,870 --> 00:23:01,310 But really, I think one of the most careful testimonies regarding the Arab uprisings and revolutions over the last decade, 185 00:23:01,310 --> 00:23:04,460 decade or so that we have in the English language. 186 00:23:04,460 --> 00:23:12,710 And I draw on it quite liberally when outlining the narrative, the threat of massacre and other parts. 187 00:23:12,710 --> 00:23:19,250 So, you know, just briefly about the other massacre. I mean, it's it was overwhelmingly unarmed. 188 00:23:19,250 --> 00:23:27,380 And so the killing of over a thousand protesters in that context was particularly sort of shocking and striking. 189 00:23:27,380 --> 00:23:32,840 And it was clear, based on Human Rights Watch's assessment, 190 00:23:32,840 --> 00:23:37,730 that there were there was the deliberate effort to liquidate, you know, actually kill people. 191 00:23:37,730 --> 00:23:41,440 And so, you know, I think that. 192 00:23:41,440 --> 00:23:49,810 It's something that I spend I think the chapter is chapter the latter part of Chapter five, possibly Chapter six, that basically explores this. 193 00:23:49,810 --> 00:23:58,000 And then I also look thereafter at the way in which various scholars opposed both the coup and the subsequent 194 00:23:58,000 --> 00:24:05,410 massacres and the sort of language that they used the way in which scholars want to characterise this Islamist, 195 00:24:05,410 --> 00:24:14,140 by which I mean people who are broadly aligned to projects like the Muslim Brotherhood's sort of project in Egypt. 196 00:24:14,140 --> 00:24:20,080 You know, they articulate their opposition to the coup in the language of democracy. 197 00:24:20,080 --> 00:24:26,990 One of the points I make early on when looking at Karabo is sort of support for the revolutions in the first place. 198 00:24:26,990 --> 00:24:35,890 He articulated in the language of freedom, and he has this fascinating phrase, which is kind of a counterintuitive for a lot of people. 199 00:24:35,890 --> 00:24:46,480 Think of Islamism or study Islamism. He says that freedom has to be prioritised over the implementation of the Sharia. 200 00:24:46,480 --> 00:24:51,790 And I argue that this is actually it sort of makes perfect sense in the Islamist universe. 201 00:24:51,790 --> 00:25:01,690 But it's something which is counter very often because of the ways in which the Islamist Islamists are constructed and sort of widespread narratives, 202 00:25:01,690 --> 00:25:09,610 shall we say. And so, you know, these are some of the scholars say you have an incredibly useful corollary now retired, of course, 203 00:25:09,610 --> 00:25:16,360 and then you have Ahmed Arizona, who is now actually the head of the International Union of Muslim Scholars. 204 00:25:16,360 --> 00:25:21,730 So these are three scholars associated with this organisation based in. 205 00:25:21,730 --> 00:25:30,730 I didn't really touch in great detail on the fact that Qatar is, you know, the Al Jazeera channel, which on which although we actually had a show, 206 00:25:30,730 --> 00:25:40,540 become somewhat instrumental in promoting the agenda of us is well and well studied of the Arab revolutions in 2011. 207 00:25:40,540 --> 00:25:49,320 And, you know, as Christian Eriksen and others have pointed out, in a sense, the Qataris overplayed their hand and have to backtrack subsequently. 208 00:25:49,320 --> 00:25:53,530 And so as I come towards the end, I just wanted to. 209 00:25:53,530 --> 00:26:01,240 So this is something I discuss in great detail, probably in chapter nine of my book, The Final Sort of substantive chapter. 210 00:26:01,240 --> 00:26:07,000 And then you have Abdullah bin B with the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates, 211 00:26:07,000 --> 00:26:14,200 Abdullah bin Zayed and other and say basically bankrolls a project called the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies. 212 00:26:14,200 --> 00:26:22,930 It's very sort of like, you know, elegantly named and it makes you gives very positive vibes. 213 00:26:22,930 --> 00:26:25,690 But that's what I argue is its purpose. 214 00:26:25,690 --> 00:26:35,020 Of course, it is a front institution, in my estimation, one of several, but one of the most important front institutions, 215 00:26:35,020 --> 00:26:41,380 religious institutions for counter-revolutionary sort of activism, shall we say, and observant. 216 00:26:41,380 --> 00:26:47,840 But it's not an accident that he becomes the head of it, given his juristic reasoning that, 217 00:26:47,840 --> 00:26:54,490 you know, creates actual Islamic juristic justifications for autocracy. 218 00:26:54,490 --> 00:27:07,480 And by 2019, I believe Abdullah then becomes the effectively the Grand Mufti, the chair of the Emirates Council of the Emirates. 219 00:27:07,480 --> 00:27:16,630 But a lot of the sort of fatwas have this transnational ambition as well, so he becomes a major tool in the toolbox at the Emirates. 220 00:27:16,630 --> 00:27:27,970 United Arab Emirates soft projection, in my estimation. And in 2020, I think it's in 2020 know within the space of a few months. 221 00:27:27,970 --> 00:27:35,080 Both designates the United, designates the Muslim Brotherhood, a terrorist organisation as the Grand Mufti of the Emirates. 222 00:27:35,080 --> 00:27:40,690 So in religious terms, they said, of course, been done in legal terms within the UAE many years earlier. 223 00:27:40,690 --> 00:27:45,930 And he also ratifies the normalisation with Israel. 224 00:27:45,930 --> 00:27:53,220 And so he's perhaps the most senior scholar to have done this in the Arab world. 225 00:27:53,220 --> 00:28:01,650 And, you know, I also highlight I've done so in other writing on the level that he's actually also highly respected as a jurist. 226 00:28:01,650 --> 00:28:06,510 He's, you know, there's no question of his juristic credentials, shall we say. 227 00:28:06,510 --> 00:28:12,960 And so this is a bit of a provocative argument that I'm making towards the tail end of Chapter nine. 228 00:28:12,960 --> 00:28:27,510 And and I basically argue that the there's kind of a twin the rise of anti-democratic religious discourses and the rise of ISIS. 229 00:28:27,510 --> 00:28:37,170 So in a sense, the failure of democratic Islamism at the hands of scholars like the little man in particular, 230 00:28:37,170 --> 00:28:43,260 I think can be twinned with the rise of ISIS. And I can't remember which up to this is now. 231 00:28:43,260 --> 00:28:47,730 But I remark how the rabbi massacre a week after the rabbi massacre. 232 00:28:47,730 --> 00:28:53,160 Of course, you have an even worse massacre in Syria with a chemical weapons attack. 233 00:28:53,160 --> 00:29:05,160 And so, you know those sorts of things the permit, the permission for the rabbi massacre on the part of, I mean, these things are done in subtle ways. 234 00:29:05,160 --> 00:29:11,100 But you know, the lack of reaction to the massacre also, in a sense, 235 00:29:11,100 --> 00:29:16,830 greenlights the possibility of these sorts of horrendous chemical attacks that we see. 236 00:29:16,830 --> 00:29:21,960 You know, one of many, actually, and I said Syria, of course, over the years. 237 00:29:21,960 --> 00:29:32,280 And so, you know, this isn't an original sort of observation that the failure of democracy and the rise of ISIS are winnable as it were. 238 00:29:32,280 --> 00:29:38,160 This is an observation I make drawing on the excellent work of Jean-Pierre to you 239 00:29:38,160 --> 00:29:48,300 and in his it's considered he's got a book called From Deep State to Islamic State, 240 00:29:48,300 --> 00:29:54,840 and also in the work of David Kirkpatrick that I've alluded to already. 241 00:29:54,840 --> 00:30:07,770 And I think that sort of, you know, the UAE signalled sort of like successes have allowed for these sorts of groups to emerge. 242 00:30:07,770 --> 00:30:17,250 And there's a kind of a somewhat macabre logic to the existence of groups like ISIS and the need for authoritarianism. 243 00:30:17,250 --> 00:30:23,670 I think many of us recognise in the region as part of the the logic of authoritarianism in the region at the moment. 244 00:30:23,670 --> 00:30:31,920 So in conclusion, my conclusion is I can try and trace a certain set of questions that I outlined in my introduction, 245 00:30:31,920 --> 00:30:43,020 a lot of which are to do with, you know, how do these different approaches to the Islamic scholarly tradition translate the scriptural sources, 246 00:30:43,020 --> 00:30:49,800 the same scriptural sources very often that they draw on to come to such diametrically opposed conclusions? 247 00:30:49,800 --> 00:30:53,170 And how cogent are the various arguments and so on? 248 00:30:53,170 --> 00:31:00,450 And perhaps the agency component is not quite so thoroughly explored as you know what sort of arguments are actually presented. 249 00:31:00,450 --> 00:31:09,300 And in the conclusions, I kind of present an outline looking at some of the debates in the secondary literature, 250 00:31:09,300 --> 00:31:13,920 and I position myself in those debates in a certain way. 251 00:31:13,920 --> 00:31:20,250 I roughly think that the Islamic tradition is, of course, diverse and open to multiple readings. 252 00:31:20,250 --> 00:31:28,770 And so both the Pro and the counter-revolutionary scholars can find resources to argue for their positions. 253 00:31:28,770 --> 00:31:32,550 And this is manifestly clear throughout the book. 254 00:31:32,550 --> 00:31:44,970 Yet I would argue that, you know, the pro-democratic scholars do seem to deploy those resources somewhat more persuasively, 255 00:31:44,970 --> 00:31:51,000 even though I don't systematically engage in a comparison between those two sort of sets of arguments. 256 00:31:51,000 --> 00:31:58,710 And I conclude on a book on what I think is a kind of hopefulness, which is that, 257 00:31:58,710 --> 00:32:06,810 you know, to a certain extent, these kinds of figures like Bambi and you know, 258 00:32:06,810 --> 00:32:20,370 this kind of autocracy discourse is necessary in the face of the weakness of the current status quo in the sense that the 259 00:32:20,370 --> 00:32:33,630 current prototype is the arguments that were were continued to be presented are not terribly persuasive to the audience. 260 00:32:33,630 --> 00:32:42,600 They are directed. And this is why Islamic democracy will continue to be a threat in the region for the region's autocrats. 261 00:32:42,600 --> 00:32:48,390 That's a kind of hopeful note on which I conclude, I hope that that was interesting if anyone has any questions, 262 00:32:48,390 --> 00:32:52,570 just wanted to read highlights if anyone would like to get their hands on the. 263 00:32:52,570 --> 00:32:59,590 That can get a discount that that's available through those two codes. 264 00:32:59,590 --> 00:33:04,820 I'll leave them on for five or 10 seconds if that's all right with you. But thank you very much for having me. 265 00:33:04,820 --> 00:33:09,290 And that was interesting. Thank you very much. 266 00:33:09,290 --> 00:33:12,220 No doubt about it. That was actually fascinating summer. 267 00:33:12,220 --> 00:33:17,590 I think a lot of us sometimes wonder if there's anything new to be written about the Arab revolutions. 268 00:33:17,590 --> 00:33:22,660 But you've proved conclusively that there was a really fascinating dimension, 269 00:33:22,660 --> 00:33:31,150 but really hasn't been looked at in in that way before looking at the role of the theologians, the dilemma and how they talk about it. 270 00:33:31,150 --> 00:33:35,030 That's been largely, as you said, ignored, and I think it's fascinating that you, 271 00:33:35,030 --> 00:33:39,610 you have dealt with it in this way and looked not only at those who supported it, 272 00:33:39,610 --> 00:33:45,880 which is perhaps being covered a little bit, but those who actually were critical and supported the official perspective, which is fascinating. 273 00:33:45,880 --> 00:33:53,770 If it's rather depressing, I think of that on certain levels. We now have time for some questions. 274 00:33:53,770 --> 00:33:57,040 If anybody wants to put a question to Osama what we do, 275 00:33:57,040 --> 00:34:03,970 we would invite you to put your question right, your question into the question and answer function. 276 00:34:03,970 --> 00:34:10,630 If you look on the bar of this webinar, you'll see a little Q&A with a couple of speech bubbles coming out of that. 277 00:34:10,630 --> 00:34:16,480 And if you press that, that will allow you to type in a question. So please type in a question. 278 00:34:16,480 --> 00:34:23,950 If you would like to be identified, you put your name in or you may be automatically identified if you wouldn't don't want to put your name in, 279 00:34:23,950 --> 00:34:25,750 that's absolutely fine and put that in. 280 00:34:25,750 --> 00:34:34,900 But if you want to put your questions in and I'll try and field as many of them as I can to Osama in the in the time that remains, 281 00:34:34,900 --> 00:34:39,520 we have about about 25 minutes, half an hour of some questions, so hopefully we'll get some questions. 282 00:34:39,520 --> 00:34:51,320 So please do put your questions in. In between time, I would like to take advantage of my position as chair to ask my own question. 283 00:34:51,320 --> 00:34:57,170 The book obviously focuses on on Egypt and I think you justify that very well 284 00:34:57,170 --> 00:35:01,610 because of the centrality Egypt is not only just in the revolutions themselves, 285 00:35:01,610 --> 00:35:05,750 but actually in the Arab world, certainly in the last 100 years. 286 00:35:05,750 --> 00:35:11,660 But I wonder whether the what happened in Egypt and the sort of issues discussing, 287 00:35:11,660 --> 00:35:18,710 to what extent do they relate to the explicit position of the Muslim Brotherhood as an organisation? 288 00:35:18,710 --> 00:35:27,120 Now, as you know, a lot of the the official discourse and criticism of what of the revolution and 289 00:35:27,120 --> 00:35:31,370 the Muslim Brotherhood was about the Muslim Brotherhood as an organisation, 290 00:35:31,370 --> 00:35:40,580 particularly the accusation that it was some sort of dangerous cult. And that leads me to wonder, get you to say a little bit more, 291 00:35:40,580 --> 00:35:49,040 perhaps on the dynamic between the traditional Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood, which I think has always been very interesting in Egypt. 292 00:35:49,040 --> 00:35:52,820 And to what extent do you think a lot of the things you've been discussing are, 293 00:35:52,820 --> 00:36:01,940 are the development out of this rather interesting historical and often strained relationship between the two? 294 00:36:01,940 --> 00:36:10,010 Or whether you think as you, as you've portrayed in your tape is actually a much broader set of issues that refer across the region? 295 00:36:10,010 --> 00:36:16,160 So I don't know if that makes sense as a question. Forgive me, your son cut out briefly when you say, Oh, sorry, 296 00:36:16,160 --> 00:36:25,940 maybe just as I understand you basically saying that to what extent are the Muslim Brotherhood and their various positions 297 00:36:25,940 --> 00:36:34,220 conditioned more by their position as Egyptian actors as opposed to their engagement with or kind of fraught relationship? 298 00:36:34,220 --> 00:36:40,850 Shall we say, with all of us looking at the tradition, but particularly the Egyptian context and whether it's a lot of these issues about the 299 00:36:40,850 --> 00:36:45,650 relationship historically between the Brotherhood and the more traditional ulema? 300 00:36:45,650 --> 00:36:51,440 Yes, I mean, it's been a very sort of fraught relationship, I think through much of that history, 301 00:36:51,440 --> 00:36:56,000 because the Ottoman, of course, have centred on the outside. 302 00:36:56,000 --> 00:37:05,900 And you know, famously, you've had plenty of religious figures and ulema indeed who have been members of the Muslim Brotherhood. 303 00:37:05,900 --> 00:37:09,470 But they their authority in a sense, 304 00:37:09,470 --> 00:37:18,530 has been subordinated to the organisation rather than to their authority as religious sort of authorities unto themselves. 305 00:37:18,530 --> 00:37:21,710 And I can't remember whose phrase this is, 306 00:37:21,710 --> 00:37:32,960 but it's quoted in a an edited and fantastic edited volume on this kind of level of global mufti where in a chapter, 307 00:37:32,960 --> 00:37:40,790 I forget who the author is called useful Kabbalah and as the nature of a special relationship. 308 00:37:40,790 --> 00:37:49,310 But above is one of the very few scholars that we can think of who's who've been able to sort of navigate this tightrope, so to speak, 309 00:37:49,310 --> 00:37:58,250 of keeping both on the good side of the ALLAMA as a class and maintaining his considerable authority as an island, 310 00:37:58,250 --> 00:38:09,890 he's seen and highly regarded as a jurist. But at the same time, you know, always played up the fact that he is a student of Senator Ben, 311 00:38:09,890 --> 00:38:14,630 actually a direct student of customs and a member of a proud member of the Muslim Brotherhood. 312 00:38:14,630 --> 00:38:19,340 So, you know, he's always in public warmly as haredi garb. 313 00:38:19,340 --> 00:38:22,700 As soon as you see him, you can immediately identify him as an asset. 314 00:38:22,700 --> 00:38:29,810 But he's also a very proud member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and I think this is hopefully answering your question somewhat. 315 00:38:29,810 --> 00:38:39,830 I think it's the case that, you know, the Muslim Brotherhood have struggled to do that because the religious authority of the alema is 316 00:38:39,830 --> 00:38:45,620 a competing sovereignty of sorts to the authority of the institution of the Muslim Brotherhood. 317 00:38:45,620 --> 00:38:49,280 The Muslim Brotherhood's resilience and its continued existence. 318 00:38:49,280 --> 00:38:55,820 Shadi Hamid talks about for, you know, nearly 100 years at this point and to a certain extent, 319 00:38:55,820 --> 00:38:59,360 are a function of it being a very regimented organisation that respects the 320 00:38:59,360 --> 00:39:06,620 hierarchy of the organisation rather than the sort of non-hierarchical hierarchy. 321 00:39:06,620 --> 00:39:15,380 If I can kind of phrase of the ulema because as scholars, everyone can debate, everyone has a right to have an opinion and scholars are not, 322 00:39:15,380 --> 00:39:24,420 you know, scholars are notorious for not really being very organised when it comes to thinking in and regimented terms of an organisation. 323 00:39:24,420 --> 00:39:30,590 So in that regard, I think that the Muslim Brotherhood will have its own internal logic when it thinks about how Islam operates. 324 00:39:30,590 --> 00:39:37,040 And I think that will always have a certain degree of friction with the way in which the ulema will think about, 325 00:39:37,040 --> 00:39:42,090 you know, things in juristic or theological terms. I hope that somewhat on. 326 00:39:42,090 --> 00:39:46,080 Is the question that you are asking the bounds of the question very well? 327 00:39:46,080 --> 00:39:52,110 Yes, I was thinking really boundary is that you said the key figure in that respect, he actually bridges those two conditions. 328 00:39:52,110 --> 00:39:56,460 Thank you. We begin to get questions coming in and I'll I'll ask one of them. 329 00:39:56,460 --> 00:40:00,570 The first one I'll go to and comes from Iftikhar Malik. 330 00:40:00,570 --> 00:40:09,120 Thank you for joining us. And if the court says Ahmed could ruin his recent book highlights the long term legacy of collaboration between 331 00:40:09,120 --> 00:40:15,960 the authority and the ulema at the expense of civic and enterprising classes leading to authoritarianism, 332 00:40:15,960 --> 00:40:19,620 as well as civilizational decline. Individuals are vital, 333 00:40:19,620 --> 00:40:28,810 but shouldn't we be focussing on social and theological trajectories within the societies which keep on throwing up such figures as these? 334 00:40:28,810 --> 00:40:34,720 So I've only read sort of a couple of pages from the introduction about his work, 335 00:40:34,720 --> 00:40:47,220 and I must say I'm not terribly sympathetic to his analysis in the sense of it is. 336 00:40:47,220 --> 00:40:53,370 To a certain extent, it doesn't really engage the discourse and these sorts of historical grand narrative sort 337 00:40:53,370 --> 00:41:00,390 of attempts at grand narratives and casting the villain as a certain type across history, 338 00:41:00,390 --> 00:41:07,560 which I get a sense of. In his argument, I don't find terribly compelling. 339 00:41:07,560 --> 00:41:14,890 And the ultimate. I don't really have a very clear answer to this, to be honest. 340 00:41:14,890 --> 00:41:20,550 I don't think the alumni have undermined civic and enterprise classes in the way that someone 341 00:41:20,550 --> 00:41:24,910 like amateur guru or perhaps Tim McCarron in a slightly different context is arguing. 342 00:41:24,910 --> 00:41:36,040 And I think, you know, the work of my colleague in the Department of CUNY, H. 343 00:41:36,040 --> 00:41:42,130 I don't know why I'm blanking on his name right now, but our colleague and associated with the Middle East Centre, 344 00:41:42,130 --> 00:41:47,920 the economic historian, fantastic economic historian Adeel Malik, Neil Malik. 345 00:41:47,920 --> 00:41:52,910 I got Malkin my name, but I was wondering if that was coming from the first name. 346 00:41:52,910 --> 00:42:00,460 So he has an excellent review, I think of Temperance long divergence, which makes it a similar, 347 00:42:00,460 --> 00:42:06,640 but, you know, somewhat different argument about economic history as opposed to authoritarianism. 348 00:42:06,640 --> 00:42:12,790 I think that those sorts of broad brush arguments as qualified and careful as they are, 349 00:42:12,790 --> 00:42:17,380 we need to be careful about sort of teleological historiography, 350 00:42:17,380 --> 00:42:19,390 speak historiography, in my estimation, 351 00:42:19,390 --> 00:42:26,170 but to do justice to his work and I hope to engage with my teacher like I would need to read it carefully, obviously. 352 00:42:26,170 --> 00:42:30,770 So I hope that that's somewhat useful. Thank you. 353 00:42:30,770 --> 00:42:36,170 I have a question here now from Jack Dickens, who thanks you for a fascinating lecture. 354 00:42:36,170 --> 00:42:45,440 Thank you. And Jack wants to know, are there? Is there any indication as to what type of democracy the pro revolution in Egypt to a desire to build? 355 00:42:45,440 --> 00:42:49,100 Would they desire the type of democracy that we saw take root in Tunisia? 356 00:42:49,100 --> 00:42:57,080 Or would they be more inclined to support the creation of a political system more like that of revolutionary Iran? 357 00:42:57,080 --> 00:42:59,240 I mean, in the the the year or so. 358 00:42:59,240 --> 00:43:05,960 But certainly Mohammed Morsi was in Mississippi speaking about which is adding my own little bit might be the most we saw. 359 00:43:05,960 --> 00:43:11,330 We saw some island with that and that had a lot of criticism about the way rather than, 360 00:43:11,330 --> 00:43:14,810 I wonder if on the theological aspect, whether you could add something on that. 361 00:43:14,810 --> 00:43:18,950 Thank you. Sure. I mean, I think fantastic question. 362 00:43:18,950 --> 00:43:26,180 Thank you very much, Jack. And I think in a sense, the Egyptian alumni would be somewhere in between. 363 00:43:26,180 --> 00:43:31,880 I think that would be a good way to put it. So Anousheh is an Andrew. 364 00:43:31,880 --> 00:43:40,820 Much has a fantastic book on this. The caliphate of man, popular sovereignty and I think the rest of the subtitle. 365 00:43:40,820 --> 00:43:51,200 But in in essence, I think that Russia's she's practised in the Tunisian context was far more pragmatic. 366 00:43:51,200 --> 00:43:57,170 He was far more willing to sort of engage in a pragmatic dialogue with, you know, 367 00:43:57,170 --> 00:44:11,190 more secular forces and yet mainstream Islamists of the type that I study not so much in this book as in my other work, mostly unpublished. 368 00:44:11,190 --> 00:44:17,810 They they are very eager to highlight that we don't believe in theocracy. 369 00:44:17,810 --> 00:44:22,490 They can. What do they mean by that? They mean the model that is found in Iran now? 370 00:44:22,490 --> 00:44:27,170 I mean, I think people could reasonably well. A theocracy is a concept, 371 00:44:27,170 --> 00:44:35,030 which means that you're bringing religion into the political sphere and you still believe that that's what you're what is appropriate to do. 372 00:44:35,030 --> 00:44:41,080 I certainly think that it wouldn't, you know, as I argue, again, briefly elsewhere, them a place. 373 00:44:41,080 --> 00:44:44,990 These these people aren't arguing for liberal democracy by any stretch of the imagination, 374 00:44:44,990 --> 00:44:49,010 but even talks about this in his first book, Temptations of Power. 375 00:44:49,010 --> 00:44:55,640 He calls it a liberal democracy, and I don't like that label because, you know, to a certain extent, you're defining something by what it isn't. 376 00:44:55,640 --> 00:45:02,480 But also illiberal is a very sort of loaded phrase, and in our culture, I would say I would call it Islamic democracy. 377 00:45:02,480 --> 00:45:07,910 And the way in which I characterise this is that liberalism is in liberal democracy. 378 00:45:07,910 --> 00:45:12,530 Liberalism is a check on a majoritarianism in Islamic democracy. 379 00:45:12,530 --> 00:45:14,990 Islam is a check on majoritarianism. 380 00:45:14,990 --> 00:45:26,120 And so, you know, that's how I would see it in other causes, all sorts of anxieties within, you know, particularly Western policy circles. 381 00:45:26,120 --> 00:45:34,730 And I think, Michael, if you sort of permit me on your comment about how Mohamed Morsi actually acted again, 382 00:45:34,730 --> 00:45:42,230 Shadi Hamid and other scholars and David Kirkpatrick talks about this in his book Into the Hands of the Soldiers. 383 00:45:42,230 --> 00:45:45,890 And they all come that in practise when you. 384 00:45:45,890 --> 00:45:51,950 Shadi Hamid is looking at it as a quantitative social scientist, as a political scientist, you know, 385 00:45:51,950 --> 00:45:58,880 quantitatively speaking, Morsi was not really a dictator, doesn't it doesn't sort of work that way. 386 00:45:58,880 --> 00:46:06,830 And so there is a certain perception, in my estimation in the West that if someone identifies with Islam, 387 00:46:06,830 --> 00:46:11,450 then they will necessarily go towards a kind of authoritarian theocracy. 388 00:46:11,450 --> 00:46:20,600 And I would just point out that, you know, that presupposition doesn't always hold very well in their discourses, 389 00:46:20,600 --> 00:46:28,130 where for decades they've been arguing against autocracy, particularly since that's the main thing that they suffer from in the region. 390 00:46:28,130 --> 00:46:34,190 Right? And so but it would be, you know, these are untested because, you know, 391 00:46:34,190 --> 00:46:39,630 the autocratic forces in the region have always had the upper hand, unfortunately. And even in Tunisia, we have seen them. 392 00:46:39,630 --> 00:46:43,970 So if that's a really long winded response, but I hope that answers the question. 393 00:46:43,970 --> 00:46:47,450 No, that answers it very nicely. We have a couple of questions coming in, 394 00:46:47,450 --> 00:46:57,580 inevitably asking you to sort of look at a little broader focus looking at other aspects of the countries, right? 395 00:46:57,580 --> 00:47:03,740 I'm think coming in from Salma Daudi too, asking about the situation in Syria. 396 00:47:03,740 --> 00:47:07,850 Thank you for joining us and thank you for your question, Salma and Sam specifically. 397 00:47:07,850 --> 00:47:15,320 I was wondering if you could perhaps discuss a little bit the threat that pro-democracy Islamic scholars could pose to the Syrian regime. 398 00:47:15,320 --> 00:47:15,950 Recently, 399 00:47:15,950 --> 00:47:24,110 the Assad regime has effectively forced Syria's Grand Mufti into retirement and seems to be positioning itself as a secular force in the region, 400 00:47:24,110 --> 00:47:28,040 even if the reality seems to contradict this narrative. All these tensions? 401 00:47:28,040 --> 00:47:35,780 Reflective of broader disagreements within influential Islamic authorities on the Syrian revolution and I mean, 402 00:47:35,780 --> 00:47:40,580 the Syrian revolution, I actually lived in Syria from 2005 2006. I was as an undergraduate here. 403 00:47:40,580 --> 00:47:50,150 Of course, I was sense that when it was possible to travel to Syria, so I have a deep and abiding love for the Syrian people. 404 00:47:50,150 --> 00:47:56,900 Sadly, my scholarship does not expel Syria quite systematically and obviously in at the other end of it, 405 00:47:56,900 --> 00:48:02,150 which scholars have done the really defining work on the Syrian revolution. 406 00:48:02,150 --> 00:48:08,600 So I don't I wasn't aware of this. I assume relatively recent developments. 407 00:48:08,600 --> 00:48:14,570 I mean, it's interesting to think about if I may speculate for a while, 408 00:48:14,570 --> 00:48:20,930 the Grand Mufti and I assume we're talking about as soon as the former Grand Mufti was, 409 00:48:20,930 --> 00:48:29,840 of course, a stalwart of the Assad regime, the sort of and the Grand Mufti before him. 410 00:48:29,840 --> 00:48:36,650 Of course, people like the Pharaoh and others have for decades been stalwarts of the Assad's. 411 00:48:36,650 --> 00:48:47,540 And so in that regard, I think it would be interesting to me if that shift to a more secular orientation is now being adopted systematically. 412 00:48:47,540 --> 00:48:56,210 There's always been a tension within the Syrian context, in my estimation, because of the Alawite background of the the heads of the regime. 413 00:48:56,210 --> 00:49:01,370 But the fact that the Grand Mufti has always been a Sunni, quite a mainstream Sunni, in my estimation, 414 00:49:01,370 --> 00:49:09,230 even if they've been politically, you know, not necessarily mainstream and in being so aligned to the dictator. 415 00:49:09,230 --> 00:49:18,490 And so I remember when I lived in Syria that the Sunnis were happy that their dictator was secular. 416 00:49:18,490 --> 00:49:23,120 You know, some some Sunnis would express that to me. You know, at least they're secular, right? 417 00:49:23,120 --> 00:49:32,090 In a sense that they're not going to sort of start interfering within our religious world as Allawi's, for example. 418 00:49:32,090 --> 00:49:37,610 And so, you know, I'm not sure that, you know, 419 00:49:37,610 --> 00:49:50,840 the the clearing of that space for from from the state and from the state's sphere of influence makes a great deal of sense for Assad as a dictator. 420 00:49:50,840 --> 00:49:55,190 But I'm not. I'm not sure exactly how the average Sunni would respond to that. 421 00:49:55,190 --> 00:49:59,960 They might think, OK, well, that's great. We never really respected the Grand Mufti. I think something like that. 422 00:49:59,960 --> 00:50:04,930 But they might. I mean, Syrians, I noticed and forgive me if this is a bit of another generalisation, 423 00:50:04,930 --> 00:50:11,780 but I noticed many Syrians would consider themselves quite devout, and perhaps some of them would be uncomfortable with it. 424 00:50:11,780 --> 00:50:19,480 There's no sort of like public voice of religion or something like that, so it's just speculation on my blog posts with. 425 00:50:19,480 --> 00:50:20,640 Thank you, Summer. 426 00:50:20,640 --> 00:50:28,510 This question comes from a not only a friend and a colleague, Marilyn, Bob and Marilyn will also be giving a talk in this series later this term. 427 00:50:28,510 --> 00:50:31,720 Thank you very much for joining us and thank you for your question, Marilyn. 428 00:50:31,720 --> 00:50:37,480 Marilyn's really inviting you a summer to look at more recent developments in Egypt. 429 00:50:37,480 --> 00:50:43,900 And specifically, she's curious about the seeming unstoppable, unstoppable movement of el-Sisi, 430 00:50:43,900 --> 00:50:52,630 the agenda to implement a new Dubai in Egypt, and how these defining themselves as Islamic actors deal with this. 431 00:50:52,630 --> 00:50:56,080 I don't know if there's a particularly interesting with the increasing the links 432 00:50:56,080 --> 00:51:00,760 with it with the Emirates and whether these how will the move defend the suspect 433 00:51:00,760 --> 00:51:04,130 behind Marin's question is the idea of how will the defenders of what happened 434 00:51:04,130 --> 00:51:09,380 certainly is rubber and what happened in 2013 dealing with this new dimension? 435 00:51:09,380 --> 00:51:15,830 So I mean, there's been a considerable amount of tension within. 436 00:51:15,830 --> 00:51:21,710 Egypt, between Bashar al Assad and Assisi over the last four or five years. 437 00:51:21,710 --> 00:51:31,640 So I mean, there's been an interesting sort of and somewhat counterintuitive coup on the part of the Egyptian 438 00:51:31,640 --> 00:51:41,510 Al-Azhar in that the US in the 2012 Constitution managed to get a certain degree of independence. 439 00:51:41,510 --> 00:51:47,840 So the shuttle, as has now to be appointed by the people. 440 00:51:47,840 --> 00:51:52,670 And for some reason, that was continued in this sort of like constitution. 441 00:51:52,670 --> 00:52:02,660 I believe it was 2014. And so, you know, there is a tension between and so Sisi would love to actually replace. 442 00:52:02,660 --> 00:52:08,270 From what I can tell, place Ahmed, play it with Alguma, who is, you know, 443 00:52:08,270 --> 00:52:14,180 an absolute sort of like shows absolute fealty to the needs of the military states in a way that, 444 00:52:14,180 --> 00:52:18,500 as I kind of indicated, a play does not seem to be willing to countenance. 445 00:52:18,500 --> 00:52:28,850 And so, you know, you do have a situation where there's already some tension between the most important sort of religious figure in Egypt and Sisi. 446 00:52:28,850 --> 00:52:39,200 Yet at the same time, I suspect someone like Ali Gomora, who is, you know, really championed by the state and is, 447 00:52:39,200 --> 00:52:46,920 you know, going to be quite in line with a lot of these sorts of agendas. So the new Dubai, I mean. 448 00:52:46,920 --> 00:52:56,370 That's that's a tall order and wall to wall to armrest with the obvious person to comment on the feasibility of not sort of the 449 00:52:56,370 --> 00:53:07,200 move and the attempts to create a new capital city and kind of redo the urban geography of the cities in order to allow for, 450 00:53:07,200 --> 00:53:17,430 you know, a neoliberal remaking of Egypt that also prevents the possibility of these kinds of revolution, revolutionary moments. 451 00:53:17,430 --> 00:53:24,720 And I think that those scholars who are fully aligned like any and there are others I haven't mentioned, 452 00:53:24,720 --> 00:53:28,620 you know, some say it was a student, is a student of radicalised, 453 00:53:28,620 --> 00:53:36,360 and he became the sort of almost the shadow Democratic race adviser to the Office of the Presidency, 454 00:53:36,360 --> 00:53:41,820 meaning to seek his father in law as a senior, as a scholar on the ticket. 455 00:53:41,820 --> 00:53:48,840 So I would suspect that it depends on where people fit in to the various fractures within the Islamic classes. 456 00:53:48,840 --> 00:53:52,740 But I may be close with invoking Nathan Brown's latest book, 457 00:53:52,740 --> 00:54:00,090 which I really love loved arguing Islam, where he basically this is a line I quote in my own book. 458 00:54:00,090 --> 00:54:11,460 He says that, you know, it seemed that the all my classes that he met with were roughly divided 50-50 on supporting the two verses opposing the two. 459 00:54:11,460 --> 00:54:18,600 And you know, I think there are all sorts of dilemmas about getting involved in the political space, 460 00:54:18,600 --> 00:54:23,910 which would create, you know, a significant kind of 50-50 divide. 461 00:54:23,910 --> 00:54:31,270 So I suspect about 50 50 would be the case with respect to support Sisi on anything. 462 00:54:31,270 --> 00:54:37,990 Thank you. Building off of that, just to get you to say something about sort of foreign influence more broadly, 463 00:54:37,990 --> 00:54:41,540 in particular, coming from a question from William the Mo'ne, 464 00:54:41,540 --> 00:54:52,700 I'm not sure that may be our good friend Frank Timoney, but the question is asking about foreign foreign interference in in in. 465 00:54:52,700 --> 00:55:02,210 I make so as to reform Islam, and he prefers, especially particularly to the Tony Blair Institute involvement in. 466 00:55:02,210 --> 00:55:05,300 I wasn't aware of, I must admit myself, right? 467 00:55:05,300 --> 00:55:14,960 I mean, I'm not specifically aware of the Tony Blair Institute's involvement that Blair has been, you know, a, shall we say, a colourful characters. 468 00:55:14,960 --> 00:55:18,920 It's the most polite way of putting this in the region. 469 00:55:18,920 --> 00:55:27,430 And certainly Blair, should we say good grief? And and basically I. 470 00:55:27,430 --> 00:55:30,550 Let me, you know, recount an anecdote, 471 00:55:30,550 --> 00:55:37,930 I visited Egypt in 2007 and was visiting an American scholar who had enrolled in the US and was studying to become island. 472 00:55:37,930 --> 00:55:44,020 An American convert to Islamic State, is now a respected scholar in North America. 473 00:55:44,020 --> 00:55:52,390 And he complained that the Blair government had, or I can't remember which ministry the FCO. 474 00:55:52,390 --> 00:56:03,310 I think under the black government had donated a huge amount of money to the US to strengthen its sort of Faculty of Humanities effectively, 475 00:56:03,310 --> 00:56:09,520 and the US and the Egyptian government had unilaterally redirected it to pharmacy and medicine or something like that. 476 00:56:09,520 --> 00:56:18,430 And he was feeling about this, saying like, you know, for all dislike of Blair's shenanigans in other parts of the Middle East, 477 00:56:18,430 --> 00:56:23,350 that that would have been something that would very much help strengthen the ISI as an institution. 478 00:56:23,350 --> 00:56:30,790 And so I think that, you know, these sorts of foreign forces can be quite complicated. 479 00:56:30,790 --> 00:56:41,560 And, you know, the obvious foreign force in the region is, of course, the United States with its billions of dollars of military aid. 480 00:56:41,560 --> 00:56:47,650 But of course, that military aid, as David Kirkpatrick so masterfully documents in his fantastic book, 481 00:56:47,650 --> 00:56:51,290 which I can't recommend enough into the hands of the it set time and mentioning 482 00:56:51,290 --> 00:56:57,400 this is dwarfed by the amounts of money coming from the UAE and Saudi Arabia. 483 00:56:57,400 --> 00:57:04,990 It's dwarfed by orders of magnitude. And so, you know, when we think of foreign forces, I think we all foreign influences. 484 00:57:04,990 --> 00:57:10,650 We also need to think regionally and not just trends regionally as well. 485 00:57:10,650 --> 00:57:16,330 And I hope that you know this question to some extent. Thank you very much. 486 00:57:16,330 --> 00:57:23,050 We have time just for one more question, which comes from another, another colleague of ours. 487 00:57:23,050 --> 00:57:28,060 It's not. I'm not choosing these in a particularly biased way. 488 00:57:28,060 --> 00:57:32,850 Most of the questions have been coming from friends and colleagues here and call it comes from the South and Najaf. 489 00:57:32,850 --> 00:57:42,190 Thank you for joining us. The Saudi question, obviously all this over all the authorities you've been naming are all male religious authorities. 490 00:57:42,190 --> 00:57:46,990 And she wondered whether there were any female preachers or female religious authorities got 491 00:57:46,990 --> 00:57:53,320 involved in this discussion on authoritarian regimes and on on the Arab uprisings more generally. 492 00:57:53,320 --> 00:57:54,640 Absolutely fantastic question. 493 00:57:54,640 --> 00:58:05,940 And so I know her work has also explored the fascinating world of female preachers in the military that as they are known and in Morocco. 494 00:58:05,940 --> 00:58:16,990 So I think those sorts of initiatives like the military that or Turkey has, you know, this entire cohort of female preachers that have emerged. 495 00:58:16,990 --> 00:58:21,610 And I think they're less salient in the political spaces that I'm looking at. 496 00:58:21,610 --> 00:58:31,420 I, you know, I hope this isn't just my myopia, but the people are focussed on it in these sort of top ranking, 497 00:58:31,420 --> 00:58:37,090 highly influential and very often government appointed figures who are both scholars 498 00:58:37,090 --> 00:58:41,530 of higher ups and well-established in the academic credentials as it were, 499 00:58:41,530 --> 00:58:45,490 but also politically extremely significant. 500 00:58:45,490 --> 00:58:55,060 And no female scholars, you know, appeared in my radar in either Egypt, which is the main focus of the book for Tunisia. 501 00:58:55,060 --> 00:59:00,190 Tunisia is interesting because for a period, and I don't know if this is still the case. 502 00:59:00,190 --> 00:59:04,720 The spokesperson for another was a woman, a daughter of Russia, the Mucci. 503 00:59:04,720 --> 00:59:10,150 And so those sorts of things do happen occasionally in the political space in places like Tunisia. 504 00:59:10,150 --> 00:59:16,090 But I, you know, even in the political space in Egypt, it seemed to be quite a bit more limited. 505 00:59:16,090 --> 00:59:25,060 And you know, this is an ongoing complaint I have. I'm speaking for a moment with my seminarian, pressed on with the fact that, you know, 506 00:59:25,060 --> 00:59:29,860 I have colleagues who went and studied the in the female sections, 507 00:59:29,860 --> 00:59:34,210 and they said that the teaching was atrocious and it was an afterthought, obviously. 508 00:59:34,210 --> 00:59:44,770 And you know, that sort of reality means that serious theologians and jurists are unlikely to be produced in those sorts of centres. 509 00:59:44,770 --> 00:59:49,750 I'd like to be proven wrong and I'd like to be shown to be ignorant about that. I would welcome that. 510 00:59:49,750 --> 00:59:54,310 But unfortunately, to my knowledge, that seems to be the reality at the moment. 511 00:59:54,310 --> 00:59:58,510 And may it change as it were? Thank you so much. 512 00:59:58,510 --> 01:00:04,750 Yes, that may change. I'm afraid the clock is against this and we've come to the end of our hour. 513 01:00:04,750 --> 01:00:12,010 But thank you so much, Asomugha, for a fascinating talk and been able to boil down quite to a really quite complex 514 01:00:12,010 --> 01:00:16,300 issue into such an accessible and such understandable and such an interesting way. 515 01:00:16,300 --> 01:00:16,720 Thank you. 516 01:00:16,720 --> 01:00:25,120 And I'm I'm sure they are many people out there, myself included, who will be going out to buy the book fairly soon after this this seminar. 517 01:00:25,120 --> 01:00:27,450 And so thank you. Thank you. Very much. 518 01:00:27,450 --> 01:00:35,250 Thank you so much for having me, Michael, and I really want to thank all of the I mean, I was really shocked by the number of attendees, incidentally. 519 01:00:35,250 --> 01:00:41,280 So I really want to thank everyone who stuck it out for the entire hour as well and for your interest in the book. 520 01:00:41,280 --> 01:00:47,250 And I hope that it's something which I mean, I don't want to dissuade you from buying, 521 01:00:47,250 --> 01:00:55,320 but I understand the Oxford Scholarship online will be sort of producing the PDF of it in a few short months. 522 01:00:55,320 --> 01:00:59,610 And so that should be downloadable from your university networks at some point. 523 01:00:59,610 --> 01:01:07,980 Right. So but if you if you would like to buy the expensive hardback, please feel free to use the discount codes. 524 01:01:07,980 --> 01:01:16,320 But I won't be sharing on my Twitter, and I'm sure it will be shared on the YouTube video of this video as well. 525 01:01:16,320 --> 01:01:21,030 We'll make sure we put it on, but thank you so much for putting them up because that's that does make a big difference. 526 01:01:21,030 --> 01:01:27,480 So thank you very much again and again. I join me this summer and thank you all of you for joining us this week. 527 01:01:27,480 --> 01:01:33,510 Please do join us next next week when we have another colleague, at least Centennial, culturally speaking, but in between. 528 01:01:33,510 --> 01:01:37,830 John, thanks so much for joining us and have a wonderful weekend. Thank you again for Selma. 529 01:01:37,830 --> 01:01:48,668 Thank you. Bye bye.