Papers by Sotiris Roussos
Studies in World Christianity
After the eruption of civil strife in Syria and Iraq, widespread violence and harassment, mainly ... more After the eruption of civil strife in Syria and Iraq, widespread violence and harassment, mainly by jihadist groups, came to substantiate fears for the extinction of the Christians. Various jihadist groups have perpetrated an ongoing ethnic cleansing of Christians. The paper will examine another alternative to co-optation, a survival strategy that has developed among the Christians in Iraq and Syria, that of armed resistance and the organisation of militias. This militarisation trend reveals serious inner-communal disagreements. Caught among regional antagonisms and suspicious of the ascendent Sunni, Shia and Kurdish political aspirations and nationalisms, the idea of self-determination and self-government in an autonomous zone around Nineveh seems the best alternative to state co-optation. The paper will also look into the evolving relationship of the Christian communities with the state, the Muslim majorities, the other non-Muslim communities and the international community in a s...
The Journal of Modern Hellenism, 2010
Islam in International Relations, 2018
This chapter explores the strategy of military conquest, administrative consolidation and territo... more This chapter explores the strategy of military conquest, administrative consolidation and territorial expansion of the so-called ‘Islamic State’ (IS), claiming that IS constitutes a hybrid formation that overcomes the dichotomy between the secular and the religious. However, contrary to the Habermasian western vantage-point views of postsecularism as a normative problem-solving process, which would lead to a peaceful inclusion of religion into a secular society, it claims that IS’s postsecularity -and particularly its notion of ‘mobile territoriality’- appropriates and transforms secular structures and idioms, in order for the religious to become translatable to various sections of the society.
Homelands and Diasporas, 2008
The Journal of the Middle East and Africa, 2014
The recent Arab rebellions have underscored the rapid decline of the Christian population in the ... more The recent Arab rebellions have underscored the rapid decline of the Christian population in the Middle East. More than a century ago, during the late nineteenth-century globalization process, Christians seemed to flourish in the Middle East, becoming major agents of Arab nationalism and playing a significant role in the building of modernity in most of the Arab Middle East. Eastern Christians’ eroded dhimmitude (a situation where non-Muslims are being allowed to retain their religious beliefs under certain restrictions) in the nineteenth century was most important in hybrid regimes in which Western forms of government and civil law coexisted with different systems of customary law and representation. This article compares nineteenth-century globalization and the globalization process of the post–Cold War era and explores how the differences between the two came to affect the position of Christians in Arab Middle Eastern societies.
Foreign Policy Under Austerity, 2016
In the last decade, Turkey has been perceived, both in Greece and Israel, as assuming a leading r... more In the last decade, Turkey has been perceived, both in Greece and Israel, as assuming a leading role in the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean through economic and political as well as ideological influence. Israel, in particular, feels alienated from Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (AKP) policy towards political Islam, and isolated in the region. As a result, its political elite is in search of new alliances in the Eastern Mediterranean. Meanwhile, Greece’s strategic concerns are heavily influenced by the inability of the European Union (EU) to build a comprehensive and integrated solution to the economic and social crisis in the European South and the poor results yielded by the Europeanisation of Greek-Turkish relations in terms of resolving bilateral territorial disputes in the Aegean or over the Cyprus issue.
International journal for the Study of the Christian Church, 2010
... ciation of the higher clergy with political parties,12 among which one of great symbolic impo... more ... ciation of the higher clergy with political parties,12 among which one of great symbolic importance is that of Archbishop Damaskinos Papandreou (18901949), who evolved into an Ethnarch (Father of the Nation) and was appointed Viceroy, until the return of King George II in ...
Religions
By the end of the 20th century, after great political upheavals, two world wars, the decolonizati... more By the end of the 20th century, after great political upheavals, two world wars, the decolonization process and political, social and scientific revolutions, it is hard to miss that the world is in a deep de-secularization process. In the Middle East, this process has taken multiple trajectories and has made geopolitics of religion central in reshaping regional issues and in restructuring modes of international politics and international system’s intervention in the Middle East.
Middle East Bulletin, 2021
A Special Issue on the Arab Spring with a fresh approach focusing on countries and movements tha... more A Special Issue on the Arab Spring with a fresh approach focusing on countries and movements that weren't the epicenter of the uprisings i.e. the Gulf monarchies, Lebanon, Iran, Morocco, Turkey, Jordan, the Kurdish and the Palestinian movement. Also articles on the European policy and the Arab Spring in theater and the art of graffiti.
MIDDLE EAST BULLETIN, 2019
Published articles (peer reviewed) by Sotiris Roussos
Journal of Modern Hellenism, 2010
International Journal for The Study of The Christian Church, 2005
... the Church of Greece. The latter, and particularly Archbishop Christodoulos, was very active.... more ... the Church of Greece. The latter, and particularly Archbishop Christodoulos, was very active. It was perhaps the first time that the Church of Greece had played a decisive role in the Patriarchal election. During the 1980s and ...
Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, 2009
The Journal of the Middle East and Africa, Aug 2014
The recent Arab rebellions have underscored the rapid decline of the Christian population in the ... more The recent Arab rebellions have underscored the rapid decline of the Christian population in the Middle East. More than a century ago, during the late nineteenth-century globalization process, Christians seemed to flourish in the Middle East, becoming major agents of Arab nationalism and playing a significant role in the building of modernity in most of the Arab Middle East. Eastern Christians’ eroded "dhimmitude" in the nineteenth century was most important in hybrid regimes in which Western forms of government and civil law coexisted with different systems of customary law and representation. This article compares nineteenth-century globalization and the globalization process of the post–Cold War era and explores how the differences between the two came to affect the position of Christians in Arab Middle Eastern societies.
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Papers by Sotiris Roussos
Published articles (peer reviewed) by Sotiris Roussos
well as by new security threats such as illegal migration. Another factor in the equation is possible new opportunities for hydrocarbon exploitation in the Eastern Mediterranean.