The contemporary political history of the modern Arab world

Announcing the online lecture series, “Rethinking Memory and Historiography of the Crusades in the Middle East,” organized by Dr. Ahmed M. Sheir (Postdoc Researcher/ Fritz Thyssen Fellow, Centrum für Nah- und Mittelost-Studien (CNMS)/ Fachgebiet Islamwissenschaft, Philipps-Uniiverrsiittät Marburg)

Held on Thursdays, 5:00 pm CET (Germany) via WEBEX of Marburg University: https://uni-marburg.webex.com

Scholars of oil-based rentierism otherwise dubbed as 'the oil curse', claim that the political systems of such countries and their leaderships cannot be taken as serious development focused agents. In a similar contention, proponents of western-style democracy support the idea that 'sheikhdom' leadership based on patriarchic inheritance is destructive to development, while yet another section of scholars claims that Islam, as a faith, is in general anti-development. In order to broaden the debate on this subject, this study uses the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as a case of a country that has achieved a tremendous success in various development areas and contrary to the old view of the three types of critics mentioned here. Introduction The United Arab Emirates (UAE) became the youngest state in the Middle East after gaining independence from the UK in 1971 and creating in 1972 a federation of seven small emirates. It has an average population of about 5 million, including a large number of expatriates who also constitute the majority of the workforce in the country. However, the International Monetary Fund had projected the population of the UAE to reach up to six million by 2015, increasing from 5.4 million in 2010, and that an increase in the number of expatriate population, considered over 80 per cent of the country's workforce, comprises the main growth drivers within the various areas of the country's economic development (IMF, 2011). The island city of Abu Dhabi is the capital of the UAE. Although it is the seat of the federal government, Abu Dhabi, as an emirate, is also composed of several regions which make it the largest among its federated sister emirates. With most of the oil and gas produced in the country extracted within the geographical boundary of the island, Abu Dhabi is indeed the richest individual emirate, making the UAE the second largest oil exporting country in the Middle East with a high concentration in the petrochemical industry. Despite Abu Dhabi's natural wealth, many people around the world think of Dubai as the capital of the country. This perception reigns due to Dubai's drastic measures in commercializing its potential in the areas of tourism, real estate, and the maritime business, particularly offering free port facilities for goods destined to other countries in the region and far beyond the Gulf region. As such, Dubai enjoys being the commercial hub of the country and possibly of the entire Gulf region. An attractive policy of short-stay tourist visa system has contributed massively towards Dubai's popularity at the global scene with numerous academic, industrial, commercial as well as professional seminars, workshops, conferences and other high profile celebrity events held in the emirate. The UAE is sometimes lumped together with its Gulf neighbors when the discussion is about political environment and structure of the states in the region. For instance, it is common to hear terms like Gulf Arab States or Arab Gulf States or the Persian Gulf Arab States, referring to the six Arab nations that formed in 1981 the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) consisting of Bahrain, Kuwait, The Sultanate of Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. The grouping up, though providing descriptive similarities, seems to undermine the internal differences the countries have in their social and political structures, leadership selection and even compositions and constitutions of the states (Aartun, 2001). The similarity may be drawn from the patrimonial inheritance of the rulership and other traditional hierarchical factors relating to the patrilineal ascension to the crown. But the distinctness of the UAE from its sister neighbours becomes clear when some consideration is given to the function of the first adjective in the country's name 'United', which symbolizes the federal type of government which the UAE embraces, unlike the other Gulf states. Secondly, the UAE, though a Muslim state, does not have tendencies of adherence to Islamic conservatism as a national political guideline or constitution (Bill & Springborg, 2000). It practices a modest quality of Islam which complies with the principles of the sharia while at the same time harmonizing it with the modern doctrines of contemporary socioeconomic systems. This is to argue that it has opted to adhere to both the principles of the Federation and of the Islamic doctrine, fulfilling simultaneously the requirements of a

This book contains the proceedings of the International conference, “Shifting Identities: Changes in the social, political, and religious structures in the Middle East”, which was held in Cyprus in July 2015. The conference brought together around 50 professors, historians, theologians, social scientists and researchers from over 15 countries including Europe, the USA, and the Middle East. Case studies from Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Iran, and Sweden were presented. Some of these case studies focused on particular community like the Armenians, Syrian orthodox, or Protestants while others studies chose to tackle issues like feminism or Arabism in the Middle East. Several of the articles struggled theologically to find a meaning to what is happening in the aftermath of the so-called Arab Spring showing a way forward. Shifting identities is not a pure theoretical exercise but are related to shifts that were experienced by several of the authors in the course of their biographical journeys.