Featured Research

The paper provides a socio-political context analysis to outline Al-Azhar’s discourse on transgender identities and its influence on law and policy in Egypt. Transgender identities in Egypt represent an issue governed by Islamic Sharia more than anything else. Scholars at Al-Azhar, Egypt’s highest Islamic authority, viewed transgender identities as a danger to the fabric of society if not regulated. Thus, in the 1980s, several Fatwas were issued to examine the compatibility of transgender identities with Sharia.

Explanations of the authoritarian retrenchment after Egypt’s 2011 Revolution invoke either the regime’s repressive advantage over ‘leaderless’ mobilisation and civic activists, or insufficient preparations and radicalism on the part of opposition groups. Both explanations are unsatisfactory. First, because despite being ‘reformist’, opposition groups’ demands were perceived as radical challenges to regimes before, during and after the uprisings.

Turkish foreign policy in Afghanistan dates to the changing dynamics in the Ottoman Empire's foreign policy, particularly following the Russian Empire's wars and the support of the British Empire during the middle of the nineteenth century. The Ottoman Empire then began communicating with the Durrani and Barakzai dynasties in Afghanistan through different missions from Istanbul and Mumbai to Kabul.

This article discusses the stereotypical misrepresentations held about Jordanians being ‘humourless,’ and how had the 1989 political opening affected the production and reception of humour in the country. I argue that the difficult economic conditions and increasing pressures after the 1989 political opening have produced more humour and carnivalesque resistance against power and the government in Jordan.

As Middle East-focused researchers we often feel that our topics of interest, methods, and the theories we draw on are poorly received in ‘mainstream’ Political Science and International Relations. Pamela Abbott and I found striking empirical evidence for this. Our article maps and analyses publication patterns of Middle East Studies-related scholarship in 13 ‘top’ Political Science & IR journals, providing a more precise analysis of the marginality of ‘regional’ scholarship in Political Science. This marginalisation on is even starker at three different levels: 1. the use of qualitative evidence, 2. the use of qualitative methods and 3. the use of non-positivist or Marxian theoretical frameworks, all of which are rare-to-non-existent. We hope the article will be of use to researchers but also in classrooms, e.g. analysing the politics of knowledge production in Social Science.