As Obama begins his second term, this article takes stock of his foreign policy approach towards the Middle East. It lays out four big arguments. First, Obama’s foreign policy in the Middle East has demonstrated more continuity with the past than real change. While shifting his approach significantly from Bush’s, Obama has adopted a centrist—realist approach towards the region, consistent with the dominant US foreign policy orientation. Second, from Palestinian—Israeli peace to Afghanistan, Obama’s conduct testifies to the structural—institutional continuity of US foreign policy. More than in any other region in the world, presidential policy in the Middle East is hampered by institutional, bureaucratic and domestic politics. America’s dysfunctional political culture has imposed severe constraints on Obama’s ability to pursue an even-handed approach towards the enduring and preeminent Palestine question. Third, despite Obama’s lofty rhetoric about a new start in relations between the United States and Muslim countries, the Middle East does not rank very high on his agenda. Putting America’s fiscal house in order and renewing its long-term economic strength have been Obama’s priorities. From the outset, Obama has been shifting US foreign policy priorities away from the Middle East to the Pacific and Asia where he and his aides believe that America’s future lies. Finally, the article argues that the US finds itself in a similar position to that of Great Britain after the Second World War, at the beginning of the end of its hegemonic moment in the Middle East. The end of American hegemony in the region stems from internal and external causes, including an awakened public opinion in the Middle East, the emergence of geostrategic and geo-economic regional powers with assertive foreign policies, America’s relative economic decline and the high costs of war, and the shift in US foreign policy priorities to the Asia—Pacific region.

Throughout the twentieth century, the treatment of religion in the social sciences had been heavily shaped by the premises of modernization theory. This theory was responsible for the development of two concepts—the secularization thesis and the traditional school of civil society—which deny any space for religious content and actors in the public and political spheres. Both concepts rely on the exceptional experience of the west and share deterministic, static and essentially pessimistic assumptions regarding the ability of religion and the state to mutually coexist in democratic settings. In view of the above Israel’s treatment of religion stands out. Israel challenged the premises of the secularization thesis and instead granted a significant official role to religious contents and actors in the state. Contrary to common beliefs, this research demonstrates that Israel’s policy resulted in mainly positive consequences and contributed to the stabilization of its democratic regime. Furthermore, Israel’s inclusive policy on religion proved successful in containing and isolating mounting religious challenges to the state in recent decades and in securing the stability of the democratic regime. Israel’s account reveals two important lessons about the nature of the state-religion relationship. First, it offers a dynamic and mutually constitutive perception of the relationship between the state and religion. Second, it advocates development of a case-sensitive approach toward religion, depending on specific social, historical, and cultural attributes. These lessons might prove highly relevant for post Arab spring societies in transition.

This article considers how Arab intellectuals represent the United States and American foreign policy in their editorial contributions to Arabic newspapers. As a case study, it examines Arab intellectuals’ reactions to the George W. Bush Administration’s campaign to effect democratic change in the Middle East, as articulated in the Administration’s 2004 Greater Middle East Initiative (hereafter GMEI or Initiative). I argue that the predominantly hostile reactions to the GMEI stemmed mainly from a closed and negative image of the United States permeating Arab intellectual circles. This negative image is the product of the history of American policy towards the region and, equally important, of the beliefs, values, and formative experiences of Arab intellectuals. The article concludes by addressing ways to ameliorate this image.

Using data from a national survey of 501 Arab American women, this study examines the extent to which family behavior mediates the influence of religion on women’s labor force activity. Prior research on families has largely overlooked the role of religion in influencing women’s labor force decisions, particularly at different stages of the life cycle. The analysis begins to address this gap by examining whether religious affiliation and religiosity have direct relationships to women’s work behaviors, or whether they primarily operate through family behaviors at different phases of the life course. The results show that religiosity exerts a negative influence on women’s labor force participation, but only when children are present in the home. Among women with no children, religiosity has no effect on employment.

Because certain movements in the Arab world of the 1930s and 1940s showed similarities to Mussolini’s and Hitler s regimes, historians have drawn comparisons with the fascist and National Socialist dictatorships. But not even those arguing for the concept of a “generic fascism” are able to wholeheartedly subsume these movements under their fascist rubric. Fascism and National Socialism evolved in Europe, were shaped by the mood at the fin de siècle, became effective after the First World War in a unique political, social, economic and cultural atmosphere, and only lost their appeal in 1945 at the conclusion of the Second World War. They flourished in industrialized societies and aimed—in novel and twisted ways—at reversing the liberalization of 19 th -century Europe. They emphasized power, national rebirth, military order and efficiency; and they were, in the case of Germany, driven by anti-Semitism and racism, resulting in totalitarian rule with genocidal consequences. National-socialist and fascist movements and regimes required the atmosphere and culture of liberal democracy as a foil—and liberal democracy was virtually nonexistent in the Near and Middle East. The preconditions for fascism were thus lacking. Colonial rule was still in place, traditional culture still prevailed in these mainly rural societies, and their small bourgeois parties showed greater allegiance to their clans than to liberal and secular ideologies.

These memoirs of the AAUG by one of its leaders, and a former president, focus on its shortcomings, as well as the role of women within the organization. It also addresses the issues of secular Arab nationalism and the more recent phenomena of Islamophobia.

This article operates on the distinction between Islamism and Islam and asks questions about how this is handled in Western studies. Islam is a religion and a civilization that deserves respect, while Islamism is a political ideology to be subjected to critical inquiry. The article is based on the enlightened Muslim thought that dissociates Islamic faith from its use as a legitimation in politics. The article shares also the dismissal of orientalism and Islamophobia, but it is critical of the instrumental use of both to silence criticism, as well as their reversal into the other extreme of an orientalism in reverse (Islamophilia). I argue that the prevailing analysis in Western scholarship on Islam not only ignores the distinction between Islamism and Islam but also falls into the trap of this reversal. The article discusses Islamism and Islamist movements that succeeded in hijacking the Arab Spring in the pursuit of a shariʿa state. The prevailing narrative not only fails to understand the Islamist shariʿatization of Islam, but also that Islamist shariʿa is neither Qur’anic shariʿa, nor classical shariʿa. I conclude with the presentation of Islamology and enlightened Muslim thought as alternative approaches for the study of Islamism, pleading for freedom of speech in this field of study.

This article traces the development of antisemitism in the Arab world, outlining major clusters of the phenomenon—Islamic anti-Jewish motifs; classic Western antisemitic tropes; and major themes in Holocaust discourse. It also highlights Arab voices critical of Arab antisemitic discourse, bigotry, and incitement against Jews—a subject largely neglected in the scholarly literature thus far. As in other societies, Arab antisemitism is not a phenomenon that is isolated from other social and political trends, but is part and parcel of the ongoing debate between competing worldviews.