Research master thesis | Middle Eastern Studies (research) (MA)
open access
This thesis traces the development of the kafala system in Bahrain from its modern origins in the British protectorate era until its reform in the first and second decade of the twenty-first...Show moreThis thesis traces the development of the kafala system in Bahrain from its modern origins in the British protectorate era until its reform in the first and second decade of the twenty-first century. It conducts a historical analysis based on archival evidence to elucidate the intricate interlocking of this trajectory with multiscalar, overlapping, and often competing social, economic, and political transformations. Material incentives, as well as domestic and regional political pressures, played a key role in this formulation. The history uncovered sheds important light on the critical shortcomings of recent reforms to Bahrain’s labour migration regime and the fundamental obstructions to change. It demonstrates that the persistent vulnerability of migrant workers under contemporary structures of kafala is inextricably linked to the workings of the global economy under the capitalist mode of production. Privileging this interconnection as the vantage point from which to consider labour migration regimes in the Gulf is crucial if we are to understand and assess the challenges to and opportunities for change.Show less
Research master thesis | Middle Eastern Studies (research) (MA)
closed access
This thesis provides a detailed case study of the Syrian Archive, the Syrian-led human rights organization that collects, verifies, and contextualizes visual material of human rights violations in...Show moreThis thesis provides a detailed case study of the Syrian Archive, the Syrian-led human rights organization that collects, verifies, and contextualizes visual material of human rights violations in the Syrian conflict. This research draws on diaspora mobilization and social movement theory literature and employs an interpretive approach to thematic analysis to examine how the Syrian Archive contributes to accountability for human rights violations in Syria. The primary data collected are in-depth semi-structured interviews with the Syrian Archive team, in addition to in-depth semi- structured interviews with people working at prominent international organisations in the human rights field. As the findings show, the Syrian Archive contributes to accountability in three ways: by turning digital material into digital evidence, by facilitating political action, and by providing a counter narrative. The interviews with external interviewees from Human Rights Watch, Bellingcat, Amnesty International, and ECCHR reveal the continued impact and mutual dependence that has emerged. The case study of Syrian Archive shows how civil society actors can experiment with new bottom-up possibilities of addressing and pushing for accountability and justice for human rights violations.Show less
Research master thesis | Middle Eastern Studies (research) (MA)
open access
Since the 1990s, the genre of Dutch Islamic children’s literature has seen an impressive boom in terms of quantity and quality. With increasing numbers of publishers active in the field and books...Show moreSince the 1990s, the genre of Dutch Islamic children’s literature has seen an impressive boom in terms of quantity and quality. With increasing numbers of publishers active in the field and books published, the genre is growing with an exponential speed and continuously transforming in character. Building upon the gradually developing field of study that deals with the everyday lives of Muslims in ‘the West’, this study provides an exploratory insight into a specific manifestation of the daily experiences of Muslims in diaspora: Islamic children’s literature. Through 25 qualitative in-depth interviews with those actors most closely involved in the phenomenon, being publishers, authors, and producers, this explorative study aimed to understand the main intentions and motivations for both producing and using these books. Providing a bottom-up account of the phenomenon, this research intended to answer the following research question: What explains the increasing popularity of Dutch Islamic children’s literature since its emergence in the 1990s? With a new generation of Dutch Muslims, born and raised in The Netherlands themselves, facing an increasing need for renewed pedagogical materials that fit contemporary Dutch context, the genre of Islamic children’s literature is the materialised response to a need for educational and socialising materials in a non-Muslim majority context. Characterised by a diversity of both actors involved and books produced, the genre of Islamic children’s literature serves multiple functions, ranging from the strict didactic teaching of virtue to playful modes of representation. Serving both as a complementary tool in the Islamic upbringing of a future generation at home and as a means of strengthening children in their Dutch Muslim identity, the genre is continuously adaptive to the needs of its ‘BRUNA’ Muslim audience.Show less
Research master thesis | Middle Eastern Studies (research) (MA)
open access
This project investigates how memory contributes to the reproduction and contestation of processes of economic dispossession in Tunisia, examining more specifically the relation between memory and...Show moreThis project investigates how memory contributes to the reproduction and contestation of processes of economic dispossession in Tunisia, examining more specifically the relation between memory and political economy in two directions. First, it investigates the dispossession of memory, that is: how the top-down manufacturing and mobilisation of collective memory has consolidated feelings of marginalisation and exclusion among subordinated individuals and social groups, aiming to perpetuate existing social and economic hierarchies. Second, this study also seeks to explore the memory of dispossession, particularly with reference to how the memory of dispossession is experienced from below and eventually contested. Building on Gramscian notions of hegemony, the project argues that struggles over memory are a crucial aspect in processes of dispossession, their reproduction from above, as well as challenges to them from below in Tunisia.Show less
Research master thesis | Middle Eastern Studies (research) (MA)
open access
Al-Hashd al-Shaʿbi or the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) is an umbrella of armed groups in Iraq that united in 2014 in cooperation with the government in order to defeat IS. Officially, the...Show moreAl-Hashd al-Shaʿbi or the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) is an umbrella of armed groups in Iraq that united in 2014 in cooperation with the government in order to defeat IS. Officially, the organization is under the control of the Prime-Minister (PM). In reality, however, it has retained operational and administrative independence, often directly ignoring orders from the PM and even attacking foreign forces in Iraq and the region. This thesis addresses the question of how the PMF has been able to retain much of its independence throughout the six years of its existence, in which the government has often attempted to rein it in. It also considers the implications of the PMF’s independence for the notion of the sovereignty of the Iraqi government. It finds that the PMF is not a singular organization, but rather a collective of independent groups that vie with each other for funding, influence, and power. The key grouping within the PMF is that of the Iranian-backed Hashd. Many other PMF groups rely on this alliance because of its control of the PMF’s central administration, which distributes funding. Iran and its allies in Iraq benefit from the PMF’s independence from potentially anti-Iranian PMs, and the cover and plausible deniability that the lack of oversight grants them. This is abetted by the support the PMF enjoys in the Iraqi parliament through its own presence there, and through political opportunists or pro-Iranian ideologues. The PMF uses its military, social, and political power to actively undermine the government in different ways. Iraq’s security sector can only properly be understood as an ‘armed political order’ in which different actors and groupings continuously vie for influence in violent and non-violent ways. The office of the PM is one venue for contestation, and the person of the PM only one of its actors. Coercive organizations of all sorts participate in this contestation. An anti-governmental Hashd group is not inherently different in this regard than a unit of the Iraqi Army. Its position is different because of the different structural constraints on both groups, and their alignment towards the government. The competition between the different Hashd groups and the recent protests which led to the appointment of PM al-Kadhimi indicate that no one – including the pro-Iranian camp – is truly dominant in the Iraqi armed order.Show less
Research master thesis | Middle Eastern Studies (research) (MA)
open access
2023-01-29T00:00:00Z
During the summer of 1958 Iran, Israel and Turkey concluded a secret agreement to share intelligence data and information gathering techniques. This agreement, the Periphery Pact (‘Pact’), was...Show moreDuring the summer of 1958 Iran, Israel and Turkey concluded a secret agreement to share intelligence data and information gathering techniques. This agreement, the Periphery Pact (‘Pact’), was initiated by Israel who was anxious to establish relationships with countries on the periphery of the ring of hostile Arab countries that encircled it. The Pact signatories, engaged in a diplomatic marketing initiative to sell the Pact to their Cold War sponsor, the United States in the belief that US support for the Pact was beneficial. Existing research tells us little about how the United States reacted to this sales pitch or what US policy was towards the Pact. My research of the US diplomatic archives indicate that the US response to the Periphery Pact arrangements was decidedly lukewarm. This appears inconsistent with US regional policy which was to stimulate the creation of regional defense arrangements by its regional allies to counter Soviet threats to the region. I argue that the response of the United States to the Pact may not be a complete surprise if analyzed in the light of the US response to the Baghdad Pact, a contemporaneous defense arrangement in the region. I also investigate how the US intelligence services reacted to the Pact. This aspect of the US policy towards the Pact is under-researched. This is surprising given Israel’s track record in clandestine diplomacy and its use of its regional intelligence gathering capabilities as an argument when marketing the Periphery Pact to US officials. My research indicates that the CIA displayed more interest in and provided resources to the intelligence sharing mechanism of the Periphery Pact. It may well be that the United States used clandestine diplomacy in parallel, rather than as a substitute, for normal diplomatic channels.Show less
Research master thesis | Middle Eastern Studies (research) (MA)
closed access
The discussions surrounding the authenticity of the extra-Qur'ānic traditions in Islam has been a prevalent theme in the scholarship for the last six decades. This thesis is about the modern...Show moreThe discussions surrounding the authenticity of the extra-Qur'ānic traditions in Islam has been a prevalent theme in the scholarship for the last six decades. This thesis is about the modern polemics surrounding the parts of the Islamic tradition with supposed Jewish origins, also known as the “Isrāʾīliyyāt”. The term Isrāʾīliyyāt has been the subject of numerous religious-polemical works since the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with Modernist Muslim commentators arguing for the ejection of this material to make way for a return to pristine Islam. Although such arguments against Isrāʾīliyyāt find considerable coverage in the academic literature, the dynamic exegetical scene in Turkey is often neglected. Highlighting the discussions in Turkey, this research aims to bring out the contemporary debates about Isrāʾīliyyāt therein with a study of the ‘new media’, a platform that is widely used by preachers from different ideological camps. This thesis seeks to situate the Turkish case within the larger Middle Eastern context of Modernist Islam by discovering the connections between exegetes from different localities and eras, aiming to locate the intellectual influences of the figures that are studied.Show less
Research master thesis | Middle Eastern Studies (research) (MA)
closed access
The colonial partition of the Middle East is one of the most recurrent topics of the scholarship on the region. In the last decade, many scholars have shifted their attention from the diplomatic...Show moreThe colonial partition of the Middle East is one of the most recurrent topics of the scholarship on the region. In the last decade, many scholars have shifted their attention from the diplomatic and military history of these borders to their economic and social significance. This thesis aims at completing this shift in regard to the boundary between the British Mandate on Palestine and the French Mandate on Syria and Lebanon. Assuming a borderland perspective, this research looks into the different ways in which local, regional and colonial actors engaged with the border and its administration. It reconstructs the evolution of state border practices on both sides in the years from the British redeployment along the OET line in 1919 until the demise of the Palestine Mandate in 1948. Looking into the agency of a wide range of actors, including peasants, travelers, smugglers and illegal migrants, this thesis argues that the relation the indigenous population had with the border cannot be understood solely through an oppositional frame. Rather, it suggests that this relation was extremely dynamic, and that the subversion of the new territorial order went along with forms of compliance with state regulations and exploitation of the limits of state jurisdictions.Show less
Research master thesis | Middle Eastern Studies (research) (MA)
open access
This thesis is a study on a 15th century medical guide for travellers written by the physician Ibn al-Amshati for the Mamluk vizier al-Barizi. The thesis includes a bio-bibliographical survey of...Show moreThis thesis is a study on a 15th century medical guide for travellers written by the physician Ibn al-Amshati for the Mamluk vizier al-Barizi. The thesis includes a bio-bibliographical survey of Ibn al-Amshati, the analysis of the contents of his manual "al-Isfar 'an hukm al-Asfar" and a comparison with earlier works of the same genre.Show less
