Book Review: Daron Acemoglu ve James A. Robinson, The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies and The Faith of Liberty, New York, Penguin Press, 2019.

Acemoglu and Robinson’s new book starts with a preoccupation with threats to liberty and ends with a set of paeans to the capable state. In this sense, it is a testament to where public sentiment has been moving during the past generation. In the United States today, more than half of those born in the late twentieth century—the so-called millennials—consider themselves socialists, and more than half of the voting population want to see more state intervention, not less. Thus, it is not surprising that when the authors find the “narrow corridor”—the optimal balance between state and society—it is plastered with portraits of those who have built strong, democratic states that promote economic redistribution while encouraging political compromise. Most, but not all, are Scandinavian.While we undoubtedly have much to learn from the Scandinavians, it is also important to note, as the authors do throughout their book, that different histories result in different trajectories and different concerns. Historically, the Scandinavian countries have high levels of social equality, political participation, and cultural cohesion. In a European sense, and even more in a global sense, they are exceptions. What is more surprising, and therefore even more worthy of study, is how Germany and Japan—two big countries that suffered long periods of war and political oppression in the modern era—have moved into the narrow corridor in which state and society expand together and therefore jointly meet and handle challenges as they occur. This picture is of course not perfect; Germany experiences rising levels of right-wing nationalism and xenophobia, and Japan’s conservatism prevents necessary economic change. Nonetheless, the two countries are examples of how (and how quickly) countries can move from Thomas Hobbes’ “state of warre,” as defined in Leviathan (1651), to somewhere pretty close to the Stockholm archipelago.Acemoglu and Robinson emphasize the structural reasons why such transformations can happen, and they are undoubtedly right much of the time: the rule of law, the simultaneous expansion of state capacity and societal control (which they, after Lewis Carroll, call the “red queen effect”), the social and cultural ability to compromise, and the creation of economic surplus that benefits everyone (though not necessarily to the same degree). The book seems weaker, however, when discussing the kind of leadership that is necessary to embody and further these processes. Political courage (a rare commodity at the best of times) and the ability to construct narratives that promote necessary change from within are among them. Organizations matter in these contests, and the authors are entirely right in pointing to trade unions, for instance, as essential components for well-balanced social progress. But individual leadership also matters, because it can at times mean the difference between a shackled Leviathan, a state that does its society’s bidding, and state collapse or tyranny.A more serious flaw in the book is its relative inattention to interests, material or otherwise, as a motive for moving outside the narrow corridor. Acemoglu and Robinson seem to indicate that the main reasons for not achieving the productive equilibriums that they cherish are weak institutions, lack of rights, and economic concentration. But what if the main problem today is that the basic economic system has created entrenched interests that go well beyond the inequalities and Wall Street malfunctions to which the authors refer? Could it be that the form of capitalism practiced in much of the world today, especially in the United States, is contrary to the balance that Acemoglu and Robinson seek, because it keeps producing private interests so strong and so effective that no state or society can control them? The authors hint at such a more fundamental problem at the end of the book, but they do not discuss it in full.This bring us back to the book’s starting point about whether human freedom can be balanced against overmighty governments. Crucial as this issue undoubtedly is, concepts of freedom are culturally determined and come in many forms. But more important today, as witnessed by the recent pandemic and the social disasters that followed in its wake, is that too much preoccupation with individual freedom can prevent rational, collective responses to public-health emergencies, embedded economic inequalities, or racist oppression. Acemoglu and Robinson’s book is a rich and fascinating inquiry into the criteria for good government and, in the end, delivers a much-needed defense of a strong, capable state. It will serve as a good starting point for discussion, even after the ground has shifted further with regard to their main preoccupations.

The DebateQuestion 1: Various commentators have frequently invoked the importance of moderate Muslims and the role that they can play in fighting extremism in the Muslim world. But it is not clear who is a moderate Muslim. The recent cancellation of Tariq Ramadan’s visa to the United States, the raids on several American Muslim organizations, and the near marginalization of mainstream American Muslims in North America pose the following question: If moderate Muslims are critical to an American victory in the war on terror, then why does the American government frequently take steps that undermine moderate Muslims? Perhaps there is a lack of clarity about who the moderate Muslims are. In your view, who are these moderate Muslims and what are their beliefs and politics?
 GEF: Who is a moderate Muslim? That depends on whom you ask and what that person’s (or government’s) agenda is. Moderate is also a quite relative term, understood differently by different people. For our purposes here, let’s examine two basically different approaches to this question: an American view and a Middle Eastern view of what characterizes a moderate Muslim. Most non-Muslims would probably define a moderate Muslim as anyone who believes in democracy, tolerance, a non-violent approach to politics, and equitable treatment of women at the legal and social levels. Today, the American government functionally adds several more criteria: Amoderate Muslim is one who does not oppose the country’s strategic and geopolitical ambitions in the world, who accepts American interests and preferences within the world order, who believes that Islam has no role in politics, and who avoids any confrontation – even political – with Israel. There are deep internal contradictions and warring priorities within the American approach to the Muslim world. While democratization and “freedom” is the Bush administration’s self-proclaimed global ideological goal, the reality is that American demands for security and the war against terror take priority over the democratization agenda every time. Democratization becomes a punishment visited upon American enemies rather than a gift bestowed upon friends. Friendly tyrants take priority over those less cooperative moderate and democratic Muslims who do not acquiesce to the American agenda in the Muslim world. Within the United States itself, the immense domestic power of hardline pro-Likud lobbies and the Israel-firsters set the agenda on virtually all discourse concerning the Muslim world and Israel. This group has generally succeeded in excluding from the public dialogue most Muslim (or even non-Muslim) voices that are at all critical of Israel’s policies. This de facto litmus test raises dramatically the threshold for those who might represent an acceptable moderate Muslim interlocutor. The reality is that there is hardly a single prominent figure in the Muslim world who has not at some point voiced anger at Israeli policies against the Palestinians and who has not expressed ambivalence toward armed resistance against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. Thus, few Muslim leaders enjoying public legitimacy in the Muslim world can meet this criterion these days in order to gain entry to the United States to participate in policy discussions. In short, moderate Muslimis subject to an unrealistic litmus test regarding views on Israel that functionally excludes the great majority of serious voices representative of genuine Muslim thinkers in the Middle East who are potential interlocutors. There is no reason to believe that this political framework will change in the United States anytime soon. In my view, a moderate Muslim is one who is open to the idea of evolutionary change through history in the understanding and practice of Islam, one who shuns literalism and selectivism in the understanding of sacred texts. Amoderate would reject the idea that any one group or individual has a monopoly on defining Islam and would seek to emphasize common ground with other faiths, rather than accentuate the differences. Amoderate would try to seek within Islam the roots of those political and social values that are broadly consonant with most of the general values of the rest of the contemporary world. A moderate Muslim would not reject the validity of other faiths. Against the realities of the contemporary Middle East, a moderate Muslim would broadly eschew violence as a means of settling political issues, but still might not condemn all aspects of political violence against state authorities who occupy Muslim lands by force – such as Russia in Chechnya, the Israeli state in the Palestine, or even American occupation forces in Iraq. Yet even here, in principle, a moderate must reject attacks against civilians, women, and children in any struggle for national liberation. Moderates would be open to cooperation with the West and the United States, but not at the expense of their own independence and sovereignty.

The DebateQuestion 1: Various commentators have frequently invoked the importance of moderate Muslims and the role that they can play in fighting extremism in the Muslim world. But it is not clear who is a moderate Muslim. The recent cancellation of Tariq Ramadan’s visa to the United States, the raids on several American Muslim organizations, and the near marginalization of mainstream American Muslims in North America pose the following question: If moderate Muslims are critical to an American victory in the war on terror, then why does the American government frequently take steps that undermine moderate Muslims? Perhaps there is a lack of clarity about who the moderate Muslims are. In your view, who are these moderate Muslims and what are their beliefs and politics?
 GEF: Who is a moderate Muslim? That depends on whom you ask and what that person’s (or government’s) agenda is. Moderate is also a quite relative term, understood differently by different people. For our purposes here, let’s examine two basically different approaches to this question: an American view and a Middle Eastern view of what characterizes a moderate Muslim. Most non-Muslims would probably define a moderate Muslim as anyone who believes in democracy, tolerance, a non-violent approach to politics, and equitable treatment of women at the legal and social levels. Today, the American government functionally adds several more criteria: Amoderate Muslim is one who does not oppose the country’s strategic and geopolitical ambitions in the world, who accepts American interests and preferences within the world order, who believes that Islam has no role in politics, and who avoids any confrontation – even political – with Israel. There are deep internal contradictions and warring priorities within the American approach to the Muslim world. While democratization and “freedom” is the Bush administration’s self-proclaimed global ideological goal, the reality is that American demands for security and the war against terror take priority over the democratization agenda every time. Democratization becomes a punishment visited upon American enemies rather than a gift bestowed upon friends. Friendly tyrants take priority over those less cooperative moderate and democratic Muslims who do not acquiesce to the American agenda in the Muslim world. Within the United States itself, the immense domestic power of hardline pro-Likud lobbies and the Israel-firsters set the agenda on virtually all discourse concerning the Muslim world and Israel. This group has generally succeeded in excluding from the public dialogue most Muslim (or even non-Muslim) voices that are at all critical of Israel’s policies. This de facto litmus test raises dramatically the threshold for those who might represent an acceptable moderate Muslim interlocutor. The reality is that there is hardly a single prominent figure in the Muslim world who has not at some point voiced anger at Israeli policies against the Palestinians and who has not expressed ambivalence toward armed resistance against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. Thus, few Muslim leaders enjoying public legitimacy in the Muslim world can meet this criterion these days in order to gain entry to the United States to participate in policy discussions. In short, moderate Muslimis subject to an unrealistic litmus test regarding views on Israel that functionally excludes the great majority of serious voices representative of genuine Muslim thinkers in the Middle East who are potential interlocutors. There is no reason to believe that this political framework will change in the United States anytime soon. In my view, a moderate Muslim is one who is open to the idea of evolutionary change through history in the understanding and practice of Islam, one who shuns literalism and selectivism in the understanding of sacred texts. Amoderate would reject the idea that any one group or individual has a monopoly on defining Islam and would seek to emphasize common ground with other faiths, rather than accentuate the differences. Amoderate would try to seek within Islam the roots of those political and social values that are broadly consonant with most of the general values of the rest of the contemporary world. A moderate Muslim would not reject the validity of other faiths. Against the realities of the contemporary Middle East, a moderate Muslim would broadly eschew violence as a means of settling political issues, but still might not condemn all aspects of political violence against state authorities who occupy Muslim lands by force – such as Russia in Chechnya, the Israeli state in the Palestine, or even American occupation forces in Iraq. Yet even here, in principle, a moderate must reject attacks against civilians, women, and children in any struggle for national liberation. Moderates would be open to cooperation with the West and the United States, but not at the expense of their own independence and sovereignty.

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Group Norms and the Attitude–Behaviour Relationship

The topic of the rights of women is a contentious and diverse one; it continues to fuel debates in both Muslim-majority and other countries. In principle, all agree that women are entitled to rights. However, particularly in Muslim-majority countries, there is a fierce debate about how and to what extent women are entitled to certain rights. On the one hand, some scholars advocate for the rights of women without deference to gender inequality or discrimination in comparison with men, while on the other hand, other scholars try to defend the inequalities and discriminations that arise from religious or cultural norms. In this regard, the literature relating to the status of women’s rights in the Muslim-majority countries gives rise to vigorous criticism. Much of this criticism relates only to the domestic laws of specific countries and their interaction with the broader international human rights norms. Although there is some discussion about the status of women’s rights in the Maldives, this discussion occurs only in Non-Governmental Organizations (both local and international) and in international forums; apart from an occasional passing mention of the Maldives in other areas of debate, thus far, there has been no academic discourse devoted to the rights of women in the Maldives and their relationship to the international human rights norms of equality and non-discrimination. This article contributes to filling this gap by studying the status of the two norms of international human rights – equality and non-discrimination, in the Maldivian context. The study hypothesises that there are potential tensions within these two norms arising out of the incorporation of Islam in the Maldivian Constitution and that these tensions can be harmonized through the techniques and tools of Islamic Shari’ah. The research finds that a maqasid-oriented ijtihad (al-ijtihad al-maqasid) could be the most suitable method for easing the tensions arising out of qat’iatil dilala (the explicit rulings in the Quran and Sunnah); in the case of tensions falling under zanni (speculative) sources, the tools of takhayyur and talfiq could bring harmony to the tensions arising. It is suggested here that these methods be used for the reforming and interpretation of laws and by way of fulfilling the international obligations of the Maldives. This article concludes by discussing the challenges and recommendations for overcoming the challenges in order to achieve the main objective of resolving the potential tensions between the Maldivian law and the international human rights norms of equality and non-discrimination.

Adopting the viewpoint suggested by "Hidden Islam", this article offers a glimpse of some tortuous (partly) concealed nuptial paths followed by foreign Muslim intended spouses (regularly or irregularly) settled in Italy, and ponders whether Muslim spouses are rather ‘invisible’ to or ‘unseen’ by academia and state authorities. Moving away from Orientalist and ‘exceptionalist’ theories, the present essay touches on relevant socio-legal phenomena that remain largely a blind spot in previous publications. Relying upon field-collected data and focusing on the manners in which Muslim alien purported spouses overcome religious and legal obstacles when contracting (sharīʿah-compliant) marriages with civil effects on Italian soil, the proposed analysis discloses legal paradoxes and unveils manifold hidden strategies. Facing a dichotomic implementation of the right to marry, Italian Muslim communities and Muslim majority countries’ diplomatic premises may be impelled to creatively interpret state provisions, Islamic laws and Muslim norms. Strategically manoeuvring across diverse state legal systems and unveiling disguised loopholes; non- European Muslim purported spouses can thus be regarded as validly married in compliance with Italian laws. Additionally, Muslim majority countries’ laws intended to impede interreligious nuptial unions, as well as domestic European state provisions aimed to tackle polygamous and sham marriages, can be skilfully managed selectively registering a (civil and/or sharīʿah-compliant) nuptial union in diverse legal systems.

Women can be individuals now.2 Being a woman doesn't matter. We are all individuals who can invest in ourselves and do whatever we desire.3 It has become a truism of women's studies that feminism i...

This paper aims to provide an overview of women’s economic empowerment, its role in Islam, and its importance in achieving sustainable development goals in Islamic countries (esp. given gender equality, among others). A Systematic literature review method was adopted to investigate the challenges in Islamic countries for women’s economic empowerment. The overall research questions were formulated based on a systematic literature review. The prime constructs identified during SLR were the effectiveness of legal and policy frameworks, barriers to accessibility, challenges and opportunities, cultural norms and religious beliefs, and economic well-being. These factors are included in the research questions to address the recent challenges and economic empowerment issues in Islamic countries. The systematic literature review identified 49 relevant research papers that were referred through the PRISMA framework, and these research papers were published between 2018 and 2023. This study finds various factors that hinder women’s economic empowerment in Islamic countries, such as social and cultural norms, education disparities, legal barriers, limited access to finance, and workforce segregation.

Both the social sciences and popular sentiment tend to identify technological innovation with mechanisation, and oppose it to the protected environment of artisan craft guilds. Recent literature has begun to question this truism in favour of a more nuanced view of the attitudes of guilds towards technological change as part of broader debates on the relation between markets and institutions in pre-industrial Europe. Historians of early modern Italy have also increasingly questioned traditional, static views of craft guilds, but their revisionism has focussed less on the history of technology than on other aspects of guild life and structure. This chapter contributes new elements to this revisionist work by examining two crucial sectors of the early modern Venetian economy: silk and glass manufacturing. Both trades underwent profound changes between 1450 and 1800, largely in response to the rise of new, nearby and distant competitors. I focus on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when international competition was especially fierce, and I address the question, not whether craft guilds as a rule favoured or opposed technological innovation, but why different guilds at different times selected some innovations and not others, and how they reshaped their production and market strategies more generally. To approach the relationship between guilds and technology we need to deconstruct both terms: craft guilds differed in their labour composition and in their relations with other guilds, the market, and state authorities; technological change, on the other hand, included new tools, techniques, and production processes, but also new products and organisational forms.

Trad nationalist a/effects

“Why are Muslim-majority countries less peaceful, less democratic, less developed?” This is the question Ahmet Kuru poses and seeks to answer in his Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment. Kuru's quite elaborate and complex causal explanation can be summarized as follows:The Muslim world was once unlike what it is today: specifically, between the eighth and twelfth centuries, it accommodated an ethnically and religiously pluralistic society, nurtured a vibrant intellectual-philosophical life, and made great advances in sciences, agriculture, urban development, theology, and commerce. The Muslim world enjoyed such a long period ofintellectual-scientific and economic progress thanks to the financial strength of merchants based on the vibrant role they played in international trade; the financial and institutional independence of ʿulama (religious scholars); the rulers and their reliance on merchants instead of the ʿulama; and the patronage extended by the rulers to scientists/philosophers. Yet, starting in the tenth century, a complex web of developments, such as the rise of the Shiʿi states, the formation of Sunni orthodoxy, declining agricultural productivity, and the spread of the iqta system, undermined the very conditions that made the Muslim “Golden Ages” possible. The political and economic upheavals that hit the Muslim world eventually pushed the rulers and the ʿulama to forge an alliance by the twelfth century (chapter 4).From the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries the Muslim world endured a series of foreign invasions unleashed successively by the Crusades, the Mongols, and the Timurids. These invasions aggravated the security situation in the Muslim world, pushed the masses into the arms of the military elites, and thus strengthened the militaristic-orientation of the state and further consolidated the ʿulama-state alliance. The same context also facilitated the spread of Sufism and Sasanid political thought. Ostracized by the ʿulama and bereft of state patronage, philosophers were gradually and systematically distanced from the Muslim body politic. Merchants also lost their former financial strength and social status as the economy became more militarized. European merchants became more competitive in the international trade and Sufism and Sasanid political thought spread. The latter ideational forces also added to the strengthening of the ʿulama-state alliance and the weakening of philosophers and merchants. Sasanid political thought legitimized the ʿulama-state alliance by promoting the idea that the state and religion are inseparable. Sasanid political thought also idealized a particular social hierarchy that envisioned a lower social status for merchants and thus discouraged commerce. As a parallel development, Sufism undermined philosophy and displaced the latter's rationalism with mysticism (chapter 5).As of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Muslims could still establish major world empires, such as the Ottoman Empire, the Safavid Empire, and the Mughal Empire. Yet these empires could not, and in fact did not, even intend to revitalize the intellectual and commercial life the Muslim world once had. With the continued support of the state, ʿulama dominated the educational system and prevented the reflourishing of philosophy. The ʿulama even prevented the adoption of the new printing technology and stemmed the spread of literacy among the masses. Already weakened in the previous centuries, the merchants could neither challenge the ʿulama-state alliance nor recover their former vibrancy and political influence. In fact, by capitulating to foreign powers and granting trade concessions the ruling elites even further weakened the merchants in the Muslim world. In addition to actively opposing any step that might revitalize intellectual and commercial life, the ʿulama also crafted the economic institutions and laws that hindered the long-term economic development of the Muslim world (chapter 6).The Muslim world eventually fell under the political, economic, and cultural hegemony of Europe, with only a few regions escaping direct European colonization. Even though Muslim statesmen introduced extensive modernization reforms—for example, in the Ottoman Empire—they failed to stop the balance of power from shifting in favor of Europe. The failure of modernization reforms was in large part due to the top-down nature of reforms, which, even though they weakened the ʿulama-state class and created a new literate class, they focused solely on strengthening the state, not on social forces, such as free and critical thinkers/intellectuals and merchants, who could have generated economic development in the Muslim world. In other words, the reforms failed to address the root causes of why the Muslim world fell behind the West and continued to keep the agents that could have worked to revitalize Muslim intellectual and economic life weak (chapter 7).To reiterate the causal explanation Kuru proposes, the long-term consequence of the ʿulama-state alliance, forged by the twelfth century, and the consequent marginalization of intellectuals and merchants largely explains the economic underdevelopment of the Muslim world. This failure, in turn, hindered the development of democracy and contributed to the continued resilience of authoritarianism in the Muslim world. Authoritarianism has taken a peculiar form in the Muslim world, embracing an inward-looking developmental model with heavy state involvement in economy. This peculiar form of authoritarianism subsequently generated violence expressed in various forms, and including not only the interstate, but also intrastate, conflicts in the Muslim world. In a more concise formulation, Kuru suggests the ʿulama-state alliance built by the twelfth century brought economic underdevelopment, which served only to sustain authoritarianism, and authoritarianism generated violence (chapters 1–3).Kuru's causal explanation is in large part path-dependent. That is, he claims, it was precisely the ʿulama-state alliance forged by the twelfth century that had put the Muslim world on a historical path toward economic underdevelopment in the subsequent centuries. To explain how the Muslim world remained stuck on that historical path, Kuru relies on neo-institutional economic theory. Timur Kuran's The Long Divergence, in particular, prefigures critically in Kuru's causal explanation.1Yet Kuru also goes beyond neo-institutional economic theory in two critical ways. First, Kuru suggests, economically inefficient laws and institutions cannot survive themselves, but have to rely on the existence of a powerful social coalition for sustenance and implementation. Therefore, Kuru painstakingly shows that the ʿulama-state alliance was not just a one-time event, but rather a persistent development that continues to survive and flourish in the Muslim world. Second, and relatedly, Kuru seems to believe that economic underdevelopment was not predetermined as neo-institutional economic theory implies. At any moment in time, powerful actors—the rulers and the ʿulama—could have changed the historical course and put the Muslim world onto a different historical path. But, alas, they did not.The links, first between economic underdevelopment and authoritarianism and then between authoritarianism and violence, are heavilytheory-based. In suggesting these links Kuru relies on rich and relevant political science literatures. Yet, he also claims that the rulers and the ʿulama made their own contributions to the sustenance of economic underdevelopment, authoritarianism, and violence in the Muslim world all along. By remaining thoroughly scholastic and medieval even to the present day and opposing original and critical thinking, the ʿulama, for example, could not effectively counter Salafi-Jihadism and thus indirectly contributed to religiously sanctioned violence in the Muslim world (chapter 1).In substantiating his causal explanations Kuru marshals not only theories, but also empirical materials, contemporary as well as historical. Kuru's empirical materials come from a wide variety of sources and hence are of wildly different kinds. Yet, all of them, be it a major historical event, like the Crusades, or an individual biography, like that of al-Ghazali, are fit together to illustrate one grand narrative. And that grand narrative is multilayered. To use Marx's terminology, Kuru's account not only takes into account structural (economic base) and superstructural (ideas, theologies, regimes, and laws) factors, but it also remembers the agent.Throughout the text Kuru engages in various theoretical debates. Consistently, though, he dismisses two major explanations for the backwardness of the Muslim world: colonialism and Islam. In dismissing colonialism Kuru emphasizes the role of agency. Kuru points to the experiences of East Asian countries and claims that the colonial past did not pre-ordain East Asia to economic underdevelopment. In dismissing Islam, Kuru advances two arguments: first, Islam is open to multiple interpretations and hence has no one single essence. Second, Islam did not prevent the Muslim world from experiencing scientific and economic flourishing during the eighth to twelfth centuries.Three fundamental issues come to mind with regard to the book. First, Kuru too easily dismisses the colonialism argument. The book disregards two other major cases that confirm the argument: Latin America and Africa. Furthermore, the book ignores the fact that the two most successful casesfrom East Asia—Japan and China—had never been under any colonial administration, and the third most successful case, South Korea, had never been under any Western one. The case of South Korea, when compared to the case of North Korea, and, of course, Taiwan, merits closer inspection, especially the role the United States played in its economic development, if it is to be used to dismiss the colonialism argument. Other cases from East Asia, such as the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Bangladesh, and Vietnam do not discredit but rather confirm the colonialism argument.Second, Kuru's causal explanation rests on a particular reading of the rise of Europe, which gives primacy to the role played by merchant-bourgeoisie and philosophers-scientists. Once these two groups emerge and begin to play their historical roles, the rest is simply history. This reading oversimplifies the rise of Europe and totally dismisses a host of factors, such as extreme political fragmentation and a competitive state-system, geographical location, and climate. It is fair to say that merchants and philosophers played their historical roles in bringing about the rise of Europe at the expense of other regions of the world within a special and unusual constellation of factors.The rise of Europe was more like a one-time unique event, which was, as Immanuel Wallerstein would say, something like the agricultural revolution or the coming into being of the universe. That is to say, the absence or suppression of some factors, thought to be the engine of the rise of Europe, in some other part of the world might not sufficiently explain the contemporary backwardness of that part vis-a-vis Europe. To put it more plainly, even if merchants and philosophers were not suppressed, the Muslim world could eventually have ended up in the same global status vis-a-vis Europe today.The rise of Europe has not only changed the balance of power between Europe and the rest, but also transformed the latter into a position, out of which, as Kuru is well-aware, the latter could have escaped with a strong state-building and economic development program. That is how Germany and Italy, which were not short in merchants and philosophers/scientists, yet still fell behind Britain, France, or the Dutch Republic, recovered in the late nineteenth century. Japan pursued a similar path during the same period. In the second half of the twentieth century, South Korea and Taiwan were able to replicate the same achievement. Now China seems to be doing it. Then why did the Muslim world fail to do the same? This question is obviously rather central to the book's argument. Yet it is not addressed.This leads to the third and last issue with the book. According to Kuru, the Muslim world has developed “an inward-looking model of governance” and therefore failed to replicate what East Asia achieved in economic development. The obviously critical question is why the Muslim world could not develop a better version of authoritarianism, which could have been conducive to economic development? Kuru does not specifically address this question. This is, in large part, because Kuru provides a rather superficial account of the last 200 years: Chapter 4 (seventh to eleventh centuries) comprises a total of forty-eight pages; chapter 5 (twelfth to fourteenth centuries),forty-four pages; chapter 6 (fifteenth to seventeenth centuries) thirty-eight pages; and chapter 7, which covers the critical centuries of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, during which the Muslim world could have potentially developed economically successful authoritarianism, comprises just twenty-one pages. Moreover, Kuru devotes only six pages in chapter 7 to his discussion of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century state-building reforms. The book could have been better balanced by devoting more space to how the Muslim world failed to meet the European challenge and thus made an even more critical contribution to our understanding of the contemporary backwardness of the Muslim world.Despite these issues, Ahmet Kuru must be applauded for his audacity. The book is ambitious in every imaginable way. Kuru poses a really momentous question, covers an expansive geographical space, traces a long historical period, and yet manages to propose a neat answer, provide an incredible array of empirical materials to back up his claims, and goes beyond the restrictionsof his scholarly specialty and thereby transcends the academically well-established borders and walls. Scholars of particular fields, periods, regions, and countries will certainly find something to disagree with in this book. Yet, all in all, Kuru's Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment is an admirable work of scholarship.

Reconsidering Palmer <scp>v</scp> Thompson

The contribution of atmospheric rivers to precipitation in Europe and the United States

Guest Editors’ Introduction

This article examines the relationship between the development of the technical order in post-industrial society and its impact on democratic values ​​in educational practice. Based on Daniel Bell’s ideas about the transition from the natural to the technical order, the question arises: ‘Will man want to go further?’ especially in the context of education and social transformations. In the light of the war in Ukraine, the analysis of the struggle between democratic and authoritarian values ​​becomes not just relevant, but urgent. Your role, as academics, educators, policymakers, and students interested in democracy and education, is crucial in this discussion. Using Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson’s concept of the ‘narrow corridor’, the article examines models of statehood where strong elites and a strong society mutually constrain each other, creating a ‘Shackled Leviathan’ – the conditions for freedom and democracy. Ukraine aspires to follow this path, confronting the ‘Despotic Leviathan’ of authoritarian regimes. Analyzing the interaction between technical progress, philosophical approaches and the realities of the modern world, the work is aimed at finding ways to strengthen democratic values ​​through educational practices in Ukraine, a task that cannot be delayed.