The revolution within: Islamic media and the struggle for a New Egypt by YasminMoll, Stanford Studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 2025. pp. 368. 9781503642423 (e‐book)

Bassam Haddad, Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience, Stanford Studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2011). Pp. 280. $24.95 e-book. - Volume 45 Issue 1

The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire and the Challenge of Solidarity. By Darryl Li. Stanford Studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019. xii, 354 pp. Appendix. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $30.00 Paper - Volume 80 Issue 4

ON SALAFISM: CONCEPTS AND CONTEXTS. By AzmiBishara. Stanford Studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2022. Pp. xii + 228. Hardback, $36.00.

Stanford Studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures

Stanford Studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures

Stanford Studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures

Stanford Studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures

Stanford Studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures

Stanford Studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures

Islamic societies were built on the framework of already established and ancient Middle Eastern civilizations. From the pre-Islamic Middle East, Islamic societies inherited a pattern of institutions that would shape daily life until the modern age. These institutions included small communities based on family, lineage, clientage, and ethnic ties; agricultural and urban societies, market economies, monotheistic religions, and bureaucratic empires. Along with their political and social characteristics, Islamic societies also inherited many of the religious, literary, and artistic practices of the pre-Islamic past. The civilization of Islam, although initiated in Mecca, also had its precursors in Palestine, Babylon, and Persepolis. Islamic societies developed in an environment that since the earliest history of mankind had exhibited two fundamental and enduring qualities. The first was the organization of human societies into small, often familial groups. The earliest hunting and gathering communities lived and moved in small bands. Since the advent of agriculture and the domestication of animals, the vast majority of Middle Eastern peoples have lived in agricultural villages or in the tent camps of nomadic pastoralists. Even town peoples were bound into small groups by ties of kinship and neighborhood, with all that implies of strong affections and hatreds. These groups raised the young, arranged marriages, arbitrated disputes, and formed a common front vis-a-vis the outside world.

This new edition of one of the most widely used course books on Islamic civilizations around the world has been substantially revised to incorporate the new scholarship and insights of the last twenty-five years. Ira Lapidus' history explores the beginnings and transformations of Islamic civilizations in the Middle East and details Islam's worldwide diffusion. The history is divided into four parts. Part I is a comprehensive account of pre-Islamic late antiquity; the beginnings of Islam; the early Islamic empires; and Islamic religious, artistic, legal and intellectual cultures. Part II deals with the construction in the Middle East of Islamic religious communities and states to the fifteenth century. Part III includes the history to the nineteenth century of Islamic North Africa and Spain; the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires; and other Islamic societies in Asia and Africa. Part IV accounts for the impact of European commercial and imperial domination on Islamic societies and traces the development of the modern national state system and the simultaneous Islamic revival from the early nineteenth century to the present.

This new edition of one of the most widely used course books on Islamic civilizations around the world has been substantially revised to incorporate the new scholarship and insights of the last twenty-five years. Ira Lapidus' history explores the beginnings and transformations of Islamic civilizations in the Middle East and details Islam's worldwide diffusion. The history is divided into four parts. Part I is a comprehensive account of pre-Islamic late antiquity; the beginnings of Islam; the early Islamic empires; and Islamic religious, artistic, legal and intellectual cultures. Part II deals with the construction in the Middle East of Islamic religious communities and states to the fifteenth century. Part III includes the history to the nineteenth century of Islamic North Africa and Spain; the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires; and other Islamic societies in Asia and Africa. Part IV accounts for the impact of European commercial and imperial domination on Islamic societies and traces the development of the modern national state system and the simultaneous Islamic revival from the early nineteenth century to the present.

This study evaluates the presence of culture and gender differences in pain thresholds and pain tolerance levels between Middle Easterners and Swedes. Sixty-four healthy individuals, 32 Middle Easterners (16 men and 16 women, mean age: 24.6 +/- 3.4 years) and 32 Swedes (16 men and 16 women, mean age: 24 +/- 3.5 years) participated in the study. Three experimental pain tests were conducted in each participant. Pain thresholds and pain tolerance levels were measured using an algometer (mechanical stimulus), the PainMatcher((R)) (electric stimulus) and cold pressor test (thermal stimulus). While no significant differences in pain thresholds were observed between Middle Easterners and Swedes in algometer and cold pressor tests, differences in pain tolerance levels were significant (P < 0.01 for both tests). All between-culture differences in pain perception, pain threshold and pain tolerance level were non-significant when measured with the PainMatcher. Significant between-gender differences were observed only in pain threshold with the PainMatcher (P < 0.05) and in pain tolerance level with the algometer (P < 0.01) and the PainMatcher (P <0.001). This study found significant differences in two out of three pain tolerance level tests - but not pain threshold tests - between the Middle Eastern and Swedish cultures and between genders. These differences were more pronounced between Middle Eastern and Swedish men than between Middle Eastern and Swedish women. Gender differences were more pronounced within the Swedish than the Middle Eastern culture. These findings indicate that culture and gender influence pain experience.

Muslim women, and particularly Middle Eastern and North African women, for the past two centuries have been one of the most enduring subjects of discussion in the Western media. I can also assert without hesitation that the issue of the veil and the oppression of Muslim women has been the most frequent topic of conversation and discussion I have been engaged in, often reluctantly, during some twenty years of my life in the Western world (mostly in the UK and Canada). Whenever I meet a person of white/European descent, I regularly find that as soon as he or she ascertains that I am Muslim/Middle Eastern/Iranian, the veil very quickly emerges as the prominent topic of conversation. This scenario occurs everywhere: in trains, at the grocery store, at the launderette, on the university campus, at parties. The range of knowledge of these eager conversants varies: some honestly confess total ignorance of Islam and Islamic culture or Middle Eastern societies; others base their claims and opinions on their experiences in colonial armies in the Middle East, or on their travels through the Middle East to India during the 1960s; still others cite as reference films or novels. What I find remarkable is that, despite their admitted ignorance on the subject, almost all people I have met are, with considerable confidence, adamant that women have a particularly tough time in Muslim cultures. Occasionally Western non-Muslim women will tell me they are thankful that they were not born in a Muslim culture.

As a conceptual approach in art practice, the female body has represented both a cultural barrier and a source of inspiration throughout art history. The adoption of the female body as an art theme is prevalent across many different artistic movements, using varying conceptual approaches. Women struggle against paradigms of inferiority to this day, though their individual cultural identity varies according to their society’s beliefs and customs – for example, many contemporary Middle Eastern cultures and customs are based on a patriarchal past, when men wielded power over women. Women all over the world experience subjugation to varying degrees in the fields of employment, education, sexuality and reproductive choice. The female body in Middle Eastern societies is a red line that artists are not allowed to cross. Though many Middle Eastern civilizations have dealt freely with the female body, as can be seen in the paintings and sculptures of ancient Egypt, many social and religious factors made the female body taboo in most Middle Eastern cultures. However, on close scrutiny of modern art history in Middle Eastern and Islamic countries, we can identify outstandingly courageous female artists who succeeded in breaking the rules. They chose to express themselves through their own own form of art as an expression of freedom. They chose to use their own bodies as an art medium, which made them pioneers in their countries, and many female artists followed their example. Media art has flourished in Arab countries since the 1990s, especially in Egypt. Many of these female artists distinguished themselves as pioneers, aligning themselves with new art forms and challenging the prevailing stereotypical notion of the female artist at that time. This new mode of female self-expression and identity has developed over time and remains an ongoing process in the twenty-first century. This article considers how Middle Eastern female media artists have struggled to transform stereotypes of women by using their own bodies as an artistic element, and how they have expressed the concept of freedom through their self-body image.