Proposed ISA Panel: International Relations and Islam: The Peculiar Case of Nation-State

Chair: Raffaele Mauriello

Discussant: Deina Abdelkader

The first section discusses the theoretical and empirical comparative analyses on nation-state between Islamic and Western scholars. It includes three categorical responses whether there is an Islamic nation-state, then comparing Western and Islamic understandings of nation-state which the author concludes that there is probable applicability of modern nation-state paradigm in light of Islamic law. The third panelist seeks to contribute a redefinition of geopolitics, which may generate a theoretical framework for modern geopolitical analysis that is compatible with Islamic interpretations of world politics. The last two panelists will provide special case studies of foreign policies of Iran and India, and how their processes are influenced by elements of Islamism or Islamic politics in their interactions with other nation-states in international fora.

1. Nassef Manabilang Adiong’s “Is There an Islamic Nation-State?”[1]

Placing an adjectival term ‘Islamic’ before ‘nation-state’ entails that it carries all characteristics and may be deduce in a way that its nature is not peculiar to Islam. That is, the idea, concept, and utility of nation-state may find traceable tracks from the historical development of Islamicate (Hodgsonian term) civilization and their encounters with Greek, Roman, Indian, Sinic, and European civilizations. This is difficult to surmise and contemplate since some elements of European nation-state, e.g. sovereignty, secularism, modernity, and level of analysis, have different understandings and interpretations for Islamicists (scholars of Islam). To ameliorate our focal understanding, the paper will firstly present the Islamic jurisprudential and political understanding of nation-state, i.e. how Islamicists responded with the colonial project and forceful application of European-styled nation-state to the entire Islamicate civilization regardless of existing polities such as the caliphate and sultanate systems. Secondly, the paper will provide critique on Wael Hallaq’s “The Impossible State: Islam, Politics, and Modernity’s Moral Predicament” (Columbia University Press, 2013). And lastly, it will argue that there were three dominant answers whether there is an Islamic nation-state and these are traditional, reformative, and progressive categorical responses coming from selected Islamicists.

2. Hossam El Din Khalil Farag Mohammad’s “Contemporary Problems of the Modern Islamic State: A Comparative Study”[2]

Prior to the twentieth century, the Islamic character of the state in the Muslim world was axiomatic. However, political transformations since the abolition of the Islamic Caliphate, emancipation from colonialism, and the spread of modernity has raised the problem of identifying characteristics of the State in the Islamic world.  Attempts at alignment between the modern state and Islamic State have created ideological and political conflict in the Arab world between advocates of adherence to revealed doctrine and advocates of Westernization and secularization. Through comparative and inductive analysis, I explore the religious foundations of the modern Islamic State by identifying the characteristics and definition of both modern Western and Islamic states.  I then go on to identify the political form of the state in Islam and address key problems, including opposing visions of national and religious loyalty and its effect on citizenship, the conflict between secularism and application of Islamic law, and promotion of virtue and prevention of vice (Hisbah).  I conclude that just as many Western countries have applied the modern state concept to fit their context and definition of secularism, Islamic countries can apply the modern state paradigm in light of Sharia, solving problems of the modern state.

3. Jason E. Strakes’ “Towards an Islamic Geopolitics: Reconciling the Ummah and Territoriality in Contemporary IR”[3]

The contemporary study of Islamic perspectives in international relations has often been occupied by an internal contradiction. While the global role of Islam was originally defined by the classical Quranic conception of a borderless community of faith (Ummah) rather than the sovereign territorial state, the relationship between Muslim-majority and non-Muslim societies has historically been represented by Islamic jurists as a spatial and territorial construct, or a division between geographic zones belonging to the House of Islam (Dar al-Islam) and the House of War (Dar al-harb). The present study seeks to reconcile this tension by examining the gradual redefinition and adaptation of spatial dualism by clerical and political elites that has occurred alongside the evolution of the modern post-colonial state, particularly in North Africa and the Middle East. It draws upon two concepts introduced by the medieval Muslim geographers, the absence of literally defined borders between nations and the degrading of power projection across distances between capital cities, to identify variations in the definition of boundaries within and between Muslim and non-Muslim populations as manifest in physical territory. These are applied in order to generate a theoretical framework for modern geopolitical analysis that is compatible with Islamic interpretations of world politics.

4. Amir Mahdavi’s “Iran’s Direct Negotiations with the United States: Ideological or Pragmatic [Foreign Policy]?”[4]

Did Iran utilize Islamism in its international affairs? The paper is aimed to address the posited question by examining terms of direct negotiations between Iran and the United States. According to Iranian political elites, the hostility between Iran and the USA symbolizes a clash of divine rights and blasphemous actuations. Therefore, studying their direct interactions will manifest whether Iranian foreign policy is ideological, pragmatic or both. Iran and the USA have had three rounds of direct negotiations over the past four decades. These negotiations include:

• The Algerian-mediated talks in 1980 which aimed to resolve Iran’s hostage conflict.

• A focus on Iraq’s internal crisis in Baghdad in 2007.

• Nuclear program after Iranian’s presidential election in June 2013.

Consequently, by analyzing these negotiations, the paper will investigate and assess the relevance and impact of Islamism on its foreign policy making procedures.

5. Joerg/Jörg Friedrichs’ “Hindu-Muslim Communalism and Indian Foreign Policy”[5]

The claim that Indian-Muslim relations are fraught with communalism is as often stated as rebutted, but usually without much consideration of its substantive merits. This paper takes the communalism hypothesis seriously and assesses it against other approaches to explaining Hindu-Muslim segregation and occasional violent clashes. Alternate explanations familiar from the literature include elite-driven electoral politics, competition over economic turf, and lack of inter-group social capital. Most such explanations are not mutually exclusive, although they are often treated as such. At the international level, Hindu nationalism is frequently seen as a game changer for India’s policy not only in its regional neighborhood but also in the wider “Muslim world”. After the recent victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), some observers expect an Indian fall-out with Muslim-majority countries. While similar expectations were hardly fulfilled during the BJP’s tenure from 1998 to 2004, the paper provides another assessment nine months after the party’s 2014 victory. Is there an intensification of communalism under Modi, and what implications does the landslide of the BJP as India’s sole ruling party have for the quality and management of India’s diplomatic and business relations with Muslim-majority countries from Pakistan to Bangladesh and from Iran to Saudi Arabia?

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[1] Nassef Manabilang Adiong is a student of theories of International Relations and politics of Islam(icate) with research interests in the concepts of nation-state and civilization. He is the author of the following articles: “Nation-State in IR and Islam” in the Journal of Islamic State Practice in International Law, “The U.S. and Israel Securitization of Iran’s Nuclear Energy” in The Quarterly Journal of Political Studies of Islamic World, “The Palestinian Refugee Question: A Constitutive Constructivist Interpretation” in Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International Relations, “Ideology that Spawns Islamist Militancy” in Frank Shanty’s Counterterrorism: From the Cold War to the War on Terror, and encyclopaedic entries such as civilization, nation, nation-state, International Relations, nationalism, pan-Islamism, Philippines, Qatar, and Suez Canal for various publishers including ABC-CLIO, SAGE Publications, Inc., and Wiley-Blackwell. His first edited book entitled “International Relations and Islam: Diverse Perspectives” is published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing on August 2013.

[2] Hossam El Din Khalil Farag Mohammad (Hossam E. Mohamed) is a Researcher at the Qaradawi Center for Islamic Moderation and Renewal, Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies.  Previously he was a member and expert for the Islamic Legal Opinion Committee at the Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs in Qatar. Mr. Mohammad holds an M.A. from Cairo University in comparative law, an M.A. from the Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies in Islamic Jurisprudence, a B.A. in Islamic Law from Qatar University, and a B.A. in Commerce from Helwan University.  He is currently a PhD candidate at Cairo University completing his thesis on Political Reform Theory in Islamic Law in light of the modern state. 

[3] Jason E. Strakes is an associate researcher in the Department of Modern History and Politics of the Middle East at the G. Tsereteli Institute for Oriental Studies, Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia. He received an M.A. in International Studies and a PhD in Political Science from the School of Politics and Economics, Claremont Graduate University. His current research interests include alternative perspectives of international order, non-Western IR theory, interactions between the former Soviet and developing world/Global South, and comparative politics of the Middle East, Caucasus and Central Asia.

[4] Amir Mahdavi is the editor of many Iranian newspapers. He was also a member of the board of Mujahedin Enghelab, the Iranian main reformist party. Mahdavi holds an MA in Conflict Resolution from Brandeis University. Currently, he is a junior researcher at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies. His op-eds have been published in The Guardian and Al-monitor. His research papers have been accepted by the Iranian International Society of Iranian Studies and the International Association of Conflict Management conferences. Mahdavi will contribute to the Near Eastern Studies Department of New York University during the next academic year a graduate student.

[5] Joerg/Jörg Friedrichs is University Lecturer at the Department of International Development and Fellow of St Cross College, University of Oxford. His latest book, on climate change and energy, has appeared with MIT Press (2013). He has published articles in peer-reviewed journals such as International Organization, Asian Survey, and European Journal of International Relations. Recently, Jörg has worked on global Islamism and cosmopolitan world society as rival globalization projects. Following up, he is now interested in the topic of situating Islam in a post-Western world. More specifically, he is interested in the quality and management of Chinese-Muslim, Indian-Muslim, and Russian-Muslim relations.

Proposed ISA Panel: Islam and Democracy: The Case of the Arab Spring

Chair: Elizabeth Cobbett

Discussant: Raffaele Mauriello

The panel consists of a theoretical paper that discusses the link between the principle of public welfare and democratization according to Islamic jurisprudence. The other four papers on the panel examine the relationship between the Arab Spring and the beliefs of its peoples; namely, Islam. The papers vary in addressing issues such as comparative authoritarianism, comparative social movements, political Islam, and the new controversial proposition of "post- Islamism". The panelists views on Islam's role in the Arab Spring is diverse in its coverage of political and theoretical analyses of the place of Islam in the future of those respective societies.

1. Deina Abdelkader’s “Islamic Law, Democratization and Public Welfare”[1]

This paper is composed of three interconnected sections. In the first section the paper is focused on the importance of Islamic law to Muslims in general, it then moves to address and research a particular principle in Islamic law that serves as the connection between governance and the law, namely; the principle of public welfare. The second part of the paper researches and connects ideological common grounds between Islamic and Western political thought. This segment compares St. Thomas Aquinas and al-Shatibi, and tests the common roots that Islam shared and contributed to what is known today as “Western” liberal democracy. Finally, the paper defines the contemporary impasse at the academic level: misrepresenting faith, and particularly Islam as inimical to Western liberal democracy. This paradigmatic complex is the greatest obstacle to research that addresses the common grounds previously mentioned. The research thus changes the question from the conventional query: Is Islam compatible with democracy, to: Did Islam contribute to the theoretical underpinnings of democracy?

2. Caroline Abadeer[2] and Scott Williamson[3]’s “Tracing the Roots of Authoritarian Durability in the Arab Spring”

The Arab Spring offers an important opportunity to conduct a comparative study of the factors that influence authoritarian durability in the region, since this wave of social mobilization affected nearly every country in the Middle East between 2011 and 2012. Using process tracing, we consider three crucial turning points for the unrest. 1) Where and why did protests expand into uprisings that threatened regimes with collapse? 2) Given the occurrence of an uprising, when and why did a state’s coercive apparatus choose to remain loyal to the regime? 3) Finally, if the coercive apparatus did remain loyal, why were some regimes then able to marshal adequate resources to suppress opposition, while others failed? Through our investigation, we find that access to oil wealth, monarchy, coercive apparatuses built on ethnic linkages, and support of foreign patrons predisposed certain regimes to success at one or more of the aforementioned turning points, which made them more robust to the challenge of popular unrest. Our findings demonstrate the extent to which many conventional explanations of authoritarian durability in the Middle East prior to the Arab Spring have paradoxically been vindicated by the uprisings.

3. Nicholas P. Roberts’ “Political Islam and the Invention of Tradition”[4]

The changing nature of activism in the Middle East since the Arab Spring includes a newfound prominence of ‘political Islam’ in shaping the public sphere. This requires new methods of thinking about the relationship between religious mobilization and democratization in the Islamic context. Contrary to popular perception, Islamists have made innovative contributions to democratic political philosophy by drawing upon dynamic interpretations of their history. The epitome of this is the concept of an ‘Islamic state,’ founded upon a social contract between rulers and ruled that is framed as indigenous in tradition – not simply a product of Western imitation. Drawing upon dozens of works by prominent Islamists, this paper demonstrates how these intellectuals have reinvented traditional understandings of bay‘a, shura, ijma‘a and hisbah to invent a tradition of religiously informed political thought that engages with many of the most pressing issues facing Muslims today. This paper, in its specific analyses, raises broader questions for contemporary international affairs. Scholars must understand regional movements as their actors understand themselves, without the preconceived biases of Western-centric theoretical frameworks. Accordingly, this paper suggests that civilizations have always learned from each other and continue to do so, especially regarding issues of social justice.

4. Fernando Brancoli’s “Arab Spring’s Metanarratives: Circulation of Political Islam Discourses in Egypt and Libya”[5]

The paper proposes a critical discussion of the role of Political Islam in the so called Arab Spring, focusing on two specific groups: the Muslim Brotherhood, in Egypt, and the National Liberation Army, in Libya. The article argues that the Islamic grammar employed by these actors usually highlights a narrative where the religious values cannot be combined with Western practices.  In fact, the exogenous performs are constructed as harmful and destructive to the society. However, at the moment these political actors acquire certain level of political centrality, especially after the revolutions and the deposition of Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Gaddafi, the narratives changes, promoting what we called here a “discursive hybridism". In this new proposition, the religious apparatus is perceived in a constant enmesh with western social organizations, forming hybrid political organizations that intermingle modernity and traditional Islamic forms. The article is deeply based on interviews conducted by the author in the region between 2011 and 2013, also using official documents and public statements.

5. Muqtedar Khan’s “The New face of Post-Islamism: Islamists after the Fall of Morsi”[6]

This paper re-examines the idea of post-Islamism, as advanced by Asef Bayat and his colleagues in his book Post-Islamism: The Changing faces of Political Islam (OUP, 2013). This paper focuses specially on the changing discourse of Islamists in response to the fall of the Presidency of Muhammad Morsi in Egypt. The paper will show that the discourse of Islamists from June 2012 to June 2103, when Muhammad Morsi was President and Islamists had power used the symbols and concepts of Islam profusely.  But in their response to the military takeover the Islamists have increasingly employed the language of democracy and human rights to criticize the oppression of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. It appears that Islamists now have a post-Islamist Discourse that raises several issues about their commitment to both Islamic values and democratic values.  This comparison of Islamists discourses, when in power and when underground, raises issues about what are the essential core values of Islamists today? Do they seek a normative reality or do they seek power for the sake of power?

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[1] Deina Abdelkader is currently an assistant professor in the department of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. Abdelkader is a Comparitivist and International Relations specialist. Her scholarly interests and research, focus on the Middle East and North Africa, Comparative Democratization in the Muslim World, Islamic Activism, and the Role of Muslim Women in Religious Interpretation. She is the author of Social Justice in Islam (2000) and Islamic Activists: The Anti-Enlightenment Democrats (Pluto Press, 2011).She has also authored a number of articles; her latest is : Coercion, Peace and the Issue of Jihad in the Digest of Middle East Studies, and a book chapter titled: “Modernity, Islam and Religious Activism”, The New Global Order and the Middle East, Ashgate Publishers, (2012) Abdelkader is also one of two women on the Islamic Jurisprudential Council of North America (Fiqh Council of North America) and she is also part of the editorial board of the Digest of Middle East Studies, and the new President of Voile : “Voices of Islamic Law and Ethics”.

[2] Caroline Abadeer is a PhD student in Political Science at Stanford University, and holds a BA from the University of Minnesota (2011). An aspiring scholar of North African politics, Caroline has also lived in Morocco as a Fulbright grantee, where she studied Moroccan Arabic, Islamist politics, and democratization.

[3] Scott Williamson will be a PhD student in Political Science at Stanford University beginning in the fall of 2014 and holds a BA from Indiana University (2012). He has been a junior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a CASA Fellow at the American University in Cairo.

[4] Nicholas P. Roberts studied Islamic intellectual history and Islamic movements with Dr. John Voll at Georgetown University in the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. He has lived and studied in Tunisia and Yemen. Prior to his appointment at Georgetown, he was Special Assistant to the former Chief of Staff of the U.S. Department of State and worked in the private sector.

[5] Fernando Brancoli is a Lecturer in International Relations at Pontifícia Universidade Católica (PUC-Rio), in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He has conducted extensive research in the Middle East and North Africa, mainly on the use of mercenaries in Libya and the the role of Political Islam discourses in Egypt. Prior to his academic position, Brancoli worked on humanitarian organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, especially in Somalia and Syria.

[6] Muqtedar Khan is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science, and International Relations at the University of Delaware. He is also the founding Director of the Islamic Studies Program at the University of Delaware. Prior to that he was Chair of the Department of Political Science and the Director of International Studies at Adrian College. He was a Non-resident Fellow at the Brookings Institution from 2003-2008. He earned his Ph.D. in international relations, political philosophy, and Islamic political thought, from Georgetown University in May 2000. His areas of interest are Politics of the Middle East and South Asia, Political Islam, Islamic Political Thought and American Foreign Policy in the Muslim World. Professor Khan teaches courses on Arab and Middle Eastern Politics, Politics of Development, Globalization, and Islam in World Affairs.

Proposed ISA Panel: International Relations and Islamic Studies: A New Agenda

Chair: Deina Abdelkader

Discussant: Nassef Manabilang Adiong

Non-Western experiences, practices, and perspectives on international affairs have long been underestimated within Euro-American academia and among Western foreign policy making. Non-Western actors have largely been regarded only as disciples of Western schools of International Relations (IR), never as proponents of theoretical approaches or carriers of relevant experiences of and practices in international relations. A look at International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity (Oxford 2013), a serious introductory manual on IR and International Relations Theory (IRT), shows that a generous list of normative paradigms includes the following: classical realism, structural realism, liberalism, neoliberalism, the English school, Marxism, critical theory, constructivism, feminism, poststrucuralism, postcolonialism, and green theory. The present panel contributes a worldview beyond Western IR. It brings together a scholarly volume of materials on theories and practices of international affairs regarding the Muslim world. Its papers address relevant aspects of ontology, episteme, methods, paradigms, and history of IR and global affairs from the perspective and experiences of Islamic legal theory, Muslim scholars, and Muslim-dominated actors. Instead of arguing against the Euro-American centered history and production of knowledge in IR, it argues for the inclusion of Islamic theories and praxis into IR and IRT.

1. Raffaele Mauriello’s “Is Dar al-Islam vs. Dar al-Harb the Paradigm of Islamic International Relations Theory? Khadduri’s Siyar Reconsidered”[1]

With the publication of several works, particularly between 1955 and 1966, Professor Khadduri laid the foundations for Western academia’s understanding of the “Islamic law of nations” (al-siyar). He described Muslims’ outlook on international affairs as being historically based on the contraposition between dar al-Islam (abode or territory of Islam) and dar al-harb (abode or territory of war). Khadduri’s intellectual strength was arguably instrumental in establishing this interpretation of the Islamic legal tradition as the cornerstone of the Islamic theory of international relations. An enquiry into different primary sources of the Islamic civilization conducted according to the methodology of the Italian school of Islamic Studies however shows that the presence of the dichotomy between dar al-Islam and dar al-harb is extremely limited. Moreover, it is neither found in the Qur’an nor in the Prophetic Sunna. The paper hence discusses to what extent it is historically accurate to assume it as the classical and established outlook on international affairs of the Islamic civilization. Methodologically, the paper argues for the necessity to integrate both methodology and findings of the Islamic Studies into the knowledge of the politics of the Islamic world of academics and practitioners of International Relations and International Relations Theory.

2. Muqtedar Khan’s “From Actor to Perspective: Islam as a Theory of Ethical International Relations”[2]

Islamic states, and various forms of state and non-state agencies play an important role in international relations. Indeed until the end of the Ottoman Empire, Islam was a dominant force in World politics. But the contemporary discourse on international relations sees Islam only as a counter-systemic entity that deserves to be studied and explained. This paper proposes that Islam can serve as a lens/epistemology to view international relations from an ethical/normative perspective and provide a critique of the international system and global governance. Whether posting Islamic states as “rogue” aberrations in the international system or advocates of Islamic governance as outside the pale of the civilized world, IR literature alienates Islam and ignores that Islam is embedded in the culture of the international system. This paper will provide a critique of how Islam is “othered” by the discourse on international relations and will provide arguments to recognize that Islam as actors, and agencies, as epistemologies and as norms is an integral part of the empirical reality even as it is marginalized in theory. To address this lacuna the paper shall propose a theoretical paradigm to reimagine Islam as a theory of ethical international relations.

3. Faruk Yalvaç’s “Ibn Khaldun’s Historical Sociology and the Concept of Change in International Relations Theory”[3]

This paper attempts to analyse Ibn Khaldun’s concept of change as described in Muqaddimah and compares it with the ahistorical and asociological concept of change present in IR theory particularly in Realist and Neorealist accounts of change.  Although Ibn Khaldun lived before the formation of the Westphalian state system that is the basic date for conceptualising the modern international system and the basis of IR theorising, his pre-modern analysis provides imortant  insights concerning the social origins of change in IR and goes beyond main stream IR theories by  linking the domestic and the international thus avoiding the ontological exteriority of the domestic from the international. This paper also compares his cyclical theory of change with the unilineer concept of change present in modernity and  the cylclical works of change present in some realist works. However,  Khaldun’s theory is found to be superior to these analyses by virtue of its historical and sociological account of change. Khaldun’s theory of change is also compared with the Neo-Weberian and Marxist accounts of change in the historical sociological analysis of IR.

4. Fadlan Khaerul Anam’s “Khilafah’s Hizbut Tahrir as Theory: Towards the Indigenization of International Relations Theory”[4]

Rooted in strong opposition to the power of Eurocentrism in international relations theory, the indigenization of international relations theory is a contemporary discourse that is still discussed today. However, this discussion is not really serious to build a theory that it could be a match for the theories that are too Eurocentric. Besides international relations theorists have not really develop this discourse. Hizb ut- Tahrir , a religious movement that has a different perspective than many contemporary religious movements: his views on the khilafah as a system of global governance (merging the boundaries of the nation state) and a system that is seen to match the political system adopted in many countries today. Khilafah’s Hizbut Tahrir regulate international relations which is based on reasons that cannot be found in many theories of international relations: the reason can only be equated with communitarianism. Khilafah’s Hizbut Tahrir actually be constructed and systemized can actually be a match for the theory of the dominant theories of international relations. This paper seeks construct and systematize the Khilafah’s Hizbut Tahrir as a new theory of international relations and the relevance of The Khilafah’s Hizbut Tahrir for with the international world today.

5. Turan Kayaoglu’s “The International Politics of Leadership of the Umma: The Organization of Islamic Cooperation as a Platform for Intra-Muslim Politics”[5]

Traditional and newly emerging Muslim powers use the OIC as a platform for influence and leadership in the Muslim world. Intra-Muslim politics revolves around four dimensions that inform the OIC politics: regionalism, the level of involvement in the OIC, bilateral relations among members, perception of the umma. Accordingly, major OIC members—Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, and Malaysia—use the OIC as a platform to boost their leadership credentials in the Muslim world in very different ways. Essentially, these states see the problems of the Muslim world from a perspective in which they have a comparative advantage and promote that perspective among other Muslim countries as the best way to advance the umma’s interest in order to boost their leadership claims. Thus Saudi Arabia sees the umma only as a religious community in need of religious orthodoxy and guidance, Iran, a political community in need of ideological leadership, Pakistan, a security community in need of military power, and Turkey and Malaysia, an economic community in need of development. These various dimensions inform the OIC politics and often undermine its effectiveness.

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[1] Raffaele Mauriello is an historian of the contemporary Middle East. He holds a Ph.D. in Islamic Civilization: History and Philology from the Sapienza, University of Rome (Italy). He has published several peer-reviewed essays and chapters in edited volumes on Shi‘a Islam history and on Iranian and Iraqi geopolitical affairs. He is also a translator of both Arabic and Persian languages. In 2013, he was awarded the World Prize for the Book of the Year of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the field of Islamic Studies for his monograph Descendants of the Family of the Prophet in Contemporary History: A Case Study, the Šī‘ī Religious Establishment of al-Naǧaf (Iraq) (Rivista degli Studi Orientali-Fabrizio Serra editore: Rome-Pisa December 2011).

[2] Muqtedar Khan is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science, and International Relations at the University of Delaware. He is also the founding Director of the Islamic Studies Program at the University of Delaware. Prior to that he was Chair of the Department of Political Science and the Director of International Studies at Adrian College. He was a Non-resident Fellow at the Brookings Institution from 2003-2008. He earned his Ph.D. in international relations, political philosophy, and Islamic political thought, from Georgetown University in May 2000. His areas of interest are Politics of the Middle East and South Asia, Political Islam, Islamic Political Thought and American Foreign Policy in the Muslim World. Professor Khan teaches courses on Arab and Middle Eastern Politics, Politics of Development, Globalization, and Islam in World Affairs.

[3] Faruk Yalvaç is an associate professor of International Relations at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. He received his PhD and MS degrees from London School of Economics and another MA degree from Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

[4] Fadlan Khaerul Anam is a student in Department of Sociology, University of Indonesia. He actively writes for various papers which included conferences. His work has reached 15 conference papers that related with sociology of religion, theory of modernity and alternative social science discourse. In 2011, his research on history ‘KH. Fadlullah Sanusi : Sang Ulama dan Kritikus Pemerintah (1945-2007)’ become 30 in Indonesian Student Research Olympiad. In 2012, his research on sociology ‘When Religion Becoming Evil: Sebuah Penelitian Mengenai Pengaruh Konflik Ulama Terhadap Munculnya Stereotip Negatif Antar Jamaah’ won a silver medal in the same event.

[5] Turan Kayaoglu is an Associate Professor of International Relations at University of Washington Tacoma and Editor-in-Chief of Muslim World Journal of Human Rights. He is the author of Legal Imperialism: Sovereignty and Extraterritoriality in Japan, the Ottoman Empire, and China (2010, Cambridge University Press). His articles appeared in International Studies Quarterly, International Studies Review, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, and Human Rights Quarterly. His research focuses on religion and international relations, human rights, and interfaith relations. Currently he is working on a book, The Organization of Islamic Cooperation: Politics, Problems, and Potential.

The Co-IRIS Research Agenda: Diversifying IR theories and approaches (Finding a via media between IR and Islam, and Worlding beyond the Clash of Civilizations)

Co-IRIS is planning to submit a workshop proposal for the International Studies Association’s (ISA) Venture research grant category. See http://www.isanet.org/ProgramsResources/Grants/WorkshopGrants.aspx

Our workshop proposal is:

The Co-IRIS Research Agenda: Diversifying IR theories andapproaches (Finding a via media between IR and Islam, and Worlding beyond the Clashof Civilizations)

International Relations (IR) has been defined as a field in recent history by the dynamics of (neo)colonial powers especially with the triumph of the United States as the sole world power in post-Cold War era. It has been dominated by theories and perspectives that are almost solely built on European/American traditions and perceptions of what IR is and what it should be. For example, European /American IRs have for long been informed by a widespread belief in the significant sovereignties of and characterized by secular nature of IR actors (both nation-states and non-states) disregarding the impact of religious elements and not recognizing equal importance of both rational and revealed knowledge. Consequently, religion is playing a larger role in all levels of analysis in IR.

Mainstream and reflexive IR theories and approaches, e.g. realism, liberalism, neo-neo synthesis/debate, social constructivism, critical theory, Marxism, poststrucuralism, English school, etc., have most, if not all, determined a lack of interest in the possibility of truly encompassing, inclusive, and globally based international values and norms distinguishing peripheral contributions beyond the usual European/American IR ontologies and epistemologies. However, following the end of the Cold War, the nature of world politics has been changing drastically, shifting from great power competition to the management of transnational issues and necessity of cooperation among global different actors. Here it comes our agenda, Islam.

Rather than an all-inclusive alternative theory of international relations, Islam represents a paradigm and research program that emphasizes law over anarchy, community over human selfishness, commitment over inconstancy, ethics over materialism, etc. As one of the foremost world religions and way of life, Islam offers useful elements of comparison and inspiration that can help improve our understanding and vision of international affairs and world politics.

The foundation of International Relations and Islamic Studies Research Cohort (Co-IRIS) is created and built to explore Islamic contributions to the field of IR on many levels: the theoretical level, and the praxis of international affairs in Muslim societies. The inclusion of Muslim contributions is not meant to create an isolationist, judicious divide between what is Islamic and what is not. Co-IRIS is created to act on the inclusion of that knowledge as a building bloc in the IR field. That is, finding bridges and commonalities between IR and Islam.

Co-IRIS is premised on the idea that knowledge is fluid: peoples adopt and utilize thoughts and ideas regardless of faith, gender, nation, etc. The mainstream idea that all knowledge presented by the Europeans and Americans is from an “Orientalist” perspective or that there is a “clash of civilizations” are both notions that are antithetical to the research agenda of Co-IRIS. Its primal aim is to develop and sustain a body of knowledge that addresses the theories and practices of the Islamic civilization and of Muslim societies with regards to international affairs and to the discipline of IR. This workshop asks the questions: Is Islamic International Relations thought and practice in congruence with contemporary IR theories or not? Comparatively, what are the similarities and differences? If there are differences, what are they and why do they exist? Can Islamic episteme influence contemporary IR theory?

We are looking forward to receiving proposals in line with our research agenda as specified above. Please email your 300-word abstract (or if the research paper is complete, the better) and your complete CV at info@coiris.org. The deadline of submission is on 11 July 2014 and notification of results is on 18 July 2014. Many thanks for your interest to Co-IRIS and you are more than welcome to join us by registering at www.coiris.org.

Yours Truly,

Your Co-IRISmates: Dr. Deina Abdelkader (University of Massachusetts at Lowell), Dr. Raffaele Mauriello (Sapienza, University of Rome), and Nassef Manabilang Adiong (independent).