Refaat and I did our masters together. He was ahead of his time and understood that a shift in the centres of knowledge was necessary for liberation. Completing his PhD in Malaysia was an act of resistance against the hegemony of western academia. Honoured to have known him.
Refaat Alareer got his masters degree from the university I teach at, which in the last two months has said exactly zero about genocide, has ignored calls to divest from funding the Israeli military, and has tried to intimidate people expressing support for Palestine
Another Palestinian account that has been restricted by
@twitter
just after his interview with the bbc. Somebody's losing the media war and is getting desperate.
@itranslate123
Exciting news! My first book 'Women, Writing and the Iraqi Ba'thist State' is now available for preorder on the
@EdinburghUP
website. Use the code NEW30 for a 30% discount!
In all fairness
@soas
should also issue a statement as the MA Refaat studied was an intercollegiate one. He took a module in Modern Arabic Poetry as part of the program, and so is also officially an alumnus of SOAS.
Really enjoyed presenting my book today, even though COVID made me do a powerpoint. Great audience numbers and Qs. Thanks
@AElborzi
for organizing and
@SOAS_MEI
Refaat's heaven is a library
Where pages bloom in the buds of leaves
and rivers of ink flow.
Birds sing in verse and the buzz of holy recitation is in the air.
Even in heaven, Refaat wears his freshly pressed shirts and thin spectacles.
Because in heaven,
there are many books.
When I first started my PhD on 'Literature as Propaganda in Iraq' ten years ago, most scholars considered the term lazy and redundant 'even' when studying authoritarian regimes. Nowadays propaganda studies is literally a field and the object of study has shifted westward.
A huge thank you to Saba Fatima
@PeriferlyCentrd
for inviting me on her podcast for a frank discussion on positionality and the rather unusual circumstances in which I wrote my book. Also a shoutout to
@NeSAtweets
for bringing us together through their amazing group!
Love must unapologetically permeate all our academic scholarship, especially in those exasperated moments when you come face to face with historical trauma or deal with intense political polarization. Stop pedalling racism and bigotry in academia in the name of objectivity.
Far too many scholars do not love the people of the middle east, or the colonized, or the victims of genocidal war, or those that live life in slow death. Instead, they find all of these people “interesting”
@ProfShatha
Not to shamelessly self promote but I'm a scholar from Saudi and this is my book published in 2020 on Iraq's literary culture. The paperback is coming out in May:
I'd love to see more khaleejis working in the humanities!
Online gender conditioning in Saudi public schools through Teams: my son is addressed as 'hero', 'lion' by his teacher. My daughter is addressed as 'darling', 'sweetheart' by hers.
جنة رفعت مكتبة
تنبت فيها الصفحات على أوراق الشجر
وتجري فيها أنهارا من الحبر
تسمع فيها همهمة القران وتغرد الطيور فيها شعرا
هناك، يلتقي المعلم بالمعلم الأكبر
ويجلس الطلاب حوله في حلقات خضراء
حتى في الجنة، يلبس رفعت قميص الأستاذ
المكوي بعناية ونظارته الرفيعة
لأن الكتب في الجنة
كثيرة
Two claims were made about me by a reviewer: that I was young (disputable) and that I was Iraqi (untrue). I fail to see what either age or origin have to do with scholarship, unless the reviewer, by implication, feels that they do. I do wish books could be blind reviewed.
Next review out of our 2021 Graduate Student Book Review Colloquium is by Kristin Hillers.
Hillers reviews Women, Writing and the Iraqi Ba‘thist State (
@EdinburghUP
, 2020 ) by Hawraa Al-Hassan
@DrHawraaH
.
Some of the articles from our Iraq conference in March are out now as an IJMES roundtable: The Past is Never Dead. It's Not Even Past: History and Memory in Iraq Studies | International Journal of Middle East Studies | Cambridge Core -
One of the most interesting literary figures in modern Arab history is Egyptian writer Abd al-Rahman Sharqawi. Sharqawi wrote biographies of early Islamic figures as well as nationalist novels and plays and was simultaneously accused of being a communist and an Islamist.
A staying image from Nuha al-Radi's Baghdad Diaries written during sanctions is of the ruling party eating gazelle meat while Baghdad disintegrates into 'groups of villages' plagued by starvation and disease. The livelihoods of human beings should never be used as political pawns
Fantastic discussion and innovative approach to the processes of canon making, transnational literary dialogue and the connection to national identity formation.
How does literature figure in the nation-building process in Iran & Afghanistan?
@RustinZ
talks with Dr. Aria Fani about the vibrant dialogue between both in his new book, Making Persian Literature: Iran and Afghanistan in the Age of Romantic Nationalism.
Credit to
@soas
for their immediate release of a statement on the murder of Refaat
@itranslate123
. This is a moral stance that
@ucl
has unfortunately not taken.
@DrHawraaH
Thank you for sharing this with us, Hawraa. We are devastated to hear that our former student Dr Refaat Alareer has been killed in the Gaza Strip. We have today published a statement about his death and the destruction of higher education in Gaza.
Interested to see what new narratives of change will emerge in the ME, now that the 'utopia' of prosperity and equality in the UK/US has been so clearly undermined. Who/what exactly do we want to emulate? Is it even necessary to have a model for the organisation of our societies?
The course Refaat studied
@ucl
included a large component on the literatures of genocide and annihilation. You should issue a statement naming his killers and include his poetry on that course if you have an ounce of academic freedom left.
@SOAS
he was your alumnus too.
Disgusting. Meanwhile soldiers who have recorded and uploaded themselves committing war crimes get to skip through passport control to attend workshops inspiring young people in London. It's all a lie, everything they taught us was a lie.
Exclusive recording of moment teen is grilled by counter-terror police over Palestine protests
That last question 🤯
@libertyhq
"extremely concerned"
Full story:
@openDemocracy
I discuss some of these covers in my book, as essential 'paratexts' in understanding the social and political function of popular novel writing and reading in Iraq under the Ba'th.
A friend once said to me: 'better to leave culture and the humanities underfunded in the Arab world, than to have them adopted by the state.' Wishful thinking here, but I hope an independent alternative can be found.
Thank you so much Amel! I'm really interested in the perspectives of scholars in media and communication theory like yourself as it's an area I consider myself to have merely dabbled in. I hope the book resonates with audiences beyond literary studies.
Gloriously 'contradictory' when taken together as a body, individual texts also reflected genre fluidity, for example Sharqawi's biography 'Muhammad, the Prophet of Freedom', with its clearly Marxist tones.
A must watch documentary. I was very lucky to meet Mustafa Jahic, the extraordinarily brave Director of the library when I visited Bosnia in 2011. I remember having trouble crying and talking at the same time🤣 (but I did manage to take this picture)
I can't recommend this enough. It's a story about the brave librarians of the Ghazi Husrev Beg Library in Sarajevo, who saved precious Islamic manuscripts and books during the siege and the Serbian aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina.
New Book:
Qur’ānic Stories: God, Revelation and the Audience
By Leyla Ozgur Alhassen
1. Introduction: A Narratological, Rhetorical Approach to Qur’anic Stories
2. Knowledge, Control and Consonance in Surat Āl ‘Imrān 3:33–62
@bdaiwi_historia
This racialized sectarian view of the Middle East was very much part of the colonial legacy of Europe, which offered simplistic and essentialist understandings of history and religion.
@Amir__Taha
The lion fixation is real. And I mean real lions, not as symbols (which of course would be understandable). I saw a video of one in a Najaf hotel...poor animals.
@TweetsByBilal
Not the same thing of course, but around 10 years ago at Cambridge, I was asked at a student families event if I was the lady who makes the curry...
@j_p_eggert
Thanks for sharing your experiences Jennifer. My book was published exactly 3 years ago, and the book review in question was published recently in a peer reviewed journal. The review itself was good, but surely it's unnecessary to assume incorrectly) my age and nationality.
@HadeelAbdlhamed
Yes Hadeel exactly! and if it is important enough to be included in a book review for a peer reviewed journal, why not make sure what you are saying is factually correct? I have been writing about Iraq for over a decade, and this still happens all the time.
For Medieval Muslim astrologers, Leo was one of the most important zodiac signs. Deemed the kingly star, Leo was used throughout Islamic history to time battles, construction, and as an omen of royalty.
A thread on Leo in astrology from the Islamic World
@deighton_rose
And they don't have to be mutually exclusive. Teaching often leads to unexpected openings and connections that can really push research forward.
Likewise, Sharqawi's texts combine both Shii and Sunni knowledge traditions. His book 'The Nine Imams of Islamic Jurisprudence' includes Zayd ibn Ali ibn al-Husayn and Ja'far al-Sadiq. A fiction writer, he narrativized Islamic history in a way that appealed to modern readers.
The very idea of a model society, be it in the west or some 'golden age' in our own past or projected future is toxic. Nothing causes as much damage as a utopia does.
The emphasis on sectarian hatred and animosity in the play's introduction, highlights a politics of empire that was reinforced by western traveller accounts of the ta'ziyeh. Ella Sykes, who visited her brother, a British intelligence officer in Persia had this to say:
@ProfShatha
Thank you so much Shatha! It was taken by a French photographer during Iraq's campaigns to eradicate illiteracy. The book looks at how women's empowerment and literary production were used to legitimize the state and I think we are witnessing similar trends today beyond Iraq.
Looking at an East India Company Officer's 19thC play 'the Passion of Hasan and Husayn', translated from Persial oral tradition, has been my pandemic passion project (pun intended).