Middle Eastern Minorities and the Arab Spring: Identity and Community in the Twenty-First Century

353 Pages·2017·2.104 MB·English

by  K. Scott Parker, Tony E. Nasrallah

Middle Eastern Minorities
and the Arab Spring
The Modern Muslim World
2
Series Editorial Board
Marcia Hermansen Martin Nguyen
Hina Azam Joas Wagemakers
Ussama Makdisi
Advisory Editorial Board
Talal Asad Tijana Krstic
Khaled Abou El Fadl Ebrahim Moosa
Amira Bennison Adam Sabra
Islam Dayeh Armando Salvatore
Marwa Elshakry Adam Talib
Rana Hisham Issa
This series will provide a platform for scholarly research on Islamic
and Muslim thought, emerging from any geographical area and
dated to any period from the 17th century until the present day.
Middle Eastern Minorities
and the Arab Spring
Identity and Community
in the Twenty-First Century
Edited by
K. Scott Parker
Tony E. Nasrallah
gp
2017
Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA
www.gorgiaspress.com
Copyright © 2 0 1 7 by Gorgias Press LLC
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the
prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC.
2017 ܛ 1
ISBN 978-1-4632-0653-6
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Data
A Cataloging-in-Publication record is available
from the Library of Congress.
Printed in the United States of America
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Table of Contents ..................................................................................... v
Preface ...................................................................................................... vii
Contributors ............................................................................................. xi
Map ........................................................................................................... xii
Introduction .............................................................................................. 1

PART I: ETHNIC AND LINGUISTIC MINORITIES IN THE
MIDDLE EAST AND THE ARAB SPRING .......................... 15
Chapter 1. Re-Considering Minorities’ Position in the Middle
East: The Kurdish Case in Syria .................................................. 17
Eva Savelsberg and Jordi Tejel
Chapter 2. The Amazigh in post-Revolution Libya: A Century
of Struggle ....................................................................................... 45
Todd M. Thompson and Youcef Bouandel
Chapter 3. The Armenian Christian Minority in Greater Syria
and the Arab Spring ...................................................................... 79
Darina Saliba Abi Chedid

PART II: RELIGIOUS MINORITIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST
AND THE ARAB SPRING .................................................. 99
Chapter 4. Adapting to Shifting Ground: The Alawites of the
Northern Levant .......................................................................... 101
Leon T. Goldsmith
Chapter 5. The Druze and the Arab Spring ..................................... 129
Lubna Tarabey
Chapter 6. Syrian Ismailis and the Arab Spring: Seasons of
Death and White Carnations ..................................................... 147
Otared Haidar
Chapter 7. The Christians of Syria and the Arab Spring ................ 175
Habib C. Malik

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vi MIDDLE EASTERN MINORITIES AND THE ARAB SPRING
Chapter 8. The Christians of Lebanon and the Arab Spring......... 203
Michael Abi Semaan and Tony E. Nasrallah
Chapter 9. The Easy Enemy: The Shia and Sectarianism in the
Arab States of the Gulf and Yemen during the Arab
Spring............................................................................................. 227
Jessie Moritz

PART III: OTHER MINORITIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND
THE ARAB SPRING ........................................................ 259
Chapter 10. Palestinians at Home and in the Diasporas and the
Arab Spring ................................................................................... 261
Bernard Sabella
Chapter 11. A Spring Abroad: Exploring the Case of Tunisian
Diasporas in Europe ................................................................... 277
Claire Demesmay, Sabine Russ-Sattar, Katrin Sold

Conclusion ............................................................................................. 307
Selected Bibliography ........................................................................... 309
Index ....................................................................................................... 327
PREFACE
We would like to express our deepest thanks to the contributors to
this volume. They have worked countless hours in field research
and in writing their respective chapters. Opinions and scholarly
conclusions are their own. Any shortcomings, of course, we as edi-
tors accept as our oversight. Regarding the always difficult problem
of transliteration, working with an international group of scholars
has inevitably led us to the conclusion that each should use the sys-
tem of transliteration with which they are most experienced. We
would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful
suggestions in improving this work.
We hope the reader will sympathetically keep in mind that the
overall purpose of this volume has been to shed insight into the
plight of those minorities of the Middle East we have been able to
cover in this volume. Events move quickly when conflict is at the
heart, and the repercussions of the so-called Arab Spring continue
to evolve at a surprising speed. The events covered in this volume
focus on the early years of the Arab Spring. What tomorrow holds
is still far from settled. For what tomorrow holds we can only
hope, and pray.
K. S. Parker and T. E. Nasrallah

vii

CONTRIBUTORS
Youcef Bouandel – Qatar University (Qatar)
Claire Demesmay – Deutsche Gesellschaft für auswärtige Politik
(Berlin, Germany)
Leon T. Goldsmith – Sultan Qaboos University (Oman)
Otared Haidar – University of Oxford (United Kingdom)
Habib C. Malik – Lebanese American University (Lebanon)
Jessie Moritz – Australian National University (Australia)
Tony E. Nasrallah – American University of Beirut (Lebanon)
K. Scott Parker – Royal Holloway, University of London
(United Kingdom)
Sabine Russ-Sattar – Universität Kassel (Germany)
Bernard Sabella – Bethlehem University/Al-Quds University (Palestine)
Eva Savelsberg – European Center for Kurdish Studies (Berlin, Germany)
Michael Abi Semaan – Independent Scholar (Lebanon)
Darina Saliba Abi Chedid – Université Saint-Esprit de Kaslik (Lebanon)
Katrin Sold – Philipps-Univerität Marburg, Center for Near and Middle
Eastern Studies (Germany)
Lubna Tarabey – Lebanese University (Lebanon)
Jordi Tejel – The Graduate Institute Geneva (Switzerland)
Todd M. Thompson – Biola University (USA)

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The Modern Middle East and North Africa