“Israeli universities are not independent of the Israeli security state but, rather, serve as an extension of its violence.” Describing a raid by Shin Bet on Birzeit University in April 2022, Maya Wind sets the scene for her book Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom (Verso Books, 2024). Prior to Israel’s establishment, Zionism had already foreseen the role universities would play in shaping and maintaining the forthcoming settler colonial entity in Palestine. Discussing the role of universities as strengthening settler outposts and later incorporating t ..read more

In 2014, Narendra Modi and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won India’s 16th general election and, among huge swathes of the country’s population as well as the international community, there was great concern about what a Modi India would look like. Aside from concerns over his role during the Gujarat riots in 2002, Modi’s platform was seen as illiberal, right-leaning populist, anti-establishment and anti-expert. Many wondered whether ideology would rule the day or competency and expertise would. The reality that unfolded was much more complex than what many expected at the time and Anuradha Saj ..read more

Italy’s relationship with the Middle East and North Africa and Islam spans millennia.  Throughout the ages, the Mediterranean country has played a role in these nations and these nations have played a role in Italy. Going all the way back to the Roman Empire and stretching to Benito Mussolini’s attempts to invade Egypt during the Second World War, Ali Humayun Akhtar’s new book, Italy and the Islamic World: From Caesar to Mussolini, aims to explore the nature of this relationship. Akhtar argues that Italy has a long history of being entangled in the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa ..read more

Between 1514 and 1639, the Ottomans and Safavid Empires engaged in a series of wars, clashes, skirmishes and destabilisation attempts. After the Treaty of Zuhab on 17 May 1639, the hostilities between the two powers largely came to an end and, for many historians, the story ends there as there seems little to tell afterwards. It is like the two Empires went their separate ways and had little to do with each other, but this view is mistaken and Selim Gungorurler’s new book, The Ottoman Empire and Safavid Iran, 1639–1682 Diplomacy and Borderlands in the Early Modern Middle East, demonstrates th ..read more

Ever since the territorial defeat of its self-described caliphate in Iraq and Syria in 2019, ISIS (Daesh, to use its Arabic acronym) has seemingly receded as the preeminent threat to peace and stability in the Middle East, particularly amidst Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. Nonetheless, beyond the region, Daesh persists as a formidable, albeit reduced threat, maintaining a presence in Africa, Afghanistan, Central Asia; it even has remnants in Iraq and Syria. Crucially, its operations are still very visible in the digital realm. Despite being banned from Twitter, now X, in 2014, Daesh has m ..read more

Is there any country in the world that openly and crudely defies the collective countries of the West but, in spite of that, continues to enjoy the status of their favoured and trusted ally? None, except Israel, claims academic Steven Friedman. In his brilliantly detailed book Good Jew Bad Jew, Friedman unpacks skilfully the reasons why no other state would be able to perpetrate serial human rights abuses and still enjoy the uncritical support of all Western powers. Published in South Africa by Wits University Press, the book’s subtitle — Racism, Anti-Semitism and the Assault on Meaning — pro ..read more

The perception of education has “historically been seen as enriching one’s Self through the encounter with an Other”, and this sets the scene for the collection of essays published in Knowledge Production in Higher Education Between Europe and the Middle East (Manchester University Press, 2023), edited by Michelle Pace and Jan Claudius Völkel. Higher education provides the space and the methods for various types of learning, woven tightly into the political and shedding light on the historical processes of colonialism in a postcolonial era. The book focuses on Europe and the Middle East and N ..read more

“It occurred to my defected mind to write a memoir of my life and deeds … so that whenever our supporters read it they will remember us with a prayer … they should realize it is free of the appearance of dissimulation, lies and hypocrisy.” It is almost a truism that every ruler wishes to be remembered, but it is rare for a ruler in the early modern period to write a first person account to ensure both their memory and version of history survives. Shah Tahmasp I’s memoir is a treat for historians of Safavid Iran. Despite its importance, it has never been translated into English before and A.C ..read more

Reading Anne Irfan’s study on Palestinians and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) at a time when Israel is committing genocide in Gaza illustrates how the allegedly apolitical premise of the UN cannot translate to neutrality, given that the agency is enmeshed with the UN, its donors and the Palestinian people themselves. While UNRWA’s mandate was primarily restricted to offering aid on a temporary basis, Israeli colonialism and the Israeli government’s refusal to allow Palestinians to return to their home transformed UNRWA. Mainly funded by powerful countries that h ..read more

Have you ever wondered why Evangelical Christians in the West have such disregard for Palestinian Christians? And why they are so keen to see the State of Israel thrive? Neither of these questions is new. The roots go back to Victorian times, and even earlier, as Gabriel Polley tells us comprehensively in this book. It is easy to blame “Zionists” for the ongoing conflict in occupied Palestine, especially the father of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl. It was, after all, his book The Jewish State (Der Judenstaat) which most people associate with the creation of the Zionist state of Israel in 1 ..read more