Sharī‘a Scripts

While the Yemen seems to be stumbling from one disaster into the next, it is good to see how some of the best experts in Yemeni studies continue their work in ways that will be useful in the country’s future. The present volume is not only bound to become recognized soon as the magnum opus by Brinkley Messick, professor of anthropology and Middle Eastern, South Asian and African studies at Columbia University and one of the world’s leading experts in Yemeni studies today. More importantly still, Sharī‘a Scripts features all the qualities required for a true academic milestone in Yemen-related scholarship for decades to come, with potential ramifications for the historical and legal anthropology of the Middle East at large. This volume is based on half a lifetime of analytical and comparative studies that began during the author’s first fieldwork period in the central and southern highlands of northern Yemen during the 1970s. Messick meticulously examines the structures of jurisprudence (the “library” in his terms) with the methodologies and techniques of textual scholarship, while relating it to the “archive” of records concerning everyday interactions in legal life as embedded within the practical interplay of fields between orality and scriptural statements.
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About the Contributors

70 Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Vol. XLI, No.1, Fall 2017 Economic Cooperation between India and Bahrain: Performance and Prospects Muhammad Azhar* Two and half decades of uninterrupted and sustained economic reforms have transformed the Indian economy into the world’s fastest growing economy in recent years. During 2014 Indian economy grew by 7.3 percent.1 Since the slowdown in Chinese economy, India has overtaken the Chinese economy. India ranks at the 9th position in the global economy and generates 2.6 percent of the world’s gross domestic product.2 Thus India has been fast becoming the land of economic opportunities. India is rich in mineral resources. But the hydrocarbon resources are very small as compared to her requirements. Rising growth and expanding economy has resulted in substantial rise in the demand for oil and gas. This in turn has necessitated in ever increasing imports of oil and gas mostly from the gulf countries. India has second largest population and the second largest labour force in the world.3 It has also vast reserves of skilled workforce. Millions of Indian expatriates’ workers are employed in gulf countries including Bahrain. And these workers are very important source of massive *Muhammad Azhar is Professor (Economics) at the Department of West Asian and North African Studies, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh (India). He obtained his M.Phil and Ph.D from Jawahar Lal Nehru University, New Delhi. His area of interest includes energy economics, finance, economic, trade cooperation and research and methodology. He has contributed several articles in various international and national journals. Prior to joining A.M.U., Muhammad Azhar worked as Reader at the Academy of Third World Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. he worked as a Research Associate at the Gulf Studies Program, Centre of West Asian and African Studies, School of International Studies, Jawahar Lal Nehru University, New Delhi. he also worked as Consultant at Indian Council of Research in International Economic Relations, New Delhi. 1 “IMF says India Still Fastest-Growing Economy”, The Economic Times, New Delhi, 12 April, 2016, p.11 2 World Development Indicators Database, World Bank, Washington, (accessed on 17 February, 2016). 3 Ibid. 71 remittance earnings for India. It must be mentioned that India is the largest remittance earning country in the world.4 As far as Bahrain is concerned, it is smallest among the member countries of Gulf Cooperation Council. However, it is also a rich country in terms of history, culture and economy. It has been the seat of the ancient civilization of Dilmun. In the ancient times it used to serve as a trading link between Indus Valley Civilization and Mesopotamia.5 Prior to the discovery of oil, the main economic activities concentrated on fishing, boat making and repairing, exploring and trading pearls, diving and some agricultural and commercial activities.6 Bahrain had been first among the Arab countries to discover oil in 1932.7 Consequent to the discovery of oil and its exports, Bahraini economy was thoroughly transformed. Since then all economic development in Bahrain depended on oil export revenues.8 However, Bahrain has very small oil reserves and also some gas reserves. Bahrain’s oil & gas reserves have been estimated at 0.01 percent and 0.05 percent of the global oil and gas reserves respectively.9 Bahrain is a member of Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC). In contrast to its neighbours, oil reserves in Bahrain are estimated to exhaust very soon. This is why Bahrain exports very little of crude oil. It exports refined oil and other petroleum products. The exhaustive nature of oil reserves was never out of sight for the Bahraini planners. This is why Bahrain launched its economic diversification program very early and prepared for the post oil era. Bahrain has been developing other sectors of the economy to reduce its dependence on oil revenues.10 The aluminum industry has been crucial in Bahrain’s diversification strategy. Bahrain has 4 www.worldbank.org/prospects/migration and remittances (accessed on 01.02.2016) 5 John H. Neidercorn, “A Reconstruction of the Pre-History of Bahrain, the Landing Place of Noah”, in Jeffery B. Nugent and Theodore H. Thomas (Ed...

This chapter interrogates the connections between liberalism as open-mindedness, tolerance of diversity, individualism, and equality; liberalization as technological modernization and the opening up of cultures; and neoliberalism as the prioritizing of market over other values. With examples from world-historical literatures from China, Europe, India, Latin America, and the Middle East, it considers engagement with western liberalisms and modernization and some recent conflicts between liberalism and neoliberalism. It concludes with some critics and theorists who have wrestled over the years with problems in liberal, liberalizing, and neoliberal societies and whose work in transcultural studies I consider important beyond their specific specialisms in Latin American, South Asian, and Islamic studies: Ileana Rodriguez, Jean Franco, Kancha Ilaiah, Joseph Massad. The chapter is an exercise in comparative political-economic languages and how we might think about literature’s global circulation under interdependent but uneven conditions of development.

102 Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Vol. 41, No. 2, Winter 2018 Book Reviews Edited by Nadia Barsoum Middle East, South Asia, and North Africa ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE OF YEMEN: Buildings That Fill my Eye edited by Trevor H.J. Marchand: United Kingdom, London, Gingko Library 2017, 231 pages. In bringing together the astute observations and reflections of an international and interdisciplinary group of acclaimed scholars, this book aims to raise awareness of Yemen’s long history of cultural creativity and the urgent need for international collaboration to protect it and its people from the destructive forces that have beset the region. EMPIRES AND ANARCHIES: A History of Oil in the Middle East by Michael Quentin Morton. United Kingdom, London, Reaktion Books Ltd, 2017, 263 pages. Empires and Anarchies is an unconventional history of oil in the Middle East. In the author’s account the burnt-out remains of Saddam Hussein’s armaments and the human tragedy of the Arab Spring are as much of the story as the shimmering skylines of oil-rich nations. From the first explorers trudging through the desert to the excesses of the Peacock Throne and the high stakes of OPEC, Morton lays out the history of oil in compelling detail, arguing that oil simultaneously enriched and fractured the Middle East, eroding traditional ways of life, and eventually contributing to the rise of Islamic radicalism. The book is essential reading for anyone interested in the promises and peril of the world’s oil boom. FROM INDEPENDENCE TO REVOLUTION: Egypt Islamists and the Contest for Power by Gilian Kennedy. United Kingdom, London, Hurst & Company publishers 2017, 262 pages. The author is taking an approach to emphasize those studies of political Islam concentrate on either ideology or strategy rather than using a framework, which argues for both to be accounted together. It concludes that in Egypt from 1952 to 2012, the absence of this dialectical process of ideology and strategy was the decisive factor in the failure of radicals, conservatives and progressives to create and maintain lasting consent to their national project. Chapter 2 examines the Nasser period (1952-1970). Chapter 3 examines how political Islam evolved during Anwar Sadat’s presidency from (1970-1981). Chapter 4 examines how political Islam evolved during Mubarak’s presidency from (1981-1992) and the author will outline the continuation of Sadat’s economic liberalization and how the Islamist movement reacted to Mubarak’s political overtures and the continuation of economic liberalization policies in light of a spiraling socio-economic crisis among the lower and middle income class. Chapter 5 examines how Mubarak moved from containment to confrontation against Egypt opposition groups (1992-2011). TRIBES AND POLITICS IN YEMEN: A History of the Houthi Conflict by Marieke Brandt. United States, New York, Oxford University Press 2017, 466 pages. This book is based on years of anthropological fieldwork expertise both on the ground and through digital anthropological approaches. It offers a detailed account of the local complexities of the Houthi conflict and its historical background and underscores the absolute imperative of understanding the local, personal, and non-ideological nature of internal conflict in Yemen. The Houthi conflict is multifaceted and complex, and its local narrative as recorded in this volume constitutes only one manifold ways of approaching and explaining the conflict. The many other narratives of the Houthi conflict sometimes compete: the sectarian narrative, the domestic political narrative, the boundary narrative, the proxy war narrative. The Yemeni government has its own version. Foreign nations have their different claims. This book research objective is to explore the local dynamics of the Houthi conflictthus required spanning a broad period, from 1960 to the present time. 103 104 JINNEALOGY: Time, Islam, and Ecological Thought in the Medieval Ruins of Delhi by Anand Vivek Tasnneja. California, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2017, 312 pages. The author discover that in the ruins of a medieval palace in Delhi, a unique phenomenon occurs: Indians of all castes and creeds meet to socialize and ask the spirits for help. The spirits they entreat are Islamic jinns, and they w In the ruins of a medieval palace in Delhi, a unique phenomenon occurs: Indians of all castes and rite...

Contributors

‘Area studies’ developed later in Great Britain than in North America. The period of rapid growth began in 1962, as a result of a report by a government committee (the Hayter Committee) set up to consider the future of Oriental, Slavonic, East European and African studies. The report recommended that the government give special grants to encourage historians and social scientists to extend their interests and apply their methods to the world outside Western Europe, and to make possible the creation of a number of inter-disciplinary centres. The report was accepted and grants were given for these purposes until 1972. By that time there were approximately a dozen universities which had some kind of regular degree course in Arabic, Islamic or Middle Eastern studies, and a number of other universities and colleges where some teaching of these subjects took place. There was a growing demand for a professional association which would make it possible for those who taught and studied Middle Eastern subjects to discuss matters of common interest and to coordinate their work in what might well be a period of financial stringency. After long discussions between interested bodies, the Society was formally brought into existence at a meeting held in London in May 1973.

The second edition of this textbook brings together general political theory and the comparative method to interpret socio-political phenomena and issues that have occupied the Indian state and society since 1947. It considers the progress that India has made in some of the most challenging aspects of post-colonial politics such as governance, democracy, economic growth, welfare, and citizenship. Looking at the changed global role of India, its standing in the G-20 and BRICS, as well as the implications of the 2014 Indian general elections for state and society, this updated edition also includes sections on the changing socio-political status of women in India, corruption and terrorism. The author raises several key questions relevant to Indian politics, including: • Why has India succeeded in making a relatively peaceful transition from colonial rule to a resilient, multi-party democracy in contrast to its South Asian neighbours? • How has the interaction of modern politics and traditional society contributed to the resilience of post-colonial democracy? • How did India’s economy moribund—for several decades following Independence—make a breakthrough into rapid growth and can India sustain it? • And finally, why have collective identity and nationhood emerged as the core issues for India in the twenty-first century and with what implications for Indian democracy? The textbook goes beyond India by asking about the implications of the Indian case for the general and comparative theory of the post-colonial state. The factors which might have caused failures in democracy and governance are analysed and incorporated as variables into a model of democratic governance. In addition to pedagogical features such as text boxes, a set of further readings is provided to guide readers who wish to go beyond the remit of this text. The book will be essential reading for undergraduate students and researchers in South Asian and Asian studies, political science, development studies, sociology, comparative politics and political theory.

54 Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Vol. XXXIV, No.4, Summer 2011 India, Pakistan and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty M. Yousuf Saeed* In its Final Document adopted in May 2010, the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference urged India and Pakistan to subscribe to the NPT as non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS) and to put all their nuclear facilities under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards “promptly and without conditions.”1 This was not the first time that members of international community asked the two South Asian states to sign the treaty. Similar appeals were made by the U.N. Security Council in 1998 and by the NPT Review Conference in 2000.2 Both countries have remained unresponsive. This article reviews the origin and evolution of India and Pakistan’s attitudes toward the NPT. It discusses the reasons they offer for staying out of the treaty, describes the similarities and differences in their policies and the changes that these policies have undergone over a period of time. It suggests that both countries should be admitted into the treaty as nuclear weapon states (NWS), the status assigned to the first five nuclear powers. India and Pakistan: Initial response The idea of an international non-proliferation treaty, when first mooted in 1961, was supported by both India and Pakistan. The Irish resolution on the “Prevention of the Wider Dissemination of Nuclear Weapons,” to which the legislative origin of the NPT is traced,3 was presented to the U.N. *M. Yousuf Saeed is an Assistant Professor of Political Science in the Department of History and Sociology at Claflin University in Orangeburg, South Carolina. He received his Ph.D. in International Studies from the University of South Carolina. His research interests include international relations of south and southwest Asia, and nuclear proliferation. 1 United Nations, 2010 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Final Document, 16. www.un.org. 2 U.N. Security Council resolution 1172, June 6, 1998; 2000 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Final Document, May 24, 2000. 3 Mason Willrich, Non-Proliferation Treaty: Framework for Arms Control (Charlottesville, Virginia: The Michie Company, 1969), 61. 55 General Assembly that year and was favored by the two countries when put to vote on December 4.4 The central paragraph of the resolution, which contained language similar to what was later used in Articles I and II of the NPT,5 asked for the conclusion of an international agreement containing provisions under which the nuclear States would undertake to refrain from relinquishing control of nuclear weapons and from transmitting the information necessary for their manufacture to States not possessing such weapons, and provisions under which States not possessing nuclear weapons would undertake not to manufacture or otherwise acquire control of such weapons....6 In addition, both India and Pakistan supported other resolutions, moved around this time in the U.N. General Assembly that recommended cessation of all nuclear tests.7 India and the NPT Indian policy regarding non-proliferation underwent a change after the Chinese nuclear explosion in October 1964.8 Defending its nuclear detonation, the Chinese government claimed that the 1963 Moscow partial test ban treaty, which prohibited tests in the atmosphere, in outer space and under water, was an attempt “to consolidate the nuclear monopoly held by the three nuclear powers and tie the hands and feet of all peace loving countries.” China, it further stated, supported “the complete prohibition and thorough destruction of nuclear weapons” and believed that partial suspension, or complete prohibition, of nuclear testing, or destruction of nuclear weapon delivery vehicles could not be the first step toward complete disarmament. Rather, in Chinese view, an international summit conference had to be convened which “as the first step” should conclude an agreement under which the nuclear-weapon and nuclear-weapon threshold states “undertake not to use nuclear weapons, neither to use them 4 Resolution 1665 (XVI) was unanimously approved. Documents on Disarmament 1961 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, 1962), 694. 5 Article I of NPT requires NWS not to transfer nuclear weapons...

This book is a tribute to the late Joseph Kostiner, long associated with the Department of Middle Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University, whose passion was the role of tribes and tribalism in state formation in the Middle East. Compiled in mid-2012, a little more than a year into the Arab Spring, this memorial volume suggests that tribes and states in the contemporary Middle East are best approached on a state by state basis, even though comparative analysis can provide insight into unique cases. Uzi Rabi, Director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University and one of the foremost scholars working on tribal identity, has assembled an impressive group of scholars to explore the past context and current conditions shaping tribal–state relations in the region. Contributors include historian Joshua Teitelbaum, anthropologist Dawn Chatty and political scientist Jill Crystal. The contributors argue that in Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Saudi Arabia, tribes and states generally have reached understandings mutually beneficial for both parties. Consequently, the tribes in these states are less likely to challenge the state as long as the rulers maintain a balance of power between the tribes and include tribal values in the national ethos. Tribe–state interdependence is most notable in Jordan, where the regime's tribal base of support has proved vital to the preservation of the political order. In Qatar, tribal identities have endured despite the country's transformation into an independent petrostate, but in the United Arab Emirates, tribalism as an organizing force in governance and social life has declined, superseded by a growing sense of national identity. In Oman, the sultan has preserved the cultural values of the tribes, but reduced their political power to neutralize their ability to harm the regime. In Saudi Arabia, cultural elements of tribal traits and traditions have been safeguarded and tribal mechanisms continue to be utilized to govern a society where kin and tribal modes of living endure.

About the Contributors

South Asian aunties are responsible for gatekeeping in the social relations of caste-based heteropatriarchal families and in white supremacist academia. Through collective performative writing, we name the category of aunty-power, exploring its possibilities for upending the hegemonies that persist in South Asian culture, and in South Asian Studies. We are acutely aware of the need to resist Hindutva and Islamophobia and interrogate what is at stake in South Asian invocations of “aunty.” We present a reconceptualization of the aunty as subject through the figure of the auntylectual, our attempt to imagine a potentially transformative feminist figure who challenges these hierarchies.

<JATS1:p>Over the last decade or two, the field of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies has witnessed the convergence of new perspectives on the history of epidemic diseases. A growing body of scholarship enables us to explore connections between Middle Eastern studies and the histories of medicine and health. This study serves as testimony that the field has reached a certain level of maturity. Contributors to the volume tackle various questions of historiography and sources, test new interdisciplinary methodologies, and ask new questions while revisiting older ones. Essays in the volume discuss diseases that affected human and non-human populations in areas stretching from the Red Sea and Egypt to Anatolia, the Balkans, and the Black Sea, in the early modern and modern eras.</JATS1:p> <JATS1:p>The volume contributes to Ottoman studies, the history of medicine, Mediterranean and European history, as well as global studies on the role of epidemics in history.</JATS1:p>

This three-day seminar, sponsored by the State University of New Yorkat Binghampton's Schweitzer Chair in Humanities, the South Asian and AfricanStudies Program, the Department of African Studies, and the African AmericanInstitute, discussed the African experience, the Middle East experience, andcrosscultural comparison.The opening presentation was made by Ali Mazrui, who holds theSchweitzer Chair in Humanities at Binghampton. He discussed the interactionof Islam and ethnic cultures in Africa and pointed out that Islam and ethnicityare essentially contradictory concepts, one being a universalist and the othera particularist view of society. "But," according to him, "Islam has becomeethnicized and ethnicity tends to become Islarnized." The resulting tensionscan be overcome only by a strong sense of human solidarity, such as theone which the Prophet talked about when he said that nobody excels in faithunless he loves for his brother what he loves for himself ...

Mideast File. v. 1, March 1982-. Quarterly. Compiled by the Shiloah Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Tel-Aviv University. Oxford, England; Medford, New Jersey: Learned Information. $675/yr combined print/fiche edition; also available on machine readable tape and online.) - Volume 17 Issue 1