Three papers were presented: A. Hess, “Revolution in a Haggard Land: State, Society and Technology in Saudi Arabia,” T. Mitchell, “The Object of Development: Egypt in the Discourse of the World Bank and USAID,” and H. Islamoglu-Inan, “Transformation of the Ottoman Political Discourse.” The workshop concluded with a general discussion led by T. Asad.

The Arab World numbering an estimated 130 million inhabitants (1972) has produced—through its own college and university system (40 institutions in 1971 and 400,000 college students)—some 560,000 graduates; see Table I. Study abroad has been at a high level ever since the early fifties. During the past two decades it has increased from about 10,000 to 40,000.

This article examines changes in Tunisian political and societal life that allowed the country's second attempt at political opening (beginning in 2011) to introduce deeper, more long-lasting changes in its political system as compared to the first attempt (beginning in 1987).1 The article argues that three such changes in particular—the increased role of regime moderates; the development of a network of civil society groups and political activists; and the use of inclusion, negotiation, and consensus—allowed the second attempt to unfold differently. The article also briefly discusses developments in the international context between the two attempts. The article contributes to existing studies of regime change and political transition as well as to historical considerations of Tunisian political developments more broadly.

In September 2002, an article I had authored, “Iraq's Security and Intelligence Network: A Guide and Analysis,” was published in the September 2002 issue of the journal, Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA). On February 6, 2003 a UK news report revealed that entire sections of a British government dossier entitled “Iraq-Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation” were copied from three published sources, with the bulk of the plagiarized material coming from the article I had written. I was a twenty-nine year old doctoral student when the media frenzy that surrounded this incident erupted, six weeks prior to the 2003 Iraq War. I, as an Iraqi-American, had to watch as both sides opposite my hyphen waged a war against each other that I had an indirect role in justifying.

The field of colonial Algerian history, once a sparring ground for colonialists and nationalists, is now experiencing a new sort of division, one derived from the contrasting intellectual traditions, Arabic and French, which meet in Algeria. Scholars of both these traditions have sought to “decolonize” Algerian history, to understand it from the point of view of the Algerian Muslim. Both approaches have made significant contributions to our understanding of colonial Algeria. Yet they have a shortcoming: both were originally developed in dealing with historical environments quite different from colonial Algeria. Thus, they face serious problems of adaptation.

“Sunlight and shadow are the same.” Quoting Emerson’s paradox, the late Ethel Roosevelt Derby opened a photographic laboratory she had established in the basement of the Harvard Semitic Museum in memory of her daughter, who had died young a few months before. That paradox succinctly summarizes the physical basis for photography and epitomizes as well something unique about culture and the human spirit: adversity often brings blessings “in disguise.”

It is difficult to appreciate and understand Sufism fully without an informed exposure to the expressive cultural forms that help define and enhance it. It is this dimension of Islamic mysticism that transports the seeker on the path of spiritual attainment into higher states of consciousness that promise spiritual intoxication (Wajd) and a unique and intimate union, even annihilation (fanā), in the supreme being. This emotional expression of faith is intensified and externalized in elaborate forms of meditation and esoteric techniques that are part of ritual ceremonies.

Through ritual, many Sufi orders and Sufi-related sects throughout the world of Islam have been able to articulate doctrines and beliefs through artistic traditions such as sung poetry, instrumental music and dance-like movements (samā’ or spiritual concerts) and have utilized meditation patterns that combine corporeal techniques and controlled breathing (dhikr, Turkish, zikr) to induce or conduct trance and ecstatic states.

A primary concern of this project is to integrate the discussion of gender and gender subjectivities in the discussion of the overall dynamics of revolutions including the conditions that led to them, the understanding of their different actors, and their agendas for change. Another focuses on understanding the way revolutions and the crises of modernity to which they responded influenced the production of gender subjectivities and contributed, in turn, to the development of working subjects who were also private actors shaped by technologies of the self that helped them deal with complex tensions and dilemmas.

In the discussion that follows, I propose to inquire into some of the assumptions that may underlie the disciplinary paradigm of Middle Eastern, and particularly Iranian, studies, making this an interpretive essay on a neglected aspect of the field, rather than a research article as such. Nevertheless, I harbor hopes of stimulating discussion and bringing something of a fresh perspective to bear on a subject which, it is generally acknowledged, lies at the very edge of the Persianate tradition of religious innovation, and consequently at the margins of the academic efforts to understand and explain it: the life and legacy of the Iranian prophet-founder of the Bahā'í faith, Mirza Huseyn Ali “Bahā'u'llāh” (1817-92). The questions I will pose are in essence three: why is the religious innovation wrought by Bahā'u'llāh considered marginal by the majority of scholars of the Islamicate world? What does this attitude tell us about the conceptual boundaries within which these same scholars labor? And do these boundaries reflect the limits imposed by the evidence itself or do they reflect the limitations of the contemporary disciplinary paradigm?