Research Papers
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Author: Hamza Kashgari
On April 3, 2021, twenty-two royal mummies were transferred from the Egyptian National Museum in central Cairo to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in eastern Cairo. According to an official of the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, an attempt to emulate the past “just as it was in the age of the pharaohs” was made in order to capture the significance of the event. To accomplish this aim, an emblem of religious signification was designed, as were a number of other symbols, both ancient and religious or mythological. The symbols contained references to actual archaeological artifacts, without which the simulation would be empty. Religious rituals
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Author: Faisal Abualhassan
The French state’s response to demands from segments of the population descended from North African and West African immigrants has increasingly been framed by the discourse of the twenty-first century’s global war on terrorism. However, the exclusion of certain segments of French society viewed (solely) as “Muslim” is the result of various failed projects of the French state itself. This commentary, which follows a previous study by this author into laicite (secularism) and the French Muslims of colonial Algeria, will first briefly discuss the evolution of the French state’s relationship to immigrants from North Africa following the end of
Number: 61
Author: Mark C. Thompson and Hanaa Almoaibed
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman addressed the contentious issue of (un)employment among Saudi nationals in an interview on 22nd April 2021, marking the fifth anniversary of the launch of Saudi Vision 2030. Highlighting the difference between “good jobs and bad jobs,” the Crown Prince defined a “good job” as one that provides basic needs, the ability to save, and the opportunity to lead a productive, healthy life. A good job, that is, a productive one, also mitigates the deadening impact of underemployment, an understudied phenomenon, especially in Saudi Arabia. Yet, the concept of what constitutes a good job is contested and evolving. For instance,
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Author: Hanin Alsudais
The expansion of the public sphere in Saudi Arabia in the 1950s and 1960s led eventually to the creation of al-Da’wa, establishing the foundation of Islamic journalism in Saudi Arabia. A newspaper that converted to a weekly magazine in 1976, al-Da’wa used modern media and a traditional salafī approach to Islam as a way to influence Saudi society from its founding on through the 1980s and 1990s. This report examines al-Da’wa’s promotion of the Islamization of social life, its perspectives on intellectuals and Islamists, and its take on the question of the role of women in society. In the 1980s, al-Da’wa served as a forum for the expression of tensi