Islamic Spirituality in America: A Middle Path to Unity

This article summarizes the concept of Islamic spirituality, with its emphasis on personal and community forms of worship. In addition to reviewing the pillars of faith that are the foundation of the Islamic religion, this article explains the concept of the “middle path.” The author shows how integration of various realms (spiritual, social, moral, and individual) allows the Muslim person to live a peaceful life, with the center of Muslim existence being God's unity. Through this concept of unity, Muslims may be able to assist the rest of the United States in working towards solutions for the loss of community in modern society. Implications for working with American Muslims are offered.     

Social Dominance Orientation, Authoritarianism, and Support for Intergroup Violence Between the Middle East and America

Social dominance theory has generally posited that terror and intergroup violence can be explained in terms of social dominance struggles. Social dominance theorists have described terror mostly as a tool for maintaining intergroup hierarchies in society (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). Although implications of the theory suggest that terror may also be used by lower status groups as a tool for the resistance of domination by higher status groups, this prediction heretofore has not been empirically demonstrated. Data from two samples, one in the United States and one in Lebanon, were collected regarding attitudes toward terrorism and intergroup violence. The results show that the American sample demonstrates the typical patterns of social dominance such that those who are higher in social dominance orientation tend to support greater violence toward the Middle East. However, the Lebanese sample shows the opposite pattern, such that those who are lower in social dominance orientation tend to support violence toward the West. These results suggest that (1) support for terrorism among Middle East citizens is a project of counterdominance, and, more broadly, that (2) the relationship between social dominance orientation and support for violence depends on the dynamics of the conflict and the status of the perpetrators.     

A dialog of faith: reflections on Middle East conflict from Jewish,Muslim and Christian perspectives

In 2004, Santa Clara University's Bannan Center for Jesuit Education brought together online religious teachers and practitioners from the three world religions to discuss important issues associated with Middle East conflict: resistance, suicide bombing, America's role in the Middle East, and the future shape of peace. These conversations aimed at helping all parties better understand one another's concerns, values and commitment to peace. Our participants replied to a series of questions, and then questioned each other's replies, while students in Europe, North America and the Middle East observed the exchange. This article describes the project, summarizes the results and invites readers to consider carefully the participants' views.     

Circulating emotions,beliefs and fantasies: The Middle East and the West1

Abstract

Much ink has been spilt analysing racism, ethnicity and ‘otherness’. These analyses are frequently sophisticated, nuanced and committed to delivering improved ethical, emotional and political relationships. As we have witnessed recently, however, emotions, beliefs and fantasies remain stubborn. We are all diminished (no matter our history) by these troublesome psychic processes, entrenched beliefs and unthinking assumptions that pulse away unchecked. Feelings of fear and hatred sit alongside complex identifications and disavowal of self and other. This contemporary political and social context is loaded with discourses of a ‘clash of civilization’, the otherness of Muslims and Islam and a dominant view which asserts that Western societies have to be protected from potential explosions of terrorism and the corrosion of Western values. These discourses impact on citizens and erode the possibilities of inter-connectedness and a sense of shared communality. This paper is an exploration of a specific example of intransigence.     

Queer Migration and Digital Affects: Refugees Navigating from the Middle East via Turkey to Germany

This article explores the ways in which digital media are used as self-empowering tools by queer refugees in the course of their migration from several Middle Eastern countries via Turkey to Germany. Our discussion expands upon queer migration scholarship and insists on the need to shift attention away from refugees’ vulnerability to the empowering strategies that queer refugees develop for themselves. Based on observation and interviews conducted with queer refugees in Istanbul and Berlin, we argue that not only social media activism and interpersonal message platforms such as social networks, but also dating applications, open up opportunities for refugees to develop new coping strategies and a sense of belonging during migration. This leads us to focus on the emotional and affective value of digital media for queer refugees. While translocal digital media embed refugees within transnational networks that offer interpersonal/emotional support as well as useful tools for activism, our study reveals the restrictive power of such media. We argue that digitally circulated affects can become regulatory forces, which integrate queer refugees into European regimes of racialized and sexualized difference.     

Racial reckoning,resistance, and the revolution: A call to community psychology to move forward

This article introduces a special issue of the American Journal of Community Psychology that features racial reckoning, resistance and the revolution in the context of a syndemic, the historical subjugation of communities of Color (COC) to racial hierarchies and the coronavirus (COVID-19). More specifically, this special issue underscores the need for community psychology and other allied disciplines to address this syndemic facing COC. The special issue delivers on the stories of the lived experiences from researchers and community members as it relates to COVID-19 and COC. Twelve articles are illuminated to challenge the field to create social change.     

Samuel Benjamin: Unorthodox observer of the Middle East

Artist, author, diplomat, Samuel Greene Wheeler Benjamin's long association with the Middle East provided the raw material for much of his work. A self‐confessed ‘freelance’ in an age of increasing specialization and professionalism, he had difficulty adjusting to the myriad changes in American society. To make matters worse, Benjamin held unfashionable opinions on many subjects. Nowhere were his ideas more contentious than in his writings on the Middle East, where he set out his thoughts on Islam, on the role of missionaries, on the position of minorities, on ‘Oriental’ government. His unorthodox observations frequently elicited unfavourable reviews of his work. Yet from a late‐twentieth‐century perspective, Benjamin stands out among his contemporaries in his breadth of knowledge and understanding of the Middle East. There were, to be sure, some strange and uninformed ideas scattered here and there throughout his works, but what surprises the careful reader today is the durability of many of those views written a century ago.     

The impact of the Gulf War on the churches in the Middle East: A socio-cultural and spiritual analysis

Much has been written about the Persian Gulf War, mostly from an American perspective. Little has been published from a non-Western, especially Christian perspective, to a North American audience. This paper is an attempt to highlight the effect of the Gulf War on the people of the Middle East generally and the Christian communities in particular. The author analyzes the social and political factors, summarizes the reports received from various public and private sources, such as national pastors and mission organizations, and presents his own impressions and evaluation of the current events as a Lebanese Christian national.