Noura Erakat on Democracy Now: Trump’s Bahrain-UAE-Israel Deal Won’t Advance Palestinian Peace & Will Up Repression (9/16/20)

As the Trump administration celebrates deals establishing diplomatic ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, we speak with Palestinian American legal scholar Noura Erakat, who says Trump’s “peace” agreements are a sham. “This is not about advancing any kind of meaningful, enduring peace, but instead about entrenching a geopolitical alliance that would otherwise increase oppression for people of the Middle East,” says Erakat, assistant professor at Rutgers University and author of “Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine.”

https://youtu.be/Q08ZFDMBnSc

Muhammad Amasha: "The UAE-sponsored “Islams”: Mapping the Terrain" (9/15/20)

As mentioned above, political actors freely swing between interpretive frameworks that advance their agendas. Countering “political Islam” seems to be the only consistent line linking Sufi neo-traditionalism and progressive anti-traditionalism sponsored by the UAE. While the Sufi and progressive networks sponsored by the UAE are not the only groups under such influence, understanding the diverse landscape of state sponsorship and its impact on scholarly positions is a first step in critically thinking about the interaction between politics and religious authority.

 https://themaydan.com/2020/09/the-uae-sponsored-islams-mapping-the-terrain/

Mother Jones: "The Trump Administration Orders an Al Jazeera Affiliate [AJ+] to Register as a Foreign Agent" (9/15/20)

“The UAE dislikes Al Jazeera partly for the narrative that the network provides across the Arab and Islamic world that exposes audiences to a point of view that is very different from the messaging the Emiratis have been trying to impose on the region since the Arab Spring,” said Kristian Ulrichsen, a Middle Eastern politics scholar at the Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. “In the eyes of Qatar’s critics, Al Jazeera has also become so synonymous with Qatar in the regional and international mindset that any setback to Al Jazeera cannot but be perceived as a blow to Qatar.”

Akin Gump and other lobbyists have reported receiving more than $56 million in fees from the UAE since 2017, when the blockade began, according to records filed with the DOJ. Akin Gump’s most recent disclosure of its lobbying contacts cites extensive outreach to lawmakers regarding the “accuracy and transparency of Qatar government-owned media” and the “influence on US politics by Mideast regional media outlets and other groups.”

 https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/09/trump-doj-al-jazeera-fara-uae-qatar/

Professor Katherine Ewing: Memory and Media (April 23, 2020) | Rendez-vous de l'In...

Memory and Media: Recreating a Sufi Subject in the Modern Nation State

Many young urban Muslims across the Muslim world have forgotten the devotional practices of their grandparents and associate “Sufism”— the spiritual or mystical side of Islam—with ignorance and superstition. But in recent decades Sufism has (problematically) been promoted as a peaceful antidote to the lure of Islamic reformism and extremism, bringing about a rediscovery of certain aspects of Sufism among educated youth in Northwest Africa. Sufi and anti-Sufi approaches to Islam compete for Muslim publics through an array of new media, and young people are as likely to learn how to practice their religion through these media as they are through their parents and local religious teachers.

I consider the effects of shifting government policies, modes of transmission, and organizational practices of Sufism on middle- and working-class subjectivities. Based on three years of team-based research on religious change which I have directed in Francophone northwest Africa (Morocco, Mauritania, and Senegal), I discuss our efforts to move away from the interview as an extraction of information toward the (re)training of a new generation of researchers to listen and interact in ways that open up memories and stories told from the interlocutor’s perspective. It is here, in these memories and stories, that the experience and dynamics of religious change can be glimpsed.

This event was organized in partnership with Columbia Global Centers | Paris.

Edited by Flavien Eripret.

NYT: "Trump Hosts Israel, U.A.E. and Bahrain at White House Signing Ceremony" (9/15/20)

 “It’s not conflict resolution and it’s not peace — this is a business deal,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of J Street, a liberal pro-Israel advocacy group sharply critical of Mr. Netanyahu. “It’s very, very clear that there are aligned interests between Israel and these countries — military, security, diplomatic, economic — and those interests have been there for two decades.” 

“This formalizes that, but it shouldn’t be overplayed as resolving a core conflict for Israel with its neighbors,” he added. Israel’s decades-old conflict with the Palestinians, he said, “remains unaddressed with this agreement.”  

Meeting with Mr. Netanyahu in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump presented Mr. Netanyahu with a large golden key embedded in a wooden box that he described as “a key to the White House, a key to our country.”

“You have the key to the hearts of the people of Israel,” Mr. Netanyahu replied.

“This is peace in the Middle East without blood all over the sand,” Mr. Trump added. [...]

Mr. Trump also said on Fox that he would “have absolutely no problem” selling the F-35 fighter jet to the United Arab Emirates, a step the Trump administration is considering despite objections in Israel over the sale of advanced military hardware to an Arab state.

Trump officials deny that such a sale was a condition for the Emirates to strike its agreement with Israel.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/15/us/politics/trump-israel-peace-emirates-bahrain.html