Suchergebnisse

Over the course of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Islamist scholars affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots have disseminated anti-Jewish religious discourse based on selective interpretations of Quranic verses and prophetic traditions. This rhetoric contributed to the development of a negative perception of Jews among broad segments of the Arab public, who viewed the former as unacceptable partners for peace and normalization. From the Camp David Accords to the Abraham Accords, as Arab regimes gradually pivoted toward the signing of peace treaties with Israel, they advanced alternative religious discourses in order to justify their groundbreaking policies and counter the Islamist approach. Based on the narratives introduced by the Egyptian, Jordanian, and Emirati regimes through their leaders, clerics, and other official outlets, this article argues that the figure of Abraham and the accompanying "Abrahamic discourse" have been pivotal in these regimes' campaigns to legitimize the shift from rivalry to normalization with Israel. By promoting the metaphor of Abraham as the common ancestor and unifying element of Islam and Judaism, Arab regimes have tapped into an effective mechanism to portray Jews as historical neighbors of the Muslims and to reconstitute a broader narrative of Islamic-Jewish coexistence in the Middle East as religiously lawful and even desirable.

This article provides an overview of a rare collection of manuscripts that was purchased by the National Library of Israel in recent years. These manuscripts, which belong to a larger corpus of manuscripts known as the "Afghan Genizah," appear to have originated in central Afghanistan, possibly in the Bamiyan area, and are datable to a period of two hundred years, namely, from the early 5th/11th century to the early 7th/13th century. The overview of these texts is accompanied by an edition and translation of two Islamic acknowledgment (iqrār) deeds in New Persian, dated to the beginning of the 5th/11th century.

The ongoing Arab uprisings that began in late 2010 have unseated or threaten to unseat every Muslim government in the region. Swirling conflicts have replaced former arrangements, and, from afar, these conflicts look like a shapeless free-for-all. The new Middle East is being built on the rubble of the old dispensation, but it is vastly different from it. If Western policy-makers hope to engage the new Middle East, they must come to terms with these five coalitions and their significance in the region. First, is the Autocratic Sunni Coalition. Led by Saudi Arabia, the only large and solvent Arab state left standing after the Arab Spring, this coalition is the most important. Second is the Sunni-Populist Coalition. It is led by Turkey and funded by Qatar. It upholds a populist version of Islamism, largely spread via numerous organizations affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Next comes the Iranian-led Shia-Radical Coalition, which seeks Shia hegemony in the region. Adapted from the source document.