Violence has been a central political issue in the Middle East during the past two decades, either episodically (Syria, Iran), or continually (Turkey, Egypt, Algeria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Israel/Palestine). This groundbreaking new study sheds light on the dynamics of this phenomenon by going beyond factors usually cited as the root causes'economy, religion, and culture'and investigating the political structure that actually triggers this violence. Initially, violence seems to be a rational instrument in contested power relations, but it often evolves into fragmented and privatized forms, such as warlords, or to nihilistic, sacrificial, or messianic forms.This book explores the ways in which the criminalization of political, ethnic, and sectarian identities has contributed to the formation of a ?tragic mind? that perceives violence as the surest provider of justice and hope. Only this in-depth research combining the cognitive, social, and religious sciences, as well as different problematiques such as the emergence of new religiosity, can allow us to understand the logic behind those attacks and the self-sacrificing forms of violence.Hamit Bozarslan, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, is the author of several books, including La question kurde: Etats et Minorities au Moyen-Orient.

‘Politics of Violence and Fear in MENA: The Case of Egypt’ explores the state-orchestrated violence in Egypt, Syria, and Turkey justified by vaguely defined terrorist threats. It analyses the “wars on terror” as cases of lengthy securitisation processes that reinforced and legitimised autocratic practices of oppression in each country. Paying particular attention to Egypt’s “war on terror” that began 1981, the book looks into how and with what implications such securitisation processes are upheld throughout lengthy periods of time. Reworking the traditional securitisation theory, this book offers a novel securitisation model (the TER-model) that addresses the questions of securitisation durability and is applicable in non-liberal empirical contexts. The monograph is ideal for graduate students, researchers and policy makers in the fields of political science, International Relations, and Middle Eastern Studies.

Laura Robson examines the interactions between international and regional political economies of oil and water, and the increasingly explicit colonial and postcolonial politics of ethno-national identity centered around the question of Palestine, arguing that the Middle East's emergence as a 'zone of violence' only developed over the past century.

This book examines the politics of political violence, truth and reconciliation in the contemporary Arab Middle East. It includes studies of state institutions, civil society and international organizations in Algeria, Morocco, Sudan, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria.

Violence has been a central political issue in many Middle Eastern countries during the past two decades, either episodically (Syria, Iran) or continually (Turkey, Egypt, Algeria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Israel/Palestine). This groundbreaking new study sheds light on the dynamics of this phenomenon by going beyond factors usually cited as the root causes - economy, religion, and culture - and investigating the political structure that actually triggers this violence. Violence seems to be treated by some groups during their initial stages as a rational instrument for changing contested power relations. In their later stages, these movements often weaken and spawn fragmented and privatized forms of violence - warlords are one example - and in some situations the violence metamorphoses into nihilistic, sacrificial, and/or messianic forms.

Explores the relation between histories of violence and their contemporary commemoration.