Emy Matesan of Wesleyan University talks about her latest book, The Violence Pendulum: Tactical Change in Islamist Groups in Egypt and Indonesia, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. In the book, she argues that Islamist groups alter their tactics in response to the perceived need for activism, shifts in the cost of violent versus nonviolent resistance, a ... Show More
Apr 2025
The Revolution within (S. 14, Ep. 13)
On this week's episode of the podcast, Yasmin Moll of the University of Michigan joins Marc Lynch to discuss her new book, The Revolution Within: Islamic Media and the Struggle for a New Egypt. This book challenges conventional accounts of the 2011 revolution and its aftermath as ... Show More
45m 39s
Apr 2025
Road to October 7 (S. 14, Ep. 12)
On this week's episode of the podcast, Erik Skare of the University of Oslo joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Road to October 7: A Brief History of Palestinian Islamism. In this book, Erik Skare argues that Palestinian Islamism is far more complex and dynamic than general ... Show More
48m 41s
Mar 2025
Decentralization, Local Governance, and Inequality (S. 14, Ep. 10)
On this week's episode of the podcast, Kristen Kao and Ellen Lust of the University of Gothenburg join Marc Lynch to discuss their new book, Decentralization, Local Governance, and Inequality in the Middle East and North Africa. This book directs our attention toward the ways in ... Show More
48m 8s
Sep 2021
Tunisia's Popular Authoritarian
This week on Babel, Jon speaks with Dr. Monica Marks, a professor of Middle East politics at NYU Abu Dhabi who has been thinking about Tunisia for almost 15 years. They discuss Tunisian President Kais Saied's recent moves to consolidate power, why Tunisians seem to support him, w ... Show More
37m 2s
Apr 2023
Tunisia’s democracy on the brink
Tunisia in North Africa was the birthplace of the Arab Spring, a wave of popular uprisings that shook or toppled authoritarian regimes in the region. But, after a decade of fragile democracy, in 2019 a new strongman, President Kais Saied, swept to power. He directed his campaign ... Show More
49m 5s
Nov 2020
Islam, islamisme, islamo-gauchisme: les territoires perdus du débat public?
Dans cet épisode de Poire et Cahuètes, on se penche sur la thématique du terrorisme, après l'attentat de Conflans-Sainte-Honorine. Et plus particulièrement sur la manière dont des penseurs et intellectuelles l'associent, ou non, à la religion musulmane.
18m 17s
Oct 2020
Danielle Haque, “Interrogating Secularism: Race and Religion in Arab Transnational Art and Literature” (Syracuse UP, 2019)
In many popular accounts of contemporary “Western” society there is an inherent contradiction between the principles underlying liberal secularism and Islam. This type of binary discourse about “religion” and “secular” naturalizes these differences and promotes the seeming rigidi ... Show More
57m 8s
Jun 2021
78/ Pedagogies of Liberation, Gender and the Syrian Revolution (with Banah Ghadbian)
This is a conversation with Banah Ghadbian. She’s a Syrian activist whose dissertation “Ululating from the Underground: Syrian Women’s Protests, Performances, and Pedagogies under Siege” was the subject of our conversation. As usual, we ended up talking about a lot of other thi ... Show More
1h 57m