| Islam and Democracy Speaker Series
Fawaz Gerges
"The Future of Islamist Militancy: A Theoretical and Historical Footnote"
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Noon
Mershon Center for International Security Studies
1501 Neil Ave., Columbus, OH 43201
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Co-sponsored by the Department of Political Science, Middle East Studies Center, and Honors and Scholars.
Fawaz Gerges holds the Christian A. Johnson Chair in International Affairs and Arab and Muslim Politics at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. He is author of the recently published paperback edition Journey of the Jihadist: Inside Muslim Militancy (Harcourt Press, 2007) and The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global (Cambridge University Press, 2005). The Washington Post selected The Far Enemy as one of the best 15 books published in the field in 2005. Journey of the Jihadist was on the best-selling list of Barnes and Noble’s and Foreign Affairs Magazine for four months.
His special interests include Islam and the political process, jihadist movements, Arab and Muslim politics, American foreign policy toward the Muslim world, the modern history of the Middle East, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and history of conflict, diplomacy and foreign policy. Educated at Oxford University and the London School of Economics, Gerges has taught at Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, and Oxford.
Gerges is currently a Carnegie Scholar who has just returned from the Middle East after completing a 15-month field study in the region. He has interviewed hundreds of civil society leaders, opinion makers, activists, and radical Islamists in the Muslim world and within Muslim communities in Europe.
Now he is working on two books. The first traces the journey of what he calls “the Iraq generation” of militants and jihadis. Gerges has interviewed scores of activists and fighters who have either fought in Iraq, or are trying to join the battlefield there. He wants compare and contrast this Iraq generation of jihadis with earlier generations, particularly the “Afghan Arabs”. Who are they, and how they differ from their predecessors in terms of class, formal education, age, and religious education? What are the distinctive social features of the Iraq generation?
The other book, tentatively titled Understanding Muslim Politics: From Nasser To Bin Laden, investigates the role of religion in the construction of Muslim political identity and foreign affairs. What do the multiple uses of religion tell us about the role of Islam as a legitimatizing mobilization tool in Muslim society, politics, and foreign policy? Does the utilization of religion serve as a mask for Machiavellian realpolitik? Does obsession with identity politics reflect a deepening crisis of Muslim governance and political economy? The book is under contract with Cambridge University Press.
Gerges has given hundreds of interviews for various media outlets throughout the world, including ABC, CNN, BBC, PBS, CBS, NPR, CBC, and Al Jazeera. He has been a guest on The Charlie Rose Show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Bill Moyers Journal, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, ABC Nightline, World News Tonight, This Week, Good Morning America and other prominent shows. He was a senior ABC television news analyst from 2000 until 2006.
Gerges’ articles and editorials have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Baltimore Sun, The Independent (London), Al Hayat (London), Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Survival, and many others.
Gerges has been the recipient of MacArthur, Fulbright and Carnegie fellowships, and his books, including America and Political Islam: Clash of Cultures or Clash of Interests? (Cambridge University Press, 2000), have been translated into a number of foreign languages.
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Fawaz Gerges
Christian A. Johnson Chair in International Affairs and Arab and Muslim Politics
Sarah Lawrence College
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