The last centuries of the 3rd millennium in the Syrian Ǧezīra

Overview on the settlement history of the Syrian Jezirah and the Middle Euphrates Valley in the period ca. 2300-1900 BC.

La vulnérabilité des réfugiés palestiniens à la lumière de la crise syrienne

Depuis 2011, la crise syrienne et ses conséquences sur la population des quelque 500 000 réfugiés palestiniens qui y résident a fait rejaillir la vulnérabilité de cette population dans l’ensemble des pays du Moyen-Orient depuis son exode de 1948. Loin des discriminations sociales et économiques dont ils ont été les victimes dans certains pays voisins, comme au Liban, les réfugiés palestiniens se sont vus assurer en Syrie un accès sans entraves particulières à tous les secteurs de l’instruction publique ainsi qu’au marché du travail local. Mais la rébellion syrienne et la guerre civile qui s’en est suivie depuis 2011 les a ramenés à leur condition première : un peuple apatride, otage du conflit en cours, dépourvu d’une réelle protection étatique et exclu du système universel de protection des réfugiés mis en place par les Nations unies au début des années 1950.

Swiss Shock: Minaret Rejection, European Values, and the Challenge of Tolerant neutrality

In 2009 Switzerland, for long an apparent beacon of European toleration and neutrality, voted to ban the erection of minarets. Internal religious matters are normally dealt with at the regional or local level – not at the level of the Swiss national parliament, although the state does seek to ensure good order and peaceful relations between different faith communities. Indeed, the freedom of these communities to believe and function publicly is enshrined in law. However, as a matter of national policy, now constitutionally embedded, one religious group, the Muslim group, is not permitted to build their distinctive religious edifice, the minaret. Switzerland may have joined the rest of Europe with respect to engaging the challenge of Islamic presence to European identity and values, but the rejection of a symbol of the presence of one faith – in this case, Islamic – by a society that is otherwise predominantly secular, pluralist, and of Christian heritage, poses significant concerns. How and why did this happen? What are the implications? This paper will discuss some of the issues involved, concluding the ban is by no means irreversible. Tolerant neutrality may yet again be a leitmotif of Swiss culture and not just of foreign policy.

Islamophobia as Reactive Co-Radicalization

Since 9/11, 2001, a new form of religious extremism has arguably emerged, one which paradoxically portrays itself as a counter to another perceived extremism regarded as a real and imminent threat. Within North America and Western Europe, as elsewhere, there is an upsurge of various forms of reactionary rhetoric and opposition expressed towards Islam and Muslims. An increase in extremist behaviour, even violence, is appearing from quarters opposed to, or varyingly fearful of, Islamic extremism if not Islam or Muslims. Islamophobia, as a manifestation of fear of an exclusionary Islam, manifests as exclusionary or negatively reactive behaviours with Muslims and Islam as the target. This article explores the idea that Islamophobia can be regarded as a manifestation of religious extremism and, further, that such extremism is construable as “reactive co-radicalization.” It focuses on two European cases – the 2009 Swiss ban on the building of minarets and the 2011 Norwegian massacre carried out by Anders Breivik – as examples of this “reactive co-radicalization.” This term, I suggest, is an apt denominator for the exclusionary reaction to the rising presence of Islam within otherwise secular, albeit nominally Christian, Western European and North American societies, among others.