T

he European populist right is distancing itself from its origins as it searches for its identity. In a sense, Europe is abandoning itself. Faced with mounting migratory pressure, Europeans are attempting to create a divide between themselves and the newcomers. Yet the Enlightenment established civilized relations between individuals, not societies. The European value system claimed universality.

The phenomenon that legitimized colonialism in continental Europe was this claim of universality. In response, European thought sought ways to live in a multicultural, post-secular society. However, the popular response of European peoples manifested itself in the abandonment of this claim. They will need more time to realize that abandoning the claim to universality also means abandoning the hierarchy of civilizations.

Recognizing the decline

The European value system, based on the Renaissance, Reformation and Enlightenment, claimed universality and established a hierarchy among civilizations, while also creating a world system. Although not everyone believed in the system, it was important to be seen as part of it and to participate in its rituals, since the system operated in a Eurocentric manner. For around sixty years, dozens of institutions formed around the United Nations were revered as churches, determining the rituals of the new world order. These institutions collaborated with complementary elements of American capitalism, such as the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO.

First, Europe abandoned the claims of its own value system. Then, the rest of the world lost faith in these values. Finally, the organizations that regulated the capitalist market lost their meaning. Furthermore, it has only recently become apparent that these developments signify a collapse rather than a transition. Those who argue that it is a transition claim that the world system is now dominated by five major powers, and that the five permanent members of the UN Security Council have lost their significance. They expect another country to join the US, China, the EU and Russia as the fifth member. Those who speak of the collapse of the system argue that the world is bigger than five.

Europe was not as accustomed to living with different cultures as it claimed to be. The Catholic and Protestant worlds of Europe had always demonstrated their quest for homogeneity through historical massacres. When the Enlightenment replaced religion, this quest for homogeneity became secularized within the context of nationalism. The Holocaust emerged as the catastrophe of modernity’s divisive quest for homogeneity.

After the Second World War, the economy took precedence over politics and the global market necessitated the legitimization of multicultural societies. However, the balance of the world system was disrupted by Turkey’s application for EU membership, the political crisis that began with Islamophobic attacks and the 2008 economic crisis. The influx of refugees, which peaked in 2015, and the shock of the pandemic after 2019 further intensified these crises. The Gaza massacre marked the point at which universal values were exhausted. By the beginning of the 21st century, Europe had lost its economic, political and human credibility.

Europe benefiting

The United States and Russia are the only remaining powers in a depleted Europe. The United States is anxious to protect its economic interests, while Russia is striving to preserve its political presence. Both powers seek to control the continent’s remaining countries, as if to demonstrate that they are not part of Europe. Each power engages with Europe’s populist right and supports nationalist and separatist political movements for different reasons. What they have in common is that neither wants a strong EU.

A fragmented Europe, akin to the Middle Ages, would retain its economic production and market power, but lose its political significance. Unable to produce even a common foreign policy, let alone the planned common army, Europe is doomed to remain an economic community without political will. The protectionist and passive stance of European nationalists coincides with the interests of non-European powers. This is why the populist right in Europe is simultaneously supported by both the US and Russia.

The US, keen to exert influence over the court ruling on Le Pen, is using Greenland as a pretext to crush Europe’s political power. By frightening markets with customs duties, the US is taking advantage of European peoples’ inability to protect their welfare. Meanwhile, Russia was aware that Europe could not fight back when it attacked Ukraine, which is under EU protection both politically and economically. Driven by a desire to preserve welfare without military engagement, Europe is facing significant challenges in both the economic and security spheres. With its market under threat from the US and its security architecture under threat from Russia, it seems unlikely that Europe will be able to preserve its political unity. The likelihood of Europe becoming more fragmented is quite high. Concerned about preserving their own identities, European populations are also being drawn towards federalism and ‘direct democracy’.

The main issue for those who support the European populist right is freedom of expression. However, what is actually meant by freedom of expression, as reflected in the names of Dutch and Austrian European populist right parties, is the ability to espouse views that do not align with democratic values. As provocations and rhetoric designed to attract media attention are increasingly framed in terms of freedom of expression, the fight against disinformation is becoming increasingly important in European countries. Legal regulations legitimized through disinformation originating particularly from Russia are also affecting the European populist right.

Independence

Another facet of freedom is independence. Russia views the European populist right as representing the people against the elites. Therefore, it supports the independence of European peoples in their opposition to their own elites. In European populist literature, politics against the elites is politics against the ‘established parties’. Europe’s established system also tries to prevent populists from participating in decision-making processes by drawing political boundaries.

In every European country, from Austria and the Netherlands to Italy and Hungary and the Czech Republic, politics now revolves around those in favor of and those opposed to integration with the EU. However, from the perspective of the European populist right, the sides in the political struggle are not pro-EU and anti-EU, but real people and Europeanized elites. It is hardly surprising that US populists also claim to support the ‘real people’. In this context, Musk’s speech of support at the AfD congress could be seen as an attempt to free the ‘real people’ from elite domination.

Another favorite topic of the populist right is ‘direct democracy’. The Swiss model of direct Democracy and confederalism are presented as a formula to save the EU’s political existence, but they actually conceal a Europe that has lost its political unity and declined in power. Paradoxically, therefore, the proponents of plebiscitary democracy, supported by both the US and Russia, are the European peoples themselves, who are concerned about preserving their identities. Those who advocate federal ideas based on the romantic notion that a unified political structure will emerge from a world of satisfied social interests also belong to the European populist right.

Another argument of the European populist right is that they alone can internalize the system of democratic values. This tendency makes the European populist right defensive and passive. The exclusionary tendencies of European peoples now stem not from a claim to greatness, but from a claim to authenticity. However, this claim to authenticity is increasingly diminishing amid new divisions. For example, this tendency towards division is evident among Germans, Bavarians and Munich residents. In the French populist right, the shift from Jean-Marie Le Pen’s view of French superiority to Marine Le Pen’s view of protecting ‘Frenchness’ represents an intellectual contraction. Such tendencies towards contraction and isolation are naturally supported by both the US and Russia.

I

n its early years, the World Economic Forum was born from a well-intentioned vision, serious intellectual effort and a quest for technical governance. When Klaus Schwab launched the Forum nearly sixty years ago, his primary aim was to strengthen the institutional capacity of Western industry and establish a healthy dialogue between corporate executives and decision-makers.

However, from the second half of the 1990s onwards, the rapid financialization of capitalism, coupled with the growing influence of new types of sponsors and global capital actors on the Forum, began to fundamentally alter the spirit of Davos. The dominance of financial capitalism and the increasingly theatrical nature of the event have eroded its intellectual weight.

It is now debatable whether the World Economic Forum should continue to be held in Davos. Davos’s reputation has suffered serious erosion over time.

The golden age: The centre of neoliberal globalization (1990-2008)

The early 1990s marked a historical turning point for both the international system and Davos’s institutional identity. The unipolar world order that emerged following the collapse of the Soviet Union reinforced the global perception that liberal democracy and the free market were ‘without alternative’. This period was symbolized by Francis Fukuyama’s ‘end of history’ thesis and marked the ideological triumph of neoliberal globalization.

Davos thus became the most visible showcase of the Western-centric global order in this new atmosphere. The principles of the Washington Consensus — privatization, deregulation, free trade and fiscal discipline — were discussed at Davos and virtually transformed into global norms. The invisible coordination mechanism formed between the IMF, the World Bank, and the World Economic Forum created intellectual and political legitimacy for reform packages that imposed the neoliberal market economy on developing countries.

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Davos was a platform on which state leaders, central bank governors, financial institution executives, and CEOs of multinational companies effectively shaped global economic policies. Representatives of ‘Third Way’ politics, such as Clinton and Blair, met with global finance and technology figures, such as Soros, Gates and Greenspan, on the same ground. They constantly promoted the idea that market capitalism and neoliberal democracy were compatible and sustainable.

From the early 2000s onwards, the first wave of digitalization played a significant role in the transformation of Davos. The rise of the internet economy saw Silicon Valley–based technology companies join the ranks of the global elite, with Google, Microsoft and Amazon becoming the new stars of the forum. The pioneers of digital capitalism began to represent not only technological innovations at Davos, but also new power relations.

However, this ‘golden age’ turned into a period in which the fragilities of the neoliberal system deepened, in stark contrast to the name given to the era. Excessive financial market liberalization, deteriorating income distribution, weakening real production and uncontrolled speculative capital growth made the global economy increasingly fragile. Sadly, Davos participants largely ignored these risks, and consequently the period from 1990 to 2008 represents both the most brilliant and the most problematic phase in Davos’ history.

Cracks in the neoliberal wing: The 2008 crisis and the erosion of legitimacy (2008-2016)

The global financial crisis of 2008 has gone down in history as the most severe structural test of the neoliberal globalisation model. The collapse that began in the US mortgage market quickly spread to the global banking system, and the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers revealed just how fragile the financial system had become. This crisis was not just an economic collapse; it also signified the intellectual bankruptcy of the market-centred order that had been staunchly defended at the World Economic Forum’s Davos Summit for years.

Following the crisis, Western governments were forced to implement extraordinary interventions that contradicted the free market rhetoric of previous years. Trillions of dollars of public funds were used to bail out banks that were ‘too big to fail’; losses were socialised while profits remained in the private sector. This situation undermined the justice and legitimacy of market capitalism profoundly.

For Davos, this period marked the beginning of a serious loss of credibility. Many of the forum’s leading figures had supported policies advocating financial liberalisation and downplaying risks, which led to the crisis. Despite this, there was no real process of self-criticism by these same actors at Davos in the post-crisis period; responsibility was attributed to ‘wrong practices’ rather than the system’s structural problems.

The Occupy Wall Street movement and similar protests that emerged in this environment were among the first major indicators of a mass reaction against the global elite order represented by Davos. The slogan ‘the 99% against the 1%’ symbolised the collapse of the neoliberal system’s social legitimacy. Davos was now perceived as both an economic forum and a symbol of global inequality.

By the mid-2010s, the Davos Summit had become a ‘post-crisis platform’, attempting to mitigate the effects of the crisis rather than determining the direction of the global economy. Consequently, the period between 2008 and 2016 can be viewed as a transitional phase leading to the ‘inevitable end’ of Davos. The confidence of the neoliberal golden age gave way to uncertainty, with ideological certainty making way for defensive rhetoric. The erosion of legitimacy deepened during these years.

The Trump Earthquake, Brexit and the Dissolution of the Atlantic (2016-2022)

2016 was a turning point for the global liberal order represented by Davos. The United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union and Donald Trump’s election as US president revealed the collapse of the political and economic consensus that had been established in the Western world for decades. These developments were not just a matter of domestic policy preferences, but also reflected accumulated social reactions against globalization in politics.

Trump’s ‘America First’ doctrine conflicted directly with Davos’s fundamental values, such as free trade, multilateralism, and institutional cooperation. The US pursued policies that rendered the World Trade Organization ineffective, initiated trade wars with its allies and demonstrated a tendency to withdraw unilaterally from international agreements. In this process, Washington became the biggest challenger to the liberal order it had defended for many years. In his second term, Trump has taken his policies and strategies even further.

Brexit showed that the idea of the irreversibility of European integration was a misconception. The British referendum clearly exposed structural problems in the economic and political architecture of the European Union, and the discourse of national sovereignty regained strength.

During this period, NATO’s role has also been subject to serious scrutiny. Meanwhile, China’s economic and technological growth has further complicated the global balance of power.

Against this backdrop of geopolitical fragmentation, the World Economic Forum in Davos has sought to defend globalization and preserve the existing order. However, Davos’s greatest weakness during this period was its tendency to view rising nationalism and sovereignty demands as a ‘temporary deviation’. The socio-economic causes of populist movements were not analyzed in depth; it was assumed that the process could be managed through cosmetic reforms to the system.

By 2020, Davos had regressed from determining the direction of the global system to defending an order that was seemingly disintegrating. Political fragmentation along the Atlantic axis has also greatly eroded the forum’s historical role. Therefore, the period from 2016 to 2022 can be defined as a phase of ‘inability to adapt’ for Davos.

I

n Eurowhiteness, Hans Kundnani, Associate Fellow in the Europe Programme at Chatham House, challenges a sanitized and linear history of the EU, prompting the reader to rethink Europe’s peaceful image against its imperial past. He goes on to tackle myopic assumptions about the European project throughout the book.

Kundnani argues that pro-Europeans, who cradled cosmopolitanism and renounced nationalism, have failed to perceive the reality of European regionalism. This provocative critique dissects both the civic and ethnic elements that shape European identity by highlighting Europe’s interaction with the “Other” and linking “Europeanness” and “whiteness.” 

Eurowhiteness may come off as unpalatable to many pro-Europeans, but it raises valuable questions against a backdrop of a rising far-right in Europe. Especially in the wake of the 2015 refugee crisis, the complex relationship between European identity and race demands urgent reflection.

Q. What are some of the myths that cause blind spots in understanding the European identity?

I would mention two in particular. The first is the idea that the EU is a cosmopolitan project. Cosmopolitanism usually has something to do with the whole world, and Europe is not the whole world. There’s a tendency by pro-Europeans and the EU to mistake Europe for the world. For example, when they talk about European integration, they sometimes seem to think that they’re talking about global integration, but they’re not.

Similarly, when they say “I’m a European or I’m a European citizen,” they seem to think they’re saying I’m a citizen of the world, but they’re not; They’re saying I’m a citizen of this particular region that has a very particular history and relationship with the rest of the world.

This is what I call in Eurowhiteness “the of myth of cosmopolitanism in Europe”, and related to that is the idea to think European integration is good for the whole of the world, but that may not necessarily be the case; It may be good for Europeans or may not be good for Europeans, arguably. But even if it is good for Europeans, it’s not clear if it’s good for the whole world.

The second myth would be that the EU is a peace project, and that is not entirely wrong. However, the way that pro-Europeans talk about it is sometimes simplistic; that after 1945 Europeans rejected war, and since then Europeans stand for peace. In reality, Europeans did not reject war in general in 1945. They only rejected war with each other.

In 1950 as the Schuman Declaration, which can be seen as the beginning of the idea of the EU as a peace project, is made by France’s then-foreign minister Robert Schumann, France is simultaneously fighting a brutal colonial war in Indochina.

Similarly, seven years later, when the Treaty of Rome is signed, France fought a brutal colonial war in Algeria. This demonstrates that Europeans are continuing to fight colonial wars until they’re defeated or exhausted.

Europeans like to think of themselves as being uniquely peaceful. The real story is more complicated, and in particular, as I say, to the extent that Europeans have rejected military force, it is military force within what has become the European Union, not even within Europe at large, that is being rejected.

Q. Has the EU’s focus shifted from peace to power?

I wouldn’t say it has shifted from being about peace to being about power. I think it was always about power as well as peace. In particular, it gets to what I was just saying about the idea of the EU as a peace project.

If you go back to the interwar period pan-European movement, which is the inspiration for the post-War European integration project, it is very clear that at that time already that the European integration project is about power and the perception of European decline accelerated by fighting one other.

The idea is: If we want to maintain our position in the world – and at that time this is a position of colonial domination- we have to stop fighting with each other. Not so that we can end European colonialism, but so that we can continue it. So in other words, European integration would take the competitive element out of European colonialism, allowing its practice collectively.

Part of the point of European integration in 1950s was for France and Belgium to consolidate their colonies in Central and West Africa at a time when they were no longer able to on their own. In particular, they needed an injection of West German capital.

The idea of geopolitical Europe goes back to the 1920s. It only seems new because pro-Europeans like to tell a story of Europe through the aforementioned myths. It only seems like a shift because we’ve forgotten the real history of how European integration began.

Q. Does the EU still export the European social model and the general welfare state?

Social market economy and the welfare state are no longer what the EU can to claim export anymore. It may have done once, but even in Central and Eastern Europe after the end of the Cold War we observe that this is not the case. In fact, the former communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe had much more generous welfare states when they were communist countries.

What happened as they joined the EU during the enlargement process is that those welfare states were dismantled as part of their transition to democracy. There are obviously lots of things that you can criticize about the communist systems in those countries, such as the lack of political freedom and so on, but they did have welfare states.

What has happened now is a further stage in which the EU is putting pressure on member states to dismantle the welfare state. For example, during the euro crisis, the austerity Germany imposed on Greece dismantled what was left of the Greek welfare state.

Q. Your book suggests that civic ideas of Europe are being replaced by ethnic-cultural ones. What is the connection of the neoliberalization of Europe to identity politics?

What I try to show in the book is that there have always been both of the elements of civic and ethnic-cultural idea in the history of what I call European regionalism- which is similar to nationalism on a larger continental scale. I’m suggesting that we can think of the history of ideas of Europe in the way we think about the history of nations. Therefore, regionalism is like nationalism.

The earliest ideas of Europe are predominantly ethnic-cultural. For example, in the medieval period, Europeanness is synonymous with Christianity. From the modern period onwards, you begin to get civic ideas of Europe. Then, in the post war period is when the EU came closest to evolving into a purely civic regionalism. Particularly, in the period from the 60s to the 90s-2000s, there was an idea of Europe centered on the social market economy, the welfare state and depoliticized mode of governance which European integration had produced.

I think what’s happened is that the social market economy and the welfare state have been hollowed out by neoliberalism in the EU. Meanwhile, there has been a backlash against the depoliticised mode of governance where the older civic idea of Europe is no longer persuasive in the same way it was before.

The way I understand neoliberalism is not just financialization, but it’s also the depoliticization of economic policy. In other words, it’s taking economic policy out of the space of democratic contestation. Although, to some extent, this has happened in the whole world in the last 30-40 years through things like the World Trade Organisation rules, the EU has taken it further through the creation of the single market, and also the Eurozone and the fiscal rules. Therefore, it’s very difficult now to pursue a left wing economic policy in the Eurozone because the fiscal rules don’t allow you to do it.

My argument is basically that when you take economic policy out of the space of democratic contestation and no longer have big fights between left and right about economic policy, your democratic politics shifts to cultural questions.

The point of democratic politics is to reconcile different interests and to have fights about questions where people in your society have different ideas or different interests. I think a healthy democratic politics is one where you do that about economic issues because there are real differences between the interests and different ideas as well.

What has happened now is that the center left parties and the center right parties converged in the center around neoliberal economic policy, which the EU has constitutionalized. Therefore, the way parties can differentiate themselves from each other now is around cultural questions.

In terms of what Europe says to the rest of the world, there was a time it would say it stood for the social market economy and the welfare state and now it says it stands for European civilisation.

A good example of this is the phrase “the European way of life,” which used to be used by French socialists, specifically, to refer to the social market economy and the welfare state and the idea of solidarity that it was meant to embody, saying “that’s what we in Europe stand for as opposed to the United States.”

Now when you look at the way that the phrase is used, it is in more civilizational terms. In the current European Commission, the Commission of Ursula Von Der Leyen since 2019, a European Commissioner for promoting the European way of life and his job is to keep migrants out, which makes it very explicit that migrants- only migrants from the South, not migrants from the east- are a threat to the European way of life. That is a very explicit expression of civilizationalism where the European way of life is defined in terms of culture and civilisation, not in terms of the social market economy and the welfare state.

Q. In your book you imply that the center right is increasingly mimicking the far right. Is there a pro-European version of the great replacement theory, if so, what is it?

There is an idea that the EU represents a European civilisation which is being increasingly threatened. This is basically a far right idea that has now been taken on by the center right in Europe.

For example, a couple of weeks ago, Eric Zemmour was doing a rally in the South of France with the young far right leader Marion Maréchal, and the slogan on the lectern at which he was speaking was ‘Defend our civilization.’  The way the far right is thinking about Europe is there’s a European civilisation that is threatened right now. The far right tends to talk about this in the context of migration. That is, it’s the migration of non-white and non-Christian people that is threatening European civilisation.

For example, Valérie Pécresse, the Republican candidate in the French Presidential election in 2022, was talking about white replacement theory or alluding to it in terms of migration. However, in addition, what the centre right tends to do is not talk so much about migration as a racial threat, but more in foreign policy terms as a threat to European civilisation. Macron has given speeches where he’s quite explicit about this.

In other words, international politics is a clash of civilizations, like how Samuel Huntington argues, and Europe is a distinct civilization. Moreover, for someone like Macron, the West is not one civilization, which is what Huntington thought but that Europe is a distinct civilisation, separate from the United States as well.

Where I see a connection with great replacement theory is that this is almost the international political equivalent of the great replacement theory. It’s not about migration but it’s that if Europe does not unite and defend itself, it will be also replaced by other civilizations. Macron has basically said that.

Q. What are some key takeaways from history regarding Europe’s interaction with those who it sees as the “Other”?

I try to show in Eurowhiteness that there’s a long history of defining Europe against various different “Others” at various different times and it’s constantly shifting. But roughly, I would say, in the medieval period when Europe is pretty much synonymous with Christianity, Jews are defined as the primary internal other and Muslims as the primary external other, excluding the divide between Western Christendom and Eastern Christendom.

Then, in the modern period, I try to show how there is a new complex modern idea of Europe, which is partly to do with the European enlightenment and the scientific revolution. It is a rationalist, secular idea of Europe rather than a religious one. At the same time, the idea of Europe also emerges in the context of the encounter of Europeans with the populations of Africa and Asia, and especially the Americas, and that’s the context in which the idea of whiteness emerges.

So, the modern idea of Europe is not just a rationalist one as opposed to a religious one, it’s also a more racialized idea of Europe that is closely connected to the idea of whiteness. What I think happens in that context is that non-white people around the world are the “Others” against which Europeans define themselves.

In the 20th century and particularly after World War I, you have the new idea of Europe as a geopolitical bloc, which I mentioned earlier. European civilisation or the European spirit, as they talked about it at that time, is being threatened by the United States on the one hand and the Soviet Union on the other hand. In that context, Russia and also the United States are respectively an “Other.” What I think we’re seeing today is a mixture of all of those “Others.”

T

Qadir’s observations underscore an important point: Muslims living in the West often find themselves caught up in the complexities of politics and day-to-day life. While this might sound exhausting, it’s not a rarity, but rather a common experience for Muslims in the West.

In stark contrast, Qadir points out that this level of complexity is noticeably absent in Turkey. The challenges Muslims face in the West seem less pronounced in the Turkish context and daily life as a Muslim is significantly less burdensome. The more streamlined and unburdened life gives Turkish Muslims a sense of ease and clarity.

Qadir’s perspective is a testament to the attraction Istanbul holds for Western Muslims and provides insight to the growing trend of Western Muslims moving to Turkey.

Islamic heritage and Western comfort

Adding to Turkey’s allure is the presence of numerous mosques, shrines, and landmarks intimately tied to Islamic history. These structures serve as tangible reminders of Turkey’s rich spiritual heritage and accentuate its appeal to Western Muslims, allowing them to embrace their faith openly while staying connected to their Western lifestyle. 

Lauren Booth, a British Muslim, author, and activist, shares her perspective on Turkey’s appeal: “It’s a great mix of Islamic and Turkish culture—that’s what’s incredible to me as a European.” “I can feel at home here as a Muslim and as a European. For me, it’s like two sides of my life are matched, finally,” she adds.

Booth also notes the growing trend of many Muslims being drawn to Turkey from countries such as the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. She describes this as a significant coming together that promises a hopeful atmosphere of prosperity and unity. Her experiences in Turkey, especially her visits to the grand mosques, led her to reevaluate her ideas about the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish people, and to acknowledge that her earlier understanding had been influenced by Western-centric Orientalism.

The lure of Western comfort and Islamic character make Turkey an ideal destination for Western students of Islam. Students from countries such as the United States find the mix of a developed society and political freedom and Islamic values particularly appealing.

Turkey’s educational institutions offer comprehensive Islamic Studies programs which attract those with a thirst for in-depth knowledge of theology, history, Islamic fine arts, and jurisprudence. Western Muslims who want to learn more about their faith, history, and culture respond to these points of attraction as well. 

Family ties and cultural bridges

Family ties and cultural heritage influence Western Muslims’ decision to make Turkey their new home. These ties provide a familiar touchstone in a foreign land and foster a sense of community and support. The presence of established networks can ease the transition and help newcomers navigate their new lives in Turkey.

Turkey’s social openness, and the warmth and welcome by the local population offer comfort and a sense of acceptance to Western Muslims who face discrimination in their home countries. In addition, the diversity within expatriate communities creates a supportive environment for newcomers seeking companionship and mutual understanding as shared experiences bridge cultural differences.

Muhammad Tahiri, a longtime resident of Turkey who leads a community of Western Muslims, emphasizes the appeal of Istanbul’s Islamic diversity and modernity. Unlike other Muslim countries with polarizing labels, Turkey has a harmonious atmosphere where labels such as “Salafi” or “Sufi” are less important. The ease of hearing the adhan (call to prayer) on the street and then shopping in well-stocked malls adds to this unique experience.

In addition, the freedom to access the Internet and mobile applications without surveillance contrasts with more controlled environments. Complementing this context, the Majlis of Istanbul Muslims has emerged as an initiative dedicated to fostering spiritual, social, intellectual, and professional dialogue within the Istanbul Muslim community, providing avenues for growth, collaboration, and the promotion of Islamic values and thought.

The migration of Western Muslims to Turkey reflects a blend of historical significance, religious freedom, social openness, and educational prospects. Turkey’s rich history, religious tolerance, and promising opportunities continue to attract Western Muslims seeking a fresh start. In their search for an environment that is consistent with their values and conducive to their faith, Turkey is proving to be a destination where these aspirations can be realized.

O

n August 10, news of a controversial contract in the Yemeni city of Dhamar went viral. The contract, signed by the Manar tribes in 2021, resurfaced after an ex-political figure from the Islah party posted about the need to implement it across Yemen on Facebook.

The contract included restrictive measures against women in the tribe. For example, it states that women are strictly forbidden to own a smartphone, and if a woman is found having one, her male guardian will be punished. The contract also bans women from wearing makeup, travelling in taxis without a male guardian, and working for humanitarian NGOs.

The contract was reposted by Abdullah Ahmed Al-Adaini, the ex-leader of the conservative Islah party, and sparked a wave of conflicting opinions between supporters and opponents. In a now-deleted Facebook post, al-Adaini claimed that the document should be circulated and implemented throughout Yemen.

This is not the only form of oppression that Yemeni women continue to face under the Houthi leadership. The situation of Yemeni women today is worse than it was eight years ago.

The enslavement of Yemeni women

Regardless of their age, girls and women in Yemen have long suffered. Affected by Yemeni tribal customs, they have struggled for their freedom and rights as independent individuals. Yemeni tribes typically regard women in terms of “honor” and some see it as their duty to control women and restrict their freedom.

An example of extreme control is an incident in 2020, when news broke that a father had sold his daughter to a man for 200,000 YER, the equivalent of 350 USD. The agreement was made on paper between both parties, with no consideration given to the age of the girl, Laimoon, who was reportedly four years old at the time. The papers also contained a formal stamp with signatures of witnesses to the “transaction.”

The incident sparked local and international outrage. Gender-based oppression in Yemen takes place amid the harsh conditions of war, poverty, inflation, and terrible governance.

The forms of oppression against Yemeni women

In an exclusive interview with Politics Today, Nadya Abdullah, the Yemeni deputy minister at the Ministry of Youth and Sports – Women’s Sector, spoke about the different forms of oppression that Yemeni women face on a daily basis. She divided them into two categories: cultural and tradition-related oppression, on the one hand, and postwar oppression, on the other.

Traditional cultural oppression of women centers on the idea that women can’t make good decisions about their own life matters. “Until recently, Yemeni women struggled to have an opinion or a decision about their educational future,” she told Politics Today. “Even today, there are still families who decide on their daughters’ future whether it is education, marriage, or work.”

She also mentioned the issue of inheritance for women in Yemen. “Women always have to lose something, either they fight and lose their family, or they don’t fight and lose their rights,” she said, adding that in some cases, women are forbidden to inherit, regardless of women’s inheritance rights in Islam.

The postwar oppression of Yemeni women

Postwar oppression is a new form of oppression of women, appearing after the 2015 war. It involves the arrest of politically active women and the suffocation of women working for humanitarian NGOs. What is more, Abdullah mentioned that many women have lost their limbs or been killed by mines planted by the Houthis in conflict areas.

“Tens or hundreds of women have lost their limbs or been killed by Houthi mines, and a large number of women have been arrested for political reasons and are still in Houthi prisons,” Abdullah said. Such oppression of women has gone beyond the bounds of tradition and culture.

Despite holding a position in the Yemeni government, Abdullah has also experienced oppression because of her gender. “I fled Sana’a in 2015 because the Houthi forces tried to arrest me at the beginning of Operation Decisive Storm,” she explained, referring to the Saudi-led operation against the Houthis in Yemen. She added, “Since then, I haven’t been able to see my family. All because I am a politically active woman.” What was once shameful has become the norm under the Houthis.

Abdullah is not the only one; the number of women detained in the city of Sana’a alone is estimated at between 200 and 350. Samera al-Huri, a Yemeni activist, was arrested by the Houthi forces for her involvement in politics. Unlike Abdullah, al-Huri wasn’t as lucky. She was captured by the Houthis and tortured for three months until she confessed to false charges of prostitution. The tribal traditions that once protected women from this form of abuse have disappeared under the pressure of war.

F

rench President Emmanuel Macron recently completed a five-day trip to Africa, visiting Gabon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo, and Angola on March 1-5. Macron’s trip to Africa excluded several countries in the Sahel region, including Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, where there is significant tension with France.

Macron faced by criticism and protests

French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent trip to Africa aimed to deepen cultural connections and the exchange of ideas between France and African countries. He promised to end the “Françafrique” policy, which has long been criticized for enabling French political and economic influence in Africa.

His recent visit to Africa was met with criticism from numerous regional political analysts, who argued that his promises lacked new substance and were simply a repackaging of previous pledges. Many have expressed disappointment that Macron did not offer concrete plans or policy changes to address the complex issues facing the continent.

African political analyst Amir Nourdine Elbachir pointed out that Western nations are still discussing plans for Africa without involving Africans, suggesting that Macron’s new policy for Africa was prompted by threats to French interests in the continent.

Meanwhile, President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Félix Tshisekedi urged Macron to treat African nations as equal partners. Tshisekedi’s statement was made during a press conference with Macron held in Kinshasa on Saturday, March 4, 2023.

Tshisekedi called for France to change its “protectionist” attitude towards African countries, adding that France needs to see African countries as partners rather than in a paternal relationship.

The critiques suggest that while Macron’s new policies may be a step in the right direction, they may not go far enough in addressing the root issues of French interference and neocolonialism in Africa.

Despite Macron’s promises to end “Françafrique,” the French practice of maintaining economic and political influence over its former African colonies, Macron faced criticism and protests throughout his trip.

Lingering colonial legacy

France’s history of colonialism in Africa has left a legacy of resentment and distrust towards the West. Many African nations feel that their resources have been exploited and they have been left to deal with the aftermath of the colonial era leading to a deep and ongoing mistrust toward Western countries, and primarily Europe.

As competition for influence in Africa grows more intense, African nations are increasingly seeking partners who prioritize African interests and treat them as equal rather than viewing them as pawns in a neocolonial game.

Protests erupted during Macron’s visit to Gabon, where some demonstrators held placards stating “France get out.” The country’s opposition leader Jean Ping accused France of having a “neocolonial attitude” towards Gabon.

China and Russia on the rise

In recent years, China and Russia have expanded their presence in Africa, raising the concerns of European countries and the United States.

An interesting video circulated on social media showing some of the protestors who were chanting slogans against Emmanuel Macron’s planned visit to the Democratic Republic of the Congo carrying Russian flags in their hands. The protest highlights the growing influence of Russia and China in Africa.

China’s economic policies in Africa focus on extracting natural resources, expanding the Chinese consumer market, and ensuring economic and political stability. Through President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative, China has expanded its economic cooperation with various African countries.

On the other hand, Russia’s approach to Africa involves business opportunities, arms sales in exchange for diplomatic support for Russia’s foreign policy preferences, political support for authoritarian leaders, and security cooperations. Russia’s relative popularity in the Global South has disappointed Western observers, and its attraction strategy has been fueled by the “memory diplomacy” approach whereby it highlights positive historical narratives such as its lack of involvement in the slave trade in Africa or colonialism in the region, and its role in supporting African countries during their struggle for independence.

In contrast, the European Union is trying to establish a broad political and economic relationship with African countries based on trade, investment, aid, and technical support, aiming to achieve better control over irregular migration.

The changing dynamics of Africa

African countries increasingly seek to assert their independence and pursue their own economic and political agenda.

The rise of China and Russia in Africa poses a challenge for the United States and EU countries by adding another layer to international African politics. They now have to re-adjust their approaches  to engage with African countries, taking into consideration their expectations and diplomatic needs.

The ongoing resentment towards the West in Africa highlights the need for a more equal and respectful relationship, one that both acknowledges the ongoing impact of Western colonialism and aims to help Africa address the root causes of poverty and instability.

D

uring the past decade, international audiences have come to associate the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led Indian Government with a muscular form on Hindu nationalism that has made the country a metaphorical living hell for religious minorities. Many experts claim Muslims and Christians have been pushed to the brink of genocide by a regime and ideology – Hindutva – that makes no secret of its intent to transform India into a Hindu-only nation.

International headlines convey this reality: “In India, calls for Muslim genocide, grow louder,” observes the Washington Post. “India’s Muslims fear for their future under Narendra Modi,” says BBC. “India’s Christians attacked under anti-conversion laws” remarks the New York Times. “Dreams of a Hindu nation leave minorities worried,” declares the Japan Times.

But when it comes to the Indian Government’s relationship with non-Hindu religions, these headlines tell only a small part of a very large story, because as anyone with an intimate knowledge of India knows – this is a country of profound paradoxes and contradictions. India is what former UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill would describe as a “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma,” a statement he used to define the Soviet Union.

Buddhism as a foreign policy tool

Because at the same time, India is persecuting religious minorities at home, it’s using Buddhism advance its foreign policy objectives abroad, particularly in Asia, despite Buddhists accounting for less than one percent of India’s total population. India has adopted the religion as a soft power tool to enhance bilateral relations in the region.

Indian headlines convey this reality: “PM Modi projects Buddhism as unique part of India’s foreign policy,” says ANI News. “Indian PM Narendra Modi promotes Buddhism worldwide,” observes Associates Times. “Modi has been working to turn India’s Buddhist heritage into strategic asset,” remarks The Week.

Buddhists may represent a tiny percentage of India’s population, but the Indian Government can plausibly sell “India’s Buddhist heritage” to a global audience, given the country is not only the birthplace of the religious faith, but also home to numerous sacred sites, including Bodh Gaya, Nalanda, and Sarnath. Some analysts contend Buddhism has been India’s most successful export, having opened the South Asian country to the world in the 6^th century, when the religion was introduced to Japan.

Modi’s ‘Act East’ and Buddhism

Moreover, Buddhism diplomacy has become an organizing principle of Modi’s ‘Act East’ policy, which aims to counter China’s growing influence in the region by cultivating bilateral economic and strategic relations with Indo Pacific nations, which is why Modi has made Buddhism a prominent feature of his international visits.

International headlines again convey this reality: “In a bid to woo Thailand, PM Narendra Modi invokes Lord Buddha,” observes the Economic Times. “PM Narendra Modi’s visit to Nepal’s Lumbini Showcases Indian Buddhist diplomacy,” writes Outlook. “PM Modi visits Buddhist temple in Japan,” remarked The Hindu. “India to spend $15 million to boost Buddhist ties in the region,” reported Associated Press.

Last year on the holiday to commemorate Buddha’s birthday – Vesak Day – Modi said, “Lord Buddha has become even more relevant…Countries are joining hands with each other and becoming each other’s strength, taking the values of Buddha.”

In his rhetoric and policies, Modi has made clear he views Buddhism to be the perfect instrument to build and enhance bilateral relations in the region because of the religion’s pan-Asian presence and reputation for promoting equality and encouraging peaceful coexistence.

Buddhist ties with Sri Lanka and Japan

By touting India’s Buddhist heritage, Modi has bolstered his government’s economic, cultural, and academic initiatives. Last year, the Indian Government announced a $15 million grant for the promotion of Buddhist ties with its neighbor Sri Lanka, where the religion is practiced by more than 70 percent of the population.

This money will be spent on the construction and renovation of Buddhist monasteries, cultural exchanges, archaeological cooperation, and reciprocal exposition of Buddha’s relics, according to India’s External Affairs Ministry.

But it’s the India-Japan relationship that best illustrates how Buddhism has operated as a binding agent between New Delhi and a fellow regional economic power, with Buddhists accounting for nearly 70 percent of the total Japanese population, a reality Modi turned into opportunity during his first visit to the North Asian country in 2014, when he chose Kyoto, instead of Tokyo, as his first destination.

He chose Kyoto because it’s home to To-ji Temple, a 9^th century Buddhist complex. There he met with then Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. When India’s Minister for External Affairs tweeted a photo of the two leaders walking together through the temple grounds, he included the words, “Moving in unison. PM Modi and PM Abe at To-ji temple, symbolic of India-Japan civilizational commonalities.”

The Japanese leader echoed this sentiment, telling local reporters at the time how Buddhism spread from India to Japan, creating what he called a “sutra” [thread] between the two countries.

T

The two earthquakes with a magnitude of 7.7 and 7.6  that struck eleven provinces in Turkey (Adana, Adıyaman, Diyarbakır, Gaziantep, Hatay, Kahramanmaraş, Kilis, Malatya, Osmaniye ve Şanlıurfa) on February 6 caused major devastation to local cultural heritage sites as many historical monuments were either severely damaged or completely destroyed.

The Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism has promptly taken action to assess the damage to the cultural treasures in the eleven provinces affected by the earthquake. Minister of Culture and Tourism Mehmet Nuri Ersoy stated that teams continue to work to assess the damage to all cultural properties and ensure their safety in the regions where the “disaster of the century” was experienced.

Ersoy also emphasized that in addition to the teams formed by engineers, architects, and lecturers from universities who are experts in antiquities, academic support will be provided by universities for damage assessment.

“Every part of the buildings will be taken under protection, and restorations will be carried out quickly in accordance with the original,” Ersoy continued.

The earthquakes affecting eleven provinces caused minor damage to many historical structures, especially the Habib-i Neccar Mosque, which has been standing for centuries in Antakya; Adıyaman Grand Mosque (Ulu Cami); and St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in Antakya.

The symbol of Gaziantep

Among the sites affected by the earthquake was Gaziantep Castle, which was built in the 11th century and is located on a 25-30 meter hill in Gaziantep city center. The castle was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2003, and served as a prison during the time of the Ottoman Empire. Built by Sultan Orhan Gazi in 1396, it is considered one of the largest and most exquisite castles in Turkey.

While some of the bastions in the east, south, and southeast parts of Gaziantep Castle were destroyed by the earthquake, debris was scattered on the road.

Şirvani Mosque, located near the historical Gaziantep Castle, is another historical structure damaged by the earthquake. The mosque, built in 677 CE, was one of the most important historical buildings in Gaziantep. The mosque’s dome and the wall on the eastern façade were destroyed.

It has been reported that many artifacts in Gaziantep museums, including those in the renowned Zeugma Mosaic Museum, have been left unscathed.

World’s first cathedral in Hatay

In the nearby Hatay Province, the world’s first cave church, St. Pierre, and the thousands-year-old Hatay Castle ruins were not damaged by the earthquake. Antakya is inhabited by several minority communities, including Syriac Orthodox Christians, Syriac Catholics, and Armenians.

However, the Habib-i Neccar Mosque, which was the first mosque in Anatolia, and the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch, which has been around since the first century CE, suffered extensive damage and almost collapsed.

The centuries-old Habib-i Neccar Mosque was built in 638 CE when Antakya was under the rule of Muslim Arabs, and was among the most important historical structures of the city.

The Hatay State Assembly Building, built by the French architect Leon Benju as a movie theater in 1927 and now serving as a cultural center, was also destroyed in the earthquake.

Massive damage at earthquake’s epicenter

Kahramanmaras, the epicenter of both earthquakes, suffered extensive destruction. The Grand Mosque (Ulu Cami), built in Kahramanmaraş during the Dulkadiroğlu Principality, lost half of its minaret, coupled with damage caused by falling rubble near the entrance of the mosque.

The Diyarbakır Fortress, which was registered on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2015, managed to survive the earthquake. It was reported that there was no serious damage to the walls, but there was debris in some parts.

Turkish authorities have pledged to provide support and resources to ensure that the damaged cultural sites are fully restored and preserved for future generations.

P

alestinian cinema was among the first to emerge in the Middle East and North Africa along with Egyptian and Syrian cinemas. Egyptian cinema started production in 1923, followed by Syrian cinema in 1928 and Palestinian cinema in 1935. However, at the time, it was barely possible to separate Palestinian and Syrian national identities, which only emerged after the division of the region by imperial powers. Before then, Palestine was known as “Southern Syria” and was part of Greater Syria, which included today’s Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine.

Yet, with the start of the British mandate in Palestine in 1917 and the French mandate in Syria in 1920, national identities gained a strong meaning. This translated into political, social, economic, and military actions against the imperial powers of the time that acted as if the region was theirs, dividing it in a humiliating manner into chunks of land.

The film industry in Palestine, which in a period of a few years saw a mass displacement of its people, was among the political, economic, and social changes taking place in the region. This mass displacement was reflected in a series of films that addressed the injustice against the Palestinian people alongside their life prior to the Nakba.

The first Palestinian movie theater was established in Jerusalem in 1908 and was known as “Cinematographe Oracle,” showing films on Saturday and Sunday nights. In 1912, a silent movie theater was established in the city, known as the “Cinema International,” where shows were organized based on ticket sales. At the time, these shows were mostly attended by male audiences who came from elite backgrounds.

In 1927, a law regulating movie theaters came to light in Palestine, which established the conditions under which the British mandate authorities were to control the sector.  he first Palestinian filmmaker was Ibrahim Hassan Sarhan, who shot a 20-minute short film of the visit of Saudi King Saud Bin Abdilaziz to Palestine in 1935. Other prominent Palestinians in the field included Ahmad Hilmi Alkilani who graduated from Cairo in 1945, and Muhammad Saleh Al-Kayali, who upon returning from his studies in Italy, established a cinema studio in Jaffa in 1940. He collaborated with the League of Arab Nations in 1945 to produce a film on Palestine.

Although the number of Palestinian films produced before 1948 was limited, the content of these films varied and provided important documentation of life before the Nakba. Such films include Realized Dreams, Studio Palestine, Ahmad Hilmi Pasha, and The Eid’s Night. Palestinian-Egyptian filmmaker Salaheddin Bardakhan produced the film A Night’s Dream in 1946, which was shown in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Amman, and Cairo at the time.

The impact of the Nakba on the film industry in Palestine

Following the Nakba and the establishment of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1965, more Palestinian films saw the light. The first Palestinian film that was shot under PLO supervision was No to Peaceful Settlement in 1968. At the time, all production units were factional, where the Fatah movement, for example, had its own production unit. The Palestine Film Unit, which was part of the PLO’s research center, published a 12-minute short film about Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip in 1967 and its impact on the Palestinian people there. Leftist Palestinian groups such as the PFLP and DFLP had their own production units, and produced films at the time such as The Path in 1973 by Rafiq Hajjar and Our Little Houses in 1974.

A dozen films unfolded carrying titles such as Why We Take Arms, Why We Plant Flowers, and Palestine in the Eye. Arab producers also contributed to the Palestinian film industry at the time; for example, Iraqi producer Muhammed Tawfik who produced dozens of films such as the Child and the Toy (1986), and Syrian Muhammed Malas who produced The Dream of the City in 1983.

With the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 1993, the Media and Culture Department of the PLO was converted into the Palestinian Ministry of Culture. In light of limited contributions, the Palestinian “Revolution films” could be considered dead today, as film productions by Palestinian factions outside the PLO are different in their approach and content from the productions of the Palestinian Revolution Cinema, including those produced by Islamic parties.

Emergence of Palestinian Cinema?

The last decade has seen an emergence of Palestinian cinema which had lost momentum in the 1990s and 2010s. Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman is among the top contributors to the Palestinian film industry with his masterpiece It Must Be Heaven (2019). In 2022, a storm of pressure on the film platform Netflix was launched after it published Farha, a Palestinian film that narrates the story of a 12-year-old Palestinian child during the events of the Nakba, which saw the displacement of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes prior to the establishment of Israel in 1948.

In the film, Farha’s father hides her in a room to protect her, promising to be back. He is unable to return, and from her room, Farha sees the horrors of the Nakba unfolding in front of her eyes: a Palestinian family is executed in the backyard of her family’s house by a group of Jewish soldiers. The film reveals a snippet of what Palestinian refugees had to endure, while the implications of the Nakba are still very present today. Today, as Israeli politicians who threaten Palestinians with a second Nakba are becoming ministers in Netanyahu’s new government, films like Farha seem even more ominous.

Farha and other Palestinian films send a message that the Palestinian film industry is coming back into the spotlight after decades of being almost inactive. The second generation of Palestinian refugees educated itself and the third generation is now taking action, supported by the fine education it has received, which will translate into more Palestinian films and novels in the coming years. The cultural war between Palestinians and Israel seems to be taking a new turn, and it will only become more heated in the coming years.

The fact that Farha is among the top 10 films on Netflix, shows that the Israeli counter-campaign to defame it has failed. As the impact of the Palestinian film and cinema industry increases, more Palestinian films are likely to be made, creating more pressure on platforms by pro-Israeli groups. Yet, the message of Farha has resonated loud and clear: the Palestinian narrative cannot be stopped.

The recent capture of six escaped Palestinian political prisoners from Israel’s Gilboa prison meant their freedom was tragically short-lived. But the escape itself, reportedly through a tunnel dug with a rusty spoon, helped put a spotlight on the plight of Palestinian prisoners and their steadfast resolve to resist the Israeli settler-colonial regime.

The publication of A Shared Struggle: Stories of Palestinian & Irish Hunger Strikers (2021) by Norma Hashim and Yousef M. Aljamal is likely to help steady the focus of that spotlight and add another dimension; namely, the use of the hunger strike to call attention to the freedom struggle and the long history of this tactic which has been used not only to improve prison conditions and uphold the dignity of prisoners but also to expose the fundamental nature of colonialism.

A Shared Struggle is the third in a series of books on Palestinian prisoners by the authors. It is preceded by The Prisoners’ Diaries: Palestinian Voices from the Israeli Gulag (2013) and Dreaming of Freedom: Palestinian Child Prisoners Speak (2016). What makes A Shared Struggle unique is its focus on the hunger strike and the parallels it draws between the Irish hunger strikers who helped bring about the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 and Palestinian hunger strikers who have long been an integral part of the fight for the Palestinian right of self-determination.

Of course, numerous other parallels between the Irish and Palestinian struggles abound. In their valuable introductions, the Palestinian-Irish academic Asad Abu Sharkh and former Irish political prisoner Danny Morison point out many of them, including the settler-colonial Plantation of Ulster and the role of Herbert Samuel, the British Home Secretary who oversaw the internment of thousands of Irish revolutionaries during the Easter Uprising of 1916 and who later advocated for the Balfour Declaration and became the High Commissioner to Palestine, where he helped repress Palestinian resistance to British colonialism.

Ultimately, it’s the contrast between the Irish and Palestinian hunger strike experience that seems most politically instructive, as noted by international law expert Richard Falk in his foreword.

It becomes easy to understand why to this day popular sentiment in Ireland is often with the Palestinians, why murals in Belfast testify to this solidarity, and why the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement has made such headway there.

But ultimately, it’s the contrast between the Irish and Palestinian hunger strike experience that seems most politically instructive, as noted by international law expert Richard Falk in his foreword. Chief among the differences, Falk notes, was the willingness of the Western corporate media to cover the Irish hunger strikers in 1981, most notably Bobby Sands who was elected to the British Parliament while on hunger strike and whose death from starvation, along with nine other strikers, is often credited as a pivotal moment.

That same media, however, studiously avoided coverage of Palestinian hunger strikers, denying them the publicity that is essential to the success of a hunger strike, as several contributors to this book point out in their accounts of their experience.

Currently, Israel incarcerates about 4,650 Palestinian political prisoners, including 200 children, 40 women, and 520 held under “administrative detention”, which is a suspension of habeas corpus that means people are never charged and never have their day in court, the kind of draconian, Kafkaesque measure that the United States duplicated in Guantanamo.

The testimonies in A Shared Struggle provide flesh and blood to these statistics and give readers a glimpse of the courage and determination of the hunger strikers who risk death, do serious harm to their own health, and experience agonies that few can even imagine.

As A Shared Struggle shows, several hunger strikes have been carried out to protest administrative detention, along with cruel and inhuman treatment, torture, restrictions on and denial of family visits, medical neglect, solitary confinement (itself a form of torture), and other violations of international law that the Israeli government implements on a daily basis.

The testimonies in A Shared Struggle provide flesh and blood to these statistics and give readers a glimpse of the courage and determination of the hunger strikers who risk death, do serious harm to their own health, and experience agonies that few can even imagine. Their heroism is all the more profound when you realize that being removed from society does not mean you are removed from history. In fact, as both the Irish and Palestinian struggles demonstrate, prisoners make history.

Natalia Grincheva, an honorary research fellow in the Research Unit in Public Cultures (RUPC) at the University of Melbourne and a scholar of digital humanities, has concentrated on developing new data methods for researching museums as core players in the creative economy and as soft power actors. Her book Museum Diplomacy in the Digital Age, published by Routledge in 2020, considers online museums mainly as places of modern cultural diplomacy and explores how museums can shape and manipulate their audiences. Furthermore, the book discusses museums’ strategic forces through their online environments to create national identities and project messages across boundaries.

The book’s main question is about the digital aspect of the contemporary museum from the viewpoint of its diplomatic effects. To answer this question, the author conceptualizes the notion of “digital museum diplomacy.” Grincheva shows that this responsibility is realized by the museums’ cultural diplomacy that occurs informally by non-state actors online.

To conceptualize this trend the author has interviewed several specialists. She has tried to understand the agency of museums in cultural diplomacy and the dialogical essence of online media now used by museums. To do so, she introduces three online practices started by Western museums during the past decade by examining the Australian Museum, Sydney (Chapter 3); the British Museum, London (Chapter 4); and the Guggenheim Museum, New York (Chapter 5).

These online museum spaces have provided a unique chance to build a cooperative communication system with the visitors. For her, these new technologies incorporated by museums can present a series of opportunities and some sources of revenue needed to extend their abilities and assets.

According to Museum Diplomacy in the Digital Age, contemporary museums can reach unprecedented global power possibilities in expanding museum collections, narratives, and programs. Drawing on many examples in online museum spaces, the book introduces some techniques for “digital museum diplomacy.” Through this diplomacy, online museums can develop values and transfer cultural and political messages to guarantee their nations’ interests.

Natalia Grincheva, Museum Diplomacy in the Digital Age (Routledge, 2020) ISBN 9780815369998, 164 Pages, 22 B/W Illustrations

Death to 2020, which is described as a “mockumentary,” is a critical interpretation of the most important political and social events of 2020 from the perspective of the show’s producers. It is a show, because although the events taking place in it are real events that we all experienced in 2020, the interpretation of these events is fictionalized in a way to make the whole thing a satirical and funny TV show.

In a nutshell, Death to 2020 is a cleverly written, well-executed, and well-produced TV show that reminds us of old-school satirical TV shows that mocked their own times

The plot of the show is as follows: the main political and social events of 2020 are chronologically retold and summarized for the audience while the fictional characters of the show, who are kind of “confused” in their own ways, start commenting on the events as if they were part of an absurd reality show.

The mockumentary takes the U.S. presidential election of 2020 as the most salient event in the regular schedule of a globalized world. The U.S. election is the most commented event in the show along with the outbreak of the COVID19 pandemic. According to the show – and it is hard to disagree – the election was between two candidates who were too old and unqualified to be the president of the world’s last declining hegemon, and created an impossible dilemma for the voters.

The campaign process of the U.S. elections shows two different Americas according to the show. However, polarization and increasing anger between the two sides are not something unique to American society. The whole world is being divided into factions and polarized, while ordinary people are becoming increasingly radicalized. This polarization is exacerbated by social media companies, which sell their users’ private information for a profit. It is, in fact, hard to disagree with these arguments.

Covid-19, which was a shock to everyone in 2020, is dealt with in depth in Death to 2020. In general, the Western world and particularly two leaders – Donald Trump in the U.S. and Boris Johnson in the U.K. – are criticized in the mockumentary. It is true that the timing of the pandemic could not have been worse: both national countries and international institutions were going through a process of dramatic change.

Technology is speeding up everything, polarization and xenophobia have hit a peak, economic recession and trade wars threaten regular people all around the globe, authoritarian tendencies are on the rise even in democratic states, climate change has become ever more serious, and many more problems of the so-called modern age have come together – all this, when the virus hit the world.

As a result, the timing and the scale of the pandemic gained great popularity in conspiracy circles. Although, this is mocked in the show, when one wonders about the origin of the virus and conspiracy theories around it, it is not that surprising that there are suspicions about its origins and timing.

Other issues are mentioned as well such as the massive Beirut port explosion, the Harvey Weinstein legal case which sparked the #MeToo movement, Brexit, Megxit (the break of Prince Harry and his American wife Meghan Markle from the British royal family), the growing popularity of social media and particularly YouTube and Netflix, and the role of WhatsApp groups and other social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok in spreading false information, creating paranoia, and consolidating the age of the post-truth.

When one looks at all these headlines and many other shocking events around the world that are not featured in the show, it is not hard to see what a crazy and perplexing environment we live in. The only conclusion one can reach is that we are all stuck in a powerful whirlpool that resembles a black hole.

Loaded with gallows humor, Death to 2020 is an appropriate retrospective of the year. Reality has become so surreal and absurd that there is nothing left but to mock it all. In the end, Death to 2020 is worth watching in order to come face to face with our new reality.

The Italian director Gianfranco Rosi’s film Notturno (2020) is a compelling meditation on life in and around the borders of Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. The film offers a critique of foreign, colonial and extremist meddling within the region in terms of constructed borders and disaffected citizenry while presenting a visual style that consists of slow-moving landscape and a story-telling approach that leans on oblique characters that display withdrawn emotion. At times the film seems to be a deliberate anachronism to the images of conflict from the region that viewers have become accustomed to.

Observational Documentary

Notturno is an interesting work both because of its subject matter and its formal approach. It partially presents itself in the tradition of Poetic Documentaries such as G. Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi (1982) which both translates as ‘Life out of Balance’ and evokes both the beauty and absurdity of humans and the planet.

The difference with Rosi’s film is that he introduces and follows a number of subjects or characters and touches upon harsher and even brutal elements of life in the region of Iraq and Syria while consistently maintaining a kind of distance.

Rosi spent three years living in the border areas of Iraq, Syria and Lebanon and there is an obvious ‘verite’ feeling to some of the scenes- he reportedly accumulated 90 hours of footage which both lends a veracity to the project while also making the complete edit feel too long at times and lacking a clear structure.

Some of the most disturbing scenes in the film are also the ones that fit the least in terms of the formal structure and tone; a series of interviews between therapists and children who recount the horrors of life in Syria or under Daesh. The children recount graphic accounts of beheadings and depict ISIS (Daesh) leader Al-Baghdadi alongside his followers in drawings with particular emphasis given to Yazidi victims.

The film opens with a series of marching soldiers passing under a majestic sky and this theme of unobtrusively allowing events to unfold comprises much of Notturno; we see everything from a drum beater of Ramadan wandering the streets to wake people from their slumber and rise for the pre-dawn meal to the sounds of gunfire to a boy cleaning his gun on guard duty to wider imagery of an American convoy of jeeps and SUV tanks and a refugee camp.

In almost all of these cases throughout the film the director gives little clue as to where this is taking place and has deliberately re-blurred borders and asked the audience to either hypothesize on location or get swept up in the idea of a conflict so complex and multi-faceted that it becomes meaningless to know where exactly on the map you are.

Oblique dramatics include a series of audio messages with a distraught mother whose daughter is being held ransom by ISIS which eventually dwindle to nothing but remembrances of the missing young woman as well as the absurd sight of a single car ferry transporting its load near a destroyed bombed-out bridge.

One sequence that does give more clues involves a group of women YPG militants holding guns and later retreating to their barracks, taking off their shoes. They cook and watch training videos on a tablet with the red, white and green flag visible on their soldiers. This and the American flag are the only ones noticeable over the course of the film.

Another episode early in the film includes a wailing mother who revisits the eerily empty prison (which is in Erbil, Iraq) where the son died- the scene proves both distant and uncomfortable to the viewer.

A later scene offers a birds-eye view of another prison yard (again the location is unclear) where orange-clad male prisoners have their limited exercise walk; little to no context is given and this scene proves disturbing because it plays out in real time and later cuts to close-up shots of them with hands cuffed behind their backs.

There is both a banality and silence to the scene as the viewer tries to reconcile media representations and earlier references in the film (ISIS/Daesh) with the state-sponsored retribution that is unfolding.

Theatre of the Absurd

This most compelling part of Notturno is the casting, direction and performance of a play on the history of Iraq called ‘Homeland’ that takes place in a psychiatric ward; the viewer is first greeted by images of wailing patients and then witness the director (a doctor) choose six patients to act in his play.

A video montage is projected in the background that provides glimpse of archival context that has been missing throughout the film- Assad, Saddam, burning oil fields, American invasion… from Monarchy to Republic to Daesh. The doctor-director gives the patient-actors scripts to memorize and the viewer witnesses both this strange approach to rehabilitation and a fiercely dedicated troupe of misfit performers express their collective outrage at the loss of their country.

One of the actors shouts ‘no to America… no to Iran’ as another video montage throws a blitz of imagery that reveals colonial roots to Iraqi civil war alongside a ‘Palestine is Lost’ mantra; Notturno seems about to end with an Arabic song of lament and the close-up of the actors but instead the film turns back to imagery of the everyday (one of the earlier characters, Ali and his silent work assisting bird hunters).

Over the months of May and June 2021, hundreds of unmarked graves of Indigenous children have been exposed in Kamloops, Brandon, Marieval, and Cranbrook across what is today called Canada. Many more are sure to be exposed in the coming months. All of them were near the former sites of Canadian “Indian Residential Schools,” which were fundamentally institutions of forced assimilation and genocide, more appropriately called prisons than “schools.”

I want to emphasize the word “exposed” here because none of these stories of children murdered by Canada’s structural violences, abandoned and disposed in unmarked graves, are new to Indigenous people. They have known, lived, and survived these stories for decades. The Canadian state itself also knew about these stories but has been for years actively trying to conceal the horrific crimes it has committed. This story is only “new and shocking” to a Canadian and international public that has bought into Canada’s projected self-image of an enlightened and progressive state and society.

Canada promotes itself on the world stage as a progressive model of “liberal democracy” in which ideals of “reconciliation,” “tolerance,” “multiculturalism,” “justice,” and “truth-seeking” flourish within its state structures. This diplomatic image is misleading though, and Canada’s crimes against Indigenous Peoples are only properly understood, not when they are posited as “dark chapters” or “historical mistakes,” but when they are situated within the historical and ongoing context of the imposition of a genocidal settler colonial sovereignty.

In today’s political discourse, the term sovereignty has become associated with the modern nation-state, where a central sovereign political body practices, at least in theory, supreme authority over a specified land and people. This is especially the case in settler colonial contexts like Canada, where Indigenous people are largely viewed as another minority group that must be assimilated into the supreme sovereignty of the Canadian state, as opposed to what they in fact are: sovereign original Peoples.

Throughout their long history and until today, Indigenous Peoples from First Nations, Inuit, and Métis have developed complex societies with complex systems of social and political organization

Sovereignty did not always follow this Euro-American colonial meaning or practice. Throughout their long history and until today, Indigenous Peoples from First Nations, Inuit, and Métis have developed complex societies with complex systems of social and political organization. Within these rich traditions and societies, multiple forms of sovereignty were imagined, theorized, and practiced.

It is impossible to fully explain what Indigenous sovereignty means in a short piece. But what we can say is that Indigenous sovereignty that flourished prior to colonization and still survives today in the values, praxis, and indeed existence of Indigenous people, is generally layered and shared.

As we learn from the writings of Indigenous scholars like Audra Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, and Glen Coulthard, decolonial Indigenous sovereignty gleans its authority from living with the land and in openness towards difference and the plurality of people. It asserts a communal type of freedom and a responsibility to each other and to the land. Whereas the settler colonial state sees the self-determination of the nation as exclusive to an imagined homogenized and purified racial identity, Indigenous sovereignty in its foundation is open and attentive to difference, plurality, and sharing.

Foundationally speaking, Canada is an ethnonational state because it refuses to acknowledge the political rights of Indigenous Peoples as sovereign Nations, and asserts instead exclusive sovereign authority for what it imagines as the British and French “founding nations” of Canada.

Under the veneer of Canada’s image as a multicultural liberal democracy is the ongoing operation of structural settler colonial violences.

In short, under the veneer of Canada’s image as a multicultural liberal democracy is the ongoing operation of structural settler colonial violences, which eliminate Indigenous people and sovereignty and replace them with settler colonists and exclusive European settler colonial sovereignty.

Where is Canada’s truth and reconciliation?

Responding to the Chinese government’s call for the United Nations to investigate Canadian crimes against Indigenous Peoples, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had this to say:

“The journey of reconciliation is a long one, but it is a journey we are on. China is not recognizing even that there is a problem. That is a pretty fundamental difference. In Canada, we had a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Where is China’s truth and reconciliation commission? Where is their truth? Where is the openness that Canada has always shown and the responsibility that Canada has taken for the terrible mistakes of the past, and indeed, many of which continue into the present?”

Trudeau is referring here to China’s “systemic abuse and human rights violations against the Uyghurs.”

It is of course highly doubtful that the Chinese government is genuinely concerned about the well-being of Indigenous Peoples, any more than the Canadian government is genuinely concerned about the well-being of the Uyghurs. It seems to me that both are using each other’s state violences as a means through which they can advance their own state strategic interests.

Putting that aside, and more to the point, is Canada really interested in the truth? And has it taken serious responsibility for its ongoing structural settler colonial violences? The answer for both is clearly, no.

First, it is important to clarify that the Canadian government did not, as Trudeau’s quote seems to suggest, initiate the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) because it wanted to do the right thing and uncover the truth. Survivors of the Canadian forced assimilation prisons were successful in forcing the Canadian state to create the TRC, among other things such as issuing a public apology.

After long legal battles, in May 2006, parties which included, legal counsel for former students, legal counsel for the Churches, the Assembly of First Nations, other Indigenous organizations and the Government of Canada approved the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement which began in September 2007. A critical part of this agreement was that the Canadian state would establish the TRC. Thus, it wasn’t Canada’s moral compass that drove the public inquiry into the truth of these “schools,” but rather pressure from Indigenous people and organizations, which forced the truth out of the Canadian state.

Second, many of the TRC’s Calls to Action are yet unfulfilled, and reconciliation remains an empty promise. In a recent analysis, Tom McMahon, former general legal counsel to the TRC and previously executive secretary to the Manitoba Aboriginal Justice Inquiry, lists some of the many Calls to Action that have been completely ignored by the Canadian government, including simple ones, such as creating a monument to honor the Survivors and the victims of “Residential Schools.”

More damning still, scholars Eva Jewell who is Anishinaabekwe and Ian Mosby in a recent special report concluded from their study that “In 2020 … our analysis reveals that just 8 Calls to Action have been implemented, this is down from 9 in 2019. Ultimately, we find that Canada is failing residential school Survivors and their families.” To put it bluntly, that’s a pathetic number: 8 out of 94 Calls to Action. Given this reality, how can anyone take Canada’s proclaimed commitment to reconciliation seriously?

The Azeri crushing military defeat of (pro)Armenian forces in the Second Karabakh War (September 27–November 9, 2020) resulted in Turkey’s surging popularity not only in Azerbaijan but also across the entire Turkic-speaking world.

Ankara’s decisive military-diplomatic support for its strategic ally, including military training, consultancy, and military-technical support showcasing the might of Turkey-produced unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) made leading Russian conservative thinkers grudgingly admit Turkey’s growing role and increasing popularity in different theater, including, among others, the post-Soviet space.

In Moscow, understanding seems to be growing that the idea of the “Great Turan,” built on the ideology of the unity of the Turks, is rapidly spreading not only across South Caucasus and Central Asia, but it is also gaining popularity in ethnically and religiously diverse parts of Russia as well. This is clearly visible in the rhetoric of both Russia’s conservative thinkers and representatives of the military-political leadership, which is demonstrating a growing uneasiness over Turkey’s growing influence.

In this regard, Russia’s concerns could be conditionally broken down into three interdependent macro-areas.

First, on the domestic level, the following entities, are heavily populated by Turks: Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Chuvashia, Dagestan, North Ossetia, Chechnya, Crimea (unlawfully annexed from Ukraine in 2014), Yakutia, Tuva, Karachay-Cherkessia, Khakassia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Gorno-Altai Republic, and Taymyrsky Dolgano-Nenetsky District.

Russian experts admit that Turkey’s foreign policy and military successes have resulted in its increasing popularity among Russia’s Turkic-speaking peoples.

Russia’s concerns rest on two main pillars. On the one hand, Russian experts admit that Turkey’s foreign policy and military successes, ambitious domestic projects and elaborate use of “soft power,” which rest on the highly revered conservative values and traditions of the Muslim world as well as the idea of pan-Turkism, have already resulted in its increasing popularity among Russia’s Turkic-speaking peoples.

On the other hand, memories of the past, of the time of internal Russian crises, when many of the aforementioned entities openly demanded either broader autonomy or vouched for full independence and sovereignty, are still very much alive. While in some regions Russia managed to find peaceful solutions – albeit having to cede sizable economic benefits, and political and cultural autonomy– in others, confrontation took the form of open armed conflict.

Russian elites are concerned that in the case of internal crises, these sentiments (separatism/secessionism) could recur, now under the banner of pan-Turkic ideology. At this juncture, a particularly telling case is that of Tatarstan. Aside from having several pro-Turkic organizations operating on its territory, Kazan has always stood independent from Moscow.

Perhaps, the most alarming example – for Moscow, of course – was the post-2015 developments, that is the downing of the Russian fighting jet in Syria. Instead of breaking up with Ankara loud and clear, Kazan opted to remain silent causing visible confusion in Moscow.

Interestingly, amidst the crisis in the bilateral relations between Ankara and Moscow, conservative Russian commentators openly wondered whether in the case of a (para)military escalation Tatarstan would act as Turkey’s “silent ally” in Russia’s rear. Even though escalation was not meant to occur, Tatarstan’s ambivalence – undoubtedly, construed in Moscow as tacit siding with Ankara – most certainly did not go unnoticed.

The second major area is Central Asia, dubbed as Russia’s “soft underbelly,” which entered the sphere of Turkish interests after the collapse of the USSR. Specifically, starting in 1993, Turkey stood behind the creation of the first regional organizations, including, among others, the International Organization of Turkic Culture (Türksoy).

A pivotal milestone that showcased Turkey’s regional success was the emergence of the Cooperation Council of Turkic-Speaking States (Turkic Council) in 2009. The latter offers its members multifaceted cooperation in the fields of economy, science, education, transportation, customs, and tourism.

Russian commentators and experts agree that a combination of Russia’s own mistakes – the foreign policy blunders of the 1990s and the derogatory treatment of foreign workers from Central Asia, which, incidentally, continues – and Ankara’s proactive position has led to the gradual erosion of Russia’s regional “soft power.” Another uninviting regional news for Russia came after an informal summit of the Turkic Council on March 31, 2021 which declared the city of Turkistan in southern Kazakhstan as “The spiritual capital of the Turkic world.”

Coupled with Kazakhstani determination to boost its ties with China through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the diminishing role of the Russian language – trendy in the whole macro-region – this news is yet another cause for worry, signaling Russia’s forfeiture of its formerly strong stance in Kazakhstan, a member of the Eurasian Economic Union, to both China and Turkey.

These developments, however, tarnish in comparison with another regional trend. Starting in 2020, Ankara has profoundly increased its activities in the fields of military-technical cooperation, offering its services and (para)military education to regional players, including Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. This has resulted in growing pro-Turkish sentiments and strengthening of the pro-Turkish lobby among the local military-political elite. In effect, Central Asia, a region where some countries are challenged with security threats, could largely benefit from the experience Turkey could offer in the area of counterterrorism and/or non-linear (para)military operations.

In this regard, it must be understood that Ankara’s increasing participation in Central Asian military-political affairs gravely upsets Russia from a moral-ideological point of view. For decades, Russia has perceived itself as an exclusive provider of military-technical assistance to Central Asian countries – perhaps, the only remaining vestige of former Soviet regional dominance. However, this seems to be withering down. Even though some influential Russian thinkers are calling on the Russian leadership to “learn the Soviet mistakes and renounce from ambitions in Central Asia,” it is dubious whether the Russian leadership is prepared to do so.

Fasting during Ramadan is one of the most important expressions of faith by followers of Islam. From sunrise to sunset, Muslims abstain from eating, drinking, and other specified human activities. Many Muslims collectively spend time during the nights and days of Ramadan performing acts of worship and, above all, reciting the Quran and repeating remembrances of God, Allah.

One of the most challenging issues in relation to Ramadan is determining its beginning and end based on the crescent moon. Since the beginning of the month is bound to sighting the moon in the lunar calendar, the exact declaration of the new month is difficult. Therefore, for many years, announcing the sighting of the crescent moon has been a challenging task. Many Muslim scholars and jurists believe that the beginning and end of Ramadan can only be determined by spotting the moon with the naked eye and that using modern tools to calculate the appearance of the crescent is not religiously valid.

However, especially in recent decades, others have emphasized the calculability of the lunar month. As a result, Muslims and Muslim-majority states are divided over the start of the month. Although it is the same as any month of the lunar calendar, the beginning and end of Ramadan is important as it determines the start and end of the month of fasting.

Declaring the sighting of the crescent moon is not the sole issue regarding Ramadan that is disputed among Muslims. Based on the sect and school of thought to which they belong, Muslim jurists also differ on various aspects of fasting during Ramadan.  These include the exact time of the beginning and end of fasting, what invalidates fasting, and the fitrah payment, a charity given to the poor at the end of Ramadan.

Among the disputed points is the challenging issue of the end of Ramadan. The day and usually its following days are among the most important feasts in most Islamic countries and Muslims living in non-Islamic countries. In recent decades and with the bureaucratization of urban life in the world, the performance of the rituals of the feast of Ramadan mostly depend on the official calendars that are enforced by the states.

In recent decades and with the bureaucratization of urban life in the world, the performance of the rituals of the feast of Ramadan mostly depend on the official calendars that are enforced by the states.

The lives of Muslims today, like those of worshippers of other religions, are shaped by a network of physical/biological, sacred/religious, and secular/political times and calendars. Muslims living in Islamic and non-Islamic countries and working in modern institutions have difficulty matching the biological time of fasting with their working hours during Ramadan. While Muslims tried to regulate their work with fasting in premodern societies, now many Muslims are forced to adapt their fasting to modern work. This unconformity has caused some Muslims to complain about this issue as their efficiency in the labor market decreases during Ramadan: they cannot compete and reach their full potential at work. On the other hand, the need to work affects their ability to worship as they would like.

Muslim states and the announcement of the sighting of the crescent moon

Apart from having to match the biological time of fasting with the demands of the labor market, the intersection of religious time and secular/political time has also caused problems. Almost all Muslim-majority countries designate certain days to the holiday of Eid al-Fitr. This closure for administrative and economic reasons has a long history and is determined by the states long ago. It is a challenging task due to the difficulties of determining the exact time of the end of Ramadan. This is made more complicated by the fact that in some Islamic countries Muslims belong to different sects which may not declare the same day as Eid al-Fitr.

Due to this fact, we see that sometimes countries that are located, for the most part, on the same meridian (line of longitude), for instance Iran and Saudi Arabia, or different parts of a country (for example, Iraqi Kurdistan and the Arab regions of Iraq) declare different first and last days of Ramadan. There was also the interesting case of Muammar Gaddafi, the former Libyan leader, who always announced the Feast of Ramadan on a different day that that announced by Saudi Arabian authorities.

In addition to governments, there are rivalries and disputes among religious elites and religious interest groups that lead to unanimity on the declaration of Eid on an exact day. Although most of the differences in declaring the Feast of Ramadan result from different jurisprudential views, the role of the rivalries and disputes between clerics cannot be ignored.

In Iran, the first and last days of Ramadan are declared by the Supreme Leader. The Iranian state propagates that the declaration is binding for all citizens regardless of any school of thought within the Shiism they follow.

Iranian Shiite religious scholars are an example. In Iran, the first and last days of Ramadan are declared by the Supreme Leader. The Iranian state propagates that the declaration is binding for all citizens regardless of any school of thought within the Shiism they follow. However, followers of other Shiite clerics, who consistently challenge the religious legitimacy of the Iranian state, provide their understanding of the start and end of Ramadan based on reports of the moon’s appearance received by their witnesses. Their followers do not attend the state-run feast prayers and prefer to join those held by their beloved clerics. These differences in announcing the end of Ramadan and of congregational prayers contest the state’s religious authority and legitimacy.

Transforming a local issue into a state one

Until very recently, the majority of Muslims lived in rural areas. The “local” determined many religious issues and believers solved their religious problems by referring to the “nearest” sources of authority and reference embodied in the local imam, saint, or other “men of Allah.” They generally did not know what others thought and did, even in nearby neighborhoods. Gradually and by becoming part of modern nation states, believers became connected to centers of political power. They had to adapt themselves to the state calendar. On the other hand, technological developments, such as the telephone, radio, television, and recently the internet, contributed to being notified of state decisions regarding the lunar calendar.

Muslim communities in countries where Islam is not the majority religion deal with the issue of the exact dates of Ramadan in a variety of ways. Some trust calendars prepared by international Muslim organizations, others seek the opinion of their local religious institutions, and others yet refer to the announcements of their country of origin.

In conclusion, spotting the new moon is something that any Muslim can do. However, moving away from traditions of moon sighting, which are still prevalent among Muslims in rural areas, has caused a significant dependence on state-run media. Nowadays, most Muslims do not know how and when the new moon can be sighted. Living in air- and light-polluted urban areas makes it generally impossible for millions of Muslims to spot the moon.

On the other hand, Muslims are deeply involved in state calendars and cannot easily swim against the current. Muslim states have other expediencies and interests in religious matters as well; they consider international necessities, regional realities, and their denominational structures.

A good example is Iraq. Sunnis generally obey Saudi Arabia in announcing the Feast of Ramadan, Arab Shiites generally follow their high-ranking Iraqi clerics, and a minority listens to the Iranian Supreme Leader. The Iraqi government declares the holiday to include the days heralded by the followers of both denominations.

In a nutshell, for the first time in history, Muslims have found themselves in a node of modernization, transnational sectarian networks, and state policies. They are obliged to obey state calendars, whether they live in a Muslim country or not. At the same time, they can expand their individuality by seeking information about the beginning and end of Ramadan from non-state sources via modern technologies. This has added to the rising crisis of authority among traditional Islamic actors in the contemporary world.

As a result, the fact that one cannot known with certainty when Muslims who live kilometers away from one another will celebrate the Feast of Ramadan and being obliged to live according to predetermined state calendars have led to unprecedented confusion and disputes among Muslims and Muslim-majority states. This phenomenon is another example of the Muslim world’s rising, new social, cultural, and symbolic mobility and crisis.

South Korea has become a soft power giant with the effective promotion of its national image and culture worldwide. The country has already proved itself by producing high-quality electronic devices and with its automobile industry. The South Korean movie Parasite was the first non-English language movie to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards in February 2020.

There is a term for this new trend: Hallyu, meaning the “Korean Wave,” describing the quick transfer of South Korean popular culture to the rest of the world. The Korean influence ranges from K-pop to television programs, drama series, and various sorts of digital content.

The Middle East region is not an exception to this wave of Korean cultural influence. Korean dramas, music, and movies are received well in the Middle East. One reason behind Korean culture’s quick penetration in the region is the overlapping cultural sensitivities related to social and moral values such as the place of family in the narratives and the lack of nudity – nudity is more common in European and North American productions. According to Spotify, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Morocco, and Algeria were the top five streamers of K-pop between 2014 and 2020.

The Korea-Arab Society (KAS) is a foundation established and funded by Korean and Arab governments to boost reciprocal cooperation in several areas such as arts, sports, culture, and economy. Korean Cultural Centers (KCC) were opened in Ankara, Cairo, and Abu Dhabi in 2011, 2014, and 2018 respectively.

On the 60th anniversary of South Korea and Turkey diplomatic relations in 2017, Turkey released the movie Ayla, based on a true story that took place during the Korean War. South Koreans call Turks “Blood Brothers.” The Department of Korean Language and Literature at Ankara University was established in 1989, and was the first department for Korean studies in Turkey.

Similarly, the UAE and South Korea have strategic partnership relations in several areas such as education, energy, and agriculture. In 2019, an MoU was signed between the UAE’s Barakah One Company and South Korea’s Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) to improve cooperation on nuclear energy. Recently, in March 2021, during the Industry and Energy Cooperation Forum, the UAE and South Korea signed another MoU for collaboration in hydrogen economy, digital innovation, and transformation.

In August 2012, Turkey and South Korea signed a free trade agreement (FTA) establishing a free trade area, followed by two other agreements on trade and investment in 2015. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan paid a visit to South Korea in 2018 and met Korean President Moon Jae-in to further the cooperation on international affairs such as the refugee crisis, fighting terrorism, world peace, and security.

South Korea has always been politically neutral in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The country has shown sensitivity towards its relationship with Israel and has kept a balance so as not to risk losing its major trade partners in the Gulf. South Korea has maintained limited military involvement in MENA with some exceptions such as the first Gulf War (1990-91). In 2003, Seoul sent troops during the invasion of Iraq but kept its forces in non-combat zones. In 2006, South Korea sent 356 soldiers to Southern Lebanon as part of the United Nations Interim Force (UNIFIL).

A win-win situation characterizes the Korean-Middle East relationship. South Korea can continue exporting high-tech products to the Middle East and benefit from bilateral agreements in other fields such as education and social reforms. Yet, the country may also face the risk of being part of the U.S. military engagements in the region, given its strong alliance and partnership with the U.S. However, South Korea is not on this track. The cultural impact of Korean arts and movies has helped the country earn a worldwide reputation especially among younger generations who are more eager to follow Korean influencers and public figures online.

Throughout the two centuries of the existence of the Russian Empire, Orthodoxy was the ideology and the main moral justification of the empire’s foreign policy expansion. This was especially the case in the “southern direction,” namely in the Black Sea and Caucasus regions, where the Ottoman Empire was traditionally the main and only military and political opponent of the Russian Empire.

Saint Petersburg and Istanbul fought each other eight times over the course of these two centuries. Both empires contained elements of theocracy in their state principles. The monarch was simultaneously the head of the official church, and in that sense, both rulers were the leaders of their respective community of believers, and shared both political and religious authority in their person. Therefore, the struggle between the Russian and Ottoman Empires traditionally not only bore military-political characteristics, but was also a religious confrontation.

Particularly indicative of this matter was the so-called Byzantine project of Catherine the Great, who in the last quarter of the 18th century intended to recapture Istanbul from the Ottomans and take the capital of the Orthodox world under the Russian protectorate. This idea was the dominant feature of Russian foreign policy for almost a century and a half. Russian troops were closest to capturing Istanbul during the Russian-Ottoman wars of 1828-1829 and 1877-1878, but these plans were not destined to materialize.

The last attempt to revive and implement the “Byzantine project” took place during World War I, when the forces of the Russian Black Sea Fleet with army formations attached to them prepared to conduct a Bosphorus landing operation in 1916, following the example of the failed Dardanelles landing operation of Russia’s allies in the Entente. During World War I, the Ottomans managed to defend their capital, which automatically put an end to Russia’s “Byzantine project.” Russia’s failure to capture Istanbul exhausted the potential of the idea of uniting all the world’s Orthodox peoples under the auspices of Orthodox Russia.

Between 1920 and 1930, over 7,000 Orthodox churches in Russia were closed, and about 15,000 clergy and 200,000 ordinary people were arrested, shot, or sent to forced labor camps for following Orthodox Christianity.

After the end of the Russian Empire and the establishment of the Soviet Union in 1917, the relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and the state in Russia fundamentally changed. The Bolsheviks saw in Orthodoxy not only an ideological opponent, but also their direct competitors in influencing the minds of the majority of the Russian population, and therefore subjected the Church to harsh political repression and even terror. This process was initiated by the decree of the Soviet government of February 2, 1918, entitled “On the Separation of Church from State and School from Church.”

Between 1920 and 1930, over 7,000 Orthodox churches in Russia were closed, and about 15,000 clergy and 200,000 ordinary people were arrested, shot, or sent to forced labor camps for following Orthodox Christianity. The apogee of the persecution of the Church in Russia came in 1932 with the opening in the Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg of the State Museum of the History of Religion by the USSR Academy of Sciences. During the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, as part of World War II, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin stopped the repressive practice against the Russian Orthodox Church, since he decided to use Orthodoxy to mobilize the Russian ethnic majority of the country’s population to fight fascism, which he succeeded in doing in full.

During Yeltsin’s presidency, the process of returning previously nationalized property and cultural artifacts to the Russian Orthodox Church began and the practice of financially supporting the Church from the state budget was initiated. The latter was perceived by the authorities and society as a certain compensation for the Church’s persecution during the years of the USSR.

The influence of Orthodoxy on Russia’s foreign policy in those years was minimal and manifested itself in a significant way only once – that is, in the first half of the 1990s, during the peacekeeping operation of the Russian military in former Yugoslavia.

However, to a greater extent, the peacekeeping mission was an allusion to the historical events of the 1870s in the Balkans, rather than a manifestation of geopolitical doctrine. Russian peacekeepers in Croatia, Kosovo, and Metohija protected not only the territory inhabited by the Orthodox Serb population during the interethnic conflict, but also physically defended the property of Orthodox monasteries and temples.

President Vladimir Putin, who was elected head of Russia in 2000, decided to turn Orthodoxy into a tool of soft power in the country’s foreign policy. During the third term of Putin’s presidency (2012-2018), an ambitious geopolitical project began to be implemented to revolutionize Russia’s influence in the Orthodox ecumene by transferring the seat of the ecumenical patriarch from Istanbul to Moscow.

These efforts were planned to be made official at the Pan-Orthodox Council in the summer of 2016, but at the insistence of the Moscow Patriarchate the location was moved to a “neutral” site – the Greek island of Crete, where the semi-independent Church of Crete operates under the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in Istanbul.

In order to subordinate the entire Orthodox world to the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Moscow Patriarchate and, consequently, the Kremlin, it was necessary to ensure the numerical majority of its representatives among the participants of the Pan-Orthodox Council, which is attended by patriarchs and archbishops from the fourteen autocephalous Orthodox Churches, with the exception of Rome. To this end, in 2011, an artificial increase in the number of dioceses and vicariates began in Russia by establishing 2-3 new dioceses and the mass appointment of vicars (bishops without dioceses) on the basis of the previously existing dioceses of the Russian Orthodox Church.

As a result of such actions, the number of potential participants in the Pan-Orthodox Council on the part of the Russian Orthodox Church tripled, which from a technical point of view guaranteed the Russian Church a numerical majority in representation in comparison with the other 13 generally recognized Orthodox Churches. The Moscow Patriarchate’s actions were fully supported and financed by the Russian political leadership, since the patriarchate itself, without the assistance of the state, could not independently maintain a bureaucratic structure artificially inflated for the implementation of geopolitical ambitions.

The main question to be determined at the Cretan Pan-Orthodox Council was the following: which of the two patriarchates, Constantinople or Moscow, would lead the Orthodox ecumene? If we look at this issue more broadly, in the context of global geopolitics, the question then becomes which of the two countries, Turkey or Russia, will be the legal successor and heir to the ideological, cultural, and even political heritage of Byzantium as a world center.

Thus, the issue went far beyond the framework of purely intra-Church or intra-Orthodox discussions and trends, and acquired a global geopolitical context that inevitably affected the content and nature of Russian-Turkish relations at the time. Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople resorted to ultra-radical measures within the framework of Church canons in order to repel Moscow Patriarch Kirill’s claims to Byzantine heritage.

This included the recognition of the autocephaly (full independence) of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Kyiv Patriarchate from the Moscow Patriarchate, which would have been completely impossible under other historical conditions. With this move, the number of firm supporters of the Moscow Patriarchate was reduced by a third, after which it was no longer necessary to talk about a Church revolution in its interests.

God is dead, said Nietzsche long ago. Since then the phrase has been interpreted in many different ways. One is an observation of the collapse of order, the dissolution of hierarchies of power between leaders and followers, teachers and students, parents and children, employers and employees, men and women, news producers and newsreaders—An exponential surge in student protests, and social media interactions of once-newsreaders-now-turned-news-producers, among others, substantiates the argument.

Some call this state of affairs the chaos of postmodernism, an era dominated by a loss of trust in authority, a questioning of power, followed by the belief that with no order, no right and wrong, that every value is necessarily right, every concern as equal as any other; others identify it as the phenomenon of moral and cultural relativism. But dissidents react by saying, ‘Stop! We have to draw the line somewhere! There must be standards!’

The ingenuity of Nietzsche’s statement lies in its prescience. Made at the turn of the twentieth century, it foretells the news headlines we are now privy to, more than one hundred years later. Through the mouthpiece of Zarathustra, Nietzsche warned posterity about the imminent danger of a world that found no merit in hierarchies and dividing lines. Through Zarathustra, Nietzsche reproduced the trope of the quintessential madman in literature. Thus Spake Zarathustra is the story of an unpopular prophet, castigated and excoriated for his cryptic statements, who broaches matters we now know were ahead of his time.

Nietzsche foresaw the eradication of order, systems, and hierarchies as a preliminary to nihilism; a negation of the individual rather than a longed-for affirmation of the self, which has ironically dominated the political forefront of countries with liberalist agendas. Such an agenda has sought to celebrate individualism, exalt every trait and concern of the individual, in order to allow him/her to grow to be healthy, wholesome, unique. Rather than that, these steps in the direction of caring for individualism, of pushing the liberalist agenda forward by recognizing every trait (and hence creating labels for everything) is fostering a culture of hypersensitivity, drowning the individual in a bucket of labels so that he/she is beginning to matter less and less.

African-Americans feel their identity to be threatened, especially by their White, American counterparts.

These labels do not manifest the ‘Who am I?’, but instead emphasize ‘What am I sensitive about?’ (Interestingly, and quite tellingly, as an indication of how labels are also relative, in Western and Central Europe this aspect of the liberalist agenda that exalts the individual is embraced by right-wing economic liberals and heavily criticized by left-wing radicals, whereas in the US it is resonant with what is seen as the progressive left.)

The growing trend of associating the label of ‘Ethnocide’ on the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in the United States has encouraged people from other cultures to wonder whether they are victims of the same phenomenon. Ethnocide it must be recalled, is the practice of destroying the soul of a people, as opposed to genocide which aims at decimating a whole genus or race. Ethnocide is the cultural assimilation of a non-dominant group by a dominant one, and the BLM movement has waved this card because African-Americans feel their identity to be threatened, especially by their White, American counterparts.

Yet, the distinction between pain and trauma slowly disintegrated. About twenty years ago, ‘trauma’ began to include experiences that were both physical and emotional, roping in a subjective element to is determination.  The label of ‘trauma’, or for that matter, ‘PTSD’ is now widely used, furthering the culture of ‘antifragility’, ‘safetysim’, or hypersensitivity that are weakening us.

One point must be stressed upon at the outset: the United States has for a long time been the ‘trend-setter’; the originator of most labels that have in no time, gained currency in other parts of the world. Raphael Lemkin for instance, knew that he had to come to the United States for his cause to gain legitimacy; for the label of ‘genocide’ to be recognized as a punishable crime.

Naturally if this country is where labels usually originate, there is a lot to say about how this process can and has gone wrong, for one of the insights one gains in a thorough study of anything, is that no system, no phenomenon, no process can be perfect.

So for example, the sensitivity we have developed to every remotely negative experience/reaction/feeling to external stimulus (of whatever form), and following that, our decision of affixing ourselves with an associative label (among the myriad of those to choose from) has made labelling—or self-labelling for that matter—rather effortless. Many of us now feel that in respecting the sensitivities of the other (to avoid the other from being ‘triggered’), we’re constantly having to walk on eggshells.

These practices of self-censure place barriers on communication, on the freedom of expressing ourselves, and while some groups may feel liberated by being given the chance to speak up, others feel threatened to express themselves in case their speech, or any part of it should encroach upon the sensitivities of an interlocutor.

The result: a constant atmosphere of tension and apprehension in which no speaker is at ease, and where one must necessarily begin with a barrage of disclaimers. (In the past few months, it has now become a requirement on several websites accepting submissions for novels, short stories, and other art work, to insert one or more disclaimers in case content may hurt the sensitivities of the reviewer/s).

Overall, a feeling of malaise seems to have crept in, especially (and ironically) in forums that are meant to foster creative thought and writing, and in the context of free speech, one of the pinnacles of liberalist constitutions, young writers, as validated by Sir Kazuo Ishiguro, seem to be intimidated and silenced.

It is justifiable that certain words should be used carefully, because of their meaning and purport, and the reactions they may stir up in marginalized groups suffering centuries of torture, oppression, and abuse, but the matter is quite another when one has to question whether it is legitimate for a writer from a dominant group to create characters in his/her novel who hail from a non-dominant one.

Questionable when one can no longer feel free to express a violent experience one has endured because it may expose a reader/listener/viewer to violence. If we don’t arm ourselves with our interior defences, or to put it a different way, develop and strengthen our immunity against external attacks, even the slightest, then all these labels, these shields, or the sources of distress they denote, would drown us, weaken us, and expose us to harsher threats later in life.

In the space of a mere three decades hateful and divisive Hindu nationalist slogans have propelled Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from a fringe political party to a national party to India’s ruling party, a result that has inflicted great harm on the country’s democratic institutions, bilateral relationships, global reputation and religious minorities.

It’s easy to forget today but BJP won just two parliamentary seats in the 1984 election, emerging as a national political force only after whipping up anti-Muslim sentiments leading up to, during and after the destruction of the historic Babri Mosque in 1992 at the hands of 150,000 Hindu nationalists associated with BJP and Hindutva organization Vishva Hindu Parishad, an event that helped put the party into position to form a coalition government in 1998 and then ultimately unilateral power in 2014.

In the six years since Narendra Modi led the party to victory in the 2014 elections, the BJP ruled government has chipped away at the rights of Muslims and cracked down on its critics, including political opponents, journalists, and human rights activists, forcing Amnesty International to cease its operations in the country out of concern its employees were being threatened and intimidated by the government for publishing reports on the Delhi Police Force’s role in the February 2020 violence, which resulted in the murder of more than 50 Muslims, and the use of torture by its security forces in Kashmir.

It’s for these reasons India’s democracy was downgraded from “free” to “partly free” in the most recent Freedom House democracy report, which delivered a scathing indictment on the Modi government, accusing it of “driving India towards authoritarianism” and encouraging the “scapegoating of Muslims” and cracking down on critics.

Worryingly – the worst the economy performs, or the louder critics of the Modi government grow, the more BJP dials up the vilification of religious minorities to divert attention away from its failings or transgressions.

Notably, Freedom House wasn’t alone in its condemnation of the Modi government, with Sweden based V-Dem Institute also downgrading India’s democracy to what it calls “electoral autocracy.”

Worryingly – the worst the economy performs, or the louder critics of the Modi government grow, the more BJP dials up the vilification of religious minorities to divert attention away from its failings or transgressions.

When protesters joined hands across the country to oppose the government’s anti-Muslim citizenship laws, known separately as the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC), party leaders threatened to shoot, drown or deport Muslim migrants.

When the government mishandled the initial COVID19 outbreak, the government joined online miscreants in falsely accusing Muslims of deliberately spreading the virus, and when farmers from Punjab and Haryana linked arms and marched to the capital Delhi to protest against laws that pave the way for the corporate takeover of the agricultural sector, leaving their farms and communities vulnerable to exploitation and destruction, BJP leaders falsely accused them of being part of foreign funded Sikh separatist plot.

What has become increasingly evident in recent weeks is that Hindutva organizations have expanded their influence and reach throughout the Indian diaspora, as witnessed recently when a mob of right-wing Indian Australians ambushed and attacked a car carrying several Sikh men in Sydney earlier this month, presumably because they had participated in a solidarity march for the Indian farmers protest in Delhi.

“For the first time in Australia we are witnessing tensions within Indian community groups, with one group attacking another because they demanded justice from the Indian government,” Deepak Joshi, an executive with The Humanism Project, a secular Indian expatriate advisory group, told me.

“In the past year or so we have witnessed several instances of online hate and threats of violence against those who criticise the Modi Government and against Muslims in particular in Australia, but this hate has been particularly directed against the Sikhs and social media since the farmers movement began.” 

Hindutva organizations and individuals have also been calling for a boycott of Sikh and Muslim owned businesses, prompting an Australian parliamentarian to warn of a growing threat within the Indian expatriate community, specifically “extremist, right-wing Hindu nationalist part of the community.”

When Gabriel Turbay Abunader, a son of Lebanese immigrants, ran for the Colombian presidency in 1946, an especially turbulent period in Colombia’s democratic history, he was the target of vicious criticism by the conservative media and public opinion of the time.

Despite belonging to a well-respected family of jurists and being a respected doctor himself, Turbay suffered virulent attacks – not for being a socialist, but for being a “Turco.” El Siglo, the main right-wing newspaper at the time, constantly appealed to Colombian society’s nationalist spirit calling on voters to vote against Turbay because he had “no Colombian blood whatsoever running in his veins.”

At the time, in contrast with other countries in the region like Argentina and Brazil, Colombia did not have a strong immigration policy with its immigrant population standing at 0.5%. Arab Colombians interviewed by the authors of the magnificent book The Arabs in Colombia: From Rejection to Integration, stated, “The establishment would have never allowed a ‘Turco’ as a president.” However, decades later, in 1978, another “Turco,” this time by the name Julio César Turbay Ayala was elected president of Colombia.

Being called a “Turco” was not a compliment in a country whose elites considered themselves superior due to their European ancestors. Turcos, at the best, were supposed to be the salesmen of basic products like clothes or certain foods.

Anyone coming from the Middle East was contemptuously classified as a “Mohammedan” regardless of whether they were Muslim or not, and authorities warned against their “exotic” costumes.

Anyone coming from the Middle East was contemptuously classified as a “Mohammedan” regardless of whether they were Muslim or not, and authorities warned against their “exotic” costumes. Perhaps, this initial discrimination urged the Arabs who arrived in the region to try to forget their origins and integrate as fast as they could. It was a matter of basic survival, after all.

The first wave of Arab immigration to Colombia and to Latin America as a whole occurred at the end of the 19^th century. These migrants came mostly from the Levant. Mainly as a consequence of the worsening condition of the Ottoman Empire, which was reaching its end, young Levantines left their homes either fearing being recruited for war or simply seeking a better future in the Americas. Since they came with a Turkish passport, natives called them “Turcos” – the Spanish word for Turkish.

Later, when the British Empire replaced the Ottomans and the creation of a Zionist entity in historical Palestine became a reality, a second wave of Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese immigrants crossed the Atlantic populating almost every country of the Latin American geography. The largest number of Arabs arrived in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, but large numbers also landed in Honduras, El Salvador, and Colombia.

My aunt Odette, who passed away in 2006, was known as “Turca” in the city’s market. Every Saturday, she drove her 56 Chevy downtown in search of eggplants, cucumbers, and cabbage for Sunday’s food festival, as I warmly recall them. “Turca, I saved the best eggplants for you today,” I remember a salesman shouting to her in his musical Caribbean accent when I joined her once in one of her visits to the market.

However, the flavors that the Levantine immigrants brought to the New World were not always considered delicacies. In the early 20^th century, a mayor of the Caribbean Colombian city of Cartagena, one of the primary ports of entry for Syrian and Lebanese immigrants, issued a law forbidding “Oriental” food. He believed that the migrants were feeding the natives “donkey’s food.” It should be noted that Cartagena is the Colombian city with the most colonial Spanish influence.

Palestinians in Chile also have an influential group of lawmakers and politicians who belong to different parties but unite around the Palestinian cause.

Today, the sons, daughters, grandsons, and granddaughters of those who left the Levant in the last century seeking a better life in Latin America have key positions in the region’s politics, culture, science, sports, and economy. Most of them are too busy being successful or often struggle to remember where they came from.

Although in almost every country in Latin America one can find cultural or social organizations run by the local Arab communities, perhaps the most developed one is the Palestinian-Chilean community. With remarkable figures in every field of this Andean nation, the Palestinian-Chileans even have a 100-year-old professional soccer team named “Palestino.”

Palestinians in Chile also have an influential group of lawmakers and politicians who belong to different parties but unite around the Palestinian cause – something that cannot be found anywhere else in the continent. They have traveled back to Palestine, which more often they simply call “home,” with some being rejected entry by the Israeli occupants of their lands.

In other countries like Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, and Argentina, Arab descendants of migrants have been elected as presidents. However, they have not shown much loyalty to their ancestors’ homelands, and instead have surrendered themselves to the imperialist interests that subjugate their home countries.

Yasser Arafat was present at the summit of the Non-Aligned Countries held in Colombia in October 1995. He was interviewed by Yamid Amat, one of Colombia’s most respected journalists who is also of a Palestinian descendant. Amat asked Arafat why he signed the Oslo Accords with Israel in 1993.

Although now we know the terrible consequences of the accords, Arafat answered Amat in the following words, “Yamid, you have sons. Are your sons more Colombian or more Palestinian today?” Amat answered, “Colombian.” Arafat continued, “You see? That’s why I did it.” Putting aside any discussion of Arafat’s political motives, Arafat understood that the Palestinian diaspora in Latin America tended to forget where they came from.

With every new generation of Arab Latin Americans, the memory of the past fades further into the background. What is certain, though, is that in Latin America somebody will always be called “Turco/Turca” to remind everybody around that a part of this chaotic melting pot under the Río Grande once received thousands of Arab immigrants who came with little luggage but great hopes.

There are different societal undercurrents at play in the United States today. On the one hand, there is the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement, and on the other, the growing radicalism of white-supremacist groups, who recently invaded the U.S. Capitol on January 6. Nihan Duran interviewed Sundiata Cha-Jua, Associate Professor of History at the University of Illinois on how to understand the fault lines of American society and politics given the concurrently rising movements: BLM activism and the white-supremacism.

َQHow do you evaluate the recent Black Lives Matter protests in the U.S., following the global reactions to the killing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020? Have the Black struggles for justice and equality re-surfaced as a political force in the 21st century?

The COINTELPRO destruction of the radical stream of the Black Power movement in the late 1970s produced a prolonged period of relative quietude in the Black Liberation Movement (BLM). Around 2010, the movement began to resurge. Activists introduced several tactical innovations, such as the initiation of the #hastag for organizing in response to the killing and murder of Oscar Grant and Trayvon Martin. Cell phone footage of Grant’s killing, for example, went viral on the then four-year-old YouTube platform, as it was watched by 500,000 people in four days.

Q. What impact did such a reach-out have on the acceleration of the movement?

The national response to the murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012 accelerated the use of online petitions as an innovative movement organizing tactic. Martin’s murder also gave rise to #hashtag BlackLivesMatter, which has also made an impact as activists used another relatively new social media format, Twitter to mobilize protests. Consequently, new organizations sprung up and older groups were reenergized. New youth-led and oriented groups such as the Dream Defenders, the former Million Hoodies Movements (now Brighter Days for Justice), and the Black Youth Project (BYP-100) emerged.

Since Michael Brown’s death at the hands of Ferguson, MO police officer Darren Wilson in 2014, a new phase of struggle in the Black Liberation movement focused on police killing and criminal justice has swept the U.S. and, in the summer of 2020, surged beyond the borders of the U.S.

Q. You mentioned that there is a “shift in emphasis.” What does that “shift” indicate when the long tradition of Black liberation movements in the U.S. is considered.

#Black Lives Matter’s slogan “we are not your grandparent’s revolution” links it to a divisive strategy more reminiscent of the Yippies, “don’t trust anyone over 30,” than the intergenerational legacy of Black liberation movement organizing. That is not to deny Frantz Fanon’s observation that “each generation must discover its mission and either fulfill or betray it.”

The point is that older more experienced activists have always played a mentoring role in the Black Liberation movement. The cutting edge of the 1960s movements, specifically the organizations, strategic visions, and political analyses still relevant come from the nationalistic Black Power wave, not the liberal integrationist Civil Rights movement.

So, the infantile divisive generational politics are doubly irresponsible, because it erases the Black Power movement. M4BL has reversed that error. It has adopted the symbolism of the Black Power movement- the fist-and centered its programmatic initiatives on a five-year plan under the slogan “Black Power Rising 2024!”

Q. What does white people’s involvement in America in the BLM movement indicate?

The involvement of such a large number of Euro-Americans evidences the Black Liberation movement’s ability to convince a broad sector of the U.S. public that systemic racism accurately describes American society. However, white engagement would be better utilized if they built solidarity, created a constituency inside white communities and civic associations that practiced the politics of the Black Panther Party’s rainbow coalition. I am also quite mindful of A. Phillip Randolph’s 1940 admonishment that “where you get your money you also get your ideas and control. We need white ‘allies’ to organize support for Black self-determination, and a pro-labor, pro-socialist movement” in white neighborhoods and social spaces.

Q. Do you think that Black politics can find its way to move from merely a critical progressive to mainstream American politics?

Why not? Since the 1830s, the Black Liberation movement has demonstrated its ability to intrude into and shape U.S. politics. The Abolitionist movement, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights and Black Power movement are examples of moments in which the Black Liberation movement seized the center stage and focused the eyes of the empire on us. C.L.R. James powerfully made this argument more than 70 years ago in the “Revolutionary Answer to the Negro Question” (1948).

Since the Ferguson Uprising and particularly this past summer, Black people reaffirmed their capacity to boldly reshape both social movement and electoral politics in the U.S. Perhaps, the best example of the power of the Black Liberation to remake U.S. politics is the rise of the African American reparations movement. Before the end of the 20th century, the Black reparations movement was virtually unknown to the U.S. public.

In the last six years, the African American reparations movement has gone from a fringe movement in U.S. politics to a strategy endorsed by all leading contenders for the 2020 Democratic Party nomination, though largely through some universal policy scheme. Nonetheless, there have now been two congressional hearings and several cities have passed reparations resolutions and few, notably Evanston, Illinois, and Asheville, North Carolina have enacted legislation.

Q. You mean that politically as well, the U.S. has come to acknowledge the persistent predicament of its Black people?

Definitely. Millions of people in 200 cities, domestic and abroad took to the streets to protest the police murder of Black men, women, and children. The Black Liberation movement has forced American society to admit the existence of systemic racism, which I prefer to call racial oppression and to “commit” to its elimination from U.S. institutional life in colleges and universities, corporations, and government agencies.

Q. Despite growing awareness, what is the possibility or limitations of a “post-racial” America? Especially today, when we witness the white-supremacist undercurrent getting more and more visible both on the social and political scenery.

Sorry but the “post-racial” idea is ridiculous and odious. It is rooted in a colorblind racial ideology that denies structural racial oppression. It insidiously contrasts the success of the meager Black elite to the assumed failures of the working-class Black majority. That the election of Barack Obama sparked the rise of right-wing social movements such as the Tea Party and that his administration was followed by Trumpist fascism that used racist appeals and policies to pursue the neoliberal agenda of tax cuts, deregulation, and privatization, all exposing that the postracial ideal is fallacious.

Q. What about the U.S. Capitol siege on January 6 then? What did make this possible? Was Donald Trump the chief responsible for this or only a symptom of undercurrents?

Ultimately, we can trace the rise of contemporary fascism that culminated in the January 6 assault of the U.S. Capitol building to the economic crisis caused by the transition to a financialized global racial capitalism, but it would be a grave error to underestimate the central role played by anti-Black racial oppression. The dislocations and alienation caused by the new structure of capital accumulation is the foundational cause but Donald Trump’s rhetoric, policy agenda, and explicit xenophobic and racist appeals mobilized white supremacists and nationalists. He recruited and weaponized them into an anti-democratic battering ram against egalitarian public policies.

Q. What to expect now, after the U.S. Capital Siege? How do you think this will impact the future of U.S. domestic politics?

The Trump regime rolled the rock back and unleashed fascist hordes who now control one of the two corporate parties. The fascists are here to stay. They are likely to elect dozens, if not scores of new congresspersons and continue to control more than a score of state governments.

Mourid Barghouti, 77, passed away on February 14, 2021 in the Jordanian capital Amman, after a life-long commitment to literature, politics, and public affairs in the Arab world. Born to a Palestinian family in the West Bank, Barghouti grew up surrounded by his extended family which lives in Deir Ghassana and the nearby villages.

In 1963, Barghouti left Palestine to pursue his undergraduate studies at the University of Cairo in Egypt. As he sat his final exams in his senior year, Israel occupied the West Bank, depriving him of his right to return to his village for the next 30 years.

While studying at Cairo University, Barghouti met Radwa Ashour (d. 2014) who he married in 1970.  Ashour was a well-known Egyptian novelist who left behind a great legacy of novels and literary works. The couple’s only son, Tamim, is a known poet and a professor of political philosophy. During a poetry competition, a literary critic once told Tanim, “You have proven that poetry genes can be inherited through DNA.”

The Barghouti family has a remarkable legacy of literature, politics, and public engagement, which is rare to find in a single family in the Arab world. It all started with the marriage of Radwa and Mourid, a marriage that was characterized by imprisonment, exile, and separation as well as great contributions to literature and politics.

Life in Exile

On the eve of signing the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel, Barghouti was deported to Lebanon for his critical views of the accords. He spent thirteen years in Budapest representing the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), although he kept himself away and refused to join any Palestinian political party. His life in exile sharpened his memory, prompting him to write twelve poetry collections and a couple of autobiographies that were translated into numerous languages.

Barghouti’s return to Palestine, however, inspired him to pen one of his greatest autobiographies, I Saw Ramallah, in which he documented his experience in exile.

Upon his return to the Palestinian territories, Barghouti took a job under the Palestinian Authority, but unable to cope with corruption, he resigned three years later. His return to Palestine, however, inspired him to pen one of his greatest works, I Saw Ramallah, in which he documented his experience in exile.

Crossings and Waiting

For him, the crossing point controlled by Israel “nullifies the fatherhood of fathers, the motherhood of mothers, the friendship of friends, and the love of lovers.” Upon his return to Ramallah, he found out that many things had changed in his 30 years of exile.

The feeling of being uprooted and not belonging characterized another of his works: I was born there; I was born here. In this Memoir, Barghouti described the feeling of living under occupation. After a long time of waiting, he was able to take his son to his home village in Ramallah, so that he could tell him “I was born here,” showing him a room in his family’s house.

The Palestinian novelist points to the ways Israel uses waiting as a weapon to make Palestinians wait forever for borders to open, for electricity to turn on, for permits to be issued, and for occupation to end. In I Saw Ramallah, Barghouti stresses the fact that Palestinian life has been characterized by uncertainty because of this very waiting. He recounts how Palestinians had to leave Palestine “until things get clearer” and they could return back, but that time never came. How they moved from Jordan, to Lebanon, to Tunisia, to establish a state under occupation “until things get clearer.”

The truth is that Barghouti was among the few Palestinians who understood the wrath of having a state under occupation, who was a critical voice of the Oslo Accords of 1993 between the PLO and Israel – a fact that brought him much trouble.

Just like Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali, who was a close friend of Barghouti, and Edward Said, who wrote the foreword to I Saw Ramallah, describing it as “one of the finest existential accounts of Palestinian displacement,” Barghouti understood well that the Oslo Accords were meant to end any self-determination and statehood aspiration of the Palestinians. In addition to expressing this skillfully in his writings, Barghouti was very critical of the corruption of the PLO leadership.

A life-long Commitment to Freedom

Apart from his involvement in Palestinian politics, Barghouti was known for supporting the uprisings that broke out in the Arab world. His fierce commitment to freedom never changed over time, despite imprisonment, exile, and exclusion.

His voice was always critical, it never faded over the years. Neither did his commitment to literature and his family. Six years after the departure of his wife, Radwa Ashour, Barghouti’s powerful presence in literature and politics has slipped away.

Perhaps a lesson one can take away from the rich life of Mourid Barghouti and Radwa Ashour is that commitment to a cause, even though it might bring many troubles, gives life a purpose. After 77 years, much of which were spent in exile, Barghouti departed us so that he could see Ramallah from above – without Israeli travel restrictions and checkpoints.

The sudden passing of Hatem Ali, 58, a highly-respected Syrian film director and actor caused a storm in social media in the Arab world with people recalling his legacy and his priceless contribution to cinema. His collective work left a remarkable impact on Arabs’ collective memory.

With his sudden passing in Cairo, Ali left a huge void behind him. Hatem Ali was uniquely multitalented – he directed, acted, and wrote screenplays – and his cinematic productions tackled important historical, social, religious, and political themes.

The environment in which Hatem Ali was born and grew up is vital to understanding the true importance and meaning of his contribution to Arab and Syrian cinema. He was born to a Syrian family in the Golan Heights in 1962 and at the age of five became a refugee when Israel occupied the territory in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

The Syrian director spent most of his teenage life in Al-Hajar al-Aswad, an area which is adjacent to the Yarmouk refugee camp, the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Syria. Palestinian-Syrian director Majed Kayali asserts that Ali attended youth camps organized by the youth wing of the Palestinian Fatah movement in the early 1980s.

Hatem Ali and Palestine

The production of Al-Taghreba al-Falastenya (The Palestinian Exile), a 31-episode drama series, is one of Hatem Ali’s greatest contributions. In this drama series, he documented life under the British occupation of Palestine, the creation of Israel, the displacement of the Palestinians, and the daily life in refugee camps after the Nakba (Catastrophe), which describes the mass exodus of Palestinians in 1948.

The series was exceptional in many different ways: the first of its kind, reflective of reality and reviving the memory of younger generations of what had befallen on the Palestinians in 1948, of displacement and destruction.

In Al-Taghreba, Ali tackled social, economic, and cultural matters that were crucial for Palestinians. This included the differences between the peasant lives in villages and the urban lives in cities, the conflicts between landlords and peasants, the divisions among Palestinians, and the cultural and linguistic differences among various segments of Palestinian society.

Unlike his character Rushdi who refused to leave his homeland, Ali’s life took a different turn. Since 2012, Ali lived in self-exile which seems to have been a political message of refusing to accept the Syrian civil war which broke out following the 2011 uprising.

Not only did Ali direct The Palestinian Exile series, which went viral at the time of its broadcasting in 2004, but he also acted in it. Ali played the role of Rushdi, a young man whose father was killed in the fight against the occupying British forces, and who later in 1948 was separated from his mother. Rushdi had to live with his uncles away from his mother whose new place of residence came under Israeli control in 1948. He would only meet her for a few minutes, in 1967, after being smuggled into present-day Israel by a Palestinian-Israeli.

The series ends by Rushdi tearing up an offer letter he receives from Pakistan to undertake his undergraduate studies, sending a message to Palestinians that they should not leave their country despite the difficult conditions of living under occupation.

In 2008, Ali agreed to direct a TV series based on the Time of White Horses, a novel written by Palestinian novelist Ibrahim Nasrallah, which portrays life in a Palestinian village. However, his dream didn’t come true as certain mainstream Arab TV channels hesitated to produce the series because it was about Palestine.

Leaving Damascus

Unlike his character Rushdi who refused to leave his homeland, Ali’s life took a different turn. Since 2012, Ali lived in self-exile which seems to have been a political message of refusing to accept the Syrian civil war which broke out following the 2011 uprising. After 2011, Ali kept moving between capitals without publicly criticizing the Assad government, which didn’t send a representative to his funeral.

In 2015, the Syrian Actors Syndicate fired Ali and 200 other actors “for not paying their annual fees.” The state-owned media in Syria allocated limited coverage to Ali’s death. This can be taken to be indicative of the regime’s views on Ali, which are similar to those it holds on Jamal Suliman, a well-known Syrian actor and a friend of Ali.

Upon his departure from Syria, Suliman was unable to return to Damascus to bid farewell to his ailing mother. He recalled how she would call him “Abu Saleh,” his name in Al-Taghreba, stressing the importance of the series in the collective memory of the old and young alike.

Ali’s love for Damascus was exceptional. In the two-part drama series The Four Seasons, he detailed the daily life of a family in Damascus. His work could easily be used by anyone looking for references about the daily life in Damascus in the late 1990s and the early 2000s.

In 1998, he directed Al-Zeer Salem, which brought him a lot of fame in the Arab world.

Ironically, and against his dying wish, Ali passed away in a hotel in Cairo, while stopping there to prepare for another drama work. Damascus, which he loved, expressed this love back, with thousands from all walks of life attending his funeral, including actors who are known to be loyal to Bashar al-Assad, in a rare scene that Damascus has not witnessed in nearly 12 years.

Restaging History

In addition to his works that tackled social and political issues, Hatem Ali left an important mark on historical drama in the Arab world, narrating important historical events, with his works translated into many languages. In 1998, he directed Al-Zeer Salem, which brought him a lot of fame in the Arab world.

The TV drama addresses the events that sparked a 40-year war following the killing of Udai bin Rabia’s brother, highlighting blood feud, a complex phenomenon that predates Islam in the Arab world.

Ali’s contribution to historical drama includes a series on Saladin and his conquest of Jerusalem, and the history of Muslims in Andalusia, including the rise and the fall of Muslim rule there.

Additionally, he directed a drama series about Omar ibn Al-Khattab, the second Caliph of Islam, documenting his life starting from the age of 18 until his death. His works documented the less-known and less-visited history of the Arab and Muslim worlds, including that of Spain.

Just before he passed away, Hatem Ali renewed his two-year Syrian passport. Upon his death in Cairo, his body was transported to Damascus, the city he loved and depicted in his works, to be laid to rest at Bab al-Sghir Graveyard, uniting Arabs and Syrians in a rare scene, and leaving behind important historical dramas.

Hatem Ali was not an ordinary director, but an original and brilliant one, who felt the pain of his people and understood their history. Just as he turned significant historical events into everlasting memories, Hatem Ali’s memory too will be honored by many in the region that will remember him as an outstanding director and actor.

In parallel with these changes in the balance of power, the Iran-Iraq War began and lasted eight years. Many Iranian volunteers joined the war fronts and, in many cases, were killed. Therefore, the images of “martyrs” became the most visible icons of public spaces.

In the 1980s and 1990s, almost all public urban areas in Iran displayed the images of Ayatollah Khomeini and the war’s martyrs. In addition, symbols of opposition to the West, especially to the U.S. government, were prominent on many of Iran’s streets. These images were often murals painted on the walls of tall buildings.

The works were usually anonymous and it is not easy to locate the artists’ traces today. An academic study has argued that after the revolution, the murals of martyrs were part of memorial and political propaganda campaigns. The artists combined the images of martyrs with inscriptions. The harmony of these murals with their surrounding environment was limited, and they maintained a moderate connection with the audience.

The number of emails commencing with or entailing the phrase “we live in unprecedented times” or a variation of this has surely mounted to unsustainable levels since the onset of COVID-19 as a global crisis. But it is no exaggeration to say that history has reached a point of imminence, a point where the viral pandemic, the failure of neoliberal democracies, and the smartphone-to-internet-to-media-exposure of police brutality has necessitated a climax that has been building for some centuries. The murder of George Floyd links at the last bolts of a long chain of events that is fastened to the colonial empire.

The problem is now clearly systemic, has always been systemic, but its institutional hold is being foregrounded. The new politics of antiracism is not, in fact, new. In Ibram X Kendi’s 2019 book How To be an Antiracist, an Amazon top-seller on the subject of race, Kendi defines that “‘Racist policy’ says exactly what the problem is and where the problem is. ‘Institutional racism’ and ‘structural racism’ and ‘systemic racism’ are redundant. Racism itself is institutional, structural, and systemic.” The nature of the power-structures that uphold racist policy is not the subject here, but that this policy is as much a problem of cultural weight as political.

Even so, the move for equity in representation is valuable. The movements and decisions of galleries, publishers, and other cultural institutions are in this way no less acts of policy than those of the state. What the galleries, the publishers, the film studios police, is not the rights of individuals in relation to the law, but the way individuals think about their rights. When a gallery or civil building is stocked with neoclassical evocations of Columbus and other colonial figures, with the works of white-American and white-European artists, the presence of “Black artists” and “artists of color” is very often represented in a skewed pop-urban way. And the political dialectic here – of featured guest, of novelty, of difference – has the effect of distancing. If this does not fade when the patron leaves the gallery, when the book is put down, when it continues to govern: it is a cultural policy.

In 2019, Kara Walker’s Fons Americanus was installed in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern. The 43-foot tall cement composite sculpture became one of the most visited installations in the gallery’s 20-year history. Nothing in its curatorship suggested novelty: it was left unadorned by signage in the central space of the hall, an immense monument for the memory of trans-Atlantic slavery, against the legacy of the empires it built. Its presence was calm, quiet, reflective, its message clear. This seems an example of a cultural policy that has moved beyond its blurry definitions, a resolute artistic display without pretense. The artwork was demolished this year.

Black-authored books have surged in sales. Reni Eddo-Lodge’s Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race is the first Black-British-authored book to ever top the U.K. bestseller list. But it remains consistently difficult, even in literary circles, to find individuals with an awareness of African authors from a region with such a rich literary output as Nigeria, beyond Chinua Achebe and more recently Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. When British and American publishing houses remain predominantly white, it does not take a wide stretch of the imagination to feel a sting of situational profiteering.

As recently as 2018, controversial author Jordan B Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life also topped bestseller lists. The allegedly reluctant Canadian star-theorist is known for his refutation of postmodern gender politics, and his denial of the concepts of patriarchy, Islamophobia, and white privilege – all points he aims to disprove through philosophical logic. Unsurprisingly, he has often been canonized by the alt-right, a complex, clustered movement defined by narcissism and violent acts of white supremacy.

An uprising towards racial equality or a dissension into mob-rule? Both descriptions have been used to cover the recent Black Lives Matter protests in American cities and parts of the UK and Europe. The current climate has resulted in a profound but largely cosmetic shift- corporate, celebrity and even political parties (such as Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats) have made it clear that they are on the side of the anti-racism movement by donating money, verbally supporting and putting a knee down in solidarity with African-Americans (and the double-sided symbolism of a flag of freedom/oppression).

Prominent sports personalities (such as NFL players) who previously shied away from anything remotely controversial have found themselves apologizing for past silence and vowing to do more (after the black-listing of fellow quarterback Colin Kaepernick for his distinctive protest against American police brutality by kneeling through the national anthem during the entire 2016 season).

Now everyone has a racist anecdote to tell from school, the workplace or beyond – whether it’s the white person saying they should have done something more or the black person recounting an otherwise forgotten incident. However, much deeper issues remain; the historical placement of statues that symbolize oppression, the intertwined history of colonialism and the slave trade and its virtual absence in school curriculums, as well as ongoing African-American racial inequality and the dissension into a polarized world-view that is solely about race.

The Killing of George Floyd

The trigger for this profound and seemingly instantaneous plea for forgiveness from the entire African American community was the torturous killing of George Floyd on May 25 (through an eight-minute knee-hold) by a white police officer in Minneapolis after he was called to deal with a suspected counterfeit $20 bill. This became the latest provocation of police brutality against African American males and has become a symbol of the countless (unrecorded) deaths against black people that occur regularly in American cities.

Floyd’s imperfect character has only deepened his “martyrdom”; a father of 5, arrested eight times between 1997 and 2005 for drug possession, theft and trespass (spending several months in jail) and who in 2009 was sentenced to 5 years in prison for aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon. As a symbol of the Black Lives Matter movement, Floyd’s seemingly tragic life story points less to flawed personal decisions and more to the institutionalized racism that is codified into administrative, educational and economic life for African Americans and culminates in either white police brutality against the community and/or time in prison. His face has become the face of the movement with images, murals, and iconography spreading throughout the world. A statue may be next.

Statueclasm

The toppling of statues that represent slavery advocates (such as the recent dramatic falling of Edward Colston in Bristol, UK) or those associated with General(s) or soldiers of the Confederate State in the American Civil War (mostly in the Southern USA) has become another manifestation of public anger and the disconnect between the icons of a place, the complex history and the sentiment of significant portions of the populace.

In fact, the American experience is often used to shoulder and deflect some of the ingrained attitudes to race and ethnicity that are deeply rooted in Europe and other nations. Canada, for instance, has perfected the approach of moral high-ground (it is constantly contrasting itself with its southern neighbor both on the political level and in the popular consciousness) while simultaneously repressing its Colonial roots of active participation in both slavery and genocidal policies to indigenous peoples. This contrasts with the American student’s introduction (although this can vary by state) to these topics, which start with a recognition of internal inherent unholy behavior at the primary school level.

Not Everything is Black and White

BLM stands for Black Lives Matter; in the U.S. people are for the most part either ‘White’ or ‘Black’ – this partially comes out of the segregationist history of the country as well as efforts to highlight massive disparities (such as the civil rights movement of the 1960s). It also raises other less discussed questions – people from the Middle-East, Turkey, and Latin America are usually categorized as ‘people of color’ even if ethno-genetically they may be part of Caucasian groupings (which is also fluid and less defined than is often presented). In the U.S., ‘Asian’ in conversation and on official forms refers to people of Far-East Asian descent (China, Japan, Korea) and is often used by people from those groups as a self-identifier (such as on TV, comedy and radio programs) even though Asia is a massive continent that includes 4.5 billion people and a plethora of ethnicities.

The complete stoppage of film production and theatrical releases, due to the coronavirus, has spawned several articles and ideas about the future direction of cinema. The inability to work with other people on set (actors, camera, sound, costume, art departments, etc.) seems an insurmountable challenge to current production methods and the massive economic consequences have created a pessimistic outlook on working in what is generally referred to as ‘the industry’ (and in some ways, erroneously since there are multiple types of them around the world- including within the U.S.).

Alternatively, with a significant portion of the world in lockdown, there has been a massive and exponential increase in the online streaming of new, different and classic cinema as well as a potential expansion of audiences, viewers and markets. The history of cinema is filled with examples of new technologies and cataclysmic events, such as war, radically altering both production and distribution methods.

The advent of sound, post-war Italy and the invention of video are three significant periods in film history that resulted in massive shifts in how films were developed and produced. We are now approaching another significant period that could see a different approach to both the production and distribution of cinema.

Changing Production Methods: A Short History

The silent film Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) by F.W. Murnau showcases the possibilities of a cinematic and storytelling language that has reached a plateau of beautiful and evocative cinematography with lighting and shadows as well as shot selections (e.g. wide, medium, close-up) that both contribute to and open up the narrative. The performance of this film is understated and effective in capturing emotion through movement and expression with minimal use of inter-titles – in comparison the first sound feature with synchronized talking called The Jazz Singer (1927) was released the same year with a completely different approach.

Moonlit characters in German Director F.W. Murnau’s Hollywood film Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)

The fictionalized film Singin’ in the Rain (1952) gives a technicolor history lesson of Hollywood’s then past and how the advent of sound created a myriad of new problems: bulky, static microphones that picked up unwanted sounds; previously silent film stars suddenly with unusual or accented voices; and a shift in writing from showing the story to ‘telling’ it. These are some of the more obvious dilemmas that occurred with a sudden and dramatic shift to ‘talking pictures’- the result was a loss of stardom for many silent actors and more profoundly a period of stagnation especially in terms of storytelling and cinematography during the 1930s.

An over-sized mic inside the costume of the heroine in the Gene Kelly technicolor musical Singin’ in the Rain (1952)

The end of WWII lays the foundation for another radical shift in film production methods. Italy had been devastated by the fighting that had seen the Fascists dominate only to be dispersed with the country turning into a battleground between Italian Partisans, invading Nazi regiments and U.S. troops coming from the south. Classical monuments, local neighborhoods and entire cities were left in ruin. London stoically survived, Paris was left psychologically battered but relatively untouched, Berlin was divided by the victors and Japan was rebuilt. Rome and the rest of Italy were largely left to mend themselves. This created a myriad of locations for Italian filmmakers who had been trained in the studio system of the 1930s (ironically with the benevolent association of Vittorio Mussolini who was the second son of the Italian Fascist leader ‘Il Duce’).

Youths walk the war-ravaged landscape in Roberto Rossellini’s groundbreaking Italian Neo-Realist film Rome, Open City (1945)

Using large scale cameras, scripted stories and experienced technicians that used the style of the previous decade mixed with a dramatic use of non-professional actors, the use of actual locations of devastated war-torn cities and a myriad of extra people and sights, this confluence of time, place and talent became known as Italian Neo-Realism, and includes directors such as Roberto Rossellini (Rome, Open City – 1945) and Vittorio De Sica (Bicycle Thieves – 1948). This cast a long and influential shadow over cinema during the next several decades in terms of both production style and the preponderance of themes related to poverty and desperation.

The despondent father and son in Vittorio De Sica’s Italian Neo-Realist classic Bicycle Thieves (1948)

The Sony portapak (1967) is in many ways the start date of the video revolution – a small, affordable video camera with separate VTR (video tape recorder) attached by a cable. The resolution was low by contemporary standards and it originally only recorded in black and white but the technology was still seized upon by artists and filmmakers.

The ability to pick up a camera, shoot and see whatever you wanted without the (burdensome and expensive) process of learning the art of cinematography and waiting for several days to see the footage, appealed to visual artists who alternated between using it for documenting performance art and as part of the work itself.

The Korean artist Nam Jun Paik famously created works that made use of video monitors in live multi-media performances such as TV Bra For Living Sculpture (1969) as well as large-scale gallery installations. The early video had its aesthetic despite its limitations – often hand-held with extreme contrast and sometimes brash colors.

Considered a pioneer of ‘video art’ this is one of Nam June Paik’s large-scale installations called Electronic Superhighway (1995, fifty-one channel video installation)

Video did not immediately replace film (in fact 16mm documentaries were still the standard in the 1970s and common in the 1980s)- but it has eventually come to dominate every form of Film and TV production just over half a century after the portapak.

Virtually every documentary is now shot on video (it has long been the best choice in terms of cost, accessibility, and flexibility), and almost every feature film is now shot in high-end digital video (albeit in the ‘cinematic’ style of traditional 35mm). Ironically the contemporary genre of ‘artist film’ to be projected in a gallery is the one area where 16mm or 35mm film is now used (mostly as a defining aesthetic to differentiate itself from what is now the dominant medium of video).

We have been living in an electronic age for several decades and home video has also exploded and spread from videotapes (the 1980s-1990s) to DVDs (2000s) and more recent instantaneous streaming.

More Change To Come?

When larger crewed productions resume, the sheer volume of canceled or delayed projects seems likely to be drastically reduced due to several factors such as minimized or canceled budgets, compromised locations and the inability to travel to certain regions or countries. Co-productions between countries has been the norm in the 21st century in terms of access to lucrative tax incentives for shooting in a certain state or country but this will likely change. There will be enormous political pressure and accountability in terms of funding and grants, and potentially difficult questions in terms of human logistics as well as things like location insurance and access to buildings and landmarks.

In this context a new kind of cinema is ripe to be born both in terms of production and distribution; museums and galleries could take on a larger role in financing and promoting feature films and there could potentially be a kind of re-convergence between art and cinema.

The immediate inclination to create films without a crew points back to some of the early formalist work done by visual artists such as Hans Richter in Germany and Fernand Leger in France (who would take their painterly style and apply it to the new medium of cinema in the 1920s), or by the previously mentioned ‘video artists’ of the 1960s and 1970s where lo-fi works created a new kind of aesthetic. There are numerous examples of filmmakers working this way already and the current conditions could accelerate these trends, such as increased CGI and animated elements, or collaboration that is structured around a post-production exchange of footage, clips, music composition and interactivity.

The slowdown in the pace of life has also allowed many people to fill up their time with reading, listening and watching films again as opposed to simply flicking through clips (something that is surprisingly common in the 21^st century – even among students of film).

Streaming sites have been enormously successful over the last half-decade and sites such as Mubi and the Criterion Channel offer more of a world cinema perspective alongside ‘classic’ Hollywood fare. The current streaming bonanza could potentially benefit a direct distribution model for tens of thousands of films (through new and different streaming channels) that have played at film festivals but had a limited reach to their target audience.

The concept of theatrical distribution has also been a hot topic for several years provoking much discussion and writing – the idea of going to the cinema as a kind of over-priced specialist event (like the Opera) or supporting your local ‘independent’ theatre that seats less than 100 as a kind of good-will gesture, have both been exposed as flawed business models that have been struggling to keep afloat.

Many smaller cinemas in Europe and North America have closed in the last decade and those that have survived are often pushed into watered-down programming choices in an attempt to appeal to as broad an audience as possible, while essentially offering a version of the same content that crowds the larger cinemas.

A decline in large-scale film productions could benefit filmmakers who may be shooting a more intimate and new kind of cinema. In many ways streaming sites, film festivals and museum (cinematheque) programs have already been the last bastion in offering an informed, diverse and experimental choice of feature films outside of the multiplex cinemas. Now may be a time to increase collaboration (streaming festivals online), look for innovation (broadened types of hybrid releases) and even switch economic models (tailored distribution).

Paradoxically the global lockdown could potentially create a new, more organic interest, and resurgence in the communal experience that promotional ‘entertainment’ centers and the non-profit independent cinema have been struggling with.