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Updated Version: The U.S. and Israel Securitization of Iran’s Nuclear Energy

2nd Virtual International Conference on Iran and World Contemporary Developments
 Imam Khomeini International University, Qazvin, Iran
Chief Organizer: Prof. Dr. Bahram Navazeni


The speech act made by the U.S. and Israel has been a tremendous effective instrument in convincing the world that the ambition of Iran of acquiring nuclear energy is capable to become an existential threat to the West Asian region and to the whole world that adhered to the concept of peaceful coexistence. It is in this regard that the proponent had scrutinized how the U.S. and Israel securitized Iran’s nuclear issue as a threat to world’s geopolitical stability.
The Copenhagen[1] School (CS) on securitization was utilized as the paradigm, which the paper had critically analyzed the process made by the U.S. and Israel. The following key points are the characters attributed from the CS thesis cognizant of this study: (1) Iran’s nuclear ambition as the security determined to be a social construction about the survival of the nuclear issue presented as posing an existential threat to a designated object. It is securitized when articulated by securitizing actor(s). (2) The governments of the U.S. and Israel were considered the securitizing actors. (3) The Americans and Israelis were the referent objects that possessed legitimate claim to survival and that their existences are ostensibly threatened. (4) This will be successful if the specific audiences i.e. the American and Israel political elites, businessmen and their public opinions are convinced. And (5) the most important is the language of security which is the ‘speech act’, this can be realized with the help of declarations, policies, speeches of leaders, and sensationalizing the issue through the medium of international media because it informs and influences the perception of reality and has direct impact on human behavior and outcome.
Consequently, the CS provided a framework to determine how and by whom a specific matter becomes a security, thus this study will explicitly shows what are the extraordinary actions which the U.S. and Israel have responded based on their asserted claims that Iran’s nuclear ambition is an existential threat in the Middle Eastern region and to the world per se. Therefore, the proponent concludes that base on historical facts; it shows that the U.S. and her allies were the culprit and perpetrators in giving Iran the capacity to develop nuclear energy, though a part of the blame should also go to the Shah’s administration or the Pahlavi dynasty’s thirst for power and greediness which were in contrast with Islamic principles and beliefs.

[1] Buzan, Barry and Wæver, Ole (1998) Liberalism and Security: The Contradictions of the Liberal Leviathan. Paper prepared for the Copenhagen Peace Research Institute.
     

 

2012 MRM Proposal: Multiple Impacts of Islam in the International Politics of the Contemporary Mediterranean Affairs

Status: rejected
Directors:

Nassef M. Adiong 
and 
Dr. Ben Kirat*
Oxford Consultancy International
What is the workshop all about?
Throughout history Islam has been interpreted in various often discordant and conflicting ways. The debates over the question of authority and legitimacy to speak for and thus define Islam are particularly intense in contemporary times. As a result of this confusion and perplexed comprehensions exist among Muslims and non-Muslims alike as to what ‘Islam’s position on a number of different issues such as human rights, democracy, international cooperation etc.
     This workshop aims to understand how discourses on Islam are employed in relation to one specific field of study, namely International Politics. Of course, there is no better regional case study from where it all originated than the Mediterranean region itself which is commonsensically understood in terms of its geography as stretching from Western Asia, Northern Africa to the Southern tip of Spain. The workshop is delimited by a defined timeframe which started with the vacuum left by Arab-Nationalism giving a rise to the post-Nasserism (1970 onwards) era and saw the intensification of Islamic and Islamists movements emerging as a political force in the entire region and whose activities are well rooted now in the region and extending to international relations as they have become a force to reckon with nowadays.
     There are different and acceptable means of measuring political impact of a certain ideology, religion or concept. One successful way is through the behaviourist approach in Political Science, which seeks to provide an objective and quantified approach to explain and predict political behaviour. Others use historicism and empirical research under the umbrella of social sciences. The workshop will humbly try to analyze and present critical research of discovering and assessing the multiple impacts of Islam to the discipline and practice of international politics/relations in the contemporary affairs of countries within the geographical context of the Mediterranean region, particularly within the Union pour la Méditerranée.
     The proposed themes and topics below will be the wider and general focus of the workshop guiding the participants on what category their research interest will be aligned to. Critically analyzing the impact of Islam to various sets of paradigms and explanations under the tenets of International Politics is the primal objective of the workshop. However, discovering, finding, and looking whether there was an impact or not is the prerequisite requirement for every paper proposals.
Keywords: Islam, International Politics/Relations, Broader MENA, Mediterranean Affairs
Please elaborate further the workshop?
The workshop will be looking at Islam, first and foremost as part of Europe and the West, on the one hand, its impact on international politics and the various notions such as democracy, state, sovereignty, secularity, terrorism and immigration…and their effects on the Mediterranean region, on the other. How these different notions have shaped the new thinking and to what extent the balance of power really holds true on the ground, for example, Bin Laden’s Mujahedeen requiring most of the forces NATO could gather to threaten, rather than control the few. This might further examine Bin Laden’s role with the CIA during the Soviet Union invasion of Afghanistan and turning the Cold War into a hot one by proxy. As a result it created its own damnation and the 9/11 catastrophe that marked the end of the 20th century and setting the pace for the 21st, as well as examining American State terrorism within Chomsky’s parameters.
     Islam has been part and parcel of international politics since it ventured out of Medina in the 7th century to reach Spain in the 8th and to continue in its international role with the Ottoman Empire from the 16th to the 20th century. Faced with colonialism a new renaissance emerged, though obscured, to certain extent by other influences coming from both Western and Eastern hemispheres. The role, in relation to the field of International Politics, of Muslim modernists in the 21st century will be examined together with that of obscurantism that emerged from Strauss and the neo-conservatives in the US matched by Pakistan/India’s Mawdudi, Egypt’s Qutb and Hassan el Banna to Bush’s counter-part Osama Bin Laden.
     The debate whether Islam is compatible or not with secularism, democracy and its interpretations to such notions and concepts like sovereignty, state, regime, theories of International Relations, International Law, war, conflict, occupation, peace, nationalism, and its irredentist characterization are added to provide a diverse paradigms to describe the complexity of international politics and show the flexibility and evolution of Islam as a religion, ideology, and/or political philosophy.
     One of the contentious concepts that supplanted Islam in the global discourse of contemporary international relations is terrorism. It is as old as politics and form part of the whole prism to make a historical and a comparative analysis of this phenomenon which is, in the main, international and goes back to the Crusades, to the Romans, the Egyptians and far beyond. However, in the modern times, there is according to security studies’ experts, both State terrorism as the one exercised by the US government and individual or group terrorism as exercised by Bin Laden, a set to undertake violent activities. Nevertheless, there is also the notion of Freedom fighters, as the case of fighting colonialism or liberating France from the Germans and many more examples like the Question of Palestine, Hezbollah, Hamas, Iraq, and Afghanistan under the Soviet Union and under the Americans: what is the difference? Where do we draw the line? Who gets to draw the line? Who gets to define who a terrorist is?
     Islamism, in its various manifestations, is the latest wave of political movement against the unipolar system of American hegemony that no one dared to challenge since the end of the Cold War. In the post Cold War, vacuum space for Islamist integrants to take over opened up. The recent terrorist attacks and the US led Iraqi and Afghani invasions have demonstrated that the balance of power with equality of force has no much value when confronted with the optimal and influential power of Islam in the practice of international politics. The American balance of power has been check-mated by that of Bin Laden and Zawahiri, facing the Zionists, as they see them and their allies. Islamism as a political force is alive and has been since the Moors in Spain and has emerged with confidence in Turkey’s Erdogan’s AK Partesi (Justice and Development Party) and to a lesser extent in the Moroccan JDP. Modern Islam has to fight on all corners, that is, national and international against Zionism and neo-conservatism as well xenophobes and Islamophobes throughout the world.
     As evident in the recent uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, and Jordan in 2011 modern Islamists have demonstrated their aspirations to modernity and antipathy toward fanaticism and religious dictatorships. They opted for openness, freedom of the individual, the media, and above all religious freedom of the individual. Consequently, this workshop will try to seek answers to questions such as:
1. Is there an Islamic impact in the international politics of the contemporary Mediterranean affairs?
2. If there is, how can we measure, assess, and evaluate that impact.
3. How true is it that Islam is an exceptional force that it has an optimal influence in the practice and discipline of international relations within the Mediterranean region?
4. What is the nature of relations between Islam and International Politics?
5. What are the elements or factors that caused Islam to influence the international politics of the Mediterranean region?
What are the aims of the workshop?
1. To find, assess, and evaluate Islamic influences in the international politics of contemporary Mediterranean affairs.
2. To present Islam as an imperative and significant force in the study of International Politics/Relations.
3. To deepen the understanding about the intricate and complicated Islamic interpretation of the International Politics and how it is utilized by state actors domestically and externally.
4. To guide novice researchers through the recommendations and critiques of senior scholars who will be participating in the workshop. This will help graduate students and junior scholars to publish their written works in scholarly peer-reviewed journals.
5. To update the participants with new research tools and development of discourses through an alternative reasoned debate by partaking in the workshop without preconceived views and subjective perceptions as religious (practicing Muslim, Christian, Jews and etc) and non-religious (aspiring) scholar.
6. To be able to contribute in the presently growing literature regarding the influence of Islam in International Politics through well-sounded and groundbreaking publications and other notable academic activities.
7. To present published materials for the perusal of other young (graduate students and novice researchers) participants and intellectual sharing among scholars (referring to all participants) who may advance for their scholarship (learning) as well as for career development.
How the workshop will be carry-out and what themes or topics may specifically include?
There will be one chair for every session, most probably from one of the workshop directors or any from the presenters depending on his/her expertise and willingness to partake, and intermittent discussants. The discussants are also the presenters who will be randomly exchanging their roles during the live sessions, e.g., presenter A will be the discussant of presenter B afterwards and vice versa. It is the role of the director to give a copy of the full paper of presenter A to presenter B within one or two week(s) before, so s/he will have time to prepare as discussant and jot down his/her comments or questions.
     The Session’s Chair will have all the copies of the papers which will be provided by the directors. The Chair will serve as emcee and at the same time moderator during the discussions, but s/he cannot convey his/her opinion until his/her chaired session ended. Only at the closing session s/he will have the opportunity to deliver his privilege speech summarizing, evaluating, recommending further research, and critically analyzing the highlights of his/her chaired session. There will be clustering of participants to form one session (comprising 4 to 5 papers) that have common and related topics. Below are proposed interrelated themes and topics but this list is not exhaustive. As long as the proposed paper falls within the scope of the overall workshop’s description, then it is accepted but subject for reviews and assessment. You may propose a paper on the following topics and subtopics:
I. Relations between Islam and politics: Islamic Politics or Politics of Islam
            A. Islamic political thoughts vis-à-vis Western and non-Western political thoughts
II. The debate on Islam versus secularism
            A. The (in)compatibility of Islam and democracy?
                        A.1. The great Middle East new wave: Revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt
                                    A.1.a. Measuring a domino effect: Yemen, Jordan, Bahrain, Libya, Kuwait
                        A.2. Kemalism: The Turkish Experience
                                   A.2.a. Turkey’s Zero-Problems Foreign Policy
                        A.3. Public Opinion(s) in the Muslim world towards the US, EU, and Israel: Political                             and security threats or not?
                                   A.3.a. Post-9/11 impact to the Muslim world
                                   A.3.b. The representation of Islam and Muslims in the international media:                                                Demonization, Balanced, and/or Exceptionalism?
                                   A.3.c. The representation of the US, EU, and/or Israel in the domestic and                                     regional media of Muslim countries: Demonization or Balanced?
                        A.4. Contextualizing Islam in Democratic Peace Theory
III. Influence of Islam in the making of constitutions of Mediterranean countries
            A. Islamic factors in the implementation of laws and public policies of a specific country
            B. Islamic factors in the implementation of foreign policy of a specific country
IV. Islamic theory of International Relations?
            A. Developing a Post-Western theory or Homegrown theory of International Relations
V. Islamic concepts of state and sovereignty
VI. Islamic views on International Law
VII. Islamic concept of regime in International Relations
            A. Islamic influential parameters to international and regional cooperation
                        A.1. Organization of the Islamic Conference
                                    A.1.a Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
                        A.2. The League of Arab States
                        A.3. The Cooperation Council For The Arab States of The Gulf
                        A.4. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
                        A.5. United Nations
                                    A.5.a. The Group of 77
                        A.6. The Muslim World League
                                    A.6.a. The International Islamic Relief Organization
            B. Islam views on Liberal Institutionalism
VIII. Role of Islam in times of war, conflict, occupation, terrorism, and peace
            A. Islamism and the War on Terror
                        A.1. Non-state actors such as Al-Qaeda and its networks.
            B. Extrapolating views of Wahhabism and Salafiyya
            C. Post-war and Pax-Americana effects: Afghanistan and Iraq
            D. The Palestinian question and Arab-Israeli conflict
IX. Contending views on Islamic nationalism or Ummah and its irredentist characterizations
            A. Deciphering the notion on Pan-Islamism
                        A.1. Estimating the political role of the Society of the Muslim Brothers
            B. Deciphering the exportation of Iranian revolution
            C. Deciphering the notion on Pan-Arabism or Arab unity
            D. Deciphering the political neologism of “Eurabia” thesis
            E. Deciphering Pan-Turkism: From Central Asia, Broader Middle East to Eastern Europe
            F. Deciphering Kurdish nationalism and other ethnic/minorities with nationalistic aspirations
X. The political influence and rise of Shi’a: From Iran, Syria, Lebanon to GCC
            A. Analyzing the present situation and future of Hezbollah and Hamas
Opening Session: An Introduction of Islam in the International Politics and the Mediterranean as the Regional Case Study
This session will formally open the workshop by discussing the debates between the peculiar relationship of Islam and International Politics. It will initially describe and later define clearly the differing concepts and notions discussed and argued by scholars in the debate. This, of course, is in line and within the scope of the Mediterranean region. It is the focus of the study and will be use by outlining the geopolitical effects of the Islamic faith as a political ideology. Accepted papers related in the above description will be part of the opening session.
Body Sessions: Clustered Paper Presenters with Related Theses (topics and issue-areas)
Based from the proposed themes with specified topics and their subtopics, all papers will be clustered and joined with related research areas and objects to form one session. Most probably four to five papers would suffice a session to survive. Further, the number of body sessions depends on the number of accepted papers which a minimum of three and maximum of five presenters will form one session.

Closing Session: Assessing Islamic Impacts of the international relations of the Mediterranean region
There will be no paper presenters for this session. It will be the moment for all the presenters to reflect, discuss, brainstorm, and argue on the impacts of Islam in the contemporary Mediterranean political affairs.
     The discussants for every session will present their assessment, feedback, and evaluation of their assigned session’s panel. They will be chronologically presented as per the order of the clustered body sessions. Afterwards, the presenters will react, comment, clarify, and elaborate first on what the discussant had argued and then furthering their thoughts (their presented papers) to support their counterarguments. The audience can participate in the discussion by pointing out on certain ideas, suggesting, commenting, reacting, and giving interrogative remarks during or after the presentations of both the presenters and discussants.
     At the last part of the closing session, the Chairs for every session will give their evaluative and concluding statements reflecting on what have been discussed from the very beginning to end and may suggest significant recommendations for further research.

*Dr. Ben Kirat is a graduate of Oxford Brookes University, he holds a Post Graduate Certificate in Education from Westminster College Oxford, an M.A in French Studies and a PhD in International Relations from Nottingham University.he worked as a Project Coordinator for Davy Mackee (Sheffield UK), the fourth UK multinational. He worked as an International Consultant for over 20 years, specializing in European-US affairs, North Africa and the Middle East. He was an adviser to ‘Le Quotidien de l’Economie’ (R.P.C.) Brussels Bureau. He was a Senior Lecturer at Northumbria University and M.A Supervisor in French Studies and held other post as Head of Department, Director of Studies and Marketing Manager in Colleges in Oxford and in Italy. He was Examiner, Regional Co-ordinator and Examinations’ Consultant for the Institute of Linguists.

2011 Korean Government Scholarship Program for Graduate Students at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies

I am grateful and thankful to Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (HUFS) and the National Institute for International Education (NIIED) for nominating and awarding me the Korean Government Scholarship Program (KGSP) as a PhD student in International Area Studies focusing on Middle Eastern and North African studies. However, I discontinued the program after three months because of personal matters.

 

2011 MESA Annual Meeting Proposal: Two parts panel on “Islam and International Relations: Mutual Perceptions”

Status: rejected

Abstract:

For a very long time, the Muslim world was regarded as an outsider from the cultural and normative pretext and state relations of the West. Even during the reign of the Ottoman Empire, scholars of International Relations (IR) excluded her as a subordinated non-ally or stealth ally of major European powers. It is now apparent that there is an imperative motivation why Islamic discourses gradually dominate contemporary international relations and events, e.g. Palestinian question, Iranian nuclear issue, Arab oil, gas and Turkish water resources, rise of extremist movements, terrorism, post-war Afghanistan and Iraq, tensions in the Maghreb countries, Sudanese conflict, Muslim rebels in Southeast Asia, and how all of these events affect the West in a theory-praxis spectrum.
     If IR scholars and members of the English School of International Relations were able to associate and converge their thoughts on conceptualizing International Relations with Christianity, this is of course majority of them are Christians. Then, it is a precedent and an indication that along the strand of the Abrahamic Faiths Islam is putatively feasible and probable to understand and interpret IR.
     The objectives of the panel are to show juxtaposed positions of mutual perceptions between Islam and IR based on conceived notions of sensitive conceptions like sovereignty, state, human rights, gender, and etcetera, to eliminate deplorable and pejorative (mis)conceptions of IR scholars towards Islam and vice versa, and add or put Islam in the epitome of global discourse of international relations as a major causal factor that affects the behaviors of every actors in the international community particularly those which have interest and peculiar relations with the Muslim world. The panel will examine two outstanding inquiries that will guide the panel in hoping to find, discover or create patterns of tangency. Questions below magnify the totality of where the panel will lead at and to what extent it is presented and analyze.
            1. How International Relations scholars perceived the field of Islam?
            2. How Islamic scholars (Muslims or non-Muslims) perceived the field of IR?
     The organizer humbly hopes that through this panel, we may able to add to the realm of literature on how human races and civilizations are linked through intellectual, cultural, economical, and social exchanges particularly on the relations between the East (Islam) and the West (International Relations).

Further announcements:

Member Calls to Participate in the MESA 2011 Meeting
H-Net Online (Humanities and Social Sciences
CEERES eBulletin (University of Chicago)
New Generation (Al-Azhar University)
ARMACAD (Armenian Academic Association)


Organizer: Nassef M. Adiong

First Session

Chair:

Ari Varon, a PhD candidate in Political Science co-advised from two institutions: the University of Sciences Po located in Paris France as well as at Tel Aviv University in Israel. Ari served as the Deputy Foreign Policy Advisor to the Prime Minister of Israel from April 2005 through April 2009.

Discussant:

Prof. Dr. John L. Esposito, the Professor of Religion and International Affairs and of Islamic Studies at Georgetown University. The founding director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding in the Walsh School of Foreign Service.

Presenters:

Ghaidaa Hetou, a PhD candidate at the Political Science department at Rutgers University. Her work focuses on contemporary Foreign Policies of Middle Eastern states. Her paper, however, will focus on a turning point in Islamic history (late 1480s) through the eyes of a scholar and politician, Ibn al Azraq, with a discussion on how to integrate the prominence of Islamic identity in moments of crisis in IR.

Prof. Dr. Moain Sadeq, a half Palestinian and Canadian teaching at Qatar University. He received his PhD degree from the Free University of Berlin 1991 and has over 15 years experience in teaching and developing curricula of history and archaeology. His paper discusses the civilizational links of religion (Islam) and Islamic culture to the Western (Christian) discipline of International Relations by dwelling on inter-faith events and inter-cultural orientations with an aim of fostering mutual understandings as its case study.

Alessandra Gonzalez, a PhD candidate in Sociology of Religion at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. She is one of the reviewers of Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion and Journal of Church and State. Her paper addresses the demographic profile of feminists in the Muslim vis-à-vis Western communities particularly a case study of 1139 Kuwaiti college students.

Didem Doganyilmaz, a PhD candidate in Historical Societies, Land and Heritage at the Universitat Rovira I Virgili in Avinguda Catalunya, Spain. She is one of the project researchers of the “Identity Conflicts in the Middle East” at the UNESCO Chair of Intercultural Dialogue in the Mediterranean. Her paper focuses on the variables that determine Turkey’s behavior which ostensibly influences the implementation of its foreign policy, whether Islamic or Secular (Western) elements in nature.

Prof. Dr. Haila Al-Mekaimi, the Professor of Political Science at Kuwait University. Her paper focuses on the Islamic radical groups relations toward a state and a global order. The paper inquire three main things: (1) what kind of revisions these movements were able to conclude? (2) How these revisions differ from the traditional beliefs of the past movements? (3) What kind of impact does this new wave of change, which swept in several countries in the Middle East, affects established Islamic groups?

Second Session

Chair: Nassef M. Adiong

Discussant:

Prof. Dr. Jocelyn Cesari, the Director of inter-faculty Islam in the West program of Harvard University and John Hopkins University. She is an Associate at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and Center for European Studies. She has served as a Senior Research Fellow and Associate Professor at the French National Center for Scientific Research.

Presenters:

Prof. Dr. Istar Gozaydin, the Professor of Law and Politics at the Istanbul Technical University. Her paper examines the operational code of Prof. Dr. Ahmet Davutoğlu, the current Minister of Foreign Affairs and a notable scholar of Islam and International Politics in Turkey.

Christopher Dallas-Feeney, a PhD candidate in Political Science at the George Washington University and the Adjunct Professor of Management at the Villanova University, PA. His paper discusses the social fitness of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Taliban insurgencies to examine their organizational payoff for legitimated power dwelling on the literature of Islamic and IR concepts.

Ari Varon will discuss how Muslims integrate, or not, between Western and Islamic concepts of religion, law and the nation-state. Using Muslims living in Europe as a case study, analyzing four distinct and comprehensive Islamic discourses reveals significant variations on how Muslim scholars address the construct of Western identity.

Jessica Daniels, a Master student in Historical Studies at the New School University in New York. She is going to present the debate on the “East” and “West” discourse drawing on the Iranian revolution as her case study.

Gokhan Duman, a PhD candidate in Historical Societies, Land and Heritage at the Universitat Rovira I Virgili, Avinguda Catalunya, Spain. He is also one of the project researchers of the “Identity Conflicts in the Middle East” at the UNESCO Chair of Intercultural Dialogue in the Mediterranean. He will present the evolution of the debate on ‘Islam and Democracy’ and whether the Turkish model is applicable to Arab states.

My Research Plan on "Islam and International Relations: Mutual Perceptions"

                                                                                                                                                                        What are you investigating? Why?

If scholars and members of the English School of International Relations were able to associate and converge their thoughts on conceptualizing International Relations with Christianity, this is of course majority of them are Christians and so Western Europe is. Then, it is a precedent and an indication that along the strand of the Abrahamic Faiths Islam is putatively feasible and probable to understand and interpret International Relations  (IR) and vice versa. Though the danger of this study might suggests a myriad adherence to two extreme poles of risky praradigm: (1) those IR scholars who totally ignore Western concepts in Islam because it’s plainly un-Islamic and (2) those Islamic (ulama) scholars who color Western concepts like IR within the Islamic prism by putting Islamic elements. This is a matter of how we are going to find tangency or via media between Islam and IR without committing submission to those extreme poles. 
     The proposed dissertation is on the study of Islam and International Relations which will be entitled as “Islam and International Relations: Mutual Perceptions.” This was initially conceptualized with the aim of looking their conceived perceptions side by side, whether, how Islam is interpreted by IR scholars and vice versa. This has been the proponent’s quest to feasibly and scholarly presents Islam as a non-alien in the Western discourse of the IR field. 
     The aims of the research are to show juxtaposed positions of mutual perceptions between Islam and IR based on conceived notions of sensitive conceptions, to eliminate deplorable and pejorative (mis)conceptions of IR scholars towards Islam and vice versa, and add or put Islam in the epitome of global discourse of international relations as a major causal factor that affects the behaviors of every actors (states, sub-state system, individuals, international and regional organizations, and multinational corporations) in the international community particularly those which have interest and peculiar relations to the Muslim world.
     The proponent will examine two outstanding inquiries that will guide this research in hoping to find, discover or create patterns of tangency. Questions below magnify the totality of where the research will lead at and to what extent it is analyze.
            1. How International Relations scholars perceived the field of Islam?
            2. How Islamic scholars (Muslims or non-Muslims) perceived the field of IR?
What methods are you going to employ?
Primary resources such as interviews to both IR and Islamic scholars will be utilized. If means and/or resources are scarce to travel to different countries just to perform onsite interviews, the online research method of interview is an appropriate substitute. Both synchronous online interviews (for example via skype, dimdim, or any forms of chat technology) and asynchronous online interviews (for example via email) will be used. Online interviews manifest practicality, easiness, fast, and less expensive compared to onsite interviews. Constructing their Operational Codes through the Verbs-In-Context-System (VICS) method of content analysis will also be utilized. Their written documents, monographs, books, articles, public speeches will be analyzed using VICS. The problem here is who among the ‘living’ scholars will be interviewed? A random of 10 scholars from each field will be selected and reached if their willing to partake or participate in the research. This first method is delimited by the challenge of selectivity approach and willingness of the scholars.
     Secondary resources such as books, journals, electronic sources and other common sources that can be found from libraries, archives, related institutes and research centers are included. A tentative list of review of related literature is stated at the latter of this proposal. A preliminary exploratory research will help to create good research design and data collection for purpose of reviews. This is the proponent chronological manner of undertaking this method. It will first set out exploratory research which precedes descriptive research then explanatory research to formulate a conceptual framework. The only thing that the study will focus on is looking for the parallel arrows that may hopefully connect IR and Islam. Below is a matrix:
Islam Perceptions International Relations
 
How it will be carry-out or what themes or objects of research may specifically include?
The process of constructing this involves selecting perspectives and categories to bring to bear on the research topic. It is only on the basis of such theorization of the research topic and the delineation of ‘objects of research’ that one can settle upon appropriate methods of data selection, collection and analysis. So the proponent provides a skeletal draft or outline on how the study will be structured or categorically assigned or divided.
A. International Relations’ perception of Islam
     1. International Relations’ perception of religion
          – It will talk about how IR scholars perceived religion generally.
     2. International Relations’ perception of Islam
          – This portion is exclusively dedicated to IR scholars’ perception towards Islam.
     3. The Secularist Debate
          – The debate that sparked among William E. Connolly, Talal Asad, Saba Mahmood, and other scholars.
B. Islam’s perception of International Relations
     1. Islamic perception of International Relations (capital “IR” means the discipline itself)
          – A discussion of the Islamic reflection on the main assumptions and notions of the discipline such as state, sovereignty, security, power, conflict and cooperation, diplomacy, human rights and etc.
     2. Islamic perception of international relations (small caps “ir” means the practice itself)
          – It will discuss intergovernmental and non-governmental practices, which is subdivided into two parts:
               a. The objective interpretation, e.g., The Holy Qur’an and the Sunnah and the subjective interpretation, e.g., the concept of ijtihad among others.
               b. The conceptions of Dar al-Islam, Dar al-Harb and Dar al-Ahd.
C. The Road Not Taken: Beyond Orientalism*
     1. Islam and International Relations as part of the stories told from a Western viewpoint.
     2. Stories from the Muslim world regarding international politics.
*Letter “C” might be optional because in the paradigm of explaining the research plan the first two parts suffices the study.

Which part of that body of knowledge your study will be added to?
For a very long time, the Muslim world was regarded as an outsider from the cultural and normative pretext and state relations of the West. Even during the reign of the Ottoman Empire, IR scholars excluded her as a subordinated non-ally or stealth ally of major European powers. It is now apparent that there is an imperative motivation why Islamic discourses gradually dominate contemporary international relations or events, e.g. Palestinian question, Iranian nuclear issue, Arab oil and gas and Turkish water resources, rise of extremist movements, terrorism, post-war Afghanistan and Iraq, tensions in the Maghreb countries, Sudanese conflict, Muslim rebels in Southeast Asia, and how all of these events affect the West in a theory-praxis spectrum.

     The researcher humbly hopes that through this study, we may able to add to the realm of literature on how human races and civilizations are linked through intellectual, cultural, economical, and social exchanges particularly of the relations between the East (Islam) and the West (International Relations).

What is your suggested work plan?
1 year      –     will deal on completing the required number of courses or units to prepare for any qualifying examinations (written and/or oral) or administrative obligations that the institute or graduate school requires the PhD student to do so. A part of this temporal duration is establishing good relationship with the supervisor and seeking advice and guidance for the preparation of thesis proposal in the committee which will examine its credibility, invariability, and feasibility.
1 years     –     data collection; surveying relevant key literature; highlighting preselected candidates for online interviews and those who are willing to participate will form the final selection of scholars to be interviewed; doing quality control by analyzing, assessing, and evaluating the collected data; reporting and updating the supervisor and the thesis committee regarding developments of the proponent’s research; and writing down the thesis.
1 year      –     continuation of writing the thesis and updating the thesis committee while at the same time seeking guidance from the supervisor; preparing the final draft and sending hard bound copies to the thesis committee and to the supervisor; and applying for the defense to determine its schedule (this will be done on the 5th or 6th month of that year so the remaining months will be allotted for any unfortunate revisions). 
______
3 years