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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 

An Islamic International Relations?

The title above of this essay will surely cause havoc in the Western academia of International Relations (IR) particularly those who were trained in an American IR school. European IR schools are somehow pluralistic in terms of how they view IR than their American counterparts. This paper is not an ‘all-knowing’ type of a term project, but it is delimited by an ‘interrogative’ descriptive structure of explanation. It will be about research inquiries on “Islam and International Relations.” How both conceptions perceived each other, its repercussions on implicit and explicit notions of human and society, and if there are mutual or reciprocal relation or relatedness, or in short ‘interrelationships’ constructed?

     But this question is apparently not the primal concern of IR; it may be more of an importance to sociology, psychology, theology and political science. Although, we cannot deny IR’s multidisciplinary approach to its field. For many years since the interwar (interbellum) period, a bulk of IR scholars’ research work has been dealing with statecraft, state-to-state relations, and the international system paying little attention to human affairs or human-to-human or human-to-society relations concomitant the roles of culture, religion, language, and other determining identities. Only then at the post-Cold War period, these matters were given importance, of course, ignited by the constructivist project in the US.
Coming to ____________, Looking for an Intellectual Patronage
When I arrived at the University I did some little research on the faculty list of _____  department and noted those who may help me in this endeavor. I initially talked to Prof.._____ during the registration period and told me that she doesn’t know if my proposed thesis (this was done verbally not the formal process of submitting a thesis proposal) is feasible enough because in her view, ‘why there’s a need to formulate an international relations theory based on religious perspective, if so then, there should be Buddhist, Hindus, Christian and Jewish conception(s) of IR’ and I replied that this is not the point, it’s like you are saying that Islam is similar or identical with other religions or ideologies.
     Further, I lamented that ‘why can Western scholars particularly the pioneers of English School of IR associated their thoughts with Christianity’? Was this because of the Peace of Westphalia’s resolutions to disputes between Catholics and Protestants, and later lead to the establishment of ‘sovereign’ nation-states. Whereby, sovereignty has been so used (rehashed) word for research by IR scholars which resulted to grand concepts like anarchy, self-help system, balance of power, national interests, power, and complex interdependence among others. Though this is not to mean that when the notion of sovereignty emerged, grand concepts that I mentioned immediately were conceived. Simple causation here is not enough but complex method of correlation is the appropriate structure of explanation. 
     Prof. _____ just shrugged me off and answered that my proposal is too ambitious (period). In my mind, there’s no ‘ambitious’ research proposal, only those who concluded their research and failed to defend their work that make it ambitious. Prof. ____ and Prof. _____ responded to my inquiry that they cannot help me in my research work because simply they’re not expert on Islam, but instead, gave me links and other important resources salient to my research. However, when I approached Prof. _____ (we had an interesting discussion that lasted almost an hour or so), it gave me hope and opened my thoughts to many possibilities.
     First, he was asking me with several questions regarding what’s really on my mind. He talked about vehemently avoiding two extreme poles: (1) those who totally ignore Western concepts in Islam because it’s plainly un-Islamic and (2) those who color Western concepts like IR within Islamic prism by putting some Islamic elements. I asked: “can we find a via media or middle way from these two ends of spectrum” because I don’t want to pattern my research in a pendulum way, wherein I might get too adhering to the no. 1 or no. 2 extreme poles? And he answered, it’s possible, if we can rework (adjust) its ontological propositions and find or discover appropriate epistemology. The thing that I can think of is to use a method that is immune and has defensive mechanism in avoiding or capable of fighting these extreme poles.
     But for now I will focus first on asking questions, observing the phenomena, and gathering a plethoric survey of literatures. Secondly, he suggested for possible research undertakings like look into the works of Edward Said, Mohammed Arkoun, Giorgio Shani, al-Zuhili and gave me the Sabet’s book to make some reports. Though I criticized Sabet’s book at first, but suddenly I am overwhelmed by the arguments he presented at the latter up to its ending. He presented a conundrum style of inquiry (like puzzles designed to test for lateral thinking) and basically at those puzzles you can find answers. Certainly, first impression never last (amen). And lastly, he humbly suggested that probably I might alter my research inquiry instead of developing an Islamic theory of IR why not divert my attention to postcolonial studies because (in his words) it’s appropriate and plausible. 
Islam and International Relations, Strange Bedfellows
Islam and International Relations, two intricate terminologies, but how can I make them tangent (meeting along the same line or point)? This is not to sound like an orientalist; projecting the “incompatibility enterprise” thus you cannot find harmony or manipulating the study based on their upbringing or normative biases, e.g., Western culture as point of reference and making it superior than oriental culture. The orientalist has done such a great deal to make Islam incompatible, or worst, hostile with Western values, ideas, norms and traditions. Declaring and pronouncing Islam’s incompatibility with democracy (remember the Western “democratic peace theory” that democratic countries or democracies don’t go to war with one another though this argument can also be associated to opposed totalitarian governments), human rights particularly of women and gay rights, international law, and etc.
     How can we advance our scholarship if we already have a preconceived perception, notion, impression and biases against Islam and its adherents, i.e., the Muslims? Why most IR scholars wrote that the area studies of Middle East in the US failed miserably? According to them, experts of Middle Eastern studies in America failed to predict the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, failed to warn the West about the rise of radical or fundamental Islamic revivalist movements, failed to suggest and give guidelines for policy making procedures or to their foreign policy that would have prevent wars or mitigate hostilities or tensions of the West with the Muslim world.
     I would argue that the reasons above were not the causes that made Middle Eastern studies vulnerable. There is a remarkable preconceived perception that Middle Eastern experts were unimportant in policy making and moreover, most of them were neoconservatives with ‘attached’ Israel propaganda on their belt, e.g., Daniel Pipes (director of the Middle East Forum and Taube), Fouad Ajami (Harvard CIA/Nadav Safran Chair on Middle East Politics), Mark Steyn (a self-proclaimed expert on Muslim culture), Ibn Warraq (founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society) and more.
     The other reasons that IR scholars did not see were my following assumptions or hunches: (1) you cannot penetrate the government’s circle of advisers to the president, the Congress and the Judiciary if your views are pro-Islamic world, (2) you cannot survive the academia in the US if you are straightforwardly criticizing Israel of course with an exception of Edward Said and Noam Chomsky, and (3) be so outwardly visible and outspoken in the US public opinion of your rants against its foreign policy to the Middle East and Israel. Anti-Israel has become a “taboo” in the public sphere of America.  
     Even Edward Said experienced the orientalist backlash. It was right after the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing, many reports were pointing out that the suspects were of Middle Eastern origin. Said’s office was bombarded with calls and emails from the media who wants to know his opinion regarding the matter, which the bombing occurred while he was in Canada giving lectures. Said thought that the reason they were calling him because he was apparently from the Middle East; he was a Christian Palestinian. Little did they know that the suspects were homegrown white American citizens.
     How can we avoid, mitigate and solve this “orientalist enterprise?” I suggest that Muslim countries or even non-Muslim countries who sympathized with the goals of Muslim countries can create a multilateral agreement condemning anti-Muslim acts. Muslim countries can invest in the international media to establish a worldwide News company vis-à-vis BBC or CNN. Invest more in the popular culture by creating movies, T.V. series, documentaries, concerts, and other tools propagating or germinating informative means that would directly hit or influence the mass people about the stories in the Muslim world. Muslim countries particularly the Arab world can extensively invest in ‘international education’ by funding researches about Islam, Middle East, and Muslims around the world without political strings attach to it.
     Moving on, we should intensively and rigorously look into the etymology of Islam and International Relations. If we talk about Islam are we referring to the religious aspects of it or the political Islam? Are we speaking of Islam as a total way of life that transcends beyond its religious status? How will Islam provides a structure of explanation in interpreting international relations theory? Is IR embedded within the realms of Islam naturally or constructively? IR scholars see Islam as ‘the otherness’ while most of the Islamic scholars interpret IR as alien. I think this is because of the dogmas or fatwas imposed by the Hanafi school of law which delineated Muslims from non-Muslims by identifying two abodes, the abode of Islam (Dar al-Islam) and the abode of war (Dar al-Harb). Sometimes most of the early Muslim jurists relegated abode of war as abode of unbelievers (Dar al-Kufr).
     We should be careful in contextualizing these terms and apply it to the present. During the Ottoman Empire, the Muslim jurists placed a third abode which is at the middle or between the first two abodes, the abode of covenant (Dar al-Ahd). It refers to non-Muslim governments which have peaceful relationship (through binding agreements or treaties) with Muslim governments that prioritizes protection and security of Muslims’ land and property. The abode of Islam does not only refer to Muslim nations or states, it also refers to Muslims practicing their faith in a non-Muslim country. As you can see here, the concept of ijtihad or making some independent interpretation for legal decisions had greatly impacted Islam. Since the inception of the four schools of Islamic laws and jurisprudence within the strand of the Sunni tradition, the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’I, and Hanbali made Islam (on a positive note) colorful and evolving.
     But on the other hand, weakened Islam due to their different legal interpretations concerning hadith (sayings of Prophet Muhammad) and sometimes they no longer refer to the original source of Islam, the Holy Qur’an. They made conflicting and contradicting fatwa (binding or nonbinding) and legal decisions implemented under the Shari’ah law, a combination of the Holy Qur’an and Sunnah (practices of Prophet Muhammad). But how this will affect in finding convergence with international relations? Declaring and imposing different interpretations of Islam by the Muslim jurists themselves made possible for other Muslim jurists in other parts of the world, e.g., in China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Tunisia, Turkey, Morocco and etc, to make their own interpretation and sometimes based on their culture to express appropriateness, applicability and adjustment.
     IR scholars tend to perceived and studied Islam on the prism of secularist epistemology of  great Judeo-Christian tradition, i.e., the concept of separation of Church and government. How is it possible to find a middle way between two ends of spectrum? Islam, where religion and politics are in unison, in contrast with IR, where religion and politics are totally separated. It sounds like a melodramatic sentiment with ingredients of Rudyard Kipling famous saying, “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.”
Finding a Remedy?
If we are going to look for some putative solution and avoid hindrances whether ascribing Islam as an ideology or religion towards international relations, then we might find answers. Katerina Dalacoura, a lecturer at LSE, talks about the concept of globalization as a via media framework. She argued that “Islamist movements can be seen as examples of non-state actors par excellence and their impact on the international system can be understood in their capacity to bypass the state and establish direct relations with other societies”[i] The problem I see here is how she’ll be able to differentiate those movements that were state-driven with irredentist motivation from those with Islamicate characterizations. The context of globalization is still debatable whether how Muslim societies are affected and of course how they respond or react from it.
     The remedy I can think of is to construct or reconstruct ontological propositions and find appropriate epistemology to decipher Islam in the ‘schema’ or views of a specific or certain international relations theory. Put simply all possible ideas and concepts together and initially develop a theoretical or conceptual framework. It will guide me in determining what things or variables I should look for.  Though I don’t want to use the word ‘variable’ because it’s a scientific term, however, I see it as a useful word for my research to denote cases supporting my claim or main idea. Consequently, most of what I have written here is inquiring ideas that bedazzling my mind regarding Islam and IR.
     On a side note or let’s say a caveat: if this proposal did not work and might be in the future holds me in a stalemate or in a state of deadlock, thus resulting into infeasibility and implausibility of the undertaken research. Then, I have no choice but to move to plan B which is (another one of my research passion aside from Islamic IR) analyzing the political elites of the Middle East by employing methods and theories of political psychology. I will start in Turkey by deconstructing the operational codes of the three political elites, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, President Abdullah Gül, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs Ahmet Davutoğlu on how they viewed, perceived and influenced Turkey’s foreign policy towards the Middle East.

[i] She sent me her piece on “Political Islam and International Relations: A Dangerous Case of Mutual Neglect?” where she delivered it at the International Studies Association annual conference, Montreal, 20 march 2004. This quotation was also taken from her work on “Islamist Movements as Non-state Actors and their Relevance to International Relations” in Daphné Josselin and William Wallace (eds), Non-State Actors in World Politics, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001.