Epilogue

2018 ◽  
pp. 237-254
Author(s):  
Angie Heo
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
War On Terrorism ◽  
Arab Nationalism ◽  
New Era ◽  
Global War On Terrorism ◽  
Migrant Laborers ◽  
Militant Groups ◽  
Coptic Church ◽  
Global War

The epilogue centers on the Libya Martyrs, the twenty-one migrant laborers who were beheaded in 2015, and the alarming rise of ISIS across North Africa and the Middle East in 2013–14. It shows how the terrorist execution of Copts and its immediate aftermath activated older strands of religious mediation that have been described throughout this book: the communal dynamics of martyr commemoration, Arab nationalism versus Christian Rome as competing referents of political belonging, the outbreak of contests and threats tied to church territory, and the cult making of contemporary martyrs in the Coptic Church. By recounting the Libya Martyrs' various contexts, the epilogue invites reflection on how acts of violence that exceed the Egyptian national frame—through impoverished Coptic migrants and pan-Islamic militant groups—exacerbate old structures of sectarian tension in a new era of post-revolutionary militarization and the global war on terrorism.

Realities of Resistance: Hizballah, the Palestinian Rejectionists, and al-Qa'ida Compared

2005 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 23-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anders Strindberg ◽  
Mats Wäärn
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
War On Terrorism ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Global War On Terrorism ◽  
Militant Groups ◽  
Osama Bin Laden ◽  
Global War ◽  
Local Representations ◽  
The U.S

In the U.S.-led ““global war on terrorism,”” al-Qa'ida and its militant affiliates have come to serve as both symbol and explanatory matrix for a range of disparate militant groups in the Middle East and beyond. Included among these are the Palestinian rejectionist factions and the Lebanese Hizballah, despite the fact that their roots, worldviews, and agendas are inimical to those of al-Qa'ida. This article argues that the scholarly and political effort to lump together diverse resistance groups into a homogenous ““terrorist enemy,”” ultimately symbolized by Osama Bin Laden, is part and parcel of neocolonial power politics whereby all ““native”” struggles against established power structures are placed beyond reason and dialogue. The authors contend that while the Palestinian rejectionist factions and the Lebanese Hizballah may be understood as local representations of the anticolonial ““third worldist”” movement, al-Qa'ida and its affiliates operate within a ““neo--third worldist”” framework, a dichotomy that entails tactical and strategic differences, both political and military. The article draws on an extensive series of author interviews with leaders and cadres from Hizballah and the Palestinian factions.

Liberal Internationalism from George W. Bush to Barack Obama

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Smith
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Barack Obama ◽  
Democratic Peace ◽  
War On Terrorism ◽  
Global War On Terrorism ◽  
Liberal Internationalism ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Global War

This chapter examines the United States' liberal democratic internationalism from George W. Bush to Barack Obama. It first considers the Bush administration's self-ordained mission to win the “global war on terrorism” by reconstructing the Middle East and Afghanistan before discussing the two time-honored notions of Wilsonianism espoused by Democrats to make sure that the United States remained the leader in world affairs: multilateralism and nation-building. It then explores the liberal agenda under Obama, whose first months in office seemed to herald a break with neoliberalism, and his apparent disinterest in the rhetoric of democratic peace theory, along with his discourse on the subject of an American “responsibility to protect” through the promotion of democracy abroad. The chapter also analyzes the Obama administration's economic globalization and concludes by comparing the liberal internationalism of Bush and Obama.

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