This paper aims to clarify ‘revised sectarianism’ substantially by analysing the ‘political party support structure’ based on the poll that our research team conducted in Iraq in October 2011. Based on the logit model on the survey data of Iraqi citizens, the following four points became clear. First, the sectarian tendency in party support became relatively clear in analysing macro data such as the results of elections. Second, on the other hand, it became clear that the tendency toward sectarianism undoubtedly varied across sectarian groups when we analysed the micro data of the poll; Sunni voters, in particular, were less subject to sectarian factors in supporting their party. Third, considerably different policies were supported by the voters who supported the same sectarian and ethnic parties. On the other hand, supporters of both the Shi’ite and Sunni parties often showed similarity in terms of policy preferences. Fourth, as the majority of voters tend not to express support for a political party, the main Iraqi parties are losing their support. These four discoveries demonstrate that it is inappropriate to analyse Iraqi politics based on sectarian and ethnic factors alone, and that ideology and policy orientation can also play a significant role.

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This article examines a failed attempt by the Waṭṭāsid dynasty to recover domination over the southern part of al-Maġrib al-Aqṣā during the 1510s. Portuguese conquest of the Atlantic coastal cities of the Dukkālah plain, which had been freed from the direct control of Fez since the latter half of the 15th century, resulted in four expeditions by Sultan al-Burtuġālī, who waged jihad against the infidels. However, his army was confronted by resistance from Arab tribesmen who had made peace with Manuel I, King of Portugal. To cope with this difficulty, the sultan sought help from Muslim saints in his negotiations with Arabs, as he recognized their influence among the Arab population. He selected mausoleums of deceased saints as stages for political performances to justify integrating the region into his power base. Sa‘dian sharifs also participated in the affair as vassals of the dynasty, collaborating in securing the tribes’ submission to the sultan. In view of these alliances, the conventional theory that stresses cooperation between the Sa‘dians and saints in the jihad against the Portuguese on the one hand, and their opposition to the Waṭṭāsid dynasty and the Arabs on the other, should be reexamined. However, the limited effectiveness of the Waṭṭāsid strategy became clear when the dynasty’s presence in the region disappeared with the end of the expeditions caused by drought and pestilence.

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This article seeks to answer the question: why did Palestinians in the occupied territories (the West Bank and Gaza Strip) develop political activities that differed from those of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), but at the same time maintain strong support toward the PLO? Primary documents collected in al-Wathā’iq al-Filasṭīnīya al-‘Arabīya (The Documents of Arab Palestine) can help illuminate the dynamic politics inside and outside the territories. Following analysis of historical developments using these primary documents, this article concludes that strict control by Israeli authorities inside the territories and Palestinians’ fear of the appearance of an alternative leadership brought their own political program to support the PLO within a relationship of co-existence. Inside the West Bank and Gaza Strip, it was very difficult to insist on the full liberation of Palestine (which the PLO did), because of the stringent Israeli control, but Palestinians inside the territories needed the PLO to prevent another leadership from forming that might collaborate with Israel or Jordan. However, changing international politics led to cooperation between the PLO and Jordan: the very country that intended to create an alternative leadership inside the territories. The paper shows how the dynamics of international politics created an ironic situation inside the territories.

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This study attempted to clarify the structure of authoritarian resilience of Morocco, which was verified by the reactions to the wave of the “Arab Spring.” After the revolutionary movements known as the Arab Spring swept the Middle East and North Africa, King Mohammad VI of Morocco carried out limited, top-down political reforms. Only three weeks after Moroccans expressed their public dissatisfaction in a series of protests, the king announced that he would amend the constitution. Based on this revised constitution, parliamentary elections were held on November 23. The Party of Justice and Development (PJD) won and took leadership of the government for the first time since entering the political arena in 1997, which was also the first Islamist-led government in Morocco. This study insisted that the PJD’s win in Morocco cannot be considered a triumph for the Islamists in the same way that Islamist party victories in Tunisia or Egypt, but it should be understood in the same context as the leftists’ victory in 1997 following the constitutional reform in 1996. It also was only a transformation/reshuffle of the government and a change in the relationship between political actors in the parliament. As a conclusion, I suggested that this might be better understood as a new strategy of the king, “the rotation of the ruling parties and the opposition,” under the name of nominal democracy.

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Israeli historical narratives, which rely on the state-own archival sources, have marginalized Palestinian oral history. This paper describes the methods of Palestinian oral history and then discusses the possibilities and challenges for Palestinian historians. The cases examined here are a series of monographs on destroyed Palestinian villages, published by the Center for the Research and Documentation of Palestinian Society (CRDPS) at Birzeit University in the West Bank. The CRDPS project can be divided into two phases. The first phase, led by anthropologist Sharif Kanaana, relied on oral testimony as the only source, so that the monographs developed the known diversity of each of the villages while also envisioning rural Palestinian society as a unified whole. The second phase, led by historian Saleh Abdul Jawad, aimed to establish an accurate, complete, and national narrative, which would be essential for the discursive struggle with Israel. In light of the real-politics, the second phase’s national narrative is considered the more persuasive one. Nevertheless, the significance of the first phase local and diversity-oriented narrative lies in its characteristics as the record of a people’s past that would otherwise fall out of the historical consciousness of the real-politics.

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The book of Sharḥ-i Shaṭḥīyāt which will be treated in this article is one of the masterpieces of Rūzbihān Baqlī Shīrāzī (d. 1209), a prominent preacher of Shiraz in the 12th century. This book mainly consists of explanations of ecstatic sayings called “Shaṭaḥāt” a technical term used by Sufi masters from the 7th to 10th century. The main purpose of this paper is to examine this Rūzbihān’s annotations of ecstatic sayings of Sufi masters, especially those of Manṣūr al-Ḥallāj (d. 922). The reasons for this focus are that, among the various Sufi masters, Rūzbihān clearly indicates that elucidating the work of al-Ḥallāj is the main objective of his book; in fact, the portion devoted to al-Ḥallāj accounts for a third of the Sharḥ-i Shaṭḥīyāt. Most previous studies on the Rūzbihān’s ideas follow Corbin’s opinion that Rūzbihān is one of the typical Sufis who described a mystical love between God and man in Sufism. However, recent studies have defined the limits of this prior view and pointed out that the traditional interpretation of Rūzbihān reflects only one side of his thought. This is a very important suggestion for further research on Rūzbihān’s ideas and the practicality of this suggestion will also be considered in the present article. This study will clarify the role of the Sharḥ-i Shaṭḥīyāt within the whole corpus of Rūzbihān’s works. They will also help us to discover a new side of the ideas of Rūzbihān, who has typically been viewed as one of the re-interpreters of al-Ḥallāj’s heretical thinking, as well as to reconsider his position in the history of ideas within Sufism.

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