Center Journals

This study critically examines the dual impact of digital technologies on the political agency of the Coptic diaspora, emphasizing both the opportunities and limitations posed by Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Digital platforms have enhanced diaspora visibility, resource mobilization, and transnational activism, but they also introduce major risks, including misinformation, censorship, and surveillance. These growing challenges have hindered the diaspora’s ability to navigate power structures, reducing the effectiveness of advocacy efforts. The study argues that the drawbacks of digital activism now outweigh its initial benefits, creating new constraints on Coptic political influence. In light of these pressures, it calls for a reassessment of how diaspora groups can sustain activism in an increasingly hostile digital landscape.

This study examines the question of the state in Azmi Bishara’s exploration of democracy through the lens of political-philosophical approaches to utopia, Rawlsian philosophy, citizenship, civil society, and justice, particularly in the Arab context. Where do Bishara’s theses on the state sit within his broader intellectual project? What is the relationship between the citizenship-based state, civil society, and justice? How does his approach compare with John Rawls’s political utopia? The study posits that Bishara focuses on developing a theory of the state and elaborating it conceptually, treating the state as a realistic political utopia. Bishara’s chief goal is to ascertain the conditions necessary for the establishment of democratic systems in the Arab region. For him, the question begins logically with the state – its origin and evolution – and ends with democracy and issues pertaining to it.

This study explores the rise of “economic theology” in Iraq through an examination of the Shi’i Al-Kafeel network and its expanding institutional presence. It addresses the central question of how religious authority, when disengaged from state structures, constructs a parallel economy grounded in theological legitimacy and moral purpose. The analysis, adopting a theoretical framework shaped by Max Weber, Werner Sombart, and contemporary reflections on religious economies, approaches Al-Kafeel not merely as an administrative apparatus but as a symbolic formation that converts ritual authority into organizational capacity and economic power. The study argues that Al-Kafeel exemplifies a distinctive mode of socio-economic action in post-2003 Iraq, one in which religious legitimacy, managerial rationality, and communal trust converge to produce an alternative model of institutional endurance and social influence.