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​In this section you will find the most important documents on democratic change in the Arab world. In this issue, we publish documents highlighting the political movement in Tunisia demanding democracy and look at the main political changes in Sudan, Iraq and Jordan in March and April 2022.

​The Muslim response to colonialism has varied country to country and region to region. The dawn of colonialism created ruptures in Muslim political reasoning, forcing them to find and reconfigure an Islamic response to the changing political realities. The Indian subcontinent never came under an Islamic Caliphate of the Umayyad or Abbasid Empires. Most military expansionist ambitions in India stemmed from the volatile Central Asian Khanates who played a major strategic role between the Caliphate and Indian subcontinent, preventing the Caliphate from controlling India directly and maintaining an advanced independent politics. This paper profiles the political context of Muslim political thought and its response to the rise of nation-state, which was shaped more of political realism, setting aside the Islamic vocabularies of Dar al Islam or Dar al Harb. This paper concludes that, the South Asian Muslim mind had accepted nation-state either in its composite or in a distinctively Muslim format which resulted in the two nation-states of India and Pakistan. Both formats have evolved within a strong Islamic context that challenges Pakistan's "Islamic credentials" against India.

​The Muslim response to colonialism has varied country to country and region to region. The dawn of colonialism created ruptures in Muslim political reasoning, forcing them to find and reconfigure an Islamic response to the changing political realities. The Indian subcontinent never came under an Islamic Caliphate of the Umayyad or Abbasid Empires. Most military expansionist ambitions in India stemmed from the volatile Central Asian Khanates who played a major strategic role between the Caliphate and Indian subcontinent, preventing the Caliphate from controlling India directly and maintaining an advanced independent politics. This paper profiles the political context of Muslim political thought and its response to the rise of nation-state, which was shaped more of political realism, setting aside the Islamic vocabularies of Dar al Islam or Dar al Harb. This paper concludes that, the South Asian Muslim mind had accepted nation-state either in its composite or in a distinctively Muslim format which resulted in the two nation-states of India and Pakistan. Both formats have evolved within a strong Islamic context that challenges Pakistan's "Islamic credentials" against India.

This text is an introduction to ACRPS published The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Daesh). It deals with a range of methodological questions to help understand the appearance of Islamic State (Daesh) as a phenomenon. It argues that as a complex, political, social and religious phenomenon, Daesh requires an approach that takes multifaceted and pluralistic perspectives. Hence, an integrated methodological approach, in which disciplines simultaneously overlap and reflect, examines Daesh within its context without neglecting its intellectual and religious characteristics. This paper argues that the existence of Daesh relies solely on war and expansion; once expansion ceases, extinction begins. It is a system that is built around a hostile environment, only remaining viable through a continuous state of expansion and regression. This introduction argues that the existence of Daesh relies solely on war and expansion; once expansion ceases, extinction begins. It is a system that is built around a hostile environment, only viable through a continuous state of expansion and regression.

Following the transformations in the Levant’s regional system since the beginning of World War II to the rise of the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, this paper examines the new context of the region with regard to Washington’s resumption of direct military intervention. It finds that the Levant – as a soft area easily subject to geopolitical influences – has always been subject to changes based on shifts in world order, from the Cold War, followed by unipolarity, to the relative decline of US power. Thus, while the main actors of the Levant’s regional system were Arabs during the Cold War, the region has become a battleground for non-Arab parties – namely Turkey and Iran – following the invasion or Iraq and the eruption of the Arab Spring revolutions.

This paper relies on the academic literature on rebel movements and armed rebellions to better the insurrection presently underway in the Egyptian provinces of the Sinai. The paper seeks to understand the implications for counter-insurgency policies, asking why the insurgency has proven so resilient, and at times expanded. The military capabilities and resources available to the militants will also be scrutinized, along with the Egyptian Army's blundering attempts at counterinsurgency and the prevailing political environment. The paper then moves to studying the tactical patterns and the overall strategy of the ISIL affiliated group active in the Sinai. The author concludes that the failure of counterinsurgency efforts, the continued absence of national reconciliation, the failure to review and revise counterinsurgency policies serve to make the Sinai region fertile ground for insurgents.

The rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) offered a significant and puzzling turning point in the Arab region, casting a large shadow over public debate. Since 2014, the Arab Opinion Index has sought to better understand Arab public attitudes towards ISIL. This paper explores findings from the 2016 survey to understand the drivers of positive views of ISIL among a small group of respondents, and to compare those findings with results from earlier surveys. The main conclusion is that, the miniscule subset of respondents who have positive views of ISIL are not inspired by shared values or religiosity. No statistically significant correlation could be found between respondents' self-identified religiosity or their attitudes towards the role of religion in the public sphere and their views of ISIL. In contrast, attitudes towards ISIL could be attributed to respondents' views on a number of political issues affecting the Arab region.

The rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and its capture of vast territories in the Fertile Crescent, has confounded the political calculations of a number of all major political players invested in the Arab region, including regional and global powers. With the failure of regional actors to contain the group, the United States was forced to backtrack on its military withdrawal from the region—when it pulled its troops out of Iraq—and become involved, anew, in the Middle East.

In redefining central concepts and causal relations, this paper takes a fresh look at the conflict between armed groups like the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the US-led international alliance. Analysis begins with the hypothesis that “foreign intervention leads to extremism” and goes on to examine its opposite, that “extremism leads to foreign intervention.” In exploring this mutual correlation – regardless of its validity – the paper finds limited analytical space to understand the nature and terms of the current conflict, and thus redefines this relation in a way that puts “foreign intervention” and “extremism” in an alternative conceptual framework. This framework becomes one of “re-regionalization,” and offers new possibilities for understanding the current conflict.

This paper elucidates Arab public opinion towards the international aerial campaign against ISIL (the “Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant”) in Iraq and Syria, based on the findings of a dedicated opinion survey. The survey included representative, randomized samples in seven countries: Tunisia, Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, in addition to communities of Syrian refugees in three host countries (Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey). Respondents were asked the extent of their support for the aims of the international campaign as well as the conduct of the airstrikes. Survey questions also take in respondents’ views on a number of related issues. The findings show that the vast majority of Arabs are firmly opposed to ISIL, with only 11% of respondents expressing views which are positive, to varying extents, towards the group.