The "Arab Spring": A Different Conceptualization. Are We Moving Toward a Post-Arab-Islamic Middle East and North Africa?

      Аннотация: This book employs the occurrence of the so called “Arab Spring” to inspect and to test some notions that dominated the Middle Eastern studies for decades. In fact, this study goes intentionally and consciously against the basic assumptions that attempted to present the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) as an “Arab Land” or “Islamic World”. MENA has witnessed the rising of the earliest Mediterranean civilizations that formed what is known now as the “western civilization”. Hence, this study proposes a challenging idea about the relationship between Islam and MENA polities. This idea is based on the simple fact that Islam is an Arab cultural product, that is not adapted to MENA polities. In other words, this study is proposing a different view that can be summarized as MENA’s clash of civilization. Moreover, the findings of this study propose that Islam is a collapsing paradigm and the future of MENA is not moving according to an Islamic agenda. On the contrary, MENA polities are struggling against the Islamic agenda that has many state and non-state actors, strategies and, more importantly, an irregular path of evolution.

Ключевые слова: Arab spring, Islam, Middle East, regime change, Islamic Exceptionalism, security studies, Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood, Terrorism