The Afro-Middle East Centre

and the

Centre for the Study of Democracy

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

Ali Abunimah is the author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse and has contributed to numerous other volumes and written hundreds of articles on the question of Palestine. In 2008-2009 he was a Fellow at the Palestine Center. He is a co-founder of the Electronic Intifada, an award-winning online publication established in 2001. Electronic Intifada covers issues related to Palestine and the Palestine-Israel conflict. It is read by over 60,000 individuals worldwide every month. Based in Chicago, Mr Abunimah is a graduate of Princeton University and the University of Chicago.


Oren Yiftachel teaches urban studies and political geography at Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva, Israel. He previously taught at Curtin University, Australia; the Technion, Haifa; the University of Pennsylvania; Columbia University; UC Berkeley; University of Cape Town; Calcutta University; and the University of Venice. Professor Yiftachel's research has focused on critical understandings of the relations between space, power and conflict, drawing mainly on neo-Gramscian, post-colonial and Marxian inspirations, with strong social justice, multi-cultural and conflict resolution orientations. His work has been widely cited and translated into seven languages. His work is known for its originality, developing new concepts and theories, including "the dark side of planning", "urban social sustainability", "ethnocratic societies", "trapped minorities", "fractured regions", "ethno-classes", "internal frontiers" and "gray space", to mention a few. Professor Yiftachel is the founding editor of the journal Hagar: Studies in Culture, Politics and Place, and he serves on the editorial boards of Planning Theory, Society and Space, Urban Studies, IJMS, MERIP. He has worked as a planner and activist in a wide range of bodies, including the public housing association, and most recently at the council for unrecognized Bedouin villages in southern Israel/Palestine. He is also a founding member of the activist Faculty for Israel-Palestine Peace (FFIPP), and PALISAD, and is an active board member of B'tselem and Adva (Centre for Social Equality). Professor Yiftachel has published over 100 articles and ten books, including Planning a Mixed Region in Israel (1992), Planning as Control: Policy and Resistance in Divided Societies (1995), Israelis in Conflict (with Kemp, Newman, Ram - 2004), and Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine (2006).

By Afro-Middle East Centre

The Afro-Middle East Centre (AMEC) hosted an academic seminar in which specialist historian, Faisal Devji, presented a paper on "al-Qaeda, Jihad and the Democratization of Islamic Authority".

The presentation focused mostly on an analysis of the rhetoric of al-Qaeda. Devji proposed that the group uses the language of "human rights" to carry out its operations.

He also focused on the opportunities for new forms of Islamic authority to be borne out of opposition to al-Qaeda, specifically democratized authority. The text of Devji's presentation can be read here.

The Afro-Middle East Centre (AMEC) will host a seminar by specialist historian Faisal Devji entitled "Al Qaida, Jihad and the Democratisation of Islamic Authority" on Wednesday 19 August 2009, at 7pm in the AMEC seminar room.

Faisal Devji is a historian who specializes in studies of Islam, globalization, violence and ethics. He has been teaching teaching at the New School for Social Research in New York City, and has just been appointed to a post at Oxford University in the United Kingdom.

Now a Canadian citizen, Devji is Zanzibari, having been born in Dar es Salaam in 1964. His undergraduate education was at the University of British Columbia, where he received double honours in history and anthropology.

He received his PhD from the University of Chicago with a dissertation entitled “Muslim Nationalism: Founding Identity in Colonial India”, and was chosen to be a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. He has taught at Yale University and also served as Head of Graduate Studies at the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London.

In 2005, Cornell University Press published his Landscapes of Jihad: Militancy, Morality, Modernity, a book which explored the ethical premises of jihad as opposed to its more widely-studied purported political ones. The book draws a distinction between the majority of Islamic fundamentalist organizations concerned with the establishing of states, and al-Qaida with its decentralized structure and emphasis on moral rather than political action. Devji's second book, The Terrorist in Search of Humanity: Militant Islam and Global Politics, was published by Columbia University Press in 2008. Devji is also a regular contributor to the scholarly journal Public Culture, and serves on its editorial committee.

Please click here for a selection of Devji's articles.

"Al-Qaida, Jihad, and the Democratisation of Islamic Authority"

Date: 19 August 2009

Time: 7pm

Venue: AMEC Seminar Room, 38 Louw Geldenhuys Drive, Emmarentia, Johannesburg

Fore more infomation, please call AMEC on +27 11 782 6754 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.