The United Nations Special Committee on Palestine is now a past history, along with the seventeen previous Committees and commissions which had reported on the Palestine problem. But this Committee had several unusual features. It was a United Nations Committee and the Big Powers had no part in it. It was instructed to complete its work in one hundred and twenty days. The Committee visited four continents, heard many advocates and collected nearly two hundred pounds of typed or printed evidence. Lastly it was the first international Committee to study the problem of Jewry inside and outside Palestine. I was in Palestine during the Committee's hearing in Jerusalem in 1947 and I was in the United States when the United Nations, under Pressure of Politics, voted for the Committee's decision- the partition of Palestine. Since then, it was my privilege to give a first hand account of the Arab-Jewish conflict by all that I saw, read and heard. I thought it might be useful to share with others the political education which it \vas my privilege to obtain in my own country.

Even though virginity in Turkey is commonly defined, thus gendered, as losing the hymen, in Turkish society, discourses of virginity connect to broader discussions, such as modernity, morality, social honor/shame, religion, family values, and even medicine (vaginismus and artificial hymen surgery). Previous scholarship on women’s rights in Turkey outlines how historical approaches by Kemalist secularism were not enough to diminish oppressive social norms such as virginity and how the current conservative government and elements of traditional Turkish society perpetuate virginity as an important virtue for unmarried women. This study adds seven Turkish mothers’ interpretations of what I am calling the contemporary Turkish discourse of virginity, as well as the mothers’ descriptions of their pedagogical practices on the topic of premarital sex with regard to their adult children. Here I report the semi-structured interviews I conducted with heterosexual urban Turkish mothers, 45-60 years old, college-educated, and socioeconomically privileged, living in Western Turkey, a region more closely aligned with European ideals. Participant mothers self-identify as Kemalist women, meaning secular, and use this perspective in describing virginity and its role in the contemporary Turkish society. I argue, first, that the “modern” participant mothers speak from an interstitial location, which is the result of contradictions between secular and conservative ideals in Turkey. Second, the participant mothers discuss virginity tactically from three different subjectivities: modern women who believe in women’s rights, modern mothers who respect their daughters’ choices regarding premarital sex, and caring mothers who worry about the social consequences of their daughters’ choices in a society that still stigmatizes the loss of virginity. Third, as a result of these shifting subjectivities, participant mothers observe as well as participate in a subtle social change in urban Western Turkey, which I argue is moving the politics of virginity from a social imperative toward covert practices of choice. The transcripts also show the underlying presumption of heterosexuality not only among participant mothers’ negotiations of virginity but also in the broader modern Turkish discourse of virginity. By bringing forward the voices of these participant mothers, this study aims to portray the complex structure of Turkish society and document interpretations of a discourse that oppresses Turkish women.

When dealing with missionary endeavors abroad most writers tend to concentrate on the evangelical aspect. However, missionaries have played a much more extensive role than this. In the case of Iran, the evangelical impact of the missionary effort was minimal in comparison to both the medical and educational branches of their work. In spite of their original intent of revitalizing the native Christianity, it was through their educators and doctors that the missionaries had their greatest influence on 19th and 20th century Iran. For centuries Iran had been relatively isolated from the outside world and its advances. Such conditions were to change as other countries acquired an interest in Iran. The British viewed Iran as a buffer for their Indian Empire and the Russians sought territorial gains. As a matter of fact, it was the Perso-Russian Wars (1813 and 1827) that suddenly awakened the Iranian government to the power of the Western nations. In order to compete, in order to survive, Iran, too, had to master Western technology. Yet this transition was to require almost a century. The 19th century witnessed the beginning of change within Iran and the American missionaries played a role in this process. Because of the lack of educational opportunities within Iran, as well as the need for medical care, the missionaries provided such services until the government was able to do so. They maintained this role for approximately one hundred years, during which time they made innumerable contributions. However, these contributions were not made without opposition. The introduction of the new force infringed upon the status quo. Many Iranians felt their position threatened. The missionary presence aroused the antagonism not only of the hierarchy of the local Christian churches, but also local officials, the Muslim ulama and the Persian government. This conflict was further intensified by the fact that the Christian minorities began to look to the missionaries, rather than their own leaders, to mediate disputes. This, is addition to their role of educator and doctor, the missionary also become arbitrator on behalf of the Nestorians. In tracing the development of the American missionary activities in Iran from their origins in 1834 through the year 1941, it becomes apparent that this was a century of changing political climate and social conditions within the country. The year 1941 is not an arbitrary date but was chosen because at this point the government had taken over all ' foreign operated schools and had established laws that limited the medical practice of the missionaries. Such measures are indicative 'of the effort made by Reza Shah Pahlavi, prior to his abdication in 1941, to consolidate power and decrease foreign control. As a result of the continuing efforts of Reza Shah to concentrate power in his hands, the missionaries' role in education and medicine was absorbed by the State.

From 1869 to 1878 approximately fifty American military officers were invited to Egypt by Khedive Ismail for the purpose of modernizing the Egyptian army. During that time the American officers led by General Charles P. Stone designed a staff system for the Egyptian army and they established a series of technical schools not only for the staff officers but for the rank and file as well. In addition to the reorganization, the American officers led exploratory expeditions into central Africa, they refortified the Egyptian coastline and they built roads and lighthouses. In conjunction with their expeditions, the officers produced numerous territorial maps, hydrological maps, and assay reports.

This study attempts to compose an account of television history in Kuwait, one that focuses on its integration into society and is told from the audience's perspective and experience. This study represents a cultural alternative to the overwhelmingly national, institutional, and biographical focus that accompanies television history works in Kuwait and the Arab world. The narrative is gathered and generated through the individual oral stories of 25 Kuwaitis over the age of 50, who generally represent the six geographical districts of Kuwait. Through their oral stories, the narrators examine the different areas in which television has integrated itself into society from 1957 to 1990. These include television’s succession to cinema, television’s novelty, television’s familiarization into society, television’s domestication, television’s interaction with modernity, and television’s content. The oral stories of the narrators regarding each area reveal a wide range of microscopic topics about living in early Kuwait and television’s integration with it, including the people’s initial “miraculous” conception of the device, television’s relation with Kuwaiti urban growth, and the early economical gap of television ownership in Kuwait. Besides the general exploration, discussing the research areas indicates a somewhat linear narrative of television’s integration into culture, where television was preceded by the cinema technology that had semiotically paved the way for the device, before an abrupt novelty period in which television was settling in an ever-changing Kuwait, followed by a familiarity period in which the device had lost its gimmicky association, interrelated with all the other sociocultural factors of society, and spatially corresponded with both the extinct and the surviving components of the Kuwaiti house. Kuwaiti television had also corresponded with the social, economical, and urban alterations of Kuwaiti modernity, with its content nostalgically reflecting different stages of Kuwaiti cultural life. In the end, an overarching theme could be found in the “foreshortening” of television’s integration journey into Kuwaiti culture, with the narrators using television to express their yearning to the values of yesteryear. Future studies suggest more focus on contextuality, qualitative data, and interdisciplinarity in television history.

As the number of Islamic institutions increases in America, the need for greater understanding of the Muslim community, and the challenges faced by this minority, increases as well. This project seeks to provide such knowledge by exploring one of these rapidly growing institutions founded and funded by Muslims, private Islamic schools. Absent from media and literature is an understanding of Islamic schools and the experiences of youth as their attendees. This project addresses this gap through an ethnographic focus on female students at one Islamic school. Data was collected via interviews, focus groups, observation, and participant observation. This student-centered approach provides qualitative insight on the perspectives of Muslim girls on identity, schooling, and community in order to foster greater understanding of the mission, social function, and practices of Islamic schools.

This study seeks to clarify the identities of the Almoravid and Almohad Berber movements in the larger Crusade narrative. The two North African Islamic groups are often carelessly placed within the group identified as “Islam” in discussions about the series of military campaigns that took place not only in the traditional Holy Land but also throughout regions of the Mediterranean such as Spain; this generalized identifier of “Islam” is placed against a much more complex group of generally Christian parties, all of them seen as separate, unique groups under the umbrella identifier of Christianity. This foray into a late 13thcentury North African Arabic history of the two groups will attempt to build a more robust identity for the two groups. The way in which they were remembered by their immediate successors will reveal far more interesting parties than simply zealous Muslims waging jihad. Their presence in the region is primarily remembered by their military involvement with Christian forces in the region, though the history of Muhammad ibn Idhari, written around 1295, reveals the groups and their ideologies to be far more complicated than simply meets the eye.

This Master's thesis deals with conspiracy theories and disinformation, a topic received with insufficient attention in the field of international relations. The phenomenon constitutes one of the most distinctive features of the Islamic world; therefore, it has significant importance for the Western foreign policy towards the region. The thesis is divided into four chapters and aims to provide Western countries with a set of foreign-policy recommendations in relation to the phenomenon of conspiracy theories and disinformation in the Islamic world. The thesis does so on the basis of a thorough analysis of the general mechanisms of conspiracy theories (1st chapter), and the specific conditions and circumstances of their emergence and dissemination in the Islamic world (2nd chapter). The study of the case of Aafia Siddiqui (3rd chapter) leads to the conclusion that the implication of conspiracy theories and disinformation in the activities of Islamic extremist groups represents a serious security threat for the Western countries, which the current policy leaves with no adequate response (4th chapter). As an outcome, the thesis proposes ten basic principles which should serve to the Western countries as a guideline for their approach to conspiracy theories and disinformation in the Islamic world. The main import of this thesis lies in it being one of the first attempts with regard to the researched topic to perform a comprehensive analysis with practical outcomes.

This paper focuses on understanding and explaining the change of Turkish foreign policy,particularly in the last decade. Many observers have expressed a suspicion that Turkey is abandoning its Western-centric alignment and gradually shifting its axis. The thesis argues that rather than a shift, Turkey is taking an independent position. It maintains that the end of the Cold War and the change in the international structure from bipolarity to unipolarity has provided incentives for countries with some degree of material capabilities to pursue independence from the U.S. policy preferences. This study analyses structural effects on the behavior of Turkey. Later it associates the observed change in Turkey’s foreign policy as the outcomes of taking an independent position to maximize its objectives. Finally, it presents empirical research to prove the argument.

This thesis will examine the succession to the Islamic Caliphate as it existed during the time of the orthodox Caliphs (632-661).