In my dissertation, I explore four inter-related research areas that advance the study of elite influence, identity, and conflict. How does religion interact with changing political conditions over time to affect contemporary patterns of extremism? To what extent do extremist attitudes explain variation in extremist behavior? What does the relationship between these two variables, and the similarities and differences in their correlates, imply for theories of extremism and ethnic conflict more generally? The next two themes focus on the way in which anti-violence appeals by elites shape extremism among followers. How does anti-violence religious---as opposed to economic--persuasion by an elite affect extremism, and can it overcome a counterargument to the peace message by a peer? Finally, what explains variation in the effectiveness of clerical persuasion on extremist behaviors across religious groups? In the opening chapter, I ask how changing political conditions shape the capacity of religious elites to mobilize extremism. In what ways might changing conditions lead to differential effects within religious groups? I study these questions based on primary field research in Lucknow and analysis of secondary historical sources. I demonstrate how the rise and fall state-sponsored religion, government regulation of religious rituals, and heightened foreign sectarian conflict structured efforts by religious elites to change norms in ways that increasingly permitted violence. For the Shia, such changing political conditions interacted with elements of their constitutive political myth in ways that strengthened perceptions of victimization. The ensuing difference in perceived group status has placed unique constraints on the persuasiveness of present-day Shia clerics who propagate pro-peace norms to their followers. Taken together, the study offers important lessons for the relationship between political conditions and the transmission of religious ideas, the durability of identities, and the effectiveness of elite persuasion in conflict settings. Chapter 3 focuses on the relationship between extremist attitudes and behavior. Research on the factors associated with religious extremism have focused on either extremist attitudes or behavior. Yet to date, there is little empirical evidence on the relationship between extremist attitudes and behavior, including on whether they are associated with the same factors. To help inform research gaps, this study leverages a face-to-face survey of 480 Sunni and Shia Muslim youth in Lucknow's Old City that employed attitudinal and behavioral measures of extremism. The results offer some of the first evidence that extremist attitudes are significant predictors of extremist behaviors, but that the strength of the relationship is not as strongly as commonly expected. Second, the study argues that economic grievances are stronger predictors of extremist attitudes than of behavior, and thus challenges theoretical expectations from the conflict literature. Third, the study points to a model of extremism in which religious and psychological factors, rather than grievance or social network explanations, drive both extremist attitudes and behaviors. The fourth chapter turns attention to the causal effect of elite persuasion and bottom-up countermessaging on religious extremism. Can pro-peace persuasion by religious or economic elites reduce religious extremism? Will such effects survive counterarguments? This study uses an audio recording experiment to examine these questions in the context of religious extremism in northern India. Sunni and Shia young adult men were randomly assigned to listen to an audio message recorded by a real in-group cleric emphasizing norms discouraging violence or a real in-group shopkeeper emphasizing material considerations discouraging violence. Another treatment---listening to a counterargument to the peace message by an in-group member---tests counter-messaging. Results indicate a surprising pattern: religious persuasion increases extremism the Shia sample and reduces extremism for the Sunni sample. Although these effects do not reach statistical significance within each sample, the difference between sects of the marginal effects of religious persuasion and the counterargument message are significant. The results support a novel logic involving group victimization consistent with experimental results and qualitative evidence. The final chapter of the dissertation examines clerical persuasion and its impact on religious extremism. How does an anti-violence religious message by a cleric affect extremism? Do such appeals work differently across groups? I argue that exposure to such an appeal from an in-group cleric reduces extremism for members of a non-victimized group but not for members of a victimized group. The latter retain extremism to guard against anticipated threats. I present evidence from an audio recording experiment among 2,100 Sunni and Shia young adult men in Lucknow, the Indian city where sectarian violence is highest and the Shia perceive themselves as victimized. I randomly assigned subjects to listen to an anti-violence religious argument from either an in-group cleric; out-group cleric; both; or none. Results show that the in-group message significantly reduces extremist behaviors up to 8 hours later for Sunni but not Shia subjects. Additional analyses and qualitative research emphasize the plausibility of the victimization logic. Furthermore, the out-group message and the interaction do not significantly change behavior for either group. I argue that intergroup inequalities matter for understanding the effectiveness of elite persuasion and discuss policy implications.

En 2005, après la chute du régime baassiste de Saddam Hussein, les autorités irakiennes, mises en place par la Coalition menée par les États-Unis, ont instauré en Irak un nouveau régime démocratique, parlementaire et fédéral, et adopté la première Constitution permanente du pays depuis la fin de la monarchie en 1958. Le système fédéral ne s’applique encore aujourd’hui qu’à une seule entité fédérée : la région du Kurdistan d’Irak, qui trouve dans ce régime une autonomie de jure succédant à l’indépendance de facto acquise quatorze ans plus tôt lors de la Deuxième guerre du Golfe. La démocratie pourra-t-elle être appliquée à un pays empreint de la culture arabo-musulmane et encore marqué par près de quatre décennies de dictature ? Le fédéralisme est-il la réponse aux divisions ethniques et religieuses profondément ancrées dans la société irakienne, en particulier entre les Arabes chiites, les Arabes sunnites et les Kurdes ? Saura-t-il constituer une solution capable de satisfaire les ambitions nationales du Kurdistan d’Irak et de résoudre les conflits qui opposent ce dernier au gouvernement central irakien ? En analysant le texte de la Constitution irakienne de 2005 et le projet de Constitution de la région du Kurdistan de 2009, en examinant les institutions fédérales de l’Irak et les institutions régionales kurdes, en étudiant la répartition des pouvoirs dans le système fédéral, et à la lumière de l’évolution de l’Irak au cours des années qui se sont déjà écoulées depuis la transition, ce travail a pour ambition de déterminer la viabilité et la pertinence du régime constitutionnel fédéral pour l’Irak et pour le Kurdistan. / In 2005, after the fall of the Ba’athist regime of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi authorities, installed by the American-led coalition, inaugurated in Iraq a new democratic, parliamentary and federal regime and adopted the first permanent Constitution for the country since the end of monarchy in 1958. Today, the federal system still only applies to a single federated entity: the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan, which found in this new regime de jure autonomy following a de facto independence acquired fourteen years earlier in the wake of the Second Gulf War. Can democracy be applied to a country stamped by Arab Muslim culture and scarred by almost four decades of dictatorship? Is federalism the answer to ethnic and religious divisions that are profoundly anchored in Iraqi society, in particular those between Arab shi’ites, Arab sunnis ad Kurds? Will it be a satisfactory solution for the nationalist ambitions of Kurdistan and the conflicts that oppose that region to the Iraqi central government? By analysing the text of the 2005 Iraqi Constitution and of the 2009 draft Kurdish constitution, by examining the federal institutions of Iraq and the regional institutions of Kurdistan, and in light of the evolution of the new regime since it was established, this work attempts to evaluate the viability and the pertinence of the Iraqi constitutional regime for both Iraq and Kurdistan.

The tiny nation-state of Lebanon has been marred by political instability and violence over the past 35 years. Most scholars blame the consociational structure of the bureaucratic system as the main culprit for the precarious state of the republic. It is an understatement to say that the delicate power-sharing balance divided between the Christian and Muslim sects has been one of the most detrimental elements to government stability and socioeconomic development. Underneath these sectarian affiliations, however, lie numerous patronage systems all vying for power and control over the Lebanese system. These systems not only act to support their Lebanese sectarian leader, but many have reached across the border and found the open hands of foreign powers. The actions of these foreign entities have also constituted a divisive role in undermining the unification of the nation into a cohesive and functioning state, particularly during the post-civil war time period. The end of the 15 year civil war through the passage of the National Reconciliation Accord heralded in a sense of promise for a future free of war and political mismanagement through the abolition of the consociational system. This promise, however, has yet to be fulfilled. This thesis is an examination into the role and impact of Syrian and Saudi Arabian patronage ties in the Lebanese system. By looking at the states through the actions of their clients we can come to a better understanding of both why and how the goals of Ta'if have yet to be achieved and potentially come to understand the needs facing Lebanon's future. / text

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2009. / Title from PDF title page (University of Texas Digital Repository, viewed on July 30, 2009). Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (D. Miss.)--Reformed Theological Seminary, Jackson, Miss., 1997. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 242-269).

The preoccupation of Islamic thinkers with the formation of moral subjects (themselves and others) motivated their deployments of different conceptual frameworks to satisfy paradigmatic moral requirements. These intellectual pursuits are portrayed as technologies involved in “caring for the self,” that is, in forming the subject/agent of the broader community. Reconstructing historical debates that draw on the works of a selection of Islamic authors, mainly between the 10th and 13th centuries CE, this dissertation addresses the related paradigmatic features of various forms of Islamic leadership (e.g. ulū al-amr, mujtahid, ahl al-ḥall, imām, and quṭb). The Qurʾānic world of interconnected meanings related to amr (authority, command, matter…) and those vested with it assumes a concern for the morality, if not outright infallibility, and the intellectual merit of a leader. Through an analysis of types of authorship and terms of discourse, ḥadīth literature on verse 4:59 from the Shīʿī tradition sheds light on the rise of various Sunnī strategies addressing the question of infallible juristic leadership (taṣwīb al-mujtahid). Another case of leadership appears in the Ṣūfī mystical strand of Sunnī thought, where the spiritual leader, or quṭb, may be seen as analogous to the Shīʿī Imām in terms of moral excellence and presence-in-absence (ghaybah). My analyses of these distinct features and forms of leadership culminate with a case study on the Mahdī in modernity, an anticipated savior figure at the crossroads of Sunnī, Shīʿī and Ṣūfī thought, in which the adapting of earlier lines of reasoning exhibits strategies for the purpose of subject-formation. Each of these case studies demonstrates not only that the interpretive frameworks of Islamic thinkers were invested in moral subject-formation but also that a holistic reading of such thought can identify their authorial activity itself as one form among the different forms of leadership that revolve around subject-formation.

Modern scholarship associates the period in which the Safavid dynasty ruled in Iran (1501-1722) with two major developments in the Persianate. One is sectarian rupture between Iran under the Shi‘i Safavids, and other Persianate regions - including Turan (Central Asia) - under Sunni dynasties. The other is a roughly contemporaneous (late sixteenth-eighteenth century) movement in Persian poetry, which has long been designated in modern scholarship as sabk-i Hindī (the Indian style); I refer to this movement as the poesis of freshness. Through the assumption that India is outside the proper or natural home of Persian poetry, modern scholarship has tended to characterize the Indian style in terms of decline. The accounts of both sectarian rupture and the Indian style rely on assumptions about difference on the basis of anachronistic categories including sect, nation, and ethnicity. This dissertation shifts focus from modern assumptions about difference, to ways in which participants in the poesis of freshness made sense of kas̱rat (multiplicity), understood to indicate creation as that in which difference and determinacy inhere. What were ways of gleaning the presence of vaḥdat (unity) – including, but beyond, divine unity – in multiplicity, and of engaging with multiplicity so as to bring about unity? Given the association of verbal expression (lafẓ) with multiplicity, I understand poesis as one means of effecting the imaginative transformation of multiplicity and the cultivation of unity. A major emphasis in modern critiques of the so-called Indian style is that it was unnecessarily difficult to the point of meaninglessness. However, I argue that emphases in the poesis of freshness that may be related to difficulty – subtlety, intricacy, ambiguous polysemy, and the generation of new metaphorical equations – are meaningful, including as ways of honing verbal form to write multiplicity against itself and bring about unity. This dissertation has two parts: the first is centered on Persian poetry, and the second, on taẕkiras (biographical dictionaries of poets). While setting their works in conversation with others, I focus on Shawkat Bukhari (d. 1695 or 1696)’s poetic collection, and Maliha Samarqandi (d. after 1692)’s taẕkira, which includes a laudatory entry on Shawkat. Shawkat and Maliha both came from Turan (Bukhara and Samarqand respectively) and spent a significant amount of time in Iran, where they met; their transregional lives lend support to recent critiques of the narrative of sectarian rupture between Turan and Iran. Moreover, they do both describe and enact ways of encompassing and bringing together religiously-marked forms of differences (including the polarity between Sunnism and Shi‘ism). However, I demonstrate the need to interpret discussions of religiously marked differences through the matrix of the relationship between multiplicity and unity. Attention to unity and multiplicity in Shawkat and Maliha’s works makes it possible to intervene in modern assumptions about sectarian rupture and Indian poetic decadence without reifying their principal analytical terms. In doing so, it points to a more pressing concern: how to engage with creation – including language itself – without taking its forms of difference or determinacy as fixed or final, instead bringing out unity’s subtle and destabilizing presence in multiplicity.

The past two decades have witnessed a dramatic growth in Middle Eastern satellite television. The corresponding diversification of content and restructuring of media power in the region raise many important questions for research. This dissertation is a case study of Huda TV, an English-language Islamic satellite channel broadcasting from Cairo, Egypt. The author collected participant observation data as an employee of the channel in 2005-2006. The primary research question asks how Huda TV asserts an Islamic presence in the satellite television arena. Many areas of media research, including the broad historical debates on culture and power, contemporary conceptions of hybridity, and the analysis of media institutions in the Middle East, share an overarching secular bias. Consequently, this dissertation plots out relevant bodies of theoretical and empirical research that both inform and constrain the kind of questions that can be asked about Huda TV as a Muslim institution. With a conscious effort to overcome the reductionist secularism of media studies, this work offers empirical data on the manner in which orthodox Sunni Islam operates within the global mediascape--the increasingly integrated, geographically expansive, and globally accessible media environment of which satellite television is one important component. This dissertation first examines the concrete manner in which Huda TV attempts to define Islamic satellite television as a distinct set of content and practices. Next, it turns to the channel's engagement with dominant discourses and bodies of knowledge that may compete with Islam for ultimate authority. Finally, it examines the impact of cultural and political-economic factors on the channel's work. This dissertation offers original insights into the study of contemporary Islam and contributes to significant, enduring questions of media research. / text

This thesis develops a model that can be used to assess the ability of religious institutions to contribute to post-conflict state building. Highlighting the tendency in state building literature to stop short in discussing what seems to be inferred, but unnameable—religion—the research proposes a framework that identifies theoretical mechanisms through which religious institutions can contribute to post-conflict state building. Drawing from the theologies of Roman Catholicism and Sunni Islam the thesis then reflects upon why they would, of their own accord, lend their considerable legitimacy and resources. The thesis diverges from traditional approaches such as rational choice theory that suggest religious institutions act to maximise membership or assets, and instead embraces a teleological view recognizing the importance of belief structures in understanding a religious institution's motivations. It embraces salvation as a hermeneutical key to outline a Roman Catholic theology of state building while drawing upon the concept of justice for Sunni Islam. The thesis concludes by incorporating the particularistic nuances of Bosnia and Herzegovina's unique historically and culturally influenced religious practices, structures and theologies to suggest the ability and willingness of the two religions' institutions to contribute to their country's state building.

La protection des populations civiles en cas de conflits armés, internationaux ou internes est au centre des préoccupations du droit international humanitaire contemporain. C’est un sujet digne d’intérêt et d’études plus approfondies. Dès lors, la recherche ici entreprise concernant l’apport du droit musulman à l’universalité des règles humanitaires protégeant les personnes civiles ainsi que des spécificités de ces règles, surtout en termes de leurs compatibilités avec celles développées par le droit international humanitaire contemporain ne pourraient que répondre à cet objectif. En effet, cette thèse, née du constat selon lequel les pays musulmans ont rapidement adhéré aux différents instruments du droit international humanitaire, tentera de démontrer pourquoi et comment se manifeste une telle convergence, voire homologie, entre les règles du droit musulman protégeant les personnes civiles en cas de conflits armés et celles développées par le droit international humanitaire contemporain. La confrontation-association entre ces deux systèmes - qui tiendra compte du contexte historique et de l’environnement dans lequel s’est développé le droit musulman- nous autorise, en effet, à défendre l’idée selon laquelle le droit musulman et le droit international humanitaire contemporain partagent les mêmes valeurs fondamentales en ce qui concerne la protection des populations civiles dans les conflits armés. Cette démarche nous permet également d’affirmer que la convergence entre les deux systèmes est en grande partie tributaire, tout d’abord, de l’originalité de la conception humanitaire du droit musulman. Cette convergence est ensuite, tributaire de la volonté qui a animé les concepteurs du droit international humanitaire de rechercher les dénominateurs communs entre les civilisations et d’élaborer des règles acceptables pour tous. Elle est, enfin et essentiellement, tributaire de l’effort de relecture et d’interprétation de l’institution du jihad, qu’ont entamé les jurisconsultes et les penseurs musulmans surtout depuis le XIXe siècle dans le but de limiter le jihad à sa vocation d’origine, soit la vocation défensive. Notre thèse n’abordera pas le sujet sous ses seuls aspects théoriques. Elle tentera, aussi, de comprendre et de jauger l’application de ce droit en se référant aux guerres menées par le prophète et ses compagnons durant les premiers siècles de l’Islam et de voir les implications de ce droit, ainsi que celles du droit international humanitaire contemporain, dans les conflits armés qui ont secoué le monde musulman, notamment ceux qui se déroulent actuellement en Irak, en Afghanistan, au Darfour soudanais et en Somalie. Cette thèse comporte trois parties. La partie introductive traitera du cadre général du droit international musulman. La deuxième partie sera consacrée à la détermination et à l’étude des facteurs qui ont permis la convergence entre les règles humanitaires du droit musulman et celles construites par le droit international humanitaire contemporain. La dernière partie de notre thèse consistera dans l’analyse des différents types de garanties et de protection que le droit musulman et le droit international humanitaire offrent aux populations civiles. En d’autres termes, cette partie sera le témoin de cette convergence et de cette parenté.