Islam and Politics: Recently Acquired U.K. Doctoral Dissertations Cataloged and Available for Loan From the Center for Research Libraries

The dissertations listed below pertain to various aspects of Islam, political affairs, diplomacy, and conflict in the Middle East.

The abstracts quoted have been taken from the electronic Index to Theses Accepted for Higher Degrees by the Universities of Great Britain and Ireland at: http://www.theses.com/ and are copyrighted by Expert Information Ltd.

CRL will augment this listing shortly with another listing of dissertations in the collection having to do generally with Middle East history and politics.

For information about borrowing these microfilmed dissertations please contact your Interlibrary Loan Department. OCLC numbers are included if cataloged. Please note that the usual lending period of 90 days may need to be shortened for high-demand items.

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Alsumaih, Abdulrahman M. The Sunni Concept of Jihad in Classical Fiqh and Modern Islamic Thought.
University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 1998. (OCLC #48469815)
" . . . aims to analyse the Shari'h law of Jihad, through investigation of the Quran, the Sunna and the works of earlier prominent Muslim jurists (fuqaha) and therefore elucidate the nature of Jihad and its components. It is the Muslims' belief that the Holy Quran and the Sunna were fixed for all time during the foundation of Islam which therefore suggests that the Shari'h law itself must be unchangeable as the Holy Quran and the Sunna are its two principal sources. . . . The second major purpose of this thesis is to test the hypothesis that human interpretation of the Shari'h law on Jihad will differ over time. . . .

Araghchi, Seyed Abbas. The Evolution of the Concept of Political Participation in Twentieth-Century Islamic Political Thought.
University of Kent, 1996. (OCLC #48469815)
"The aim of the thesis is to identify the concept of political participation and its evolution as approached in the political thought of Muslim writers and intellectuals of the present century. The major question is: how the concept of political participation, as the manifestation of people's sovereignty in the Western liberal democracy, can be accommodated in, or coexist with, the divinely- inspired political theory of Islam in which sovereignty belongs unquestionably to God alone. . . . [The thesis considers] the political ideas of a number of the most influential Muslim thinkers who represent the main streams of twentieth-century Islamic political thought."

Hamid, Ahmad Fauzi Bin Abdul. Islamic Resurgence in the Periphery: a Study of Political Islam in Contemporary Malaysia with Special Reference to the Darul Arqam Movement 1968-1996.
University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 1998. (OCLC #48463171)
". . . investigates the political challenge posed by Darul Arqam, an Islamic movement, to the Malaysian state from 1968 until 1996. As a general manifestation of Islamic resurgence, the challenge sheds light on three important issues: the tactics, methods and strategies pursued by Islamic movements; the secular authorities' pattern of response to Islamic movements; [and] the impact of repression on Islamists. Applying the case-study of Darul Arqam to wider historical and situational settings, this thesis urges a rethinking of issues and concepts of general theoretical and practical significance."

Henry, Clarence C. The Iraq-Kuwait Crisis, a Critique of United States Policy 1990-91.
University of Birmingham, 1995. (OCLC #48462791)
". . . argues that the United States manipulated the United Nations mechanism in order to achieve its foreign policy objective of destroying Saddam Hussein's military machine which posed a threat to American interests in the Middle East. The thesis highlights Iraq's position that the US had a covert agenda which during the height of the crisis was either ignored or dismissed. It postulates that the Bush administration pursued maximalist options in its six month pre-war coercive strategy against Iraq, instead of positively pursuing peaceful alternatives such as economic sanctions and diplomacy."

Hodjat, Mehdi. Cultural Heritage in Iran, Policies for an Islamic Country.
University of York, 1995. (OCLC #48462886)
"Compiling a more precise body of knowledge concerning the present situation of cultural affairs in Iran and attempting to search for more appropriate policies for its future application are the goals pursued in this research. The research is carried out in two principal domains: the status of cultural heritage in Islam and the development of cultural heritage in Iran . . . ."

Kobayashi, M. The Islamist Movement in Sudan : the Impact of Dr. Hassan al-Turabi's Personality on the Movement.
University of Durham, 1996. (OCLC #48469721)
Focuses on the Sudanese Islamist movement led by Dr Hassan al- Turabi, from 1964 to 1995. The researcher believes that an understanding of the personality of Dr al-Turabi is key to an understanding of the Sudanese Islamist movement.

McKenzie, Kevin. In the Gulf between Prejudice and Culture: Talking the Experience of Western Expatriates in the Middle East. Loughborough University of Technology, 1997.
(OCLC #48462725)
". . . an investigation into the accounting practices by which British and American expatriates make sense of Western involvement in the Middle East. Based on the analysis of an audio-taped archive of some sixty hours of face-to-face interview material recorded in Kuwait during a ten-month period in the year immediately following the Persian Gulf Conflict of 1990-91, this project explores the interactional work by which speakers situate their conversational contributions in dialogic anticipation of a range of competing but mutually co-implicative demands for accountability which they take their talk and their participation in the circumstances of that talk to entail. . . ."

Mirarab, Mehrdad H. The Role of the United States in the New System of Power Relations in the Persian Gulf Region, with Particular Reference to the Security and Stability.
University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 1996. (OCLC #48463329)
"The last decade has witnessed a dramatic resurgence in the United States capabilities of deploying her military forces around the world, particularly, in the Persian Gulf region. The region's security and stability, due to its extensive oil reserves, is crucial for the well being of the global economy. . . . The study traces both regional developments and US policies towards the region in a period of approximately three decades since the British withdrawal in the early 70s and it attempts to construct an analytical framework for the study of the effect of regional developments upon US policies in the region."

Movahidi, M. I. Islamic Political Thought in Iran in the Modern Period with Special Reference to the Thought of Shariati.
University of Keele, 1995. (OCLC #48463302)
" . . .a discussion covering the recent Islamic political thought broadly expressed in political literature in terms of Islamism. Two western theories of cultural essentialism explain this development as a continuation of historical context of Islam. In contrast, the theory of nation-state views it as a departure from the past in favour of reconstructing a new society which has a full compatibility with the western style of nation-state formation."

Murithi, Timothy. The Moral Dimension of International Dispute Settlement.
University of Keele, 1998. (OCLC #48463095)
"An examination of the phenomenon of conflict in the international sphere reveals a situation defined by the marked decrease in the number of interstate disputes and an increase in the number of sub- national ethnic conflicts. Whilst most of these conflicts have been on going for several decades it appears that the end of the Cold War, with the withdrawal of superpower intervention has left many parts of the world on a highly volatile footing."

ON ORDER (EXPECTED SHORTLY)

Marshall, D. E. The Qur'anic Punishment -- Narratives.
University of Birmingham, 1996. (on order)
"The Qur'anic punishment-narratives are a source of valuable insights into Muhammad's experience at Mecca. They reflect the expectation that God would intervene in this world to punish unbelievers and vindicate the believers. . . .The Hijrah raises the question of how the threat to the unbelievers of divine punishment in this world will be fulfilled . . . In this transition from Meccan and Medinan paradigms the narrative content of the Qur'an changes significantly, and the Qur'an as a whole presents a very different understanding of the triangular relationship between, firstly, God; secondly, the messenger and his community; and, thirdly, the unbelievers."

Salsabili, M. The Chemical Weapon Convention (CWC): a Comparative Study of Impediments to Implementation in the Middle East.
University of Exeter, 1999. (on order)
" . . . seeks to explain the different behaviour of Middle East states towards implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). It examines why certain states join whereas others reject the convention. The model that is developed and applied examines three sets of explanatory variables - military calculation, institutional dynamics, and intra-governmental politics - which lead a state to early ratify, late ratify, or reject the convention . . . This model is tested through a structured and focused comparison of three cases - Iran, Egypt and Algeria."

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To identify other dissertations from U.S. and other universities, please try the following sources.

Dissertations and Theses in Libraries of UNC-Chapel Hill.

Dissertations &Theses -- Quick Reference -- UNC-Chapel Hill

Dissertation Abstracts Online.

For more Arts and Humanities Reference assistance,
Please contact Tom Nixon, Humanities Librarian
tommy_nixon@unc.edu
(919) 962-1151

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