Ismail
Biographic Data
| ID | 68811 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ismail |
| FAMILY NAME | Ismail |
| SIGNATURE | ISMAIL |
| AFFILIATIONS | SOAS University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6227-6297 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 163 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Recalibrating Authoritarian Coercion With Neoliberalism
This article examines how authoritarian governance, in Egypt, is being recalibrated through infrastructural technologies that embed regulation into everyday life. It argues that, in the current phase of neoliberal financialisation, authoritarian governance must, by necessity, harness citizens' capacities for self‐regulation to achieve the neoliberal objective of making the population creditworthy. Focusing the analysis on the recent nationwide ro…
Urban spatial politics and collective action in revolutionary Cairo
This article centres the role of Cairo's popular forces in the 2011 revolutionary Uprising in Egypt. It does so by bringing to focus the relationship between these forces' everyday spatial practices and forms of contention, on one hand, and revolutionary activism and protests in central places like Tahrir Square, on the other. It demonstrates that everyday life in popular neighbourhoods of Cairo is constitutive of a political domain in which ordi…
The Rule of Violence
Over much of its rule, the regime of Hafez al-Asad and his successor Bashar al-Asad deployed violence on a massive scale to maintain its grip on political power. In this book, Salwa Ismail examines the rationalities and mechanisms of governing through violence. In a detailed and compelling account, Ismail shows how the political prison and the massacre, in particular, developed as apparatuses of government, shaping Syrians' political subjectiviti…
Piety, profit and the market in Cairo
Urban Subalterns in the Arab Revolutions
This paper investigates the role of urban subalterns both as participatory agents in the Arab revolutions and as mediating forces against revolutionary action. It argues that during revolutionary periods the positioning of subalterns as a political force should be understood in relation to their socio-spatial location in the urban political configuration. Looking at the protest movements in Cairo and Damascus, the paper examines the differentiate…
The Egyptian Revolution against the Police
The organizers of the protests in Egypt on January 25, 2011-"Police Day," a public holiday that commemorates the role of the police in the resistance against the British occupation in Egypt-wanted to subvert the celebration of the police and turn the day into an occasion to indict the institution in charge of policing-in a sense, putting it on public trial. To grasp the character of the police in Egypt, we need to consider the police not only as …
The Syrian Uprising
Civilities, Subjectivities and Collective Action
Starting today, this is your countryDo not throw rubbish. Do not pay a bribeDo not falsify a document. Do not submit to injustice and tyrannyComplain about any institution that falters in the perfo
Authoritarian Government, Neoliberalism and Everyday Civilities in Egypt
This contribution explores how authoritarian governmental practices come to inform everyday civilities—manners and forms of interaction among the subjects of government. With a focus on Egypt it examines how forms of government and rule deployed by the state give rise to particular modes of action, norms of interaction and socio–political dispositions among the citizenry. Central to this analysis is the examination of political subjectivities tha…
Muslim Public Self-Presentation
In this article I want to address a number of issues thrust into the open by different manifestations of Islamist politics and the intersection of religion and identity politics in Western societies. This intersection should be read in conjunction with the emergence in Muslim-majority societies of forms of political activism that ground themselves in Islamic doctrines and invoke religious traditions as frames of reference. It is necessary in read…
Islamism, Re-Islamization and the Fashioning of Muslim Selves
This article explores the political implications of Muslim public self-presentation and forms of self-fashioning associated with the ongoing processes of re-Islamisation in both Muslim-majority and Muslim-minority societies. It sketches how projects of the Muslim public self contribute to a refiguring of the public sphere. The argument put forward is that public practices of self-reform grounded in religion and presented in pietistic terms are po…
Political Life in Cairo’s New Quarters
Since the 1970s, Cairo has experienced tremendous growth and change. Nearly three million people now live in new urban communities characterized by unregulated housing, informal economic activity, and the presence of Islamist groups. Salwa Ismail examines the effects of these changes in Political Life in Cairo's New Quarters. Working in Cairo, Ismail interviewed new quarter residents, observed daily life in markets and alleyways, met with local l…
Politics of Piety
Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Saba Mahmood. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. 233 pages
Being Muslim
The paper explores the construction of both Muslim and Islamist identities and the ways in which they interact, converge and diverge. This exploration is set against the background of debates on the nature of Islamism and its positioning vis-à-vis modernity and post-modernity. The paper argues that processes of modernity and post-modernity may be at work in the production of Muslim identities, but highlights the need to examine how different dime…
Islamic political thought
Two interrelated issues are central to Islamic political thought in the twentieth century: the relationship between religion and politics and the role of the Islamic heritage in modern society. The treatment of these issues began in the nineteenth century, in the context of Muslim societies' encounter with the West. Commencing with the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt (1789–1803), and extending through a period of Western Christian missionary activit…
Rethinking Islamist Politics
This text revisits the main arguments and explanatory frameworks that have been used since the 1970s to understand Islamic activism, moderate as well as militant and violent, and proposes a rethinking ofIslamist politics. Linking macro-level explanations to micro-level analysis, it analyzes Islamist activism and militancy in terms of the interplay of social formation and political structures on the one hand, and network processes within the other
The Paradox of Islamist Politics
With the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a group which is argued to represent Islamism is thought to have carried out an action of unprecedented scale against one of its enemies. In light of the September 11 events, those outside the field of Middle East studies might be surprised to find that influential scholars have been arguing for some time that Islamism has failed. In the 1990s, militant Islamists aspired to replace gove…
The Popular Movement Dimensions of Contemporary Militant Islamism
This paper is a revisiting of the question of contemporary Islamism in Egypt. Its purpose is to rethink the main arguments and explanatory frameworks relating to Islamist activism in general and the militant and violent type in particular. It presents some new propositions about the phenomenon and provides elements for a deeper understanding. This revisiting is undertaken in light of certain developments over the last decade or so, which may be s…
Religious “orthodoxy” as public morality
(1999). Religious “orthodoxy” as public morality: The state, Islamism and cultural politics in egypt. Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies: Vol. 8, No. 14, pp. 25-47
Confronting the Other
The rise of Islamist groups in Egypt's polity and society is given force through the articulation of a set of competing yet inter-linked discourses that challenge the authority of the post-independence secular nationalist discourse and attempt to reconstitute the field of struggle and domination in religious terms. Concurrently, these discourses seek authoritative status over the scope of meanings related to questions of identity, history, and th…
Political Liberalization and Democratization in the Arab World
Being Muslim
The paper explores the construction of both Muslim and Islamist identities and the ways in which they interact, converge and diverge. This exploration is set against the background of debates on the nature of Islamism and its positioning vis-à-vis modernity and post-modernity. The paper argues that processes of modernity and post-modernity may be at work in the production of Muslim identities, but highlights the need to examine how different dime…
The Egyptian Revolution against the Police
The organizers of the protests in Egypt on January 25, 2011-"Police Day," a public holiday that commemorates the role of the police in the resistance against the British occupation in Egypt-wanted to subvert the celebration of the police and turn the day into an occasion to indict the institution in charge of policing-in a sense, putting it on public trial. To grasp the character of the police in Egypt, we need to consider the police not only as …
The Syrian Uprising
The Popular Movement Dimensions of Contemporary Militant Islamism
This paper is a revisiting of the question of contemporary Islamism in Egypt. Its purpose is to rethink the main arguments and explanatory frameworks relating to Islamist activism in general and the militant and violent type in particular. It presents some new propositions about the phenomenon and provides elements for a deeper understanding. This revisiting is undertaken in light of certain developments over the last decade or so, which may be s…
Urban Subalterns in the Arab Revolutions
This paper investigates the role of urban subalterns both as participatory agents in the Arab revolutions and as mediating forces against revolutionary action. It argues that during revolutionary periods the positioning of subalterns as a political force should be understood in relation to their socio-spatial location in the urban political configuration. Looking at the protest movements in Cairo and Damascus, the paper examines the differentiate…
Authoritarian Government, Neoliberalism and Everyday Civilities in Egypt
This contribution explores how authoritarian governmental practices come to inform everyday civilities—manners and forms of interaction among the subjects of government. With a focus on Egypt it examines how forms of government and rule deployed by the state give rise to particular modes of action, norms of interaction and socio–political dispositions among the citizenry. Central to this analysis is the examination of political subjectivities tha…
Confronting the Other
The rise of Islamist groups in Egypt's polity and society is given force through the articulation of a set of competing yet inter-linked discourses that challenge the authority of the post-independence secular nationalist discourse and attempt to reconstitute the field of struggle and domination in religious terms. Concurrently, these discourses seek authoritative status over the scope of meanings related to questions of identity, history, and th…
Islamism, Re-Islamization and the Fashioning of Muslim Selves
This article explores the political implications of Muslim public self-presentation and forms of self-fashioning associated with the ongoing processes of re-Islamisation in both Muslim-majority and Muslim-minority societies. It sketches how projects of the Muslim public self contribute to a refiguring of the public sphere. The argument put forward is that public practices of self-reform grounded in religion and presented in pietistic terms are po…
Politics of Piety
Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Saba Mahmood. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. 233 pages
Civilities, Subjectivities and Collective Action
Starting today, this is your countryDo not throw rubbish. Do not pay a bribeDo not falsify a document. Do not submit to injustice and tyrannyComplain about any institution that falters in the perfo
Urban spatial politics and collective action in revolutionary Cairo
This article centres the role of Cairo's popular forces in the 2011 revolutionary Uprising in Egypt. It does so by bringing to focus the relationship between these forces' everyday spatial practices and forms of contention, on one hand, and revolutionary activism and protests in central places like Tahrir Square, on the other. It demonstrates that everyday life in popular neighbourhoods of Cairo is constitutive of a political domain in which ordi…
Piety, profit and the market in Cairo
Muslim Public Self-Presentation
In this article I want to address a number of issues thrust into the open by different manifestations of Islamist politics and the intersection of religion and identity politics in Western societies. This intersection should be read in conjunction with the emergence in Muslim-majority societies of forms of political activism that ground themselves in Islamic doctrines and invoke religious traditions as frames of reference. It is necessary in read…
Political Liberalization and Democratization in the Arab World
Confronting the Other
The rise of Islamist groups in Egypt's polity and society is given force through the articulation of a set of competing yet inter-linked discourses that challenge the authority of the post-independence secular nationalist discourse and attempt to reconstitute the field of struggle and domination in religious terms. Concurrently, these discourses seek authoritative status over the scope of meanings related to questions of identity, history, and th…
Religious “orthodoxy” as public morality
(1999). Religious “orthodoxy” as public morality: The state, Islamism and cultural politics in egypt. Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies: Vol. 8, No. 14, pp. 25-47
The Popular Movement Dimensions of Contemporary Militant Islamism
This paper is a revisiting of the question of contemporary Islamism in Egypt. Its purpose is to rethink the main arguments and explanatory frameworks relating to Islamist activism in general and the militant and violent type in particular. It presents some new propositions about the phenomenon and provides elements for a deeper understanding. This revisiting is undertaken in light of certain developments over the last decade or so, which may be s…
The Paradox of Islamist Politics
With the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a group which is argued to represent Islamism is thought to have carried out an action of unprecedented scale against one of its enemies. In light of the September 11 events, those outside the field of Middle East studies might be surprised to find that influential scholars have been arguing for some time that Islamism has failed. In the 1990s, militant Islamists aspired to replace gove…
Islamic political thought
Two interrelated issues are central to Islamic political thought in the twentieth century: the relationship between religion and politics and the role of the Islamic heritage in modern society. The treatment of these issues began in the nineteenth century, in the context of Muslim societies' encounter with the West. Commencing with the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt (1789–1803), and extending through a period of Western Christian missionary activit…
Rethinking Islamist Politics
This text revisits the main arguments and explanatory frameworks that have been used since the 1970s to understand Islamic activism, moderate as well as militant and violent, and proposes a rethinking ofIslamist politics. Linking macro-level explanations to micro-level analysis, it analyzes Islamist activism and militancy in terms of the interplay of social formation and political structures on the one hand, and network processes within the other
Being Muslim
The paper explores the construction of both Muslim and Islamist identities and the ways in which they interact, converge and diverge. This exploration is set against the background of debates on the nature of Islamism and its positioning vis-à-vis modernity and post-modernity. The paper argues that processes of modernity and post-modernity may be at work in the production of Muslim identities, but highlights the need to examine how different dime…
Political Life in Cairo’s New Quarters
Since the 1970s, Cairo has experienced tremendous growth and change. Nearly three million people now live in new urban communities characterized by unregulated housing, informal economic activity, and the presence of Islamist groups. Salwa Ismail examines the effects of these changes in Political Life in Cairo's New Quarters. Working in Cairo, Ismail interviewed new quarter residents, observed daily life in markets and alleyways, met with local l…
Politics of Piety
Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Saba Mahmood. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. 233 pages
Islamism, Re-Islamization and the Fashioning of Muslim Selves
This article explores the political implications of Muslim public self-presentation and forms of self-fashioning associated with the ongoing processes of re-Islamisation in both Muslim-majority and Muslim-minority societies. It sketches how projects of the Muslim public self contribute to a refiguring of the public sphere. The argument put forward is that public practices of self-reform grounded in religion and presented in pietistic terms are po…
Muslim Public Self-Presentation
In this article I want to address a number of issues thrust into the open by different manifestations of Islamist politics and the intersection of religion and identity politics in Western societies. This intersection should be read in conjunction with the emergence in Muslim-majority societies of forms of political activism that ground themselves in Islamic doctrines and invoke religious traditions as frames of reference. It is necessary in read…
The Syrian Uprising
Civilities, Subjectivities and Collective Action
Starting today, this is your countryDo not throw rubbish. Do not pay a bribeDo not falsify a document. Do not submit to injustice and tyrannyComplain about any institution that falters in the perfo
Authoritarian Government, Neoliberalism and Everyday Civilities in Egypt
This contribution explores how authoritarian governmental practices come to inform everyday civilities—manners and forms of interaction among the subjects of government. With a focus on Egypt it examines how forms of government and rule deployed by the state give rise to particular modes of action, norms of interaction and socio–political dispositions among the citizenry. Central to this analysis is the examination of political subjectivities tha…
The Egyptian Revolution against the Police
The organizers of the protests in Egypt on January 25, 2011-"Police Day," a public holiday that commemorates the role of the police in the resistance against the British occupation in Egypt-wanted to subvert the celebration of the police and turn the day into an occasion to indict the institution in charge of policing-in a sense, putting it on public trial. To grasp the character of the police in Egypt, we need to consider the police not only as …
Piety, profit and the market in Cairo
Urban Subalterns in the Arab Revolutions
This paper investigates the role of urban subalterns both as participatory agents in the Arab revolutions and as mediating forces against revolutionary action. It argues that during revolutionary periods the positioning of subalterns as a political force should be understood in relation to their socio-spatial location in the urban political configuration. Looking at the protest movements in Cairo and Damascus, the paper examines the differentiate…
The Rule of Violence
Over much of its rule, the regime of Hafez al-Asad and his successor Bashar al-Asad deployed violence on a massive scale to maintain its grip on political power. In this book, Salwa Ismail examines the rationalities and mechanisms of governing through violence. In a detailed and compelling account, Ismail shows how the political prison and the massacre, in particular, developed as apparatuses of government, shaping Syrians' political subjectiviti…
Urban spatial politics and collective action in revolutionary Cairo
This article centres the role of Cairo's popular forces in the 2011 revolutionary Uprising in Egypt. It does so by bringing to focus the relationship between these forces' everyday spatial practices and forms of contention, on one hand, and revolutionary activism and protests in central places like Tahrir Square, on the other. It demonstrates that everyday life in popular neighbourhoods of Cairo is constitutive of a political domain in which ordi…
Recalibrating Authoritarian Coercion With Neoliberalism
This article examines how authoritarian governance, in Egypt, is being recalibrated through infrastructural technologies that embed regulation into everyday life. It argues that, in the current phase of neoliberal financialisation, authoritarian governance must, by necessity, harness citizens' capacities for self‐regulation to achieve the neoliberal objective of making the population creditworthy. Focusing the analysis on the recent nationwide ro…
Law (20 works) · Political science (20 works) · Politics (18 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Islamic Studies and History (11 works) · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies (11 works) · Law (11 works) · Middle East Politics and Society (10 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Gender Studies (8 works)