Muna Asenwar
PhD project: “‘Arab Neo-Ottomanism’? The Formation and Function of the Arab-Islamist Narrative on the Ottoman Past”
This research investigates the role of political Islam in the Arab World in laying the grounds for highly positive reception of Turkey’s Neo-Ottomanist discourses, and in paving the way for a new regional alliance constructed upon shared memories of imperial legacy. This research follows a multidisciplinary approach to analyze the nature and trajectory of what I argue to be an “Arab Islamist Neo-Ottomanism”, precedent to its Turkish counterpart, rooted in an innovative historical conception, and facilitatory of Turkey’s expanding regional influence.
First, the research investigates the proliferation of history books authored by figures affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood under the declared objective of ‘defending the Ottoman history against defamation’. A historiographical survey will be undertaken to examine the emergence of this narrative since the 1980’s, and its success in surpassing the anti-Ottoman Arab nationalist narrative. Mostly dismissed due to non-adherence to academic standards, this narrative is to be studied as an exemplary text-based case of “populist histories”, building on Laclau’s framework of populist reason with inductive critical discourse analysis.
I contend that the Islamist narrative on the Ottomans develops in parallel to / and under the influence of an intellectual quest to create an “Islamic (Islamist) theory of historical analysis” beginning with Qutub’s manifesto in the 1960’s, which gives the narrative its distinctive character and novel historical reasoning. I question how this historical conception alters historical thinking and political imagination in the Arab world today.