Ruling Islamists and Ethnic Minorities

Announced by the University of Pittsburgh.

In this presentation, Dala Daoud will discuss ruling Islamists’ minority treatment in Sudan and Turkey. In the past four decades, Islamists have emerged as important actors in the politics of the Middle East and North Africa, seizing power in some cases. In response, scholars of MENA have been investigating Islamists’ behavior and policies relating to a wide range of issues. And yet, despite its real-world and academic salience, empirical research on the relationship between contemporary Islamist rulers and minorities has been sparse. Observing a variation in Islamist approaches towards ethnic groups, she demonstrates that religious affiliation and religious-ideological motivations have little explanatory power. She will argue that in effort to secure their power, Islamists engaged in alliance building with or against minority groups, prompting shifts in treatment. Alliance building itself was affected by strategic interactions between Islamists, minority groups and other key political actors as well as the regional and international environments.

Dalal Daoud was a visiting scholar at the AbuSulayman Center for Global Islamic Studies from 2021-2023. She is a Provost's Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Waterloo and an incoming assistant professor with the Department of Political Science at the University of Guelph. She holds a Ph.D. in political studies from Queen's University. Dr. Daoud’s broader research interests include ethnic politics, Islamist politics, as well as MENA and African politics. Her research has been awarded several external awards, including the Social Science and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Fellowship and the Ontario Government Scholarship.

Register Here; https://gmu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIqduuspzkuGtPFBNQvkZmRSoRo0-HPPIr...