MACMILLAN Religious Minorities in Non-Secular Middle Eastern and North African States (Minorities in West Asia and North Africa)

Product Description This book describes and compares the circumstances and lived experiences of religious minorities in Tunisia, Morocco, and Israel in the 1970s, countries where the identity and mission of the state are strongly and explicitly tied to the religion of the majority. The politics and identity of Jews in Tunisia and Morocco and Arabs in Israel are, therefore, shaped to a substantial degree by their status as religious minorities in non-secular states. This collection, based on in-depth fieldwork carried out during an important moment in the history of each community, and of the region, considers the nature and implications of each group’s response to its circumstances.  It focuses on both the community and individual levels of analysis and draws, in part, on original public opinion surveys. It also compares the three communities in order to offer generalizable insights about ways the identity, political culture, and institutional character of a minority group are shaped by the broader political environment in which it resides. The project will appeal to scholars and students in the fields of Middle Eastern and North African studies, Judaic studies, Islamic Studies, minority group politics, and international relations and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Review “Professor Mark Tessler has pulled together in one volume the wealth of his decades-long research on the Jewish minority communities in Tunisia and Morocco, and the Arab minority in Israel, and has woven a fabric rich with insights. While focused on the 1970s and 1980s, Tessler’s analysis resonates today, as he assesses in a concluding chapter. This volume is filled with perceptive descriptions of each community; and it also places the communities within the contemporaneous regional context, in particular the impact that the Arab-Israel conflict and the rise of political Islam have had on each minority community. This is a very useful compilation of research, of interest both to the lay reader and the academic community.” (Daniel Kurtzer, Princeton University, USA, and Former U.S. ambassador to Egypt (1997-2001) and Israel (2001-2005)) “In this volume Mark Tessler revisits work he did in the last three decades of the twentieth century that focused especially on Jewish minorities in Tunisia and Morocco and the Arab minority in Israel, but was engaged as well with the shock that religious revivalism delivered to the expectations of modernization theorists.  We see how a skilled, sensitive, and caring scholar, delivered on his commitment to understand the Middle East by taking seriously the opinions and attitudes of ordinary people who live there.  Tessler’s career has been devoted to building bridges, not only between Jews and Muslims, and Arabs and Israelis, but also between area specialists and social scientists.  Across each divide the message is the same:  the world is changing, each group has more in common with the other than they prefer to think, and all would be better off living and working in mutual respect than in stigmatized disdain.” (Ian Lustick, Professor and Bess W. Heyman Chair, University of Pennsylvania, USA) “A leading political scientist of the Middle East and North Africa, Mark Tessler compiles extensive field research and writings from the 1970s and 80s addressing Jews in Tunisia and Morocco and Arabs in Israel – issues that remain relevant today. These are not only detailed narratives of the dilemmas of important communities at critical times of transition, but they also offer penetrating scholarly insights that become much clearer when one reads them together; and the historical perspective, provides a better assessment of the utility of such notions as ‘religious minorities in non-secular states.  The reader will find the volume thought-provoking, and Tessler’s own reflective assessment in the conclusion analytically engaging and helpful for thinking about the issue of minorities in the region. Worth reading.” (Shib