This episode of Protean View features Nader Hashemi, a political theorist and the Director of the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University.
Hashemi joined Protean View to discuss his 2017 book, Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East, and whether it remains relevant in the aftermath of October 7.
Sectarianization was published during the twilight of the Arab Spring and appeared to have a lot of explanatory power in that moment. The book argues that recent bouts of sectarianism in the Middle East are primarily informed by authoritarian regimes manipulating identity cleavages to extend their expiring shelf life. Nearly a decade later, as the politics of the region shift, does the sectarianization thesis still hold up?
We address the recent history of the Middle East and analyze post-Arab Spring politics as we attempt to situate the sectarianization thesis in the present moment.
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