Contains entries that provide information about significant people, places, and events in the history of the Middle East and North Africa since 1800; arranged alphabetically from Dabbagh to Kuwait University.

Derived from the renowned multi-volume International Encyclopaedia of Laws, this analysis of media law in Kuwait surveys the massively altered and enlarged legal landscape traditionally encompassed in laws pertaining to freedom of expression and regulation of communications. Everywhere, a shift from mass media to mass self-communication has put enormous pressure on traditional law models. An introduction describing the main actors and salient aspects of media markets is followed by in-depth analyses of print media, radio and television broadcasting, the Internet, commercial communications, political advertising, concentration in media markets, and media regulation. Among the topics that arise for discussion are privacy, cultural policy, protection of minors, competition policy, access to digital gateways, protection of journalists’ sources, standardization and interoperability, and liability of intermediaries. Relevant case law is considered throughout, as are various ethical codes. A clear, comprehensive overview of media legislation, case law, and doctrine, presented from the practitioner’s point of view, this book is a valuable time-saving resource for all concerned with media and communication freedom. Lawyers representing parties with interests in Kuwait will welcome this very useful guide, and academics and researchers will appreciate its value in the study of comparative media law.

Prior to 2011, popular imagination perceived the Muslim Middle East as unchanging and unchangeable, frozen in its own traditions and history. In Life as Politics, Asef Bayat argues that such presumptions fail to recognize the routine, yet important, ways in which ordinary people make meaningful change through everyday actions. First published just months before the Arab Spring swept across the region, this timely and prophetic book sheds light on the ongoing acts of protest, practice, and direct daily action. The second edition includes three new chapters on the Arab Spring and Iran's Green Movement and is fully updated to reflect recent events. At heart, the book remains a study of agency in times of constraint. In addition to ongoing protests, millions of people across the Middle East are effecting transformation through the discovery and creation of new social spaces within which to make their claims heard. This eye-opening book makes an important contribution to global debates over the meaning of social movements and the dynamics of social change.

The 1979 revolution fundamentally altered Iran’s political landscape as a generation of inexperienced clerics who did not hail from the ranks of the upper class—and were not tainted by association with the old regime—came to power. The actions and intentions of these truculent new leaders and their lay allies caused major international concern. Meanwhile, Iran’s domestic and foreign policy and its nuclear program have loomed large in daily news coverage. Despite global consternation, however, our knowledge about Iran’s political elite remains skeletal. Nearly four decades after the clergy became the state elite par excellence, there has been no empirical study of the recruitment, composition, and circulation of the Iranian ruling members after 1979. Postrevolutionary Iran: A Political Handbook provides the most comprehensive collection of data on political life in postrevolutionary Iran, including coverage of 36 national elections, more than 400 legal and outlawed political organizations, and family ties among the elite. It provides biographical sketches of more than 2,300 political personalities ranging from cabinet ministers and parliament deputies to clerical, judicial, and military leaders, much of this information previously unavailable in English. Providing a cartography of the complex structure of power in postrevolutionary Iran, this volume offers a window not only into the immediate years before and after the Iranian Revolution but also into what has happened during the last four turbulent decades. This volume and the data it contains will be invaluable to policymakers, researchers, and scholars of the Middle East alike.