Sites of Pluralism: Community Politics in the Middle East

To cite this publication: “Sites of Pluralism: Community Politics in the Middle East,” CIRS Summary Report no. 27 (Doha, Qatar: Center for International and Regional Studies, 2020).

This Summary Report provides an overview of the CIRS research initiative on “Pluralism and Community in the Middle East.” Scholars and policymakers, struggling to make sense of the Middle East, have been focusing their attention on the possible causes for the escalation of both inter-state and intra-state conflict. This region bears the legacy of multiple imperial excursions and has traditionally demonstrated pronounced ethno-linguistic richness, religious diversity, and a depth of cultural intermingling. The region has historically hosted multiple populations with distinctive ethnic and linguistic identities, preserved in previous eras under the loosely structured administrative bodies of different empires that were, as a result of their sprawling geography, multiethnic, multilingual, and multicultural.