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Demands for freedom, justice, and dignity have animated protests and revolutions across the Middle East in recent years, from the Iranian Green Movement and the Arab Spring uprisings to Turkey's March for Justice and the ongoing struggle in Palestine. Although expectations raised by the Arab Spring were largely disappointed and protests that toppled entrenched rulers unleashed vicious counterrevolutionary forces, there is no doubt that the landscape of the Middle East has changed. Drawing from diverse disciplines, this volume offers critical perspectives on these changes, covering politics, religion, gender dynamics, human rights, media, literature, and music. What ultimately has changed in "the new Middle East"? Who are the actors pushing the direction of change? How are aspirations for change being expressed through media and the arts? With extensive analysis and thoughtful reflection, this book gives readers an in-depth portrayal of a modernizing Middle East.

Cheryl A. Rubenberg, independent analyst and former associate professor of political science at Florida International University, died on 16 June 2017 at age seventy-one. Born and raised in Pennsylvania, she earned her bachelor's in political science from Hunter College, her master's in international relations from Johns Hopkins University, and her Ph.D. in international relations from the University of Miami (1979). After a year at Florida Atlantic University, she joined the political science faculty at Florida International University. A student who took her class on American government wrote that Professor Rubenberg "changed my life forever" by exposing the business interests that motivate leaders of American government and media.

Vincent Cornell's Realm of the Saint is a masterly work, indisputably
authoritative, the result of more than twenty years of research on Sufism in Morocco and
Al-Andalus. Drawing on a critical reading of a vast array of textual sources, including
hagiographies, histories, didactic treatises, devotional works, and poetry, this book brings to light
material that has been virtually untouched in academic studies on Moroccan Sufism. As Cornell
points out, Morocco has become a paradigm for the anthropological analysis of Sufism, but the
vast archival resources of Morocco had been hitherto largely untouched by academicians.
Through detailed analysis of the lives of many Sufi saints as presented in hagiographical literature,
exploring both the ideological and sociological dimensions of sainthood in the Moroccan context,
he convincingly argues that the "doctor" versus "saint" topos that
prevails in the anthropological literature does not do justice to the reality of pre-modern
Moroccan Sufism. He also deconstructs the centrality of "maraboutism" and
rurality in Moroccan Sufism. Cornell compares his findings with studies of saints in Europe by
scholars such as Peter Brown and Thomas Heffernan, as well as with the Weberian theories of
charismatic leadership that have prevailed among social scientists, displaying an extraordinary
range of competence in the literature of several academic disciplines. It is a rarity to find a scholar
of Cornell's deep understanding of Arabic and Islamic tradition who also places his
research within the broader context of the study of religion. Nevertheless, scholars outside Islamic
studies are unlikely to read this book because of its length, excessive detail, and frequent use of
Arabic terms, despite the presence of a glossary of technical terms at the end of the book.

Scholars have long noted that the Prophet Muhammad assumed increasing importance in Sufi thought and practice over the centuries. For Sufis, belief in Muhammad's perfection often went beyond the standard affirmation of his immunity from error, and sometimes went so far as the assertions of the Spanish Arab Qadi ʿIyad (d. 1149/50) that Muhammad had assumed all the qualities embodied in the Ninety-nine Beautiful Names of God. Belief in Muhammad as a primordial cosmic light of divine origin is documented as early as the 8th to 9th centuries, and reached its fullest exposition in the works of Ibn ʿArabi (1165-1240) and his successors. Popular devotion to the Prophet in the form of poetry in his honor and celebrations of his birthday is documented at least as early as the 13th century.