Islamists and Civil Wars in the Middle East

On Friday, December 6, 2024, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., in Sala Conferenze di Palazzo Boyl, the Institute of DIRPOLIS (Law, Politics, Development) is organizing the seminar “Islamists and Civil Wars in the Middle East”, held by Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl, professor at Leiden University, event chair Kevin Koehler, professor at Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna.

Abstract

Religiously framed conflicts, particularly those involving Islamist armed groups, are seen as exhibiting greater intractability and recurrence rates. We argue that existing research has conflated regional and religious factors, and that standard structural and strategic explanations of war duration may better account for conflict intractability. Our analysis systematically disentangles whether the observed intractability stems from an Islamist ‘exception’ or regional and war-related patterns. A statistical analysis assesses the power of structural factors in explaining war intractability. We complement this with case studies of the civil war in Syria (2011-present) and Lebanon's civil war (1975-1990), contributing to the broader understanding of civil war intractability by challenging predominant assumptions about the role of religious ideology in conflict persistence.

The event can also be followed via this link remotely.