Casa Árabe

ieam

INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARABIC AND MUSLIM WORLD STUDIES

Casa Árabe’s International Institute of Arab and Muslim World Studies (IEAM), based in Cordoba, is the institution’s research and forecasting centre, comprising a multidisciplinary team of researchers.
IAEM’s work focuses on research projects, directing national and international research networks, organising seminars and academic courses, collaborating with universities on postgraduate study programmes, and hosting doctoral grant-holders.

Research priorities:

political reforms and socioeconomic trends in Arab countries
Islamisms in their contexts
social conditions of Arab and Muslim women
young people, social change and immigration
Muslims in Spain and the West
islamophobia

IEAM has the following research projects currently under way:

Demography, family and social change in Arab countries

The book Demografía, familia y cambio social en los países árabes is the preliminary result of Casa Árabe’s work on the social conditions of Arab and Muslim women.
As a launch project, a multidisciplinary working group of researchers from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, France and Spain was established. The group contributed valuable fieldwork that enabled important demographic changes taking place in Arab countries to be examined. This made possible an analysis of the effect these have on family changes and their influence on the role and status of women.

The work throws light on the enormous differences that exist between countries. Analysis of recent decades of demographic data, and the observation of social, legal and political changes, reveal furthermore the complex and evolving situation of women in these countries. The findings refute a static stereotype of Arab-Islamic women.

The project is directed by Sophie Bessis and Gema Martín Muñoz, Director General of Casa Árabe.

Researchers:

Houria Alami M’Chichi
Mohammed al-Dbiyat
Penny Johnson
Thérèse Locoh
Dorra Mahfoudh
Zahia Ouadah-Bedidi
Nourredine Saadi
Soraya al-Torki
Alberto Veira-Ramos

Islamic movements in Europe

This project aims to make specialist academic knowledge about Islamism and Islamic movements accessible to the wider public with a personal, academic and/or professional interest. A book will be published to meet public interest in these groups (Hermanos Musulmanes, al-Adl wa-l-Ihsan, Milli Görüs, et al) providing accessible empirical information about them. It will also propose concepts and models enabling the reader to put media information into context, and identify distorted or tendentious views. It will offer concise theses on these groups’ activities, and reasons for their (apparent) success among sectors of Muslim communities. It will help contextualise and broaden debate on how concepts like “Islamic”, “fundamentalist”, “Islamist”, “radical” and “extremist” are ideologised and utilised, and the problems that arise.

The project is coordinated by Frank Peter, of Viadrina University Frankfurt-Oder and Rafael Ortega, researcher at Casa Árabe’s International Institute of Arab and Muslim World Studies.

Arab and Islamic feminisms

Industrial policies in the three countries of the Central Maghreb: Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia

This project will prepare and publish a report on development of industrial policies in the Maghreb in recent decades. The report includes case studies of industrial policies in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, and a comparative analysis of these policies.
The study aims to analyse the launch of these policies, their results and impact on the industrial fabric of each country. It also examines the challenges faced in the context of a liberalisation process developed through association agreements with the European Union.

The project is directed by Fatiha Talahite and coordinated by Olivia Orozco, coordinator of Casa Árabe’s Socioeconomic and Business Programme.

Researchers:

Azzam Mahjoub
Fatiha Talahite
Rafik Bouklia-Hassane
Larbi Jaidi

Maghrebi educational systems faced with globalisation

This research project, directed by the comparative education specialist Abdeljalil Akkari (University of Geneva), studies basic education systems in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. It seeks to describe their development, strengths and weaknesses, and their ability to respond to challenges presented by globalisation. The results will be published in Spanish and French.

Effects of Hispano-Moroccan business cooperation: the case of the Tangiers urban region

The project will prepare and publish a study on the impact of Spanish companies based in northern Morocco on local development in the Tangiers area. Using some 50 personal interviews with businesses, social interlocutors and Spanish and Moroccan institutions in the region, the study analyses the insertion and impact of Spanish companies, and Hispano-Moroccan business cooperation, on the productive, social, territorial and local institutional fabric of this urban area.

The project is directed byJose María Mella, professor at the Autonomous University of Madrid, and coordinated by Olivia Orozco, coordinator of Casa Árabe’s Socioeconomic and Business Programme.

OTHER ACTIVITIES

Casa Árabe’s IEAM publishes a bi-monthly online magazine, Sociopolitical Watchtower, which analyses current political events in Arab and Islamic countries.

IEAM researchers are carrying out the Records of Memory programme, collecting in-depth interviews with distinguished personalities of Arab politics and history. Starting from an individual’s memory, a collective memory can be constructed. Records of memory are published on paper and on DVD.

The programme Muslims in the West is an information tool to analyse the plurality of Islam and of Muslims who live in Spain and other western countries. Casa Árabe’s IEAM prepared and published the book “Muslims in Spain. A Reference Guide”, in Spanish and English, as part of a joint project with the Organisation for Human Rights and Democracy (ODHIR) of the OSCE.

The European campaign Against Forced Marriages between Muslims was presented in Spain at our headquarters.

We have published in Spanish reports on islamophobia prepared by the European Union’s Observatory against Racism and Xenophobia (now the European Agency of Fundamental Rights).

In May 2009 we organised a seminar on Islamophobia in Debate in collaboration with the Department of Ethnic Studies of the University of Berkeley.

In September 2007 a course was organised on Young people and Muslims. The New Generation in Arab countries and in Europe at the UIMP of Santander. This was followed in 2009 by a course on Islamisms in context.