Political Culture, Political Dynamics, and Conspiracism in the Arab Middle East

Matthew Gray Conspiracy theory (naẓariyyah al–mu’āmarah) , conspiracy rhetoric, and the more general “conspiracism” have begun to gain greater attention among scholars and observers of politics in the Arab Middle East, even though traditionally there has been a paucity of scholarly analysis of it, especially by political scientists. Arab Middle Eastern conspiracism has been touched upon by some scholars, including Leon Carl Brown in his influential work International Politics and the Middle East: Old Rules, Dangerous Game (1984) , more recently by El–Nawawy and Iskandar (2003) in the context of the characteristics and influence of the Qatar-based satellite television station Al-Jazeera, and less comprehensively by some other writers on religious concepts and radicalism in the region (see for example the short mentions in Bonney 2004 and Juergensmeyer 2000) . The main English language book on Middle Eastern conspiracism is Daniel Pipes’ The Hidden Hand: Middle East Fears of Conspiracy (1996)...