The primary international professional association of scholars who study the Middle East is MESA, the Middle East Studies Association. If you go to the main website, you will read:

The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) is a private, non-profit, non-political learned society that brings together scholars, educators and those interested in the study of the region from all over the world. From its inception in 1966 with 50 founding members, MESA has increased its membership to more than 3,000 and now serves as an umbrella organization for more than sixty institutional members and thirty-nine affiliated organizations. The association is a constituent society of the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Council of Area Studies Associations, and a member of the National Humanities Alliance.

Members of MESA receive two journals, the flagship International Journal of Middle East Studies and the revamped Review of Middle East Studies. Each year MESA holds an annual convention, this year in Denver. As noted, the association is non-political and contains members with widely divergent views on the controversial political and religious issues in the Middle East and North Africa.

So, why, you might wonder, is there a rival organization known as ASMEA, The Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa, with its own journal housed with Taylor and Francis? Ah, politics. The founding fathers of the association are Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami, who appear to have joined forces primarily because of a common distaste for the work of Edward Said and their unfailing attraction to the intelligence community. The welcome message suggests that ASMEA is filling a gap:

ASMEA is a new academic society dedicated to promoting the highest standards of research and teaching in Middle Eastern and African studies, and related fields. It is a response to the mounting interest in these increasingly inter-related fields, and the absence of any single group addressing them in a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary fashion.

Like MESA, it claims to be non-partisan, although it is hard to explain why having only one point of view constitutes being non-partisan. It is obvious that scholars, like everyone else, will have differing opinions about issues like Palestinian statehood, inflammatory religious rhetoric, gender and a variety of issues that call for better understanding through dialogue among scholars. But ASMEA is monologue on top of being superficially trite. The claims for the “highest standards of research” are laughable, given the contents of its journal. For example,the most recent issue contains one book review. The chosen book is Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion across the Islamic World by Robin Wright. The author of the book is a reporter, well-traveled (140 countries and counting) and with a prolific presence on all the media. With due respect to the importance of journalism in a free society, Ms. Wright is not an academic scholar; nor has her book been published through the peer review vetting of an academic press. I am not concerned with the value of her book, but it is the kind of book that routinely gets reviewed in major media outlets and rarely in academic journals. Is this the only book that ASMEA could find worth reviewing? [Update: In my original post I misidentified Stephen A. Emerson as Stephen Emerson, an unabashed partisan who sees jihadist terror behind every Islamic-looking bush.]

But the ASMEA welcome continues:

ASMEA is, first and foremost, a community of scholars concerned to protect academic freedom and promote the search for truth to reach new heights in inquiry. The Association will advance the discourse in these fields by offering its members new opportunities to publish and present ideas to the academic community and beyond.

Protect academic freedom? If this means the freedom to publish blatantly biased material without peer review, then be clear. New heights in inquiry? How does one reach a new height by lowering academic standards to journalistic pablum? And does Robin Wright really need another forum for the barrage of reporting and for-profit publications? Campus Watch loves ASMEA, which hardly needs further comment.

ASMEA operates as though it were under siege and the last defender of democracy and Israel. In an exclusive 2008 commentary on the site, Robert Barnidge, Jr. claims:

For the self-appointed gatekeepers of acceptable thought, Islam embodies a tangible and fixed set of beliefs that cannot be legitimately contested, and those who dare to dissent, to challenge, to offend, risk being tarnished with the “Islamophobic” brush.

If the author is referring to apologetic Muslims, then indeed they tend to defend their faith against all comers as rigorously as apologetic Christians and Jews do. If the author is referring to scholars who belong to MESA, then he has not been to many MESA conferences. I know of few of my fellow scholars who would subscribe to the absurd notion that Islam “embodies a tangible and fixed set of beliefs.” Even Edward Said never thought that. “Islamophobia” is indeed used for those who brush the historical and cross-cultural variety inherent in the concept of Islam as monolithically violent and opposed to the West. Lewis, Ajami and Emerson are self-assured about “what went wrong”, the “Arab predicament” and “the terrorists living among us”: we are supposed to be very afraid. Indeed ASMEA was formed because the founders claimed that MESA was not paying any attention to jihad and Muslim terrorists. If this is not “Islamophobia”, I am afraid I cannot think of a better term for it.

The state of the website mirrors the ludicrous pretension of the association. The prompt for “Announcements of Interest” leads to two posts about study in Israel; no doubt this study is non-partisan in the same way as the association. By the way, the Syllabi Bank appears to be bankrupt. The problem with ASMEA is not that there is no room for other professional organizations, but that it is an Islamophobic extension of the continuing “Orientalism” fostered by both Lewis and Ajami. The sooner it is folded into Campus Watch, the better for us all, for at least then there will be truth in advertising.

Daniel Martin Varisco