London Middle East Institute: Reviving Pluralism in the Middle East

Nicolas Pelham will at the London Middle East Institute giving a lecture on his latest book, Holy Lands: Reviving Pluralism in the Middle East, in which he presents a strikingly original and startlingly optimistic argument. European powers and European-backed nationalism broke up the Ottoman Empire, in the process undermining the high degree of religious pluralism and autonomy, which were the essential building blocks of a pluralistic society in the Middle East.  

As the successor states of the Ottoman Empire, Western European governments parcelled up the Middle East into sectarian states, turning holy communities into holy lands. The result has been ever-increasing sectarian violence. The only solution, Pelham argues, is to accept the Middle East for the deeply religious region it is, and look to the past for lessons in pluralism and ways of managing sectarian relations in the future.  

Nicolas Pelham has written about the Middle East since 1992. Since 2010, he has reported on the region’s collapse for The Economist and New York Review of Books. He is the author of two previous books, A New Muslim Order (2008) on Arab Shiite rule and A History of the Middle East (2010) with Peter Mansfield.