Several MESA Members met in October to organize a two-week summer institute for high school teachers on the general subject of teaching about Islam and the Arab world. Having determined the overall topics to be addressed, we decided to leave one session open to deal with whatever might be “The Crisis of the Day.” Someone asked, “But what if there isn’t a crisis?” Such a possibility seemed quite unthinkable to most of us. “I’m sure there will be something,” said one person. And another, for good measure, added, “And if there isn’t, we can make one up.”

This rather cynical view of the importance of conflict in the overall reality of the Middle East may remind some of us of the distorted joke about the scorpion and the frog crossing the river, often repeated by speakers with the clincher, “This is the Middle East.” In reality, however, it may reflect a deeper concern that many of us have. What is this Middle East to the study of which we have devoted our lives? Have we somehow created an entity for our own needs and purposes that may not correspond to reality?

Soviet Scholarship on Islamic studies exists in almost hermetic isolation from its Western counterpart for both linguistic and methodological reasons. Soviet scholarship is concerned with a different set of questions that emerge from Soviet Marxism, rarely tackling the conceptual questions formulated in the West. Nevertheless, Soviet scholarship is very strong on descriptive detail which could, if properly utilized, enrich Western debate. Unfortunately, few Western Islamicists (except those involved in Central Asian history) know Russian, and therefore a wealth of factual information unearthed by Soviet scholars remains virtually unknown in the West and plays no part in the scholarly discourse here.

The SSRC’S Joint Near and Middle East Committee has organized a series of workshops on the state in its Middle Eastern context. The format consists of discussions of papers written by members of the committee, as well as of articles and chapters of books presented as background material by a small number of invited guests. A report on the first workshop, held at Buyukada, Istanbul, in September 1989 appeared in the MESA Bulletin 24 (1990), pages 179 to 183. A third workshop was held at St. Antony’s College, Oxford in December 1990.