Following the 2022 World Cup, POMEPS partnered with Georgetown University-Qatar’s Center for International and Regional Studies—which has had a long-standing interest in studying sports and politics in the MENA region, and most recently completed a multiyear project on the World Cup—to bring together a group of scholars from the Middle East, Europe, and the United States to explore the deep interconnections between football and politics in the Middle East. We invited scholars from a wide range of perspectives, making sure to include contributions focused not only on the Arab world but also on Iran and Turkey. The essays in this collection offer a rich and varied window into these multidimensional politics, from the local to the global and from the historical to the contemporary. They offer a tantalizing glimpse into the possibilities for future research.
Marc Lynch, George Washington University and Zahra Babar, Georgetown University-Qatar
Uniter or Divider? Identity Politics and Football in Jordan
Curtis R. Ryan, Appalachian State University
The “Bot-iful” Game: Football, Social Media Manipulation, and Transnational Gulf Politics
Marc Owen Jones, Hamad bin Khalifa University, Qatar
Football as a Platform for Ethnic Identity Assertion in Iran
Ehsan Kashfi, University of Alberta
The Rise of Gulf States’ Investments in Sports: Neither Soft Power nor Sportswashing?
Majd Abuamer, Doha Institute: The Arab Center For Research and Policy Studies and Yara Nassar, Doha Institute: The Arab Center For Research and Policy Studies
Political Contestation around “Football in Cinema” Project in Iran
Nazanin Shahrokni, London School of Economics
Political Polarization and Football in Turkey
Sefa Secen, Syracuse University
Reclaim the Spectacle: Ultras Fandom and the Politics of the Sporting Event in Egypt
Ronnie Close, The American University in Cairo
Private Investment in Egyptian Football Clubs: A Case Study of Ghazl El-Mahalla FC’s Failed IPO
Saleh Mahmoud, The American University in Cairo
The Qatar World Cup and the New Islamic Approach to Football in the Middle East
Dag Tuastad, University of Oslo
The Role of Football in Preserving National Identity in the Arab World
Eman Demerdash, Cairo University
Beyond the Game: The Politics of Palestinian Football Since 1995
Ibrahim Rabaia, The Palestine Research Center