Debates on gender, war, and revolution in the Middle East are not new. The question of gender in the region has moved the imaginaries of academics, administrators, policymakers, journalists and activists throughout the decades, if not centuries. There is no shortage of academic literature on the topic, from colonial obsessions with the oppressed-woman and the radical-woman, to anticolonial efforts to reclaim debates on the topic, to authors focused on including masculinities and queer perspectives.Footnote ¹ There is a similarly vast amount of literature on war and revolution in a region that has often been seen, and continues to be seen, through a lens shaped by a disproportional focus on conflict and violence. Many have brought the two perspectives together, discussing the nexus of gender, revolution, and war in the Middle East.Footnote ² Most recently, Middle East studies publications have focused on the gendered implications of Israel’s ongoing genocidal war on Gaza.Footnote ³ Debates about gender, revolution, and war are relevant beyond academic circles, as they often reflect and inform broader developments, including in policy, practice-focused, and activist spaces.

This roundtable, which consists of three articles on gender, war, and revolution in Afghanistan, Iran, and Syria, contributes to this long-standing tradition of debates on the topic, offering unique perspectives on an oft-discussed area. They were written by three authors who participated in the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) Global Academy, an initiative run by MESA and City University of New York that supports displaced scholars from the region. In “Between Veil and Vanguard: Ideological Battles over Afghan Femininity,” Sayed Hassan Akhlaq (Coppin State University) discusses contested approaches to gender identities in Afghanistan. In “Religion Meets Gender: The Impact of Sunni Islamic Discourse on the Jina Uprising in Rojhelat,” Ahmad Mohammadpour (Bentley University) and Fateh Saeidi (University of Texas) write about the roles of gender, religion, and ethnicity in the Kurdish-led Jina movement in Iran. In “Popular Sovereignty and Trans Mothering of Antiwar Syrian Soldiers,” Razan Ghazzawi (Oregon State University) explores the experiences of Syrian soldiers, including a trans member of the Syrian armed forces under former president al-Assad.

Together, the three articles that make up this roundtable stand out for the broad range of their methodological approaches, their challenging of dominant approaches and simplifying binaries, and their efforts to highlight and counter the sidelining of marginalized perspectives.

Methodologically, the articles rely on a broad range of tools and techniques. Sayed Hassan Akhlaq provides a historicopolitical analysis, tracing developments since long before the formation of the Afghan state, going as far back as the eighth century. Ahmad Mohammadpour and Fateh Saeidi rely on an analysis of Friday sermons and statements of faith leaders, including those shared on social media. Razan Ghazzawi hones in on the experience of one person as part of an ethnographic case study approach based on life history interviews. This richness in approaches is testament to the innovative nature of contemporary Middle East studies as well as an inspiring insight into the methodological possibilities within the discipline.

Although they differ in their methodological approaches, the three articles all aim to challenge dominant, and often simplifying, approaches to the topic of gender, revolution, and war, contesting binaries that do not reflect the complexities of the issue. Focusing on the experiences of communist and Islamist Afghan women in the late twentieth century, Sayed Hassan Akhlaq highlights how, ideological differences aside, both groups “prioritized revolution over reform and confrontation over negotiation, shaping their activism around radical transformation.” By comparing the experiences of communist and Islamist women in Afghanistan, he writes communist women back into accounts of the country’s experiences with war, revolution, and gender, a perspective that is often overlooked, and an important contribution to broader debates about women in communist movements in the region and beyond.Footnote ⁴ The article argues that, although communist and Islamist views on gender identity were different, both often constituted state-led, top-down approaches that alienated large parts of broader society and the popular masses. In their article, Ahmad Mohammadpour and Fateh Saeidi complicate dominant understandings of the role of religion in the initially women’s rights–focused Jina movement in Iran, by highlighting the central role that Kurdish Iranian Sunni Muslim clerics played in the movement. They trace the development of the Jina movement from what could have been a purely feminist cause to one that is inherently linked with religious, ethnic, and national grievances. The authors highlight the duality of religion as a vehicle of both state control and resistance to it, reminiscent of similar discussions of the “ambivalence of the sacred” elsewhere.Footnote ⁵ Razan Ghazzawi’s article on practices of mutual care among soldiers in the Syrian army describes Syrian experiences of trans mothering, contributing to the broader literature on mothering, which tends to be dominated by Western accounts centered on racial and heteronormative conceptualizations of family. By focusing on the experience of a trans woman soldier who cares for her fellow soldiers beyond campist ascriptions of ideological stances (of “pro-regime” or “pro-revolution”), both the author and protagonist of the case study humanize the soldiers “outside the binary political categorizations imposed by the state and revolutionary discourse.”

Focusing on marginalized groups within the respective contexts they write about, all three articles highlight the sidelining and exclusion of minoritized groups in the region. Sayed Hassan Akhlaq criticizes both communist and Islamist state-led, top-down approaches to women’s empowerment for its marginalization of large parts of the Afghan population, concluding that “ordinary Afghan women have rarely had the opportunity to define themselves on their own terms.” Ahmad Mohammadpour and Fateh Saeidi highlight the grievances of Sunni Muslim Kurdish communities in Iran, which led to a very specific form of convergence of gender-focused, ethnic, and faith-based resistance. Razan Ghazzawi examines the experiences of ordinary soldiers and trans women, two groups whose accounts often are not considered in either the armed forces or broader society, within a discursive context that tends to focus on states rather than popular accounts.

Many years since the first academic debates on gender, war, and revolution in the Middle East emerged, research on the topic has come a long way. We are way beyond simple discussions of “women and war,” which often tended to focus on women as victims of war, rather than both victims and perpetrators.Footnote ⁶ Instead, scholars from across the region and beyond discuss the complexities of gender, revolution, and war, equipped with a range of methodological tools, questioning dominant accounts, adding nuance where it is much needed, writing the experiences of marginalized groups into academic debates. It is a pleasure to see.