For over a decade, scholars of Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS)a subset of terrorism studies identifying with the widening and deepening era of International Relations (IR)have persuaded scholars of political sociology to push the disciplinary boundaries imposed by Orthodox Terrorism Studies (OTS). OTS academics reify a positivist conceptualization of terrorism that is exclusively theorized using an institutionalized problem-solving approach that wholly perceives perpetrators of terrorism as being non-state actors and (almost) never Northern democratic sovereign state actors. Adopting a critical and reflexive lens to the study of terrorism allows us to highlight the danger of ignoring the increased sanctioning of state sponsored terrorism identified in the militarization of law enforcement agencies after the events of 9/11. The militarized and terroristic pedagogy adopted by law enforcement and other representatives to secure the homeland is noticed in law enforcement agencies re-writing the social contract by presuming civilians as threats to national security thus ejecting them from the body politic. The paper concludes by proposing that we ABOUT THE AUTHOR Khaled Al-Kassimi's work seeks to critically approach politics occurring in (under)developed areas such as Africa, the Americas, and the Arabian Peninsula. In addition, his writings relating to the field of Political Science are contoured by critical approaches to International Relations and Security Studies, Post-Development and Decolonial Studies. His most recent publication in Cogent Social Sciences at Taylor and Francis (November -2018 issue) entitled "ALBA: A Decolonial Delinking Performance Towards (Western) Modernity -An alternative to development Project" conceptualizes ALBA using concepts elaborated by decolonial scholars of the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region by proposing the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) as an alternative to development project that embodies the spirit of Bandung and principles of South-South Cooperation thereby contesting the supposed belief that only (western) knowledge systems lead to economic and social development.

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The (secular-humanist) philosophical theology governing (positivist) disciplines such as International Law and International Relations precludes a priori any communicative examination of how the exclusion of Arab-Ottoman jurisprudence is necessary for the ontological coherence of jurisprudent concepts such as society and sovereignty, together with teleological narratives constellating the “Age of Reason” such as modernity and civilization. The exercise of sovereignty by the British Crown—in 19th and 20th century Arabia—consisted of (positivist) legal doctrines comprising “scientific processes” denying Ottoman legal sovereignty, thereby proceeding to “order” societies situated in Dar al-Islam and “detach” Ottoman-Arab subjects from their Ummah. This “rational exercise” of power by the British Crown—mythologizing an unbridgeable epistemological gap between a Latin-European subject as civic and an objectified Ottoman-Arab as despotic—legalized (regulatory) measures referencing ethno/sect-centric paradigms which not only “deported” Ottoman-Arab ijtihad (Eng. legal reasoning and exegetic hermeneutics) from the realm of “international law”, but also rationalized geographic demarcations and demographic alterations across Ottoman-Arab vilayets. Both inter-related disciplines, therefore, affirm an “exclusionary self-image” when dealing with “foreign epistemologies” by transforming “cultural difference” into “legal difference”, thus suing that it is in the protection of jus gentium that “recognized sovereigns” exercise redeeming measures on “Turks”, “Moors”, or “Arabs”. It is precisely the knowledge lost ensuing from such irreflexive “positivist image” that this legal-historical research seeks to deconstruct by moving beyond a myopic analysis claiming Ottoman-Arab ‘Umran (Eng. civilization) as homme malade (i.e., sick man); or that the Caliphate attempted but failed to become reasonable during the 18th and 19th century because it adhered to Arab-Islamic philosophical theology. Therefore, this research commits to deconstructing “mainstream” Ottoman historiography claiming that tanzimat (Eng. reorganization) and tahdith (Eng. modernization) were simply “degenerative periods” affirming the temporal “backwardness” of Ottoman civilization and/or the innate incapacity of its epistemology in furnishing a (modern) civil society.

Background Neurological manifestations have been widely reported in adults with COVID-19, yet the extent of involvement among the pediatric population is currently poorly characterized. The objective of our systematic review is to evaluate the association of SARS-CoV-2 infection with neurological symptoms and neuroimaging manifestations in the pediatric population. Methods A literature search of Cochrane Library; EBSCO CINAHL; Global Index Medicus; OVID AMED, Embase, Medline, PsychINFO; and Scopus was conducted in accordance with the Peer Review of Electronic Search Strategies form (October 1, 2019 to March 15, 2022). Studies were included if they reported (1) COVID-19-associated neurological symptoms and neuroimaging manifestations in individuals aged < 18 years with a confirmed, first SARS-CoV-2 infection and were (2) peer-reviewed. Full-text reviews of 222 retrieved articles were performed, along with subsequent reference searches. Results A total of 843 nonduplicate records were retrieved. Of the 19 identified studies, there were ten retrospective observational studies, seven case series, one case report, and one prospective cohort study. A total of 6,985 individuals were included, where 12.8% of hospitalized patients experienced neurocognitive impairments: MIS-C (24.2%), neuroinflammation (10.1%), and encephalopathy (8.1%) were the most common disorders; headaches (16.8%) and seizures (3.8%) were the most common symptoms. Based on pediatric-specific cohorts, children experienced more drowsiness (7.3% vs. 1.3%) and muscle weakness (7.3% vs. 6.3%) as opposed to adolescents. Agitation or irritability was observed more in children (7.3%) than infants (1.3%). Conclusion Our findings revealed a high prevalence of immune-mediated patterns of disease among COVID-19 positive pediatric patients with neurocognitive abnormalities.

The resurgence of a deterministic mode of representation mythologizing Arabs as figuring (threatening) Saracen by judging their epistemological commitments as hostile to Enlightened reason-based ideals is demonstratively identifiable after 9/11, and more so following the Arab uprisings in 2011, when we notice that the Arab in general, and Muslim in particular, was historicized as the “new barbarian” from which (liberal-secular) Westphalian society must be defended. Such neo-Orientalist representations disseminate powerful discursive (symbolic) articulations (i.e., culture talk) —in tandem with the (re)formulation of legal concepts and doctrines situated in jus gentium (i.e., sovereignty, immanence, and pre-emptive defense strategy)—legally adjudicating a redemptive war ostensibly to “moralize” a profane Arabia. Proponents of neo-Orientalism define their philosophical theology as not simply incompatible with Arab epistemology (Ar. نظريةالمعرفةالعربية), but that Arab-Muslims are an irreconcilable threat to Latin-European philosophical theology, thus, accentuating that neo-Orientalism is constituted by an ontological insecurity constituting Arab-Islamic philosophical theology as placing secular modern logic under “siege” and threatening “civil society”. This legal-historical research, therefore, argues that neo-Orientalism not only necessitates figuring the Arab as Islamist for the ontological security of a “modern” liberal-secular mode of Being, but that such essentialist imaginary is a culturalist myth that is transformed into a legal difference which proceeds to argue the necessity of sanctioning a violent episode transforming a supposed lawless “Middle East” receptive to terror, into a lawful “New Middle East” receptive to reason. This sacrilegos process reveals the “inclusive exclusion” temporal ethos of (a positivist) jus gentium which entails maintaining a supposed unbridgeable cultural gap between a (universalized) sovereign Latin-European subject, and a (particularized) Arab object denied sovereignty for the coherence of Latin-European epistemology.

This paper appraises the regional impact of economic sanctions initiated by the United States against the Syrian Arab Republic by analyzing the 'spillover effect' of such measures elsewhere in the Levant. Specifically, this paper measures the impact of the ongoing American sanctions regime in Jordan and Lebanon. Excising the Syrian market from the regional economy has had-and will continue to have-ruinous consequences for Lebanese and Jordanian balance sheets. This eventuality redounds to the benefit of the United States, which seeks to extend its hegemony over a weak and divided Middle East. America's 'off-shore balancing' act in the Syrian context should thus be analyzed through the lens of the realist school of IR theory. Using a hybridized research methodology incorporating qualitative and quantitative analysis, this article examines the myriad effects of the embargo while deconstructing the epistemological and theoretical frameworks underpinning the theory and practice of contemporary 'liberal-interventionist' discourse.

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