FINO Memo
The articles written in the "FINO Memo" format form the core of FINO's proactive information work. Here, topics are prepared for the public in a concise form that contain innovative findings from the specialist sciences and that, from FINO's point of view, deal with processes that may be of prognostic significance or that the sciences wish to draw the public's attention to in a special way. In keeping with the information mandate, the FINO memos are also kept rather short and are not written in a purely specialist scientific format.
FINO Memo 24: The UAE and the End of the Middle East
The recent agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates to normalize relations is another milestone in the transformation of the Middle East, which began ten years ago, and which has completely shifted the political, economic and military balance in the region. The core concern of the Emirates and their allies is the containment of political Islam and the irreversible embedding of the Arab states in a global modernity. However, the Emirates and Saudi Arabia are not at all liberalizing their political order, but rather restoring the state as an all-encompassing power without having to define a future Islamic or Arab ideal state. Instead, the Gulf regimes are transforming the state into a postmodern Leviathan that nips any political claim to Islam in the bud.