Ali Ahmida’s book ‘The Libya We do Not Know’ republished in updated and expanded version

A book by Ali Ahmida, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Political Science, was recently republished in an updated and expanded form.

The original 2014 version of The Libya We do Not Know:  History, Culture and Civil Society, published in Arabic by Dar al-Hilal Press in Cairo, Egypt, and the Libyan Ministry of Culture, sold 16,000 copies.

The book introduces Libya from the perspective of subaltern, ordinary people, examining their social and cultural history, and it provides a critique of the contemporary scholarship and media fixation on Qadhdhafi, oil, and terrorism.

The book is divided into five sections: method and post colonialism; social history and state formation; identity and culture; the rise and collapse of the dictatorship; and the challenges of post revolution, such as arms, security, state building, and truth and national reconciliation.

The updated edition includes a lengthy introduction that diagnoses the regional and internal causes behind the unravelling of Libya into a virtual civil war, the fighting between the two governments and the rise of the Islamic State in the city of Sirte. It also presents a strategy for conflict resolution based on past models of compromise and the need for a Truth and Reconciliation Committee.

The Libya We do Not Know has been reviewed and discussed in Egyptian and Libyan media such as al-Qahira, Libya al-Mustaqbal.

Ahmida, whose areas of expertise are political theory, comparative politics, and historical sociology, is the author of several other books, including The Making of Modern Libya: State Formation, Colonialization and Resistance (SUNY Press 1994, 2009); Forgotten Voices: Power and Agency in Colonial and Postcolonial Libya (Routledge Press, 2005); and Post-Orientalism:  Critical Reviews of North African Social and Cultural History (The Center of Arab Unity Studies, Beirut, 2009).