Posted By Nathan J. Brown Tuesday, February 28, 2012 - 1:49 PM
Nearly two decades ago, I entered an Egyptian embassy in an
Arab state in order to request a visa. I was brought to the consular officer
who immediately noticed that I seemed startled by her appearance. "You're
surprised at this?" she asked, gesturing to her hijab. Somewhat
embarrassed, I indicated that I had never met an Egyptian diplomat who was
covered. She acknowledged that there were very few but also spoke of how she
had been pleasantly surprised not simply that she was accepted as a diplomat
but that some senior people in the ministry were supportive and protective.
Her story was in one sense a bit odd: hijabs have become
extremely widespread in Egyptian society, but she was speaking as if she was
operating in alien terrain in the diplomatic corps. And in a sense she was. To
this day, it is uncommon to find covered women in specific places in Egyptian
society; the long beard characteristic of Salafis is similarly all but unknown
in sensitive state institutions like the security establishment and the
judiciary. The reasons are clear -- security-vetting blocks the entrance of
those suspected of Islamist inclinations and those at the top positions of
authority in various institutions often work to protect them as enclaves for
their part of Egyptian society.
Posted By Curtis R. Ryan Tuesday, February 28, 2012 - 10:19 AM
FIFA, the international federation for world soccer, is
poised to make a decision in a few days that will impact the lives of hundreds
of thousands of young Muslim women -- whether or not to overturn the current
ban on the hijab, or headscarf.
Matters actually came to a head last summer, in June 2011, when the entire
Iranian women's soccer team was prevented from playing in Olympic qualifying
matches held in Jordan. The ouster of an entire national team, minutes before a
key international match, led to a resurgent global debate on the relations
between the hijab, sports, and international politics. Today, however, the
winds of change seem to be blowing back in the other direction, as activists,
athletes, and allies -- Muslim and non-Muslim -- appear to have met every FIFA
objection and will arrive at the March 3 London meeting of the International
Football Association Board (IFAB) with a proposal to lift the ban and allow
thousands of women an opportunity that is blocked under current rules.
Posted By Marc Lynch Thursday, January 26, 2012 - 5:51 PM
This photo of the "sleeping salafi" from the opening session of Egypt's
new Parliament burned like wildfire through the Twitter feeds and
Facebook pages of my Arab, Egyptian and Middle East watcher friends. The
overwhelming tone of the comments was high snark, as liberals fell over
themselves snickering at the dozing beards. The image played to every
prejudice which has greeted this new wave of salafi Islamists.
There's just one problem. The iconic figure in the lower right corner of the photo wasn't sleeping. He's blind.
Dr. Wageeh el-Sheemy is a university professor and new parliamentarian from the Salafi al-Nour Party. As the We Are All Khaled Said page explained yesterday, el-Sheemy is "the
first blind person
to become member of the Egyptian parliament thanks to the #Jan25
Revolution. In fact, he is the first ever disabled member of the
Egyptian parliament." That's really impressive, and a great story. Congratulations to Dr. El-Sheemy -- and to the Nour Party for putting
him forward as a successful candidate.
It should also be a lesson to all. For all the
legitimate concerns about where the newly empowered salafi trend will
take Egypt -- and there are many -- it is far too easy for people to leap to unwarranted conclusions
about them. In the coming days, it will be useful for all Egyptians,
and those watching Egypt, to take a breath before rushing to judgement.
We can't help you with that guy in the third row though...
Posted By Marc Lynch Wednesday, January 25, 2012 - 9:52 AM
On January 25, 2011 on the Middle East
Channel, Ashraf Khalil marveled from the streets of Cairo about "sheer size of the turnout, which was larger
than anything I've seen in 13 years of covering Egyptian protests." From
Washington, I pushed back against skeptics who doubted that Tunisia's
revolution would spread to Egypt, as I noted that, "the images and
stories of protests today have been impressive, both in numbers and in energy
and enthusiasm. The Egyptians are self-consciously emulating the Tunisian
protests, seeking to capitalize on the new mood within the Arab world."
This week, the Middle East Channel is proud to offer a wide range of commentary
looking at an Egypt one year after the outbreak of the revolution. Among the
highlights, including a few from last month for perspective:
Posted By Monica Marks Friday, January 6, 2012 - 10:28 AM
Giggling over a
communal pot of couscous, the girls swap stories and take turns pushing each
other across the room on wheely chairs. Douha Rihi, 20, a German language
major, wants to study abroad in Berlin. Sana Brahim, 23, is pursuing a master's
degree in Microbiology. They don't look like the kind of young women you'd
expect to find at the center of a major ideological controversy, but here they
are -- all ten of them -- perched on the second level of the university
administration building, fighting for their right to wear the full Muslim face
veil, called niqab, inside classrooms and during exams.
Along with a group of scraggly-bearded young Salafi men, these girls have been
occupying the University of Manouba College of Arts and Humanities administration
building since November 28 of last year. Their protest has resulted in the
continued closure of one of Tunisia's largest campuses since December 6 and has
kept an estimated 13,000 students from attending their classes.
Posted By Marc Lynch Monday, December 26, 2011 - 1:02 PM
It's time for the official, Aardvark-certified list of the Best Books on the Middle East for 2011! (See last year's winners here.) Next year's list will undoubtedly be dominated by books addressing this year's uprisings which have transformed the Arab world, but not many significant books on the topic were published in 2011. That'll hopefully change on March 27, when my own book The Arab Uprising comes out-- don't worry, it won't be eligible for the 2012 awards of course! -- and, all joking aside, when a number of great journalists and scholars weigh in with books in the pipeline. In the meantime, you can always go back to Revolution in the Arab World, the eBook based on Foreign Policy articles, which I think remains an outstanding guide to the first few months.
First, the ground rules. The awards are limited to English-language books that were published in calendar year 2011 and which dealt primarily with the contemporary broader Middle East. I read more than 65 books published this year which fit that description, from academic and trade presses alike. The award is entirely subjective, based on what I found impressive or interesting. There's no committee, no publishers sent me free copies or offered up lucrative swag, and I couldn't read everything -- especially if books were published too late in the year or if publishers insisted on releasing them only as $90 hardcovers. If your book didn't make the list, however, then you know what do do (hint: you really can't go wrong by blaming Blake Hounshell).
And with that...the 2011 Aardvark Awards for the Best Books on the Middle East:
Posted By Lauren E. Bohn Monday, December 12, 2011 - 1:42 PM
Assiut
feels far away from the famed epicenter of Tahrir Square. The oft-neglected
peripheral region of Upper Egypt (the cultivated valley of the Nile from Cairo
in the north to Aswan, 535 miles south) has been plagued by institutional
apathy for years, long dismissed as a dead-end, from where one travels to the
capital for work and never returns. When Egypt's contentious de-facto leaders,
the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), speak of a silent but loyal
majority, or "liberals," fret about the backward religious and violence-prone rural
areas, they have cities like Assiut in mind. But the reality is far more
complicated. Assiut and Tahrir are bound together by personal connections and
shared concerns -- inextricable ties that suggest a far more nuanced emerging
Egypt than is generally felt from the central nerve of Cairo.
Posted By Leila Ahmed Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - 7:18 PM
In
1955, Albert Hourani, the Oxford historian and bestselling author of A History
of the Arab Peoples, published a short article called "The Vanishing Veil: A
Challenge to the Old Order." Pointing out that veiling was a fast-disappearing
practice in most Arab societies, Hourani gave a brief history of how it was
fading from modern society -- and why it would soon become a thing of the past.
The trend to unveil,
Hourani wrote, had begun in Egypt in the early 20th century, set in motion by
the writer Qasim Amin. Amin had argued that "gradual and careful change in the
status of women," including women's casting off their veils, was now an essential
step in the advancement of Muslim societies -- and "not contrary to the principles
of Islam." Although Amin's ideas had been met with great resistance, Hourani
recounted how they gradually gained acceptance and spread among the "more
advanced Arab countries," first in Egypt and then "Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and
Iraq."
When Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in Tunisia on Dec. 17 after a
municipal worker confiscated his wares, it appeared to be simply another sad
story in a region plagued by corruption, brutal state security services, and lack of accountability. But against
all odds, his act of desperation has spurred a wave of reform that has engulfed
the entire region, toppling the autocratic regimes in Tunisia and Egypt and
threatening to engulf other countries across the Middle East.
But the uprising has not followed the same course in every
country. In Jordan, protests have forced the government to abandon liberal
reforms in favor of an unsustainable economic status quo. In Algeria, they have
highlighted the public's disaffection with the political process. In other countries, the reverberations from
the popular upheaval are still unclear. In the West Bank, for example, opinions
remain divided about whether the events represent an opportunity for the
Palestinian Authority, or its death knell.
Posted By Michael Wahid Hanna Monday, January 17, 2011 - 10:36 AM
The bombing of the Church of the Two Saints in Alexandria following
a New Year's Eve liturgy was widely, and rightly, interpreted as a dangerous
escalation of the ongoing tensions in Egypt between the country's majority
Muslim population and its Coptic minority, the largest such population in the
Arab world. The bombing was followed by a cruder attack by an off-duty
policeman on a group of Copts on board a train in Upper Egypt. While alarming, such events were not
novel. They were preceded last
year by an attack on Coptic Orthodox Christmas Eve against a church in the
Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi that resulted in the deaths of six
parishioners and a Muslim security guard. Approaching the recent attack as a sui generis occurrence, as the Mubarak regime would prefer,
reflects Egypt's convenient historical amnesia about violence and institutionalized
discrimination against Copts. In fact, the roots of the current crisis in Egypt
are much deeper and can be traced back through Egypt's 20th Century
history, the end result of which is
a state of affairs where Copts do not enjoy equal rights as Egyptian citizens.
Posted By Kenan Malik Thursday, July 15, 2010 - 8:18 PM
A frail old man, wearing a black
turban and ankle-length robes, stepped out of an Air France 747 into a chill
February morning. His back hunched, he clutched the arm of a steward as he took
faltering steps down a portable ramp to touch Iranian soil. After 15 years in
exile, Ruhollah Khomeini had come home, the 78-year-old spiritual leader of a
popular revolution that had toppled the shah of Iran and humbled SAVAK, his
American-backed secret police force. Several million people from all across the
country thronged into the capital to welcome the ayatollah, lining the 20-mile
route out to Behesht-Zahra cemetery, where many of the martyrs of the revolution
were buried. "The holy one has come!" they shouted triumphantly. "He is the light
of our lives!" At the cemetery Khomeini prayed and delivered a 30-minute
funeral oration for the dead. Then a boys' chorus sang, "May every drop of
their blood turn to tulips and grow forever. Arise! Arise! Arise!"
In the decade between Khomeini's
return to Tehran and the imposition of his fatwa on Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses -- and it was almost 10
years to the day that the one followed the other -- Islamism mutated from being
a minor irritant to nationalist regimes in Muslim countries into a major threat
to the West. The Rushdie affair, and the fatwa in particular, seemed like a
warning that the seeds of the Iranian revolution were being successfully scattered
across the globe, not least into the heart of the secular West.
Posted By Eyal Press Thursday, May 13, 2010 - 5:01 PM
This article originally appeared in the April 29, 2010 (Volume 57, Number 7) issue of the New York Review of Books and is re-published with permission on the
Middle East Channel.
One evening last
October, several hundred new recruits to the Shimshon Battalion filed into the
vast plaza adjoining the Western Wall in Jerusalem.
At a site normally thronged with worshipers, the soldiers gathered to be sworn
in to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), surrounded by parents and well-wishers
who snapped pictures and recorded the proceedings with handheld video cameras.
One of the videos would soon make news, capturing the moment when, instead of
proudly reciting the oath of loyalty in which military induction ceremonies
traditionally culminate in Israel,
two of the recruits unfurled a banner that left the nature of their loyalties
unclear. "Shimshon Does Not Evacuate Homesh," the banner proclaimed.
Posted By Nadim Rouhana Thursday, April 22, 2010 - 7:47 PM
In the conflict studies courses
I teach, I expose my students to theories that claim state-sanctioned
inequality is a source of perpetual conflict. I know this to be true not only
from my academic research, but from personal experience: I also run a small
research institution in the northern Israeli city of Haifa that focuses on the
status of the Palestinian citizens in Israel and their relationship with the
state. This population, with the silent complicity of the United States, has
long been the target of official state policies of discrimination.
Posted By Ahmed Ali Thursday, April 8, 2010 - 7:55 PM
As the news broke that his cross-sectarian alliance was leading last month's parliamentary election with 91 seats, former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi was seen on television, grinning and receiving well-wishers in his Baghdad headquarters. His supporters took to the streets, jubilantly dancing and exchanging congratulatory embraces. It was, however, a short-lived victory. Since election day, there has been little reason for either the leaders of his coalition, al-Iraqiyya, or the 2,851,823 voters who endorsed the alliance, to celebrate.
Posted By Bassim S. Khoury Tuesday, April 6, 2010 - 3:52 PM
Christiansaround
the world have just finished celebrating the Easter holiday--and thousands did
so by making the annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem
(where the Church
of Holy Sepulchre is one
of Christianity's most revered sites). Yet for many Palestinian Christians who
have attempted to make this journey, ongoing Israeli restrictions on movement
have made this a particularly
discouraging holiday, with many being turned away at Israeli checkpoints in
the West Bank, specifically
in Bethlehem where hundreds demonstrated
in the week leading up to Easter.
COMMENTS (0)
As the news broke that his cross-sectarian alliance was leading last month's parliamentary election with 91 seats, former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi was seen on television, grinning and receiving well-wishers in his Baghdad headquarters. His supporters took to the streets, jubilantly dancing and exchanging congratulatory embraces. It was, however, a short-lived victory. Since election day, there has been little reason for either the leaders of his coalition, al-Iraqiyya, or the 2,851,823 voters who endorsed the alliance, to celebrate.
Read More
