Archive for September 17, 2012
women in Egypt in the Nasser years
A class at the Islamic college for women at Al-Azhar University in Cairo in the 1960s.
Posted on September 17, 2012 by As'ad
Robert Worth: he can see what we all can’t see. He just wrote a revisionist history of Obama’s foreign policy toward the Arab world
“Then came the protests of the past week in the Middle East — a vivid illustration that the United States’ support for greater democracy in the Arab world during the past two years is no guarantee against the incendiary power of Islamist sentime…
Posted on September 17, 2012 by As'ad
Christian sensibilities
“Mr. Sidhom approvingly recalled the uproar among Egyptian Christians that greeted the 2006 film “The Da Vinci Code,” which was seen as an affront to aspects of traditional Christianity and the persona of Jesus. Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and other …
Posted on September 17, 2012 by As'ad
To American politicians: do you think that you are fooling Mulims when you tell them you have abolute freedom of speech in the US?
US officials have been really insulting my intelligence all week with talk of the “freedom of speech” that we have here in the US that Muslims don’t understand. Oh, they do understand. They understand that the US government has made it ille…
Posted on September 17, 2012 by As'ad
Muslims (or some of them) and their enemies
Some Muslims make it so easy for their enemies to provoke them and annoy them. It is not very smart.
Posted on September 17, 2012 by As'ad
complaints
“Others said that the outpouring of outrage against the video had built up over a long period of perceived denigrations of Muslims and their faith by the United States or its military, which are detailed extensively in the Arab news media: the invas…
Posted on September 17, 2012 by As'ad
David Kirkpatrick: vomiting Orientalist cliches
“It was also a demand that many of them described with the word “freedom,” although in a context very different from the term’s use in the individualistic West: the right of a community, whether Muslim, Christian or Jewish, to be free from gra…
Posted on September 17, 2012 by As'ad
Erdogan: he may lose, but then again, he may win
“A brilliant political analysis of Turkish dilemma in Syria by Jon Alterman, Middle East program director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (Foreign Policy magazine blog): “And certainly there are ways that Syria could work ou…
Posted on September 17, 2012 by As'ad
The Western Art of Offending Muslims: the Sexual Weapon
My latest blog post for Al-Akhbar English: “The Western Art of Offending Muslims: the Sexual Weapon”.
Posted on September 17, 2012 by As'ad
Students of California speak
“The University of California Student Association, which represents hundreds of thousands of students at all 10 UC campuses, passed a resolution today condemning recent attempts to censure boycott and divestment efforts by Palestinian human rights …
Posted on September 17, 2012 by As'ad
Like everything in Lebanon
I am watching the massive demonstration against the anti-Islam film in Lebanon (the biggest of any protest thus far) that was organized by Hizbullah. I fear that this will quickly turn into a sectarian festival. The champion of Salafite sec…
Posted on September 17, 2012 by As'ad
Brahimi and Hamad bin Jasim
“”Avant d’arriver à Damas, ce jeudi, le médiateur international de la crise syrienne, le diplomate algérien Lakhdar Brahimi, avait eu la veille au Caire une explication de texte houleuse avec le premier ministre qatarien, Hamad Bin Jassem, un …
Posted on September 17, 2012 by As'ad
US complicity in Sabra and Shatila
“By allowing the argument to proceed on Mr. Sharon’s terms, Mr. Draper effectively gave Israel cover to let the Phalange fighters remain in the camps. Fuller details of the massacre began to emerge on Sept. 18, when a young American diplomat, Ryan…
Posted on September 17, 2012 by As'ad
Comparing protests
“Using a variety of sources published during the early phase of the Arab revolutions, I created a spreadheet (image below and larger photo here) with the lowest figure for Arab Spring crowd estimates mentioned in the earliest, independent, Western …
Posted on September 17, 2012 by As'ad