Author: issandr

Loonies

Via Talking Points Memo:

Surprise, surprise …

“A year from now, I’ll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush.”

Richard Perle
AEI Keynote speech

September 22, 2003

From the same guy who memorably brought us:

“This is total war. If we just let our vision of the world go forth… our children will sing great songs about us years from now.”

The American Brotherhood

The Chicago Tribune ran this interesting article on the Muslim Brotherhood’s US chapter a few days ago. It’s worth reading, if only to see the reach of one of the oldest modern political movements in the Middle East — one that continues to have much influence in its birthplace, Egypt, and far beyond:

Many Muslims believe that the Brotherhood is a noble international movement that supports the true teachings of Islam and unwaveringly defends Muslims who have come under attack around the world, from Chechens to Palestinians to Iraqis. But others view it as an extreme organization that breeds intolerance and militancy.

“They have this idea that Muslims come first, not that humans come first,” says Mustafa Saied, 32, a Floridian who left the U.S. Brotherhood in 1998.

While separation of church and state is a bedrock principle of American democracy, the international Brotherhood preaches that religion and politics cannot be separated and that governments eventually should be Islamic. The group also champions martyrdom and jihad, or holy war, as a means of self-defense and has provided the philosophical underpinnings for Muslim militants worldwide.

Many moderate Muslims in America are uncomfortable with the views preached at mosques influenced by the Brotherhood, scholars say. Those experts point to a 2001 study sponsored by four Muslim advocacy and religious groups that found that only a third of U.S. Muslims attend mosques.

Just a reminder

It’s seems that now it’s official: Iraq had no WMD.

Actually, it’s about the third time someone reports this — I think the last time was the Kay report presented to Congress. It may not be that important in the face of the fait accompli that is the occupation of Iraq, but it’s worth remembering that this war was brought about by either mind-numbing incompetence or dishonesty. It’s also worth remembering that many “apolitical” Middle Eastern experts were flogging this in the run-up to the war. The neo-cons and their allies may have been doing it for their own ends (i.e. they were dishonest) but how about the “liberal hawks,” people like Ken Pollack (remember this?) Should we ignore these people next time they say something? That the Iraq war was fought on false pretexts may not be a big deal to politicians or even voters in the upcoming US election, but it should be a big deal to those people whose job it is to know about the Arab world and countries like Iraq — the academics, the intelligence officers and the others who should have known better.

Egyptian culture in crisis?

Whatever else happened to the Egyptians?The Beirut Review (a literary supplement to the Daily Star) just ran a review I wrote of Galal Amin’s sequel to “Whatever Happened to the Egyptians?” (entitled, creatively, “Whatever Else Happened to the Egyptians?”). Amin is an economics professor at the American University in Cairo, and he analyzes changes in Egyptian society and culture over the last 50 years or so using concepts of social mobility, productivity and globalization. This second book focuses at some length on what Amin considers Egypt’s cultural decline. As you’ll see from the review, I don’t agree that culture in Egypt is in such dire straits as Amin does (I just saw Ahmed El Attar’s play “Mother I want to be a Millionaire” the other night–a dynamic, original piece that comments on almost every aspect of contemporary Arab culture in a series of fluid, visually captivating, overlapping vignettes–and was very impressed), but he makes some valid points about the mediocrity of mass culture and the negative effects of state-subsidized venues for expression.

An announcement and a review

As you can see in the post below, there is a new poster on arabist.net. This website was never meant to be a personal blog, and Ursula Lindsey, who has written about Egypt for various newspapers and magazines, is the first of hopefully many other contributors you will see as the site matures. It is a labor of love and obviously a work in progress that depends largely on how much spare time I have. In the meantime, enjoy Ursula’s posts and do check out her other work, notably over at popmatters.com, where she will be soon be starting a regular column on Cairo. We’ll keep you informed.

Getting back to her review of Galal Amin’s Whatever else happened to the Egyptians, I thought it may interest readers to take a look at my own review of Whatever happened to the Egyptians, Amin’s first book in this series, which was published in the Cairo Times in December 2000. It’s not online, so click below to view the full post.

Continue reading An announcement and a review

“Blaming Saddam for everything”

Jimmy Breslin’s editorial in Newsday is mind-boggling for two reasons: one, that such a great number of Americans seem to think that Saddam was behind the 9/11 attacks despite all the media attention that he is getting since his arrest, and secondly that the role of the Bush administration in spreading that notion is still not seriously attacked. Here’s what one person told Breslin, who was interviewing people near the World Trade Center:

“For me Hussein did it, the other guy, too. These people both is together in Iraq and in the trade center,” Garcia said. “If Saddam don’t do nothing, why he go into a hole? Because he is afraid we catch him for the World Trade Center that he did with bin Laden? The both of them together.”

Saddam has plenty to blamed for in his own country. Perhaps the misguided notion that he was involved in 9/11 will dissipate when he is put on trial and not charged with conspiring in that attack.

New US-funded Arabic language TV station

This has long been rumored, but now seems actually closer to starting: Al Hurra (The Free One) is the name of the forthcoming US-funded Arabic-language TV station. Although based in Virginia, it seems one of its major offices will be in Baghdad. There is considerable irony that this will yet another state-controlled TV station, although if it does as good work as Radio Free Europe this might not be a bad thing.

CIA study says no Arab-Israeli peace until 2020

Haaretz notes a new study by the CIA’s National Intelligence Council posits that no peace is possible until Arafat’s death and perhaps long after that:

The intelligence estimate casts doubt on the likelihood of a full peace settlement materializing in the years before 2020; nonetheless, should an Israel-Palestinian agreement for a “cold peace” win support among a majority of Palestinians, it would constitute the most significant development in the region since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, improve the Arab world’s attitude toward the U.S., and eliminate a pretext used by Arab countries which are reluctant to implement political reforms, the U.S. assessment claims. Israel, the evaluation adds, will not relinquish nuclear weapons it possesses.

Furthermore:

The Middle East section of this global assessment warns about the possibility of a war between Israel and Syria, or some other Arab state. In such a future war, it is possible that unconventional (biological, chemical or even nuclear) weapons could be used, warns the National Intelligence Council. Such a war would eradicate the softening of Arab attitudes toward the U.S., and also derail efforts to revive progress on the Israel-Palestinian peace track. Another rout of an Arab army by the IDF would cause Arab populations to reconsider the viability of their political regimes.

Surely that was the argument about 1967, but even the viability of Arab political regimes was doubted, there was little opposition movements could do about it, particularly while these governments became clients of the US or USSR. I also wonder if the 2020 date is perhaps a reflection of wishful thinking — certainly the current Israeli government does not seem interested in achieving peace and thinks time is on its side (which has been more or less the policy since 1967, since time allows the creation of facts on the ground.)

You can download the full report in pdf here and take a look at reports for other regions at this page.