Month: February 2007

Link dump 09/02/07

★ Ian Buruma does Tariq Ramadan, lets him get away with describing Hassan al-Banna as a “moderate” closer to Mohammed Abdou then SAyyid Qutb, but picks up an interesting anti-globalization facet to Ramadan’s thinking:

“Western Muslims and the Future of Islam” throws some light on Ramadan’s idea of “Islamic socialism,” an ideology, combining religious principles with anticapitalist, anti-imperialist politics, that goes back to the time of the Russian Revolution. (Libya’s strongman, Muammar el-Qaddafi, is one who claims to rule according to these principles.) The murderous tyranny to be resisted, in Ramadan’s book, is “the northern model of development,” which means that “a billion and a half human beings live in comfort because almost four billion do not have the means to survive.” For Ramadan, global capitalism, promoted by such institutions as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, is the “abode of war” (alam al-harb), for “when faced with neoliberal economics, the message of Islam offers no way out but resistance.”

To be a sworn enemy of capitalism does not mean you are a communist, a fascist, a religious fundamentalist or indeed an anti-Semite, but it is something these otherwise disparate groups frequently have in common. Advocating a revolt against Western materialism on the basis of superior spiritual values is an old project, which has had many fathers but has never been particularly friendly to liberal democracy. Ramadan’s brand of Islamic socialism, promoted with such media-friendly vitality, in conferences, interviews, books, talks, sermons and lectures, has won him a variety of new friends, especially in Britain and France.

★ WaPo profiles anti-Wahhabi Saudi thinker Khaled al-Dakhil.

★ Amira Hass makes lists of the prohibitions faced by Palestinians.

★ In Britney vs. The Terrorists, Robert Reilly highlights, once again, the disaster of US public diplomacy and the decision to downgrade the serious reporting of Voice of America in favor of the MTV-style content of Radio Sawa.

★ The Forward reports on Hillary Clinton’s speech to AIPAC, in which she made attendees squirm in their seat by calling for tough engagement with Syria and Iran. But read her actual speech and you can tell she is a radical on Iran, not a moderate, and called it a threat to virtually everything in the world. She also says this:

Israel is a beacon of what’s right in a neighborhood overshadowed by the wrongs of radicalism, extremism, despotism and terrorism. We need only look to one of Israel’s greatest threats: namely, Iran. Make no mistake, Iran poses a threat not only to Israel, but to the entire Middle East and beyond, including the U.S. I don’t need to remind this group that about a month ago the Iranian government hosted a conference in Tehran whose sole purpose was to deny the Holocaust.

That’s funny. Iran is a threat because it might one day get nuclear weapons and its politicians engage in hate speech. Israel has nuclear weapons (tons), attacks and threatens countries around it all the time, and its politicians also regularly engage in hate speech.

★ The Economist on Russia’s re-emergence as a player on the regional scene. The late Yevgeni Primakov (probably among the greatest Arabist spy/diplomat of the 20th century) would be proud. And it’s a bit scary to think this is probably a positive development.

★ Eric Fair, a former US interrogator/torturer in Iraq, writes an op-ed in the WaPo about what he did.

★ A poll finds that despite government agit-prop, Arabs are not that worried about Iran:

WASHINGTON, Feb 8 (IPS) – U.S. and Israeli hopes of forging of a Sunni Arab alliance to contain Iran and its regional allies may be misplaced, at least at the popular level, according to a major survey of six Arab countries released here Thursday.

The face-to-face survey of a total of 3,850 respondents in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates found that close to 80 percent of Arabs consider Israel and the United States the two biggest external threats to their security. Only six percent cited Iran.

★ A new blog on military issues, counter-insurgency in the Middle East and more: Abu Muqawama.

★ A report on Hizbullah’s identity crisis by Amal Saad-Ghorayeb and Marina Ottaway.

★ A rare op-ed in support of Jimmy Carter by former US Congressman Paul Findley, himself the victim of AIPAC campaigns in the 1980s.

★ May Yamani is uncharacteristically outspoken about the “moderate mainstream” monicker in a piece titled These moderates are in fact fanatics, torturers and killers.

★ Independent Jewish Voices is a new British group protesting the takeover of mainstream Jewish organizations by rabid pro-Israel right-wingers and their campaign against British Jews who are critical of Israel. This week, they took out ads in several prominent newspapers and had a series of op-eds in the Guardian. Of course Israelis are not happy about this.

★ Speaking of Jewish groups silencing Jews they don’t agree with, our friend Joel Beinin had an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle describing how a talk he was scheduled to give was cancelled after pressure by local California groups.

★ If you follow Fr
ench intellectual politics, last week’s endorsement of Nicolas Sarkozy by former Maoist-turned-neocon André Glucksmann has caused some reflection on the rise of French neo-conservatism, notably among prominent once-lefty Jewish intellectuals. Worth looking at, though, is how L’Arche, the main French Jewish publication, has over the years morphed into the Gallic version of Commentary.

Palestinian brothers at war

Great, sad story from Gaza by the excellent Sarah El Deeb:

JEBALIYA REFUGEE CAMP Gaza Strip–The two al-Ottol brothers are recovering in separate rooms of their house, wounded in the latest round of fighting between rival Hamas and Fatah militias one on each side.

Hamada al-Ottol, 19, was wounded while fighting for Fatah, the movement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. He wants revenge. His brother, Tahseen, 22, of Hamas, hopes a summit underway in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, can stop the internal conflict before the rift between them becomes irreconcilable.

Do what is necessary

Isn’t it interesting that the MB, in an editorial on its English-language website, appeals to the Bush administration to do something about a group of senior members being sent to a military tribunal:

In astonishing step that reflects the ruthless nature of the Egyptian regime; the Military ruler of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, ordered Khayrat el Shater, Second Deputy Chairman of the Muslim Brotherhood, and a number of its leaders to be tried by a military tribunal!

It is a sad day for freedom and human rights when patriotic civilians who did not commit any crimes are being tried in a military tribunal only because of their political views and for daring to oppose a corrupt government.

It is time now for President Bush to decide either to go with freedom and democracy as a principle claimed by his administration and lectured to the egyptians by Mrs. Rice, his Secretary of state, or to continue supporting despotic regimes by turning a blind eye to their oppressive actions. In either case the consequences are expected to go beyond Egypt leaving ample room for all extremists to reinforce their claims against democratic reformers who renounce violence like MB.

They’ve been reading the Washington Post too much. Also checked the Arabic site, no similar argument that I can see. (And by the way, when will people stop reporting that the Ikhwan sites have been shut down? It’s just not true.)

More seriously, MEMRI / FrontPageMag (my Ziotrolls’ favorite publication, as we’ve established) has a media analysis of the regime vs. the ikhwan that’s actually fairly thorough in covering the mainstream media debate, albeit with the usual slant. And this Jerusalem Post writer really, really cares about Egypt:

Egypt’s security is Israel’s security.

If the Brotherhood does come to power, it might spell disaster for all progressive-minded Egyptians, for Egypt’s allies, and for Israel. In spite of the regrettable but inevitable restrictions on human rights that Mubarak’s crackdown entails, perhaps the West would be wise to let the Egyptian rais do what is necessary, without undue criticism.

The article is titled “Long live Egypt’s ‘rais’.” Nice to see Israelis care so much about “progressive-minded Egyptians.”
Back to the issue of the MB: if Khairat al-Shatir (#3 of the group, alleged key financier) and his pals are sent to a military court, they are going to be convicted. Military courts don’t find people not guilty. And we already know from past experience that putting mid-level and senior cadres in jail might be a setback, it won’t shut down the organization, which has plenty of able and willing people who can step in.

Mufti not against women presidents after all?

I got hold of a press release from Dar al-Iftaa saying that the Mufti was not in fact against women being president. The fatwa in fact referred only to barring women from being caliphs — which is hardly relevant to modern politics. Or at least, if the Caliphate is ever restored, whether women can hold the position will be the least of our concerns. The fatwa obviously plays on the distinction between Sultans and Caliphs — on a related note, I highly recommend Fatima Mernissi’s The Forgotten Queens of Islam (in the original French Sultanes oubliées) on the history of Muslim sultanas.

Since we were fairly negative about the earlier reports of the Mufti’s fatwa, I’m reproducing the statement for Dar al-Iftaa below, after the jump.

[Thanks, Paul]
Update: Apparently the Mufti considers the Organization of the Islamic Conference to be the contemporary equivalent of the Caliphate, as opposed to the Salafi/MB “imperial” vision of a modern Caliphate. It’s an interesting argument, within the confines of Islamic (ist?) discourse.

Continue reading Mufti not against women presidents after all?

Azimi on Egyptian bloggers

Our friend Negar Azimi has a a very nice, long piece in The Nation about Egyptian bloggers and the recent video torture scandals. It’s all good stuff, but I’ll highlight the part about our own Hossam:

But how threatening, we may wonder, can a handful of bloggers be–and how much of a threat could they be to the twenty-five-year-and-running rule of a leader like Mubarak? After all, many of them are simply tech-savvy twentysomethings recently out of university. And besides, how big a role can bloggers play in a country in which they number just over 3,000–a mere fraction of whom write political content?

Hossam el-Hamalawy runs arabawy.org, a blog that has been central to documenting what he has dubbed Egypt’s very own Videogate. “We’re exploding,” he tells me. “The government didn’t see it coming, and it’s creating a domino effect. You read bloggers in Tunisia, Yemen, Libya, and they take pride in the Egyptian gains. Once you get this far, there’s no going back. You can’t take the plug out.” As recently as January 2005, there were only about thirty blogs in the country. “My dream is that one day there will be a blogger with a digital camera in every street in Egypt.”

Exploding or not, this sort of electronic activism defies facile definitions. No longer simply an upper- or middle-class phenomenon, blogging has become an outlet for expression among a broad spectrum of people. Some bloggers post exclusively from Internet cafes (those without PCs), some are without a university education, many are women. Today there is a blogger in every urban center in Egypt–from the stark Sinai Peninsula to Mansoura in the Nile Delta. Most write in Arabic. Recently one blogger went so far as to set up a site devoted to bringing attention to police brutalities taking place in the Sinai following bouts of terrorism (hundreds, even thousands of Bedouins have been disappeared by state security, often locked away and abused with impunity). Other blogs broach the sensitive subject of how the country’s religious minorities are treated–particularly the Copts, who make up Egypt’s Christian community. Blogs have also been a crucial space for engaging such uncomfortable topics as sexuality, race and beyond. Suddenly, the (improvised) Arabic word mudawena, signifying a blogger, has found its way into the lexicon.

Read it all. One small criticism: quoted stats about print media are not accurate, independent newspapers now play a much bigger role and state press figures are believed to be over-inflated. I don’t think we should underestimate the importance of the feedback loop between the new dailies with websites such as al-Masri al-Youm and bloggers.

Oren on Iran

Since we discussed the Israeli historian Michael Oren recently, readers might be interested to read his recent scare-mongering piece (along with Yossi Halevi) about Iran in the New Republic, which is not without echoes of Bernard Lewis’ alarmism about Shia millennialism and the neocon pre-emption doctrine. It notably repeats the claims that Arab states will all feel compelled to arm themselves with a bomb, confusing the recent interest in acquiring civilian nuclear technology with the military stuff. Full piece below after the jump — it has a lot of interviews with Israeli defense analysts and provides some insight into their thinking, even if it is rather breathless in constructing Doomsday scenarios about region-wide war.

Also see Kafr al-Hanadwa’s take on a NPR program discussing the Oren’s book, along with Rami Khouri and Fouad Ajami.

Update: More Israeli alarmism by Barry Rubin and a call to Jewish organizations to get tough on Iran.
Continue reading Oren on Iran

Hmmmm Moroccan honey

The NYT discovers Moroccan honey. Skip the boilerplate travel-writing imagery and take heed, Moroccan honey is great. Especially if spread on a buttered gheif (the much better Moroccan equivalent of Egyptian feteer.)

Well, that’s my culinary nationalism post of the day done. Also, one of the most beautiful books you could ever read on Fez, or on Sufi Islam for that matter, is Titus Burckhardt’s amazing Fez: City of Islam. Below: detail from a public fountain in Fez.

Dsc 0340