Tag: academia

LAT on Muslim-Jewish campus relations in US

Here’s an interesting article on Muslim-Jewish relations on a Californian university campus by my friend Ashraf Khalil, now sorely missed in Cairo. It’s a shame these activists go for comparisons between Palestine and the Holocaust when there really is no need for comparison — what’s happening in Palestine is bad enough as it is, and it’s happening now.

University profs to protest for judges/detainees on Sunday

University professors — presumably the same ones that have been campaigning for State Security to move off-campus and greater academic freedom — will be holding a demo in front of the High Court in Downtown Cairo at noon on Sunday to call for the release of recent detainees.

Correction: Have received a message saying that the professors are actually heading a delegation to meet with the Prosecutor General. I suppose there is still a good chance they won’t be able to meet him and that it will turn into a demo.

The Empire Attacking Academic Freedom

Today’s Guadian Reports that the Tariq Ramadan saga in the States is ending. Ramadan, swiss citizen and grand-son of Egyptian MB founder Hassan al-Banna, is one of Europe’s most important Islamist thinkers. He won joint- appointments at Notre Dame last spring to teach Islamic studies and religion, conflict, and peace-building. A week before arriving Stateside in August, Homeland Security revoked his visa because of a security threat which was neither disclosed nor clarified.
Despite attempts, including petitions signed by the most prominent of US academics working on the ME, the government chose to say and do nothing.

Yesterday it more or less ended with Ramadan resigning his appointments at Notre Dame.

There is a direct and aggressive assault on thought on behalf of the American Empire. The last MESA presidential address by Laurie Brand at the San Franscisco meeting in November cogently argued such a line. When it is published on the web, it will be posted.

Academics, intellectals, and thinkers have for centuries struggled with various types of governments about their ideas. Now the world’s latest Empire has joined the rather poor company of governments that oppose intellectuals.

After 9/11 there was a moment to deepen understanding, spread lines of inquiry, and increase integration. The Bush administration missed the chance by opting for the conservative more long-term detrimental route. Shame on them.

Some of my Egyptian friends happily rushed to say that “America is not allowing Tariq Ramadan to teach there” so as to flaunt the US mistake last fall. Unfortunately, a fact not revealed in the Egyptian press is that Ramadan has not been allowed into Egypt since 1995.
The sad part is that I bet a high majority of Americans do not even know this is going on. Oh….the empire does not have to disclose what is not happening.

It is ok though – these is an ebb in government-intellectual relations. Academic disciplines will continue. Thankfully, hard-working, serious thinkers that push the envelop would not have it any other way….from where ever they find the space and tolerance to practice their trade.

Keep thinking…it pisses them off.

Another Failed US Policy

The Moroccan Summitt came and went with many arguing that nothing news-worthy happened. Perhaps on the surface they are right. But for the sake of austerity, lets have a look.
While some argue the economic reform before political reform discourse never left, the outcomes of last week’s Moroccan Summit firmly resituated and re-centered this notion.

It is within this context that states concerned about the Arab world’s governance condition converged to discuss the US diplomatic plan to democratize the world (since Iraq has not proven a successful democratizing kick-starter). Yet, what really was on display is another expression of a US policy failure.

Last February Al-Hyatt newspaper leaked the US’s Greater Middle East Initiative (GMEI). Immediately, Arab leaders balked. Most prominently Hosni Mubarak called the plan “delusional” and an invitation to open “the gates of hell” without controlled reform (translation no reform, only adding cosmetic national councils). Yes….when one wants to bring a sudden stop to a idea’s circulation – employ the chaos argument. Other defensive, and not necessarily wrong, arguments Mubarak proffered were the “Islamists will hijack the Democratization process,” reform cannot come from outside, and reforms were already in progress.

By mid-March 2004, the US had not realized that while it could unilaterally launch a war, it was unable to push diplomatic reform plans. Mind you, many warned that the US’s measures had no teeth. Brian Whitaker of the Guardian sniffed the GMEI out for what it was nearly as quickly as it was launched.

This did not stop the US State department undersecretary Marc Grossman from touring the Arab world with his “we don’t want to impose this on anyone but it will be done” message in March 2004. I remember his encounter with then Egyptian FM Ahmad Mahir being more or less hostile. According to the view then democracy, one way or the other, would stop the scourge of terrorism. Terrorism is treated so simplisticly that if you eliminate authoritarianism it will magically disappear (without changing the US’s biased regional policies).

Arab leaders responded launching diplomatic missions to Europe to try and unite Old and New Europe against the US’s imperialistic designs. In large part, they succeeded.

The “initiative” battle was more or less over when Bush convened the G-8 summit in Georgia last June. The GMEI (then changed to Broader ME plan because in German “Greater” implied, ironically, imperialism when it was translated) was blocked by which countries did not show up rather than those in attendance. As al-Jazera.net pointed out then “Egypt and Saudi Arabia, two countries covered by the initiative but alarmed by its potential implications, declined invitations to the summit. Tunisia, which holds the rotating presidency of the Arab League, followed suit. Leaders of Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Jordan, Turkey and Yemen accepted Bush’s invitation.” So four out of 22-Arab league countries attended.

The idea of democratizing the Arab world fades as Iraq unravels. Yet, a summit scheduled to further discuss the outdated plan in Morocco took place on 11 December. The NYT ran a story on 5 December, entitled “US Slows bid to advance Democracy in Arab world,” which forecasted the get-together’s expected agenda and limited outcomes. The NYT also followed up with a piece that correctly argued that Arab leaders used the “excuse” of the Arab-Israeli conflict as the reason not to reform. The story did not, however, choose to focus on how the US plan had changed over the year and became a fairly large diplomatic failure. I am not sure the US could have ever pushed through, morally or practically, such an ambitious reform program. However, the Moroccan summit’s limited outcomes are further evidence that the US is losing influence with its regional allies.

Essentially, democratization efforts are being sidelined in favor of developing the social and economic aspects of the Arab world. Afterall, the Washington Consensus (WC) has been wrongly telling us for years that when the economic reform is done then political reform (read democracy which, in turn, is understood as peace) can commence. The Arab governments, knowing this convention to be wrong, simply have called for the WC to be followed. Indeed, this WC approach is a tremendously popular refrain in a certain party secretariat’s reform plans in Egypt. In the absence of any real desire or ability to oppose the Arab states, US policy shifted towards accommodate the possible.

Anyone who has thought more than a minute about this insanely wrong and simplistic “economic reform leads to democratization” concept (derived from Modernization theory) knows that what took place last week was not a sincere attempt to create a dialogue or space for development. Morocco’s summit was “politics as usual” as the US continues to sure up support for its contradictory regional role as a destabilizing hegemon.

I often argued last spring that when the GMEI successfully ran out of steam, we would see the proliferation of “We tried but Arab Culture resists modern democracy” arguments by US officials and more right-leaning analytical servants of political power. Nevertheless, I was outwitted again.

Instead of blaming the culture….it looks like they instead will simply blame the rulers, who are marketed as pining to stay in power at any cost. But then again, I should of realized….the culture argument is being saved for when the US military leaves Iraq in the midst of its ongoing civil war.

The truth of the matter is….the US never cared if there was democracy or reform. They only care about making sure that the dictators that exist in the region are friendly to the status quo minded establishment in Washington. By treating the Arab states as their vassals rather than actors (with interests and attributes) that can contribute to international political development, the US repeatedly, and likely uncaringly, continues to frame its policies erroneously. Its dialogues between equals (even when the equals aren’t equals) not orders from above that translate into every language and produce more promising, balanced policies.

Pollack panned

The Asia Times’ Kaveh Afrasiabi trashes Kenneth Pollack’s new book, The Persian Puzzle. I haven’t read the book but I’m glad someone’s taking Pollack to task, as his The Threatening Storm was probably the most influential pro-war book in the run-up to to the invasion of Iraq. It was particularly admired by Washington liberals (notably Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, who interviewed Pollack) who now seem to have forgotten that, well, Pollack was completely wrong: there was no serious WMD threat in Iraq. But then again they should have known not to trust any Beltway think tank “expert” who conveniently releases books when their subjects are in the news.

Ignatieff on terrorism

Michael Ignatieff (that philosophical vagabond: he went from Oxford to the London School of Economics to Harvard in just a few years, and from Isaiah Berlin to war, peace and terrorism in even less time) offers an essay on the terrorist as an auteur, and draws the lesson that he is tempting us to join him in infamy:

An accomplished terrorist — al-Zarqawi is undoubtedly one — understands us better than we seem to understand him. He knows that the only chance of forcing an American withdrawal lies in swaying the political will of an electorate that, already divided and unwilling, has sent its sons and daughters there. This is where his images become a weapon of war, a way to test and possibly shatter American will. He is counting on our moral disgust and on the sense of futility that follows disgust. Moral disgust is the first crucial step toward cracking the will to continue the fight.

Now let’s not be sentimental about American virtue or scruple. Democracies can be just as ruthless as authoritarian societies, and Americans haven’t been angels in the war on terror, as the images from Abu Ghraib so plainly show. But the willingness of American democracy to commit atrocity in its defense is limited by moral repugnance, rooted in two centuries of free institutions. This capacity for repugnance sustained the popular protest that eventually took us out of Vietnam. Al-Zarqawi is a cynic about these matters: the truths we hold to be self-evident are the ones he hopes to turn against us. He thinks that we would rather come home than fight evil. Are we truly willing to descend into the vortex to beat him? He has bet that we are not.

But his calculation is that either way, he cannot lose. If we remain, he has also bet — and Abu Ghraib confirms how perceptive he was — that we will help him drive us into ignominious defeat by becoming as barbarous as he is. He is trailing the videos as an ultimate kind of moral temptation, an ethical trap into which he is hoping we will fall. Everything is permitted, he is saying. If you wish to beat me, you will have to join me. Every terrorist hopes, ultimately, that his opponent will become his brother in infamy. If we succumb to this temptation, he will have won. He has, however, forgotten that the choice always remains ours, not his.

(Thanks, Negar!)

Some people have all the historical luck

Anthropologist Marshall Sahlins on the European rediscovery of the Greeks that led to the Renaissance:

What else can one say about it, except that some people have all the historical luck? When Europeans invent their traditions — with the Turks at the gates — it is a genuine cultural rebirth, the beginnings of a progressive future. When other peoples do it, it is a sign of cultural decadence, a factitious recuperation, which can only bring forth the simulacra of a dead past.

From Waiting for Foucault, Still [PDF].

MEF defends Patai

The Middle East Forum yet again confirms its intellectual and moral bankruptcy — and attachment to racist stereotypes of Arabs — by reprinting the foreword of the 2002 edition Raphael Patai’s The Arab Mind, the book that the New Yorker’s Samuel Hersh revealed was behind neo-conservative ideas of the Arab world and may have encouraged the mindset that led to the use of torture at Abu Ghraib.

The foreword was written by Norvell B. De Atkine, a teacher at John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, who declares himself an “incurable Romantic” about the Arab world, as Patai did. These kind of arabists, who fancy themselves as later-day Lawrences of Arabia or Richard Burtons, are really not helpful in these days of mass poverty, social unrest, political extremism and autocratic regimes.

But here is what De Atkine has to say:

It might legitimately be asked how well Patai’s analysis bears up in today’s world. After all, it has been about thirty years since the majority of The Arab Mind was written. The short answer is that it has not aged at all. The analysis is just as prescient and on-the-mark now as on the day it was written. One could even make the argument that, in fact, many of the traits described have become more pronounced. For instance, Islamist demagogues have skillfully used the lure of the Arabic language, so carefully explained by Patai as a powerful motivator, to galvanize the streets in this era of the Islamic revival, in a way even the great orator Abdul Nasser could not achieve.

Wow, those Islamists, they use language and everything! And the idea that they “galvanized the streets” in way that “Nasser could not achieve” is ridiculous when you think of the crowds he could pull. The Islamists — at least those of the Bin Laden type — have a limited appeal in the Arab world, even if they’ve managed (because of their experience in Afghanistan and elsewhere) to be very effective organizations. Otherwise the entire Arab world would be run by Islamists. Furthermore, Islamic revivalism is also not going anywhere. The biggest trend in Arab societies today is the growth of apolitical piousness that manages to integrate with modernity just fine — not a Taliban or Wahhabi-like return to seventh-century Arabia.

The point is not that Patai had nothing worthwhile to say. It is more that whatever his contribution to understanding the Arab world was, it was too tinted by ideology and romanticism to be fully trusted. The Arab world has gone through tremendous changes since Patai first wrote The Arab Mind, which is why it is time to leave scholars with an outdated view of the region (Bernard Lewis, an outstanding Ottoman historian but dubious interpreter of the Arab world, comes to mind here) to the historiographers and intramural academic bickering.