Rudolph Peters. Crime and Punishment in Islamic Law: Theory and Practice from the Sixteenth to the Twenty-first Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. xi + 219 pp. $30.99 (paper), ISBN 978-0-521-79670-5; $74.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-521-79226-4. In his Crime and Punishment in Islamic Law, Rudolph Peters has provided an excellent, accessible, clearly delineated, […]
Geography Archives: Africa
Countries in the continent of Africa
Venezuela’s Transition to Socialism
In October 2008, I was invited by the World Forum for the Alternatives to a conference in Caracas, Venezuela. This provided me with an opportunity to learn more about a country that has embarked on a path of redistribution under a programme that Venezuela’s President Hugo Cavez Frias now calls “Socialism of the 21st […]
Obama’s Economic Advisors: Will Well-tested Enemies of Africa Prevail?
One of Barack Obama’s leading advisors has done more damage to Africa, its economies and its people than anyone I can think of in world history, including even Cecil John Rhodes. That charge may surprise readers, but hear me out. His name is Paul Volcker, and although he is relatively unknown around the world, the […]
Somalia, the Third Front Revisited
President Bush has oft stated that history will be the rightful judge of his legacy. Some academics, such as John Lewis Gaddis and Fareed Zakaria, have already begun early revisions to the Bush years. But as historians mark the final score, they must not omit a serious examination of the administration’s policies in Somalia, […]
Afghan Resistance Is ‘Terrorist’ under Canadian Law, Khawaja Trial Judge Rules
In the first major prosecution under Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Act, Mohammad Momin Khawaja, a 29-year-old Ottawa-area software developer arrested almost five years ago, was convicted October 29 on five charges of participating in a “terrorist group” and helping to build an explosive device “likely to cause serious bodily harm or death to persons or serious damage […]
“Next Year We’ll Go Back. . .”: The History of Turkish “Guest Workers” in the Federal Republic of Germany
Karin Hunn. “Nächstes Jahr kehren wir zurück. . .”: Die Geschichte der türkischen “Gastarbeiter” in der Bundesrepublik. Moderne Zeit: Neue Forschungen zur Gesellschafts- und Kulturgeschichte des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2005. 598 pp. Tables, bibliography. EUR 46.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-3-89244-945-4. Karin Hunn’s meticulously researched, highly informative, and well-structured study is a […]
Multiplicity at the Heart of Asia: “Chinese Turkestan” in Broad Historical Perspective
James Millward. Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang. New York Columbia University Press, 2007. 352 pp. $41.50 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-13924-3. There are precious few well-written and well-researched books on Central Asia/Eurasia on any topic or period, especially for a non-specialist readership. This magnificent survey history of an important heartland in the region […]
Solidarity Forever?
William Minter, Gail Hovey, and Charles Cobb, Jr., eds. No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists over a Half Century, 1950-2000. Trenton: Africa World Press, 2008. xvii + 248 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, index. $29.95 (paper), ISBN 978-1-59221-575-1. This is a remarkable and often insightful collection of essays and reflections, many of […]
Seized! The 2008 Land Grab for Food and Financial Security
Today’s food and financial crises have, in tandem, triggered a new global land grab. On the one hand, “food insecure” governments that rely on imports to feed their people are snatching up vast areas of farmland abroad for their own offshore food production. On the other hand, food corporations and private investors, hungry for profits […]
Nawal El Saadawi — in Dialogue
Less than a minute in, Nawal El Saadawi, the ideological godmother of Muslim feminists, flouts author interview protocol rather fabulously, by pretending she’s not really doing one. I’m at a sunny breakfast table in Edinburgh on the last day of her UK book tour, to discuss the republication of her seminal 1970s books, but […]
New African Resistance to Global Finance
Far-reaching strategic debate is underway about how to respond to the global financial crisis, and indeed how the North’s problems can be tied into a broader critique of capitalism. The 2008 world financial meltdown has its roots in the neoliberal export-model (dominant in Africa since the Berg Report and onset of structural adjustment during the […]
World’s Labor Federations React to Financial Crisis with Proposals from Re-regulation to Socialism
Labor unions around the world have reacted to the financial crisis and the economic recession with words and actions reflecting their national experience, their political ideology, and their leaderships. Unions and workers have already seen the financial crisis and the growing recession result in the closing of plants and offices, in shorter workweeks, pay cuts, […]
The Global Financial Crisis: Will South Africa Be Unscathed?
For the last several months, headlines about the global financial crisis have regularly made the front pages of international newspapers. Over this period, Europe and the US have come to realise that corporations are facing the worst economic crisis since the 1929 crash. In South Africa, however, articles on the global crisis have tended to […]
The Israeli Regime between the Sea and the River
Ariella Azoulay and Adi Ophir, This Regime Which Is Not One: Occupation and Democracy between the Sea and the River (1967 – ), Resling, 2008. Listen to the Alternative Information Center’s interview with Ariella Azoulay and Adi Ophir about their book This Regime Which Is Not One. First, an anecdote. A couple of weeks ago […]
It’s Our Turn Now: Resistance As If It Really Mattered
Of all the people I interviewed for my book, Inside the Red Zone, the words of one have never left me. In a little farming village 50 miles north of Baghdad, I spoke with a local sheik who described his arrest and detention by the U.S. Army. For two weeks, he and a dozen other […]
Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks
Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks: African Employees in the Making of Colonial Africa. Madison University of Wisconsin Press, 2006. 342 pp. $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-299-21950-5. In the 1970s and 1980s, an edited volume focused entirely on African colonial intermediaries such as interpreters, translators, clerks, and secretaries would not have aroused much interest from historians of […]
Reading When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?
Reading Shlomo Sand‘s book When and How Was the Jewish People Invented? (Resling, 2008), I realized that there are actually several, not all related, arguments and debates within it. In other words, it does not have one thesis that can be accepted or rejected as a whole, but an attempt to address various historical issues […]
Iran: Comprehensive Sustainable Development as Potential Counter-Hegemonic Strategy
The questions regarding variations in social development, economic progress, and political empowerment have produced a voluminous literature over the past century, and because of the complexity of these issues, much important reflection will continue well into the future. In the early 1980s, a United Nations’ Commission coined the term “sustainable development” as a public statement […]
Renouncing Zionism, Reclaiming Humanity
It is about time that Jews spoke out strongly and decisively against Zionism, and the newly announced International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN) is trying to do just that. IJAN is moving towards an “offensive” against Zionism rather than the customary “reactionism,” responding to outrages, which characterizes most solidarity work. This offensive takes two routes: A […]
Israeli Bestseller Breaks National Taboo: Idea of a Jewish People Invented, Says Historian
No one is more surprised than Shlomo Sand that his latest academic work has spent 19 weeks on Israel’s bestseller list — and that success has come to the history professor despite his book challenging Israel’s biggest taboo. Dr. Sand argues that the idea of a Jewish nation — whose need for a safe haven […]
