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: Middle East
India: Fighting Fascism
Last month, the New Delhi-based human rights group Anhad, along with some 90 other organizations, held a two-day national convention on the theme, ‘Countering Fascism: Defending the Idea of India’. It was attended by scores of social activists from various parts of the country. Predictably, it received hardly any mention in the so-called ‘mainstream’ […]
The Rise and Fall of the Arab Middle Class in the Middle East: Between Modernization, Nationalism, and Revolution
Keith David Watenpaugh. Being Modern in the Middle East: Revolution, Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Arab Middle Class. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. xi + 325 pp. $37.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-691-12169-7. One of the great modern landmarks of the city of Aleppo is the Baron Hotel. The Mazloumians, a wealthy Armenian family of […]
An Open Letter to President-elect Barack Hussein Obama
Dear President-elect Obama, Members of the American Iranian Friendship Committee (AIFC) congratulate you on your glorious victory that was felt and admired especially by common men, women and children of all races and economic status in the United States and around the world. Tuesday, November 4, 2008 is a date that will live in […]
Election of Barack Obama: The People’s Victory? Or the Elite’s?
Barack Obama has won. What happens when what appears to be the people’s victory is also the victory of the economic elite? Where is that convergence of interests located? And how long can such a coincidence of interest last? What are the tasks of the left and the social movements in the face of the […]
“Special” New York Times Blankets Cities with Message of Hope and Change: Thousands of Volunteers behind Elaborate Operation
PDF: www.nytimes-se.com/pdf Ongoing video releases: www.nytimes-se.com/video The New York Times responds: cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/pranksters-spoof-the-times/ Hundreds of independent writers, artists, and activists are claiming credit for an elaborate project, 6 months in the making, in which 1.2 million copies of a “special edition” of the New York Times were distributed in cities across the U.S. by thousands of […]
Enemy Alien: The Fight to Free Palestinian Activist Farouk Abdel-Muhti
Enemy Alien: The Fight to Free Palestinian Activist Farouk Abdel-Muhti Dir. Konrad Aderer | 70 mins | documentary work-in-progress Discussion with Konrad Aderer, Sharin Chiorazzo, Jane Guskin, Shane Kadidal, Joanne Macri, David Wilson Wednesday, November 12 7:00 pmThe Brecht Forum 451 West Street New York, NY (between Bank and Bethune Streets; take the A/C/E/L to […]
I Hope
Will Obama prove, at the helm of government, that his threats of war against Iran and Pakistan were only words, broadcast to seduce difficult ears during the election campaign? I hope. And I hope he will not fall, even for a moment, for the temptation to repeat the exploits of George W. Bush. After all, […]
Obama Picks Bill Ayers as Secretary of Defense!
(PU) Barack Hussein Obama, newly elected President of the People’s Republic of America, today announced his choice of William Ayers, a former leader of the 70s militant antiwar group, the Weather Underground, for U.S. Secretary of Defense. The appointment allays concerns of many peace movement progressives who had feared that Defense Secretary Robert Gates, overseer […]
Dikmen Valley: A Story of Resistance from Turkey
Dikmen Valley in Ankara, Turkey was originally Dikmen Village. The village goes back to the 1950s, but it wasn’t settled in the form of a squatter [gecekondu in Turkish] neighborhood till around 1968. The valley has five etapes. The first and second etapes were settled the earliest while the fourth and fifth etapes were […]
Desperate Need for Serious Change in Transatlantic Foreign Policy
Almost eight years of the Bush/Cheney Administration have plunged the world into a deep political, economic, and moral crisis, whose overcoming will probably require decades if a sharp turn does not immediately take place. That is why the newly elected Obama/Biden Administration must bring about serious change. After having lost the popular national vote against […]
Israel’s Man of the Year Eluded Justice
After reading about Israel’s most recent Man of the Year Award recipient, I did not know whether to laugh or cry. It looks like the judging panel at the Israeli television station Channel 2 is in need of a public relations consultant. The recipient of this year’s award was Meir Dagan, the Chief of Mossad, […]
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 […]
Travesty of Tolerance on Display: Museum Lays Waste to Ancient Muslim Cemetery
Israel seems to have little time for the irony that a modern Jewish shrine to “coexistence and tolerance” is being built on the graves of the city’s Muslim forefathers. The Israeli Supreme Court’s approval last week of the building of a Jewish Museum of Tolerance over an ancient Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem is the latest […]
Obama’s Victory: A Sociological Prayer
I’m a sociology teacher, a member of the Pacific Green Party of Oregon, an almost-pacifist, and a libertarian socialist. My intellectual heroes are people like Karl Marx, Thorstein Veblen, C. Wright Mills, and Noam Chomsky. I believe democracy is much more in the streets than in the halls, and that Mohandas K. Gandhi and Martin […]
Humanity’s Highest Need?The Politics of Art and Culture in Syria
miriam cooke. Dissident Syria: Making Oppositional Arts Official. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. vii + 208 pp. Illustrations. $74.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8223-4016-4; $21.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8223-4035-5. To live and do research in Syria is to confront contradictions at almost every turn. In a repressive state, artists not only create works that are […]
The Unfolding Crisis and the Relevance of Marx
Some of you may have been present at our meeting in this building in May this year, when I recalled what I had said to Lucien Goldman in Paris a few months before the historic French May 1968. In contrast to the then prevailing perspective of “organized capitalism,” which was supposed to have successfully left […]
Better Late Than Never: Modern Turkey Remembers Its Past
Esra Özyürek, ed. The Politics of Public Memory in Turkey. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2006. x + 225 pp. $24.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8156-3131-6. The Politics of Public Memory in Turkey, edited by Esra Özyürek, an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California San Diego, has its origins in a […]
The End of the Libertarian Bubble
The libertarian moment in U.S. bourgeois politics is quickly passing today. It was burning bright in the spring, when Ron Paul banners were hung from every overpass. Soon his books will be remaindered. Libertarians have nothing to say that will get a hearing in a period of crisis. Libertarianism can rationalize the economic success or […]
On Racism and Coexistence in Acre
The recent incidents in Acre appeared to be spontaneous acts of racism and a threat to the “coexistence” between Arabs and Jews in the city. But that is only if we take seriously the idealist notion of “coexistence” that some said prevailed in Acre. If not, we are left with a reality where two […]
