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Smoke billows from burning tires as a Lebanese boy flashes the victory sign at a blocked road leading to the international airport in Beirut (AFP)

The Middle East is in turmoil again. Today West Beirut was “taken over” by Hezbollah. In historical terms the violence in the region has never stopped. Where shall we start? Even in myth Cain killed Abel in the biblical beginning. Hammurabi, the great law giver, was a despot who fought against his foes between and beyond the Tigris and Euphrates, as they fought against him. His law code sits in a museum, a relic of what might have been. But the blood of all the victims in his reign simply seeped into Babylonian mud, the same clay that literalists of the three hegemonic monotheisms claim as the creative design for all humanity. Perhaps it is less tasting the forbidden fruit than thinking we spring from dirt that damns much of eternity’s religious rhetoric as a foil for political self interest. How else can rational beings make sense of the diversity of hate and fighting that constantly armageddons a region reduced to more than an Oriental curiosity since Napoleon aggrandized it into a war over property rights? Arabs vs. Israelis, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iranian nukes, Taliban stonings, Egyptian protests, Yemenis fighting Yemenis, the ongoing rape of Iraq, Kurds vs. Turks, and once again fallen limbs from the cedars of Lebanon. (more…)

A very positive review of Daniel Martin Varisco’s recent book Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid (University of Washington Press 2007), appears in this week’s issue of the prestigious Times Literary Supplement. In his examination of the evidence and logic of Edward Said’s argument in his classic book Orientalism, first published in 1978, Varisco provides an evenhanded exploration of the subject, thirty years on.

Aside from minor quibbles concerning Varisco’s tendency to pun (a common trait, regretfully, among scholars associated with the University of Chicago’s Anthropology Department), Robert Irwin, the Middle East editor of the TLS, praises the book’s careful research and insight. “Varisco’s book,” he concludes, referring in part to its magnificently detailed and informative footnotes, “makes for exhilarating reading.”

Given the tendency of right-wing pundits to claim that contemporary academe has fallen for Said hook, line, and sinker, what is one to make of a thoughtful and sensitive critique from within? Could it be that the field of contemporary Middle East Studies is no more homogenous and globally misguided than the field Said himself identified as “Orientalism”?

Yemeni soldiers patrolling in Saada, 150 miles north of the capital, Sana’a. A Yemeni Member of Parliament accused of being a leader of a deadly three-year uprising by the Zaidi minority in the northern mountains warned in remarks published on Feb. 25 that rebels might widen their campaign. (Photo: Khaled Fazaa / AFP-Getty Images)

Integrated Regional Information Networks, United Nations, May 6, 2007

The I.C.R.C. and Red Crescent came under attack in the Saada region of northern Yemen. (Photo: Afif Sarhan / IRIN)

A humanitarian aid convoy of the International Committee of the Red Cross (I.C.R.C.) and the Yemen Red Crescent Society came under heavy gunfire on May 2 in the governorate of Saada, north Yemen, the I.C.R.C. has reported.

The incident took place in al-Saifi area, 18 kilometers north of Saada city.

Fighting between government forces and followers of rebel leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi in Saada governorate is still going on, causing thousands of people to leave their homes, said aid workers. (more…)

Statue of Saparmurat Niyazov, Turkmenistan’s former president, soon to be removed

by By DAVID L. STERN, The New York Times, May 5, 2008

ALMATY, Kazakhstan — A 246-foot tall, rocket ship-like monument to the late ruler of Turkmenistan, topped with a golden statue of himself that rotates to always face the sun, will be removed from the center of the Turkmen capital, state news media there have reported.

A decision by President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov to move the monument was his latest step in dismantling the personality cult of Saparmurat Niyazov, whose often bizarre decrees turned the isolated, energy-rich country into the punch line of a bad international joke.

The president had already reversed Mr. Niyazov’s order renaming the days of the week and months of the year in honor of himself and his family. He had also ended the bans on opera, ballet and the circus, which Mr. Niyazov had decreed un-Turkmen, and lifted restrictions on the Internet. (more…)

Are you ready for a Muslim robot programmed to pray? Speaking of the transformed life, you can now wind up a robot to do the prayer. Hopefully, it is rust-proof. Youtube has it all.

by Mohammed al-Qiri, Yemen Observer, April 8, 2008

The Grand Mosque of Sana’a is considered to be the oldest in the Islamic world. It was built by order of the Prophet Mohamed (PBUH) in the sixth Hijri year, corresponding to 627 C.E.. It is located in the Bathan garden, between Ghamdan palace and the Malmlamah rock.

Over the course of history, there have been many additions made to the original building. The mosque was extended in the eighth century by the Amawi Khalif al-Walid ibn Abdulmalik (705- 715 C.E.) and at the beginning of the Abasi dynasty in the eighth century C.E., doors were added by Governor Omar ibn Abdulmajeed al-A’dawi, in addition to other overhauls in 745 C.E under his watch. (more…)

المصدر: شريف عرفة

One of the central claims of feminist theory, post Second Sex, is that gender is inevitably a political issue. It would seem that this point has won converts from all sides.

TO BANISH THE “LEVANTINE DUNGHILL” FROM WITHIN: TOWARD A CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING OF ISRAELI ANTI-IRAN PHOBIAS

By Haggai Ram, International Journal of Middle East Studies 40 (2008), 249–268.

Held since 1956, the Eurovision Song Contest is an annual event traditionally dedicated to the eternal themes of love, peace, and harmony. Yet Israelis asked to pick a song for the 2007 contest in Helsinki paid little heed to these themes. Instead, they settled for “Push the Button,” a controversial number by an Israeli punk group called Teapacks; the song is generally understood as a description of life under the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran with its “crazy rulers.” Meanwhile, an Israeli fashion house (Dan Cassidy) commissioned a series of photos at a construction site in southern Tel Aviv that showed a topless model lying in a pit. The project was designed as a warning against the “holocaust” that would follow Iran’s possible nuclear attack on Israel; the pit, as the project’s creative director explained, represented “the mass grave of complacent Tel Aviv residents.” (more…)

The Iraqi Poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab

[Note: This is the 21st in a series of translations of selected letters of the noted Iraqi poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab. For more information on the poet, click here.]

Letter #21

Al-Ma’qil, 9/17/1964

My Brother, Adunis. Dearest Beloved (along with Muhyi al-Din Muhammad). May I be lucky enough to find Muhammad.

O Dearest Friend,

How are you? Correspondence between us has stopped for about nine months now. The two reasons for this are bad luck and my incurable disease. My general health is not bad, but my two paralyzed legs are still the same. My soul is overflowing with poetry, but it is poetry that flows from the fountain of deep pain and dejection, not of delight. Just yesterday, I wrote a poem void of sadness, despair, and pain because our brother, ‘Ali al-Sabti, met with my loved ones in Lebanon and carried joyful news about them to me with a promise that they will send me a letter. (more…)

Battle in Brooklyn | A Principal’s Rise and Fall
Her Dream, Branded as a Threat
By ANDREA ELLIOTT, The New York Times, April 28, 2008

Debbie Almontaser dreamed of starting a public school like no other in New York City. Children of Arab descent would join students of other ethnicities, learning Arabic together. By graduation, they would be fluent in the language and groomed for the country’s elite colleges. They would be ready, in Ms. Almontaser’s words, to become “ambassadors of peace and hope.”

Things have not gone according to plan. Only one-fifth of the 60 students at the Khalil Gibran International Academy are Arab-American. Since the school opened in Brooklyn last fall, children have been suspended for carrying weapons, repeatedly gotten into fights and taunted an Arabic teacher by calling her a “terrorist,” staff members and students said in interviews. (more…)