Monthly Archives: January 2012

Best of the Blogs


Cartoon source: http://www.trafficgenerationcafe.com/blog-website-faceoff/

Bassam Gergi and Mazen Zoabi unroll their guide to the Arabic blogosphere

Open Democracy, 12/30/11

Jadaliyya aims to shape the debate in the west by providing a window into regional scholarship and knowledge. Where others see data points, they see “living communities and dynamic societies.” The site currently publishes posts in both Arabic and English.

Mamfakinch is run by a group of young Moroccan activists who founded the #Feb20 movement calling for broad political, economic and social change. It aims to highlight information often ignored or distorted by official media sources. The site currently publishes posts in French, Arabic and English.

Nawaat, which means ‘the core’, was created to provide a platform for Tunisian bloggers and cyber-activists. It played a critical role in the Tunisian uprising and recognises that the “conquest of freedom is a battle to be fought every day. It currently publishes posts both in French and Arabic. Continue reading Best of the Blogs

A Buick in Kabul


One of the most famous round-the-world journalists of the last century (or any century) was Lowell Thomas, most known for his blockbuster show on “Lawrence of Arabia.” In 1922 Thomas traveled to Afghanistan and visited the Emir Amanullah. A digital archive of 73 photographs from that trip is available online at Harvard University. Here are pictures of Kabul and other parts of Afghanistan from 90 years ago. Several of the photographs show the American Buick that Thomas drove for his visit. If you happen to be old car buff and interested in Afghanistan, this will be a visual feast.


Continue reading A Buick in Kabul

The Islamists are coming, the Islamists are coming


The Arab Spring has morphed into the pundits’ pandering about Islamism. An example, and there are many to choose from in the current political orgy of right-wing rhetoric, is in a New York Times op-ed by John M. Owen IV. It seems that when Muslims elect representatives who are Muslim they must be a new species called “Islamists.” Yes, throughout the Middle East, where the dominant religion happens to be Islam and there happen to be many forms of Islam, there is a strong interest in electing leaders who espouse religious values. In part this is due to decades of dictators who barely gave lip service to Islam and did all in their power to demonize those Muslims who opposed them. But just look at the current GOP field of candidates and tell me that voting on religious values is somehow unique to Muslims. Do read what Owens writes and then my reasons for being critical of this Islamist hunting…

Why Islamism Is Winning
By JOHN M. OWEN IV, The New York Times, January 6, 2012

EGYPT’S final round of parliamentary elections won’t end until next week, but the outcome is becoming clear. The Muslim Brotherhood will most likely win half the lower house of Parliament, and more extreme Islamists will occupy a quarter. Secular parties will be left with just 25 percent of the seats.

Islamism did not cause the Arab Spring. The region’s authoritarian governments had simply failed to deliver on their promises. Though Arab authoritarianism had a good run from the 1950s until the 1980s, economies eventually stagnated, debts mounted and growing, well-educated populations saw the prosperous egalitarian societies they had been promised receding over the horizon, aggrieving virtually everyone, secularists and Islamists alike.

The last few weeks, however, have confirmed that a revolution’s consequences need not follow from its causes. Rather than bringing secular revolutionaries to power, the Arab Spring is producing flowers of a decidedly Islamist hue. More unsettling to many, Islamists are winning fairly: religious parties are placing first in free, open elections in Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt. So why are so many Arabs voting for parties that seem politically regressive to Westerners?

The West’s own history furnishes an answer. From 1820 to 1850, Europe resembled today’s Arab world in two ways. Both regions experienced historic and seemingly contagious rebellions that swept from country to country. And in both cases, frustrated people in many nations with relatively little in common rallied around a single ideology — one not of their own making, but inherited from previous generations of radicals. Continue reading The Islamists are coming, the Islamists are coming

When Yemeni springs stop flowing…


غيول» اليمن تموت استنزافاً

عمر الحيان
المصدر أونلاين – الحياة

January 5, 2012

تعدّ الأنهار، أو الغيول كما يسميها اليمنيون، الشرايين الحيوية للموارد المائية في اليمن، فأرض اليمن هبة الغيول، مثلما مصر هبة النيل. ومنذ آلاف السنين اعتمدت الحضارات اليمنية المتعاقبة على جريان الغيول في الأودية، وعلى ضفافها شيّد الإنسان اليمني حضارته وأقام جنات سبأ ومعين.

ومقارنة بشبه الجزيرة العربية، أضفت الطبيعة الجبلية وكمية المتساقطات والمدرجات الخضراء طوال العام جمالاً وغنى على اليمن، ما جعل الأوروبيين يطلقون عليها لقب الأرض السعيدة. لكن الوضع اليوم مختلف، إذ تربض العاصمة صنعاء فوق حوضها المائي المهدد بالنضوب سنة 2025، وفقاً لدراسة أجراها مشروع إدارة حوض صنعاء، لتصبح أول عاصمة في العالم بلا مياه ربما بحلول سنة 2017.

مدينة صنعاء، الواقعة على ارتفاع 2150 متراً فوق سطح البحر، والمتربعة على قاع منبسط تحيط به الجبال من كل الجهات، كانت قبل أربعين عاماً منبعاً للغيول التي يعتمد عليها السكان في الشرب والزراعة، ولعلّ أشهرها الغيل الأسود الذي ينبع من شمال صنعاء.

تغيّرت ملامح المدينة، واندثرت الأراضي الزراعية تحت مباني الأسمنت المتمددة في كل الاتجاهات، مع ارتفاع عدد سكانها إلى نحو مليون وخمسمائة ألف نسمة، يعتمدون على الآبار الجوفية للحصول على مياه للشرب وللأعمال الإنشائية والصناعية والزراعية. وقد أصبح في سجلات أمانة العاصمة نحو 16 ألف بئر، بعمق بات يتجاوز 1000 متر.

يحكي الحاج حسين علي، من أهالي صنعاء، أنها كانت تعتمد على الغيول والآبار اليدوية التي لا يتجاوز عمقها عشرة أمتار. ويشرح بحسرة كيف جفت آبار صنعاء القديمة بعد «مشروع السائلة»، الذي رصف مجرى السيول وسط العاصمة.

Continue reading When Yemeni springs stop flowing…

Tabsir Redux: With Kitto Illustrating Bible History

As a child I spent many inquisitive hours leafing through the books in my grandmother’s parlor bookcase. One that especially attracted my attention was John Kitto’s An Illustrated History of the Holy Bible (Social Circle, Georgia: E. Nebhut, 1871). Rev. John Kitto, recognized on the title page as author of the London Pictorial Bible, the Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature, ETC, ETC, retells the entire history of the Old and New Testament, from creation to the destruction of Jerusalem. Kitto was born into poverty in 1804 in Plymouth, England and due to an unfortunate accident ate age thirteen became entirely deaf and was forced into the poor house at the age of fifteen. This is quite an inauspicious beginning for a waif who went on to be a respected theological scholar. Through the local humanitarian efforts of several men in Plymouth, Kitto became a lay missionary to Malta and then for three and a half years in Baghdad. “While residing in that city,” writes Alvan Bond in the preface to Kitto’s book, Cairo “was visited by the plague, the terrific ravages of which swept off more than one-half the inhabitants in two months. Amidst this fearful desolation he remained calm and active at his post.” Once back in England he married and produced a travel account and several pictorial histories of the Holy Land. In 1844 the University of Giessen conferred upon him the degree of D.D. His ill health forced him to seek help in the spas of Germany, where he died after a mere half century in 1854. Continue reading Tabsir Redux: With Kitto Illustrating Bible History

Traveling with Ibn Battuta


Tim, left; book, right

The superb travelsmith Tim MacIntosh-Smith has recently published the third volume of his fascinating trip in the footsteps and sailing lanes of the 14th century traveler Ibn Battuta. The book is called Landfalls: On the Edge of Islam with Ibn Battutah and is available in paperback or hardback. If you are looking for new year reading, here is a worthy volume to start with.

Here are some of the accolades:

‘The long-awaited and dazzling conclusion to the Tim Mackintosh-Smith trilogy . . . Again and again, this takes us into fascinating territory: into the company of dervish masters, soothsayers and magicians; towards the old rites of blood sacrifice, with demon ships of the Sea God blazing on the surface of the Indian Ocean; or on a quixotic hunt for a sacred musical instrument possessed by a royal dynasty of African kings. At such times, [Tim and Ibn Battutah] are united in a glow of wonder.’ Barnaby Rogerson, Country Life

‘Landfalls is a beautifully written account of Islamic life and culture in the 21st century . . . [and] a joyous celebration of cultural diversity. Just as Ibn Battutah did 700 years ago, Mackintosh-Smith helps make the alien familiar to his readers.’ Ian Critchley, Sunday Times Continue reading Traveling with Ibn Battuta

Babel: A New Post-Occupation Translation


Tower of Babel artwork in Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna, c. 1500

The beginning of a year that is yet again an apocalyptic venue is as good a time as any to quote from the biblical book of Genesis. Many of the events in Genesis took place in the legendary space that we now call Iraq, a space that the United States military is unoccupying after a prolonged mission that appears to have accomplished more mayhem than a lasting peace (at least in the recent holiday “peace on earth” spirit). Remember the story of the Tower of Babel; well here is my take of a new translation, being as faithful as I dare to the original King James English:

Genesis 11: The Tower of Babel
1 And the whole earth outside the Axis of Evil was of one mind, and of one resolve about the WMD of King Saddam.
2 And it came to pass, as the coalition troops journeyed to the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, but no WMD; and they dwelt there for almost a decade.
3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make bombs, and burn them thoroughly. And they had billions of dollars in weapons for battle, and slime had they in mind for talking about the party of the king.
4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a democracy, and a puppet regime, who will sell us oil that reaches unto the ports of Texas; and let us make us a name to be feared, lest we not have economic hegemony upon the face of the whole earth.
5 And the ones who lorded over came down to see the democracy and the puppet regime, which the children of the founding fathers builded.
6 And the ones who lorded over said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one dangerous religion; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined in their sharia to do.
7 Go to, let us go down, and there stoke their differences, that they may attack each other because of one another’s sectarian speech.
8 So the ones who lorded over scattered them with superior air power from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the democracy.
9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the ones who lorded over did there confound themselves, not knowing what they needed to know about Islam, Iraqi culture or the Arabic language.

A problem in the translation, you say? Continue reading Babel: A New Post-Occupation Translation