Monthly Archives: June 2012

Qatar’s Social Divide

"Arab Spring", Development, Qatar


Qatari women as depicted on the main website of the Qatar Chamber of Commerce

Qatar’s social divide: hindering a pathway to the future?

By Michael Stephens, Open Democracy, June 10, 2012

When considering what Qatar might have in common with Arab countries which experienced revolutions following December 2010, one might get easily confused. There was no Arab Spring here, people did not take to the streets in protest. Indeed, most Qataris hold a genuine affection for the Emir, something which cannot be said for many other Arab nations.

It follows then that Qatar must be unaffected by the macro social processes that led to the outbreak of the Arab Spring. For if Qatar did not experience any of the symptoms it surely did not suffer from the illness, right?

Wrong, Qatar, like every Arab country in the world is struggling to deal with a number of social issues,ranging from a youth demographic boom, to political Islam, to inherent tribalism which pervades the public sphere.

Of most importance is the struggle between traditionalism and modernity, between the values of a mostly Bedouin orientated society clashing against western ideas. The struggle that many of the country’s young population go through on a daily basis is painfully obvious, as they attempt to combine the expectations of their families with growing up in a globalised world which their parents fundamentally do not understand.

This social cleavage leads to a society which awkwardly steps into the future, leading the ruler Sheikh Hamad Al Thani to plot a course which combines a mix of modernising polices on one hand with concessions to conservative forces on the other.

In recent years, this process has begun to accelerate. Continue reading Qatar’s Social Divide →

Ansar al-Sharia on the Ropes?

"Arab Spring", Terrorism Issue, Yemen


The news today is that Yemeni government troops and local tribal militia have finally dislodged the ultra-conservative Ansar al-Sharia from their base in the southern towns of Ja’ar and Zinjabar. These cities had been under de facto control of the rebels for over a year, with the military weakened during the long drawn-out political turmoil that eventually led to the removal of Ali Abdullah Salih. According to al-Jazeera, “Since the offensive began, 485 people have been killed, according to an AFP tally combined from different sources. This includes 368 al-Qaeda fighters, 72 soldiers, 26 local armed men and 19 civilians.” Without question this is a major blow to a group that used foreign fighters and was increasingly at odds with local tribes. During their tenure both towns had become virtual ghost towns where a distinctively non-Yemeni form of Islamic law was mandated by force. Details thus far are rather skimpy. but it appears that the remaining individuals of Ansar al-Sharia fled east to al-Shaqra.

The question remains, of course, of whether this is a major blow to Ansar al-Sharia and its affiliated partner al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula or a skirmish. Given the massive external support now being given to the central government, I strongly suspect that this is the beginning of the end for Ansar al-Sharia as a fighting force. It has survived thus far on weapons looted from the army with almost no direct outside support apart from an influx of foreign fighters from Afghanistan and Somalia. The agenda of Ansar al-Sharia, like that of AQAP, has failed to find fertile ground among the bulk of the population with outright antagonism from most tribal leaders. It has flourished primarily due to the weakness of the government over the past year. Continue reading Ansar al-Sharia on the Ropes? →

Tabsir Redux: Mahdi as Hell…

Anthropology/Sociology, CyberOrient, Islamic Sciences, Teaching Resources, Turkey

Has your atlas arrived yet? The New York Times reported yesterday that prominent American scientists and politicians are receiving what purports to be an “Atlas of Creation” from a Turkish media guru self-named Harun Yahya. No, it is not revenge for the “War on Terror.” Nor is a glossy book of patent nonsense, no matter how intelligently designed and styled as “probably the largest and most beautiful creationist challenge yet to Darwin’s theory” much of a challenge. Scientists will recognize it for a “load of crap,” as Kevin Padian, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, impolitely phrased it.

The “War on Terror” has manufactured a whole host of new enemies. But what a strange bedfellow is Charles Darwin, who liberated science from the dogmatic demands of religious apologists like Mahdi Yahya a century and a half ago. Darwin’s approach now summarizes all of modern science, a steady advance in knowledge because no specific idea is ever held sacred. This does not mean that scientists must abandon religion and faith, but it does offer a view of the world in which human reason is not abandoned under the cloak and rhetorical dagger of a supposedly spiritual quest for moral behavior. Continue reading Tabsir Redux: Mahdi as Hell… →

The 8th Voyage of Sindbad: #4

Humor and Satire, Literature, Travel


Sinbad the Sailor by Nadir Quinto (1918-1994), an Italian artist, born in Milan

The Eighth Voyage of Sindbad
bu Mahmoud Abdelaziz

[Webshaykh’s Note: This last semester I taught an Honors Seminar on the Arabian Nights. The last assignment asked students to write the 8th voyage of Sindbad, drawing on what happened in earlier voyages. I will post several of these here for your enjoyment. This is the fourth one I am publishing by Mahmoud Abdelaziz. The third is by Peter Otis. The second is by Marissa Priest. For the first by Taryn Teurfs, click here.]

{Sindbad the Porter said to Sindbad the Sailor, “For God’s sake, pardon me the wrong I did you,” and they continued to enjoy their fellowship and friendship, in all cheer and joy, until there came to them death, the destroyer of delights, sunderer of companies, wrecker of palaces, and builder of tombs (The Seventh Voyage of Sindbad)}.

Angels with black faces descended from the heavens carrying rough haircloth and sat around Sindbad the Sailor in throngs stretching as far as the eye can see. Sindbad’s entire body was paralyzed with fear, including his vocal cords, which he could not get to vibrate in the least in order to make even the slightest utterance. Then the Angel of Death came and sat at his head and said, “Foul soul, come out to the wrath and anger of Allah!” Then his soul divided up in his body and it was dragged out like a skewer is pulled out of wet wool. Sindbad screeched in torment from the excruciating pain of his soul’s inertial desire to remain in his body clinging to this world. Then the Angel took hold of it. When he had grasped it, the other angels did not leave it in his hand even for the twinkling of an eye. They took it and wrapped it in the rough haircloth and a stench came out of it like the worst stench of a corpse on the face of the earth.

Then they took it up and whenever they took it past a company of angels, they asked, “Who is this foul soul?” and the angels with the soul replied, “Sindbad the Sailor, son of Sindbad the revered Imam of Baghdad, father of Sindbad the acclaimed doctor of all the orient—” But before Sindbad’s soul could feel even a modicum of pride, the angels continued, using the worst names by which people used to call him in this world—“slave to his own desires, worshipper of the dunya, the self-indulgent Sindbad the Sailor who had forsaken his family to pursue his own selfish interests.” Upon hearing his own atrocities and misdeeds, Sindbad’s soul began weeping with guilt and regret. The angels brought him to the lowest heaven and asked for the gate to be opened for him. It did not open. As verse forty of chapter seven of the Holy Qur’an, the Divine Guidance for mankind, reads:

To those who reject Our signs and treat them with arrogance,
No opening will there be of the gates of heaven,
Nor will they enter the garden,
Until the camel can pass through the eye of the needle:
Such is Our reward for those in sin.

Continue reading The 8th Voyage of Sindbad: #4 →

Meanwhile in Socotra

"Arab Spring", Environment, Yemen


The famous dragons blood tree; Photo by Valerio Pandolfo

Revolution in Socotra: A Perspective from Yemen’s Periphery
by Nathalie Peutz, Middle East Report #263, Summer 2012.

At the beginning of 2012, as Egyptians and Syrians marked the second year of their revolts, protesters also took to the streets of Hadiboh, the tumbledown capital of Yemen’s Socotra archipelago (pop. approx. 50,000). Like demonstrators elsewhere, the Socotrans were calling for both local administrative change and national political reform. While the Socotran protests, occurring since March 2011, were small, they were no less significant than the more spectacular rallies in the epicenters of Arab revolution. Indeed, the spread of revolution to Socotra, the largest and most populated of the archipelago’s four islands, shows the extent to which the events of 2011 have resonated even at the very margins of the Arab world. Moreover, it demonstrates how socially and culturally empowering these events have been for a people who have long been politically subjugated, economically marginalized and, unlike many in mainland Yemen, unarmed.

For if revolution has reached Socotra, as many young enthusiasts in Hadiboh would claim, it is manifest not merely in the biweekly gatherings of male protesters marching through the dusty market to the familiar slogan, “The people want the fall of the regime.” It is evident also in the way that Socotrans have begun to speak openly and forcefully about their preferences for Socotra’s political future. And it was measurable in the islands’ largest cultural event, a five-day festival during which nine Socotran wordsmiths vied for the title of “poet of the year.” Now in its fourth year, the festival, which began on the eve of 2012, featured poem after poem, in the islanders’ native Suqutri tongue, reflecting on the Arab revolts, the turmoil on the mainland and the fate of the archipelago. Where political discontent long found expression in ruminations on a pastoral past, today it is articulated in contending verses on the prospects for Socotran sovereignty.

For the full article, click here to read it on the MERIP website.

Horses of Early Arabia

Animals, Archaeology and Antiquities, Saudi Arabia


The largest, and to date the most significant, of more than 300 artifacts found so far at al-Magar is a sculpture fragment whose head, muzzle, nostrils, arched neck, shoulder, withers and overall proportions resemble those of a horse, though it may represent an ass, an onager or a hybrid. Eighty-six centimeters (34″) long, 18 centimeters (7″) thick and weighing more than 135 kilograms (300 lbs), it is provisionally dated to about 7000 bce.

The latest issue of Saudi ARAMCO World (May/June 2012) has a fascinating article about archaeological finds at the site of Magar in southwestern Saudi Arabia. It features an early sculpture of a horse, among other artifacts.

The 8th Voyage of Sinbad: #3

Humor and Satire, Literature, Orientalist Art, Travel


Sinbad the Sailor by Nadir Quinto (1918-1994), an Italian artist, born in Milan

[Webshaykh’s Note: This last semester I taught an Honors Seminar on the Arabian Nights. The last assignment asked students to write the 8th voyage of Sindbad, drawing on what happened in earlier voyages. I will post several of these here for your enjoyment. This is the third one I am publishing by Peter Otis. The second is by Marissa Priest. For the first by Taryn Teurfs, click here.]


The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad: The Isle of the Lost Civilization
by Peter Otis

And Scheherazade said, it is recounted, your grace, of how Sinbad the Sailor invited the Porter back the following evening, and told the tale of his magnificent eighth voyage:

My friends, I tell you that in turbulent times, the fortunes of all men and creatures in God’s creation are scattered like sand in a torrent, and that fate holds unpredictable odds in store. Truly, as I recounted to you yesterday evening, my seventh voyage was the final of my audacious journeys on the vast and distant seas on the outer rim of the world. Of course, you know from my voyages of my immeasurable wealth. However, you know not that the vast fortunes that surround you this evening would not be, were it not for my eighth and final voyage! On my journey back to Baghdad from my seventh adventure, I was wracked with a deep sense of despair to learn in Basra that civil war had erupted between the Caliph’s two sons, whose greedy rage had resulted in the devastation of my beloved Baghdad! Surely, my friends, the destruction is all too fresh in your minds as well. I returned in horror to find Baghdad in ruin, and to little surprise my own wealth stored at my palace had been plundered amid the turmoil. What precious wealth I had brought back with me from my seventh voyage I gave to the city’s keepers to finance reconstruction and the care of invalids. Give alms according to God’s will, for truly, only God in his goodness is eternal, while the aspirations of man and his pride are reduced to dust! Heartbroken to see the object of my desire—my beloved city—ruptured in such a way, I returned to my true home the sea, and left Baghdad almost as quickly as I had returned to her. Continue reading The 8th Voyage of Sinbad: #3 →