Monthly Archives: May 2013

Do We Care?

"Arab Spring", Ethics, Syria, Terrorism Issue


Scene after a massacre in a coastal Syrian village on May 4

Do we care? When the news media report yet another attack on civilians in Syria (or Iraq or Afghanistan or anywhere outside of Boston and New York), do we really care? It is hard to be sympathetic to the picture above without feeling the pain caused by imagining your own child’s body bloodied and lifeless. It is not easy for those of us in the fabled “land of the free” to admit that in war and civil strife everyone is presumed guilty by being in the way of a bomb and only proven innocent as a victim. These are bodies that have stopped growing, faces forever locked into expressions of horror. There can be no rest for these children in the grave for there can be no end to the grief of those who knew them.

But what do we care? It did not happen here. We make sure of that by sending arms to our erstwhile allies and droning anyone abroad who looks like a terrorist. As long as we proclaim our rhetorical support for human dignity, who can blame us? This was the act of a vicious dictator struggling to hold on to absolute power. Asad is Russia’s bastard, not ours. The weapons used to rip apart these childrens’ lives were Cold-War-forged Soviet, not Free World. Thank God, our God of course, there is no “Made in the USA” trademark on any of the bombs used here. But our’s will soon be in play here, as they are in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan and Yemen, and even more children will never be able to play again.

Should we care? We did not know them. There are seven billion of us living and dying on this planet. What does it matter if a few children do not have a chance to live? Perhaps they would die of cancer before their teens or be run over by a car? What if one of these children had grown up to be a violent terrorist and take some of our lives? There are many ways not to look at these dead bodies, not to count them as our own. You can ignore what you see here, quickly click your mouse to escape caring. But tomorrow there will be another picture just like this, perhaps with women or men. Perhaps with soldiers who have little choice but to follow orders or risk their own lives. You need not worry, though, because you will not know any of them, not their names, not the sound of their laughter, not their dreams, not the goodness that shines through in every corner of our globally disconnected world.

So go ahead. Ignore what you see. Thank your God it’s not about you. Life goes on here no matter how many lives end over there. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I have said what I want to say in less than 500. The rest is up to you.

Pew Survey on World’s Muslims

Ethics, Islam: Introduction, Journalism and Media

The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, April 30, 2013

Executive Summary

A new Pew Research Center survey of Muslims around the globe finds that most adherents of the world’s second-largest religion are deeply committed to their faith and want its teachings to shape not only their personal lives but also their societies and politics. In all but a handful of the 39 countries surveyed, a majority of Muslims say that Islam is the one true faith leading to eternal life in heaven and that belief in God is necessary to be a moral person. Many also think that their religious leaders should have at least some influence over political matters. And many express a desire for sharia – traditional Islamic law – to be recognized as the official law of their country.

The percentage of Muslims who say they want sharia to be “the official law of the land” varies widely around the world, from fewer than one-in-ten in Azerbaijan (8%) to near unanimity in Afghanistan (99%). But solid majorities in most of the countries surveyed across the Middle East and North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia favor the establishment of sharia, including 71% of Muslims in Nigeria, 72% in Indonesia, 74% in Egypt and 89% in the Palestinian territories. Continue reading Pew Survey on World’s Muslims →

Bedtime for Bibi

Ethics, Humor and Satire, Israel

Austerity and sequestration are the dismal economic buzzwords of the day. While thousands of airline passengers in the United States waited for late flights due to a lack of air traffic controllers, and while tens of thousands of Israelis protested the latest cutbacks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel had his own solution. He flew to the funeral of Margaret Thatcher last month in a specially fitted plane. There are obvious perks to being a leader, especially a sleepy one. So why not rent a retrofitted El Al superliner to take 75 guests to London for a mere $427,000 from the national treasury. It was not the latest in security secrets that upped the price, but rather a newly installed rest cabin in which a $127,000 bed was installed for his wife and himself for a five hour trip. I am not sure if Bibi has ever watched the Lialda ad that warns a man to consult his physician if he experiences an erection lasting over four hours. No doubt some Israelis feel as though Israel has suffered enough from electoral dysfunction throughout his tenure.

The Killing of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki

Journalism and Media, Obama Administration, Terrorism Issue, Yemen, YouTube Watch


For a brief introduction to a report on the killing of the 16-year old son of Anwar al-Awlaki, check out this brief Youtube video. Here are the details on the video:

Watch the full 50-minute interview with Jeremy Scahill at http://owl.li/klnWN. Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was a 16-year-old boy, born in Colorado, who liked listening to hip-hop and posed as a rapper in pictures posted on Facebook. He was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen two weeks after the Obama administration assassinated his father, the U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, in a separate strike. Abdulrahman’s death is a central part of Jeremy Scahill’s new book, “Dirty Wars: The World Is A Battlefield.” While the Obama administration has defended the killing of Anwar, it has never publicly explained why his son was targeted. Scahill reveals CIA Director John Brennan, Obama’s former senior adviser on counterterrorism and homeland security, suspected that the teenager had been killed “intentionally.” “I understand from a former senior official of the administration who worked on this program at the time, that when it became clear that Abdulrahman al-Awlaki had been killed, that President Obama was furious, and that John Brennan, who at the time was … the guy running all of these operations, that Brennan believed or suspected that it was an intentional hit … against this 16-year-old kid,” Scahill says.

Democracy Now!, is an independent global news hour that airs weekdays on 1,100+ TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Check out our vast news archive and stream live 8-9am ET at http://www.democracynow.org.

Drone Policy in Yemen

"Arab Spring", Anthropology/Sociology, Ethics, Obama Administration, Terrorism Issue, Yemen

For anyone in the NYC region, I will be giving a talk at the COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SEMINAR on KNOWLEDGE, TECHNOLOGY, and SOCIAL SYSTEMS on Wednesday, May 15, 7 pm (at Columbia University’s Faculty House). The title of the talk is: “Drone Strikes in the War on Terror: The Case of Post-Arab-Spring Yemen.” Unmanned drones have been used by the US military against terrorism in many areas of the world. In particular, these drones have become the US military’s weapon of choice in targeting terrorists in Yemen, where strikes quadrupled in 2012 from the previous year. This talk addresses the impact of these strikes on the political context within Yemen and the effectiveness of the strategy in combating Al Qaeda recruitment. The talk builds on a commentary published in the Middle East Muddle blog of the Anthropology News website.

For information on the talk, please contact me directly by email at daniel.m.varisco@hofstra.edu.

Tom Friedman (not Tom Sawyer) Abroad in Yemen

"Arab Spring", Development, Environment, Journalism and Media, Terrorism Issue, Yemen, Zaydi


Background image is Daniel Beard illustration for the 1899 edition of Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer Abroad

The well traveled journalist Thomas Friedman has popped up in Yemen, but apparently he has yet to find out that no one in Yemen drives a Lexus and Yemenis do not grow olive trees. Friedman has won many awards for his hot-air balloon reporting of events in the Middle East. He reminds me of Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer Abroad, where the American boy hero gets a birds-eye view of Egypt and Palestine without ever escaping being mere “innocents abroad.”

Still, a postcard from Yemen via the New York Times op-ed page, by such a renowned journalist deserves a reading. As usual the journalist himself is one of the main attractions, including starting the very first sentence with an “I” to his own presence. I am not a fan of Friedman’s reportage, even when he claims some kind of inside knowledge about a place in the Middle East, but I do appreciate that two very important points are highlighted in his article: Yemen’s water crisis is a greater threat to instability than any political act and Yemen is poised to “have the best chance to start over – now – if they seize it.” I would only add this: if Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and the U.S. do not keep the Yemenis from seizing and sustaining control of their own future.

Like Friedman, I have long known that Yemen is “a country of breathtaking beauty, with wonderful people” and, yes, it has become a “human development disaster.” But I would not explain this disaster away as simply due to “political mismanagement” by a string of military dictators. The United Nations, the World Bank, the United States, Britain, France, The Netherlands, Japan, China and a rather long list of foreign aid donors have pumped millions upon millions of dollars into a system without achieving any sustainable results. Saudi money has bankrolled the Ministry of Education, introducing a conservative Salafi brand of Islam that is overtly political. Yemeni workers have been treated like slum bums by the Saudis and Gulfies who hire and fire them at will. While Friedman is right to stress that the environmental and economic crisis created by the critical shortage of water, especially for domestic use in cities, is the major problem being faced, it is not “just about water” by any means. The heavens and fountains of the deep could open tomorrow and the mix of old and new ideologies (most coming from outside Yemen) would blossom like spring flowers after a desert rain. Continue reading Tom Friedman (not Tom Sawyer) Abroad in Yemen →

Qat, Cosmopolitanism, and Modernity in Sanaa, Yemen

Anthropology/Sociology, Gender and Sexuality, Plants, Qat (Catha edulis), Sanaa, Yemen

Webshaykh’s Note: An article entitled “Qat, Cosmopolitanism, and Modernity in Sana’a, Yemen” has been written by Irene van Oorschot, and published inArabian Humanities, Vol. 1, 2013. Her ethnographic study focuses on urban women in Sanaa. I attach here the beginning paragraphs, but urge readers to read the full article on Arabian Humanities, a new journal dealing with Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula.

The prevalence of qat consumption in Yemen strikes even the most casual of observers. Adolescent and adult men can be seen chewing in shops, taxis, and on the streets, while the many qat vendors in the streets and squares of Sana’a contribute —in the eyes of many tourists— to its quaint charm. While women do not usually chew qat in public places, married women chew qat in the privacy of their own or their female relatives’ houses. Chewing qat is however held to be shameful for unmarried women, a notion which is sometimes explained with reference to the alleged effects qat has on people’s libido. As a (sexual) stimulant, qat has no place in unmarried women’s lives. After all, they are not supposed to have premarital relationships, and as such are “not supposed to chew”. However, among unmarried women of the educated and urban elites, qat chewing is an popular way to spend one’s spare time:

“It is just a way to relax, to unwind, to be away from work, and to be with my friends,” Wafā’, an unmarried woman, told me. “My married sister chews qat, too, and she is even younger [than I am]! So why should I not get to chew qat and relax?” Continue reading Qat, Cosmopolitanism, and Modernity in Sanaa, Yemen →