All posts by dvarisco

Père Etienne Renaud: In Memoriam, 1

Ethics, Islam and Christianity, Scholars, Tunisia, Yemen

Just a few days ago I learned that a man I respected more than just about anyone else I have ever met had passed away on June 20, 2013 at the age of 76. This was Père Etienne Renaud, a man of the cloth I met in Yemen in 1978 and was able to visit in Rome in 1983. Etienne was a remarkable man, a missionary of the White Fathers (Pères blancs) teaching electrical engineering in Sanaa and ministering to the expatriate Christians in the community at the time. He was loved by all, including the many Yemeni Muslims he met, because he loved all.

His interest in Islam had evolved while serving in the French army in Algeria, after which he decided to enter the priesthood. With Arabic training in Damascus in 1968, he went to Tunisia the next year and on to Yemen in 1972. In 1980 he returned to Rome and taught Arabic at the recently formed Pontifico Instituto di Studi Arabi e d’Islamista. In 1986 he became Superior General of the order and served for six years. He visited many African countries where the White Fathers worked and spent the last several years in Marseille encouraging dialogue between Christians and Muslims.

Père Etienne was no ordinary missionary. He saw his mission as one of living his faith rather than trying to convert for conversion’s sake. In a poignant article, which I will post here in a follow-up, he noted that he was a Christian because he was born into Christianity. Although he accepted the Christian message as truth for him, he would not put himself in a position to judge another’s faith. His goal, as laudable as they come, was to be true to himself and allow others to be true to themselves, to see dialogue as an encounter that did not have to result in a zero-sum monologue. Continue reading Père Etienne Renaud: In Memoriam, 1 →

War is still hell

"Arab Spring", Afghanistan, Art, Bible and Holy Land, Egypt, Iraq, Palestine, Syria, Terrorism Issue


The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch, ca 1500

War is hell and it was long before General Sherman figured that out. It helps to remember exactly what “hell” means. In 1741 the Protestant firebrand Jonathan Edwards gave a rather clear picture:

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince…

Over five centuries ago, the painter Hieronymus Bosch gave an artistic rendering, as noted above. Had he known about poison gas, I suspect we would have seen a few canisters in his registers. In the hell that is war, a Dantean perspective would place the various poison gasses near the bottom level. It now seems that the United States is certain that Syria’s Assad has used poison gas, crossing the rhetorical line drawn by President Obama awhile ago. Foreign Policy is reporting new old evidence that our government is not so much concerned about the use of such poison gas as it is in who are the intended victims. We apparently knew in advance that Saddam would use such gas when we gave him logistical support to fight off the Iranians, whose country he had ruthlessly invaded. And, of course, we did nothing when he gassed the Kurds in Halabja.

The truth is that war has always been hell, since the first historical descriptions. In reality it is never the kind of supposedly heroic “give ‘m hell” bravado of John Wayne or Rambo. Gore trumps the vanity of glory. The problem is that hell is eternally present and not in some far-off ethereal realm. A further problem is that hell has no suitable escape hatch. Thus thousands have died in Syria and many more will be killed on all sides, no matter what the United States does next. The same goes for Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine and now, it seems, Egypt. Even those who think that by killing someone else because they are … (fill in the sectarian blank) they will go to an imagined heaven only deserve to end up in the hell they create for their victims.

Those of us far away from the fighting, only within Youtube range, may forget how close to hell we really are. The stench of dead bodies and the devastating odorless poison that snuffs out lives lightning quick are not part of the air we currently breathe, but we should not forget that hell is not a place but an attitude, an attitude that kills. It is also an attitude for which there is no real immunity in avoiding its reality. If only we could say “to hell with war,” but then that would be a tautology.

Death at the mosque

"Arab Spring", Egypt, Ethics, Iraq, Lebanon, Shi'a


Blast at al-Taqwa Mosque in Tripoli, Lebanon

The mosque in Islam is known as a place of prayer. Since the very inception of Islam it has also been a place of death, indeed murder. It is reported that Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, was killed as he was praying in the Great Mosque of Kufa in Iraq by a fellow Muslim. Today in Tripoli, Lebanon, explosions at two mosques killed at least 27 people and injured hundreds. One of the blasts occurred near the al-Taqwa Mosque, where a Salafi preacher was praying, in the Abu Ali Square as those attending were leaving following Friday afternoon prayers. Another blast hit the al-Salam Mosque in the center of Tripoli. The reason? Yet another repeat of the intra-Islamophobia of one group of Muslims politically opposed to another group of Muslims.

When Ali was hit with a poisonous sword blade, he urged his sons and followers not to seek revenge on the Kharijites, the group to which the man who attacked him belonged, but to the man himself. But Ali was a better man than his followers. It seems that the attack on the Sunni mosque was tit-for-tat for the blast earlier this month in southern Beirut in the stronghold of Hezbullah. And the cycle continues, not only here, but in Iraq where it is almost a daily occurrence this summer.

There is a twisted logic here, the notion that someone who is clearly of the same religion is also someone that can be mercilessly slaughtered at prayer. Is there no one who will pray for peace and who will set aside political partisanship to work for peace? Continue reading Death at the mosque →

Going for Broke (Read “Provoke”)

"Arab Spring", Egypt, Terrorism Issue

Given the events of last week in Egypt, it is hard not to reflect on these events while they are fresh. Opinions on the military crackdown, which has resulted in hundreds of innocent (obviously people protesting but not carrying weapons, including women) victims, are deeply divided. There seems to be no middle ground in the media or on the street, as far as one can see from outside the conflict area. One reason for this impasse is the level of violence attached to the level of vitriolic rhetoric from both sides. The removal of Morsi was bound to stir up the wrath of those who fervently supported the Muslim Brotherhood as all hopes for gaining power through the ballot box were shattered. The call for protests was doomed to failure as long as the military and security forces were intent on maintaining control of Egypt’s economy and protecting their base of power. In part this is due to the fact that the military never lost power and was clearly not prepared to do so, even with the changing of the guard in the officer shuffle at the top. But it is also the case that the Muslim Brotherhood had many enemies from the start, especially among those who were more secular-minded.

In a New York Times commentary Rick Gladstone quotes several scholars who argue that the aim of the military in forcefully removing the protesters with live ammunition was to provoke the expected violence by members of the Brotherhood. During the past month Egyptians have been bombarded with a propaganda message that the Brotherhood has become a bunch of bearded terrorists who must be resisted. So the strategy by Sisi and the military/security complex appears to have been to provoke violence from the protesters, knowing full well that there would be a violent reaction. The stores of a few weapons that the military claims was found among the protesters, even if planted there by the military, reinforces this scenario. The gut reaction of some supporters to blame the Copts and burn down more than 30 churches again feeds into the message that the Muslim Brotherhood is too radical. Continue reading Going for Broke (Read “Provoke”) →

The Tragedy that is Egypt today

"Arab Spring", Egypt, Islam and Christianity, Islamophobia, Terrorism Issue

Egypt is once again under military curfew. Mubarak is gone, but the military and security system that stabilized the Mubarak regime is undeniably in control, no matter what the rhetoric about restoring democracy. The brief flirtation with a seemingly democratic election has been an abject failure, no matter who you think is to blame. There are no winners in the recent protests and crackdown that left well over 500 people dead and several thousand wounded. At this point all Egyptians are on the losing side as violence escalates. The situation today is a tragedy and is bound to get more tragic in the days ahead. Egyptians are pitted against each other in sectarian clashes, Muslim against fellow Muslim and some Muslims targeting the Copts. As many as 20 Coptic churches may already have been torched. God forbid if Egypt still had a viable Jewish population.

Blame is being hurled against all sides with breakneck speed in blogs, commentaries and twitter. But blaming is part of the problem, since it further inflames the frustration that leads to violence. Coptic churches are being burned because the Copts are said to side with the military as though it is only about politics. But the ugly intolerance that many Salafis and Muslim Brothers have preached to their own transcends politics. The military is indeed ruthless and manipulating the media with propaganda, demonizing the Muslim Brotherhood. Enough Brothers are acting out their violence to lend some credence to the claims in the eyes of many Egyptians. There is also the atrocity of pushing for martyrdom, as leaders of the Brotherhood encourage those who are protesting Morsi’s ouster to engage the military in what can only be a losing and bloody battle. Both sides are acting like spoiled children; no one is promoting a peaceful mediation, if one is still possible. Continue reading The Tragedy that is Egypt today →

Egypt Erupts

"Arab Spring", Egypt, Teaching Resources


I have been reading a number of Mamluk historians recently and the turn of events in Egypt since the removal of President Morsi is an eerie reminder that the history of Egypt is more than the Nile, as Herodotus once put it; Egypt is the home of coup after coup from the Pharaohs to the Greeks to the early Muslims who founded Cairo to Fatimids, Ayyubids, Mamluks, Ottomans, Napoleon, the British and Nasser. The Nile still flows and the blood still spills out in the ongoing history of civil strife. The history of Egypt beyond the pyramids that the tourists photograph is very much about the military.

Today the Egyptian military and security forces followed through on their warning that they would clear the Muslim Brotherhood sit-ins in Cairo. The rhetoric for the past month has literally gone ballistic. The government has painted the Brotherhood as a band of intolerant terrorists, while the Brotherhood has made it seem as though they are martyrs for democracy. In all of this there must be some who wish for the days of Mubarak, just as some Iraqis long for the relative security of Saddam Hussein. The Arab Spring, which brought down dictator after dictator, has sprung a leak and a steady flow of blood is oozing out, literally hemorrhaging in the case of Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and now Egypt.

Reports this morning from both sides in the conflict stretch the meaning of hyperbole. The government claims only 16 or so dead in all of Egypt, while a spokesman for the Brotherhood said thousands have been killed and tens of thousands injured. The truth is quite obviously in between. Continue reading Egypt Erupts →

Airing out on Area Studies: Confessions of a Middle East Area Specialist

Anthropology/Sociology, Orientalism, Yemen

[These remarks were written on the train back to New York after the 1997 AAA meetings in Washington. I had earlier provided extemporaneous remarks on the subject at the business meeting of the Middle East Section. I found these in a set of old files and decided such a confession is timeless, at least in my case. And this year I will again be presenting papers at both AAA and MESA. ]

The idea of “Area Studies,” especially those areas where several centuries of Western colonialism have helped define the modern boundaries, is under attack. One of the more besieged areas is the Middle East, once the Near East and part of the politically uncorrected Orient as such. I am not particularly interested in defending Area Studies as such. But I am dismayed at the weakening of Middle East Studies programs at major universities. As an anthropologist who encourages other anthropologists to work in the Middle East, I appreciate the teaching of Middle Eastern languages, literature, culture, history, politics, economics, etc. as potentially useful information for ethnography. I do not know how trying to learn “too much” about the region could distort one’s anthropologizing.

Each fall I have a major decision to make: should I go to AAA or MESA? Continue reading Airing out on Area Studies: Confessions of a Middle East Area Specialist →

Morsi: The Arab World’s Wannabe Mugabe

"Arab Spring", Egypt, Journalism and Media, Terrorism Issue, Yemen

I wonder if the judges who dole out the increasingly meaningless Nobel Peace Prize ever have second or third thoughts. In 2011 the Yemeni journalist Tawakkul Karman shared the prize for her visible opposition to the regime of Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Salih. The prize is symbolic to be sure, so it is not surprising that a recipient becomes hyperbolic with the international public attention. Karman was picked because of her advocacy work in Yemen, not because she was a savy expert on Middle East politics. A week ago she decided to cash in on her reputation and lend support to the sit-in followers of deposed President Morsi. The Egyptian authorities, not unsurprisingly, denied her entry for an obvious propaganda tour for the Muslim Brotherhood. Karman is shocked, it seems, that a military regime that would oust a sitting president would then deny her entry to come into Cairo and provide support for the opposition.

Foreign Policy has posted a commentary by Karman entitled Morsy Is the Arab World’s Mandela, with the subtitle Why we must stand and support the Muslim Brotherhood’s fight for democracy. Nelson Mandela? At a time when this fellow recipient of the Peace Prize (in 1993) is rumored to be near death’s door, this is an insult to the work of Mandela to end South Africa’s apartheid. My point is not to vilify or defend Morsi, but to compare him to Mandela is pure media hype. Continue reading Morsi: The Arab World’s Wannabe Mugabe →