All posts by dvarisco

Bin Who? Bin Laden?

Afghanistan, Humor and Satire, Osama Bin Laden

Two protracted wars drag on as the so-called “War on Terror” seems to be winding down in theory. In another year our hunt for the infamous Osama Bin Laden will be almost a decade old. The detour into Iraq, toppling a brutal dictator and ensuring a far more Iran-friendly government in Iraq, is reaching a deadened end, if you do not count the numerous advisors who will remain in and out of uniform. Then there is Afghanistan, which was the bane of the Brits in the 19th century, the Soviets in the 20th century and most probably the Americans and NATO in the 21st century. Billions of dollars and thousands of lives later the reason the United States originally got involved in the region, specifically to capture Bin Laden and bring him to justice, remains unfulfilled. Whether cooling his heels in a Pakistani border cave or a Swat safe house, the suspected mastermind of the 9/11 bombing is still out there somewhere.

Imagine if Bin Laden could be captured? Well, if you read German, you have a guide. While in Vienna earlier this fall I picked up a copy of Bin Laden Enthüllt, a comic book by Mohamed Sifaoui and Philippe Vercovici (Frankfurt: Eichborn, 2009). Continue reading Bin Who? Bin Laden? →

The Wacky Wiki Leaks

Journalism and Media, Libya

The media hype over the latest batch of smorgasbord-style Wiki leaks is indeed a feeding frenzy of almost Faustian proportions. Both mundane musings and sensitive undiplomatic quotes are now available online and also on the main pages of major newspapers, like the New York Times. If the day after Thanksgiving is Black Friday, then Mr. Julian Assange has just provided the world with a Black Sunday to boot. But somehow I see more than a minimum of black humor in what libertarian-minded folk might see as a silver lining. Thus far in my casual reading of several diplomatic cables I find nothing I did not already know or suspect. Is there any sane person who does not think that diplomats would spy for their country, no matter what that country? Does anyone other than those who are only glued to Fox News believe that world leaders say what they really think in public and hold no negative views of other world leaders? And, who is silly enough in this day and age to think that any communication marked “secret” will remain so?

The mantra of the news organizations is that people have a right to know how their government works, even if publishing off-the-record remarks (especially of leaders we consider allies) damages the ability of our government to work. If I was Hosni Mubarak or King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, my biggest concern would not be that the world now knows what I think of the leader in Iran or Iraq, but how the one remaining superpower is unable to keep secret things secret. The damage from these leaks is less what is being said than the mere fact it can so easily be leaked. Continue reading The Wacky Wiki Leaks →

Pizza my mind

Anthropology/Sociology, Food and Drink, Lebanon


Pizza Hut in Beirut, 2009; photograph by Daniel Martin Varisco

Being Italian by family name, and Sicilian at that, I feel qualified to talk about pizza. Whether or not pizza really was invented in Italy, Italian Americans have made pizza parlors the strip mall contender with Chinese takeouts. Pizza was not invented once, any more than the wheel. Once you start baking flat bread, and that goes back millennia, all you need is a few of the right kinds of droppings and the rest is culinary evolution. In the current global economy food has been ethnicized and consumer friended around the world. The Pizza Hut, with humble beginnings a half century ago in Kansas (yes Kansas!), now boasts franchises throughout the Middle East. There is even a website in Arabic. Of course, real Italians (those with the requisite last names) go to local parlors rather than give in to the fast food giant.

But this commentary is not really about pizza; it’s about what we choose to eat rather than what we actually eat. Choosing Pizza Hut in Beirut is branding yourself, even if you convince yourself it tastes good. Continue reading Pizza my mind →

Yemen is Not a Terrorist Factory

Anthropology/Sociology, Development, Journalism and Media, Terrorism Issue, Tribalism, Yemen


Yemen is not a terrorist factory
By Daniel Martin Varisco, Special to CNN, November 8, 2010

Editor’s note: Daniel Martin Varisco is a professor of anthropology at Hofstra University and has visited Yemen over a dozen times for development consulting and research since 1978. He moderates Tabsir, an academic blog on Islam and the Middle East.

(CNN) — Domino theorists love the Middle East. Because of this, a number of media pundits have recently added the little-known country of Yemen as a front in the unsettled aftermath of George W. Bush’s War on Terror.

First came the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan, then a protracted war there and in Iraq. Iran is still in the hawkish gun-sights of conservative pundits, but the focus has now shifted to Yemen, a country most Americans could not find on a map. Is Yemen really the terrorist haven we should fear the most?

For the rest of my post on the CNN blog, click here.

Ibn Tufayl’s Fable

Books You Should Read, Environment, Islam and Christianity, Islam in Europe, Islamic History, Islamic Sciences, Literature, Scholars, Sufism


What would happen to a child growing up on an island outside any human society? In real life such a scenario would be absurd. No child could survive from birth on his or her own, despite exotic accounts of feral human babies being reared by animals. But as a thought experiment, it makes an intriguing story. Such is the philosophical fable spun by the Andalusian Muslim scholar Ibn Tufayl over eight centuries ago. I have just finished teaching this text and the lessons in it are fresh in my mind.

If you have never read this classic fable, it can be found online in the original 1708 translation into English by Simon Ockley. A more recent translation by Lenn Evan Goodman is available from Amazon. The author was a distinguished Muslim intellectual who borrowed from the earlier Greek icons Aristotle and Plato, as well as the commentaries by earlier Muslim philosophers like Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and al-Farabi. His fable combines logical arguments, inductive scientific observation and a form of intuition that leads to a union with the One. Continue reading Ibn Tufayl’s Fable →

Sanity through Inanity

Ethics, Humor and Satire, Islam and Christianity, Islam in Europe, Islamophobia, Journalism and Media, Judaism

Yes, sanity through inanity, and certainly not with a talking (but brainless) head like Hannity. Yesterday comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert brought a few hours of utter sanity almost to the steps of Congress in their Rally to Restore Sanity. Fear and hate, the fuel of electoral robo-calling, were ridiculed. If, as Glenn Beck not long before sermonized, people in America have turned their back on God, perhaps they should back off a bit and act more like the Jesus of the beatitudes than Joshua at the battle of Jericho. All it takes to get back on track is for everyone to tone down the rhetoric and hear the laughter. For one sunny afternoon in our nation’s capital God finally had a reason to laugh, given the mess we humans have been making of things and each other. At least this time the stage featured two jesters who know they are jesters rather than Fox News’ gift to incivility. No one was compared to a Nazi, nor a Communist. As Stewart noted in an eloquent speech at the end of the show:

“This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith, or people of activism, or to look down our noses at the heartland, or passionate argument, or to suggest that times are not difficult and we have nothing to fear.”

It was, contrary to those steeped in Tea Party rhetoric, a clarion call for the values that have become antithetical to our political system: being calm, civil and accepting of differences. Stewart has not only read Rousseau’s “social contract,” but reminds us through humor of the central importance of tolerance for democracy to work. If the world was watching yesterday, they finally had something to smile about: I do not only mean the jokes but an American proud of his country for the right reasons.

One of the right reasons is the beauty of a Jewish comedian defending the right of Muslims to be American too. Continue reading Sanity through Inanity →

Let’s Play Spot the Muslim

Apocalypse Watch, Islam in America, Islamophobia 101, Journalism and Media



left, Muslim Moroccan-French actor Said Taghmaoui does not care much for shirts; right, scary Muslim garb

The recent debate over remarks by NPR reporter Juan Williams on the Bill O’Reilly Show is quite revealing, although not in terms of fashion. Of late NPR has gone public with its No Partisan Reporting image, placing comments on Fox News atop the same perch as Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity. Lost in the shuffle is the ultimate bottom line in media as business: Williams has just signed a multi-year contract with Fox News. In commenting on his statement that he personally feels uncomfortable traveling on an airplane with fashionably coded devout Muslims, Williams is quoted on the Fox News website (with the typographical error intact):

“They take something totally out of context,” Williams said Thursday night, adding that his point was that Americans must come to grips with their prejudices.

“I have always thought of journalism, in a way, as a priesthood. you honor it you protect it,” he said, before criticizing his former employer. “These people don’t have ay sense of righteousness, of what’s right here. They’re self righteous.”

Of course, we all know that Fox News, especially someone like O’Reilly is not at all “self-righteous.” Continue reading Let’s Play Spot the Muslim →

If war is still hell, does that mean it no longer exists?

Afghanistan, Iraq War, Journalism and Media


If you are bored enough to follow the cable or evening news, the top stories these days are all about politics. At this point we are all suffering from a Tea Party hangover, candidates who make ads claiming they are not witches or Nazi sympathizers, conspiracy theories of foreign money buying congress, and the latest notes inscribed on Sarah Palin’s million-dollar hands. It is as though the media has outsourced its integrity, what little it ever had in the broad historical sweep of journalism in this country. I remember an old saying in the days when people actually thought about peace: what if they started a war and nobody came? Well, now it seems that the mantra is what if a war is going on and no one cares. The two ongoing wars started during the Bush years are falling off the radar, as two recent polls have voiced:

In a nationwide New York Times/CBS News poll conducted last month, 60 percent of Americans said that the economy or jobs were the most important problems facing the country. A mere 3 percent mentioned Afghanistan or the war. Continue reading If war is still hell, does that mean it no longer exists? →