Category Archives: “Arab Spring”

Sociology of the Arab Spring

"Arab Spring", Anthropology/Sociology, Egypt, United Arab Emirates

For those interested in the issue, the recently published July issue of International Sociology (30:4) is devoted to the Arab uprisings. It includes articles on the relations of revolution to such various dimensions as space, cultural symbols, microdynamics of mobilization, political Islam, and current scholarship:

Contents

Mohammed Bamyeh and Sari Hanafi, “Introduction to the special issue on Arab uprisings”

Atef Said, “We ought to be here: Historicizing space and mobilization in Tahrir Square”

Zaynab El Bernoussi, “The postcolonial politics of dignity: From the 1956 Suez nationalization to the 2011 Revolution in Egypt”

Hatem M Hassan, “Extraordinary politics of ordinary people: Explaining the microdynamics of popular committees in revolutionary Cairo”

Mazhar al-Zo’by and Birol Başkan, “Discourse and oppositionality in the Arab Spring: The case of the Muslim Brotherhood in the UAE”

Nada AlMaghlouth, Rigas Arvanitis, Jean-Philippe Cointet, and Sari Hanafi, “Who frames the debate on the Arab uprisings? Analysis of Arabic, English, and French academic scholarship”

Egypt and the Puppet Regime

"Arab Spring", CyberOrient, Egypt, Humor and Satire, Muslim Brotherhood

Politics rules the news cycle on Islam and the Middle East. Given the colonial history of the region, there have been numerous puppet leaders installed or allowed to dangle over the years. But the latest puppet regime in Egypt, which has had its share, centers around a cosmetically enhanced widow matron that lolls around in a negligeé and talks about sex. Her name is Abla Fahita and she is a puppet in a new Egyptian tv series. She is turning heads in post-Brotherhood Egypt; if Morsy was still in power, it might very well be her own head that would have been in cinematic danger, although she has been on Youtube for several years and made an appearance on Bassam Yousif’s show. She even has her own MTVish video.

Humor has never been in short supply in Egypt, so even if her Friday night show is censored off the air, other puppets will appear. But in the meantime, if you want to laugh along with a lot of Egyptians, who are in need of something to laugh about beyond politics, just put “Abla Fahita” into Youtube, sit back and enjoy.

An Impish Desire for Imperial Déjà Vu

"Arab Spring", Huthis, Journalism and Media, Orientalism, Ottoman Empire, Turkey

An Impish Desire for Imperial Déjà Vu

Daniel Martin Varisco, MENA Tidningen, May 27, 2015

A recent online commentary by Robert Kaplan for Foreign Policy displays the provocative title: “It’s time to bring imperialism back to the Middle East”. The punch line surfaces in the final paragraph: “Imperialism bestowed order, however retrograde it may have been”. Retrograde? How about brutal?

Let’s see: Mussolini made the trains run on time; Hitler brought Germany out of the humiliation of a World War I defeat; Genghis Khan lengthened the Silk Road by slaughtering just about everyone along the way. So let’s bring back the Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein, Colonel Qaddafi and all the recently demoted dictators so we can have “order” again, the kind of “order” which is imperially blessed and apparently serves American interests.

Kaplan’s view of Middle Eastern history is about as top-down and lop-sided as you can get. Take the Sublime Porte, for example: “For hundreds of years, Sunnis and Shiites, Arabs and Jews, Muslims and Christians, in Greater Syria and Mesopotamia had few territorial disputes. All fell under the rule of an imperial sovereign in Istanbul, who protected them from each other”, he writes. Really? What romance novel has Kaplan been reading? Was there such love for the Ottoman sultans that no ethnic group ever complained? Did all these subjugated people sleep peacefully at night knowing that the Janissaries would protect them from each other? But why stop with the Ottomans?! The caliphs in Abbasid Iraq must have been all made for a Disney Aladdin movie and their mercenaries nothing short of angels? And what barbarian would have dared speak against the glorious Pax Romana of the Caesars? Forget the out-dated Sermon on the Mount. According to Kaplan, blessed are the Machiavellian despots for only they can enforce peace in the name of order, at least in what used to be called the Holy Land. Continue reading An Impish Desire for Imperial Déjà Vu →

The Youtube Caliphate

"Arab Spring", Ali Abdullah Salih, Huthis, Terrorism Issue, Yemen

To add to Yemen’s woes, yet another wannabe player in the maelstrom of Yemeni politics has entered the picture, this time announced through a Youtube video picture. Out in the desert in Yemen about a dozen or so masked militia men wielding full battle gear go through basic training maneuvers choreographed for the video. The leader, or at least the spokesman, stands in front of his men about half way through the exercise and pledges his allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ISIS caliph who is apparently wounded and perhaps not even alive anymore. Move over al-Qaida, Huthis and loyalists of Ali Abdullah Salih, there is now a small group of video performers somewhere out in the desert who have extended the caliphate to Yemen.

Caliphate allegiance groups are now the rave and not just in Yemen. The ISIS franchise marketing strategy is pure video, sometimes slick but at other times — as in this video — rather poorly done. Imagine a dozen guys with kalashnikovs in a couple of pick-up trucks rolling into Sanaa and terrorizing the Huthis. The problem that the creators of this video face is that not that many Yemenis can see their call due to the lack of electricity. If they are planning to attract disaffected American and European youth, a better format would be a hiphop or rap production, showing a MacDonalds or KFC Chicken or Pizza Hut in the background (there actually is a Pizza Hut in Sanaa, so that could be an incentive for the foreign fighters to take the capital for ISIS).

I think I have seen an earlier version of this video, but with a better ending. Check it out here also on Youtube…