Category Archives: Countries

Lauren Booth on Lauren Booth

Gender and Sexuality, Islam in Europe, Islamophobia 101, Journalism and Media, Palestine


I’m now a Muslim. Why all the shock and horror?

by Lauren Booth. The Guardian, November 3, 2010

It is five years since my first visit to Palestine. And when I arrived in the region, to work alongside charities in Gaza and the West Bank, I took with me the swagger of condescension that all white middle-class women (secretly or outwardly) hold towards poor Muslim women, women I presumed would be little more than black-robed blobs, silent in my peripheral vision. As a western woman with all my freedoms, I expected to deal professionally with men alone. After all, that’s what the Muslim world is all about, right?

This week’s screams of faux horror from fellow columnists on hearing of my conversion to Islam prove that this remains the stereotypical view regarding half a billion women currently practising Islam.

On my first trip to Ramallah, and many subsequent visits to Palestine, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon, I did indeed deal with men in power. And, dear reader, one or two of them even had those scary beards we see on news bulletins from far-flung places we’ve bombed to smithereens. Surprisingly (for me) I also began to deal with a lot of women of all ages, in all manner of head coverings, who also held positions of power. Believe it or not, Muslim women can be educated, work the same deadly hours we do, and even boss their husbands about in front of his friends until he leaves the room in a huff to go and finish making the dinner. Continue reading Lauren Booth on Lauren Booth →

Sudan Open Archive

Anthropology/Sociology, Development, Sudan


The Sudan Open Archive offers free digital access to knowledge about all regions of Sudan. It is an expanding, word-searchable, full-text database of historical and contemporary books and documents. The current version, SOA 2.0, incorporates a comprehensive, interactive guide to internet resources on Sudan.

The Sudan Open Archive (SOA) is designed and implemented by the Kenya and UK-based Rift Valley Institute, working with institutional partners in the north and south of Sudan. The Archive was created by DL Consulting using open-source Greenstone archive software developed by the New Zealand Digital Library project at the University of Waikato. It is maintained with support from the J.M. Kaplan Fund. Other partners include UNICEF, UNEP and the Southern Sudan Centre for Census, Statistics and Evaluation.

A Biography of Defiance

Morocco, Photography, Poetry, Travel


Henri Matisse, The Moroccans, 1915-16,The Museum of Modern Art, New York,

A biography of defiance by Hassan El Ouazzani

It was better for the world not to have existed. It was better
for the dynasty to have kept its desire for another evening party.
It was better for the master to have been tired that night, for the earth
to have been dismal. It was better for something to have happened so that
the very semen be assassinated,
the semen whose descendant
is this one resident
in the home
of anguish.

That one
to whom the sky did offer but the robe of fire
now consuming his limbs. Continue reading A Biography of Defiance →

Leaves from an old Bible Atlas #7

Archaeology and Antiquities, Architecture, Bible and Holy Land, Israel, Palestine, Photography, Travel


Hurlbutt’s Atlas, p. 137


Hurlbutt’s Atlas, p. 133

The Christian fascination with the Holy Land as a window into interpretation of the Bible has a long and indeed fascinating history of its own. Here I continue the thread on Jesse Lyman Hurlbutt’s A Bible Atlas (New York: Rand McNally & Company, 1947, first published in 1882). As might be expected, a large part of the atlas is devoted to Jerusalem. Here are two century old pictures, one of the Dome of the Rock and the other a view of the Garden of Gethsemane looking toward an uncluttered landscape beneath the old city walls of Jerusalem.

Keeping an eye on Karzai

Afghanistan, Humor and Satire, Journalism and Media



Heute, October 7, 2010, p. 5

While in Vienna earlier in the month I picked up a free Austrian tabloid called Heute. Leafing through the pages, it was obviously mainly about the upcoming election, lottery winners, local births in the Vienna zoo, movie stars and “Sexbombe Katy begeistert Fans.” But the layout on p. 5 was too precious not to comment on. Here is the fashion week model in a gold-laced dress with nipples poised not far over the head of Afghan President Karzai. One wonders if this was a total accident or if the editor was nurturing other fantasies.

It’s the Occupation, Stupid

Afghanistan, Arab-Israeli Conflict, Iraq, Iraq War, Islam and Christianity, Islamophobia, Osama Bin Laden, Terrorism Issue


[Webshaykh’s Note: In the current online issue of Foreign Policy there is an excellent essay by Robert Pape on the post 9/11 missteps and how a faulty narrative has not only bogged us down into two unwinnable wars, but also not made us safer from terrorism. Click here for the full article; I excerpt the ending here.]

by Robert Pape, Foreign Policy, October 20, 2010

Put differently, adopting the goal of transforming Muslim countries is what created the long-term military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, the United States would almost surely have sought to create a stable order after toppling the regimes in these countries in any case. However, in both, America’s plans quickly went far beyond merely changing leaders or ruling parties; only by creating Western-style democracies in the Muslim world could Americans defeat terrorism once and for all.

There’s just one problem: We now know that this narrative is not true.

New research provides strong evidence that suicide terrorism such as that of 9/11 is particularly sensitive to foreign military occupation, and not Islamic fundamentalism or any ideology independent of this crucial circumstance. Continue reading It’s the Occupation, Stupid →