Category Archives: Countries

Viagra for Aladdin Lovers

Film and Video, Gender and Sexuality, Orientalism, United Arab Emirates


“Sex and the City 2’s” stunning Muslim clichés
It’s hard to overstate the offensiveness of the fabulous four’s exquisitely tone-deaf trip to Abu Dhabi

By Wajahat Ali, Salon, May 26

I’m a heterosexual, Muslim dude who until recently thought pleated khakis and loafers were “hip” and mistook Bergdorf Goodman for an expensive Swiss chocolate. So it is not surprising that 40 minutes into “Sex and the City 2,” a 150-minute cotton candy fantasy accessorized with materialism and fashion porn, I was comatose with boredom.

But I was defibrillated by the film’s detour into Abu Dhabi (really Morocco and studio sets) and what can only be described as an Orientalist’s wet dream. After discovering they will visit the Middle East, the ladies whip out hall-of-fame Ali Baba clichés: References to “magic carpet” (a double entendre, naturally), Scheherazade and Jasmine from “Aladdin” come in rapid succession. Upon hearing a stewardess give routine flight instructions in Arabic, Samantha behaves like a wild-eyed child hearing a foreign language for the first time. “I wonder what she’s saying. It sounds so exotic!”

Michael Patrick King’s exquisitely tone-deaf movie is cinematic Viagra for Western cultural imperialists who still ignorantly and inaccurately paint the entire Middle East (and Iran) as a Shangri La in desperate need of liberation from ignorant, backward natives. Continue reading Viagra for Aladdin Lovers →

Worth a Response: Why Yemen is not Afghanistan

Afghanistan, Anthropology/Sociology, Development, Journalism and Media, Osama Bin Laden, Terrorism Issue, Yemen


“The village of Rihab in Wadi Dawan, a valley that is the ancestral home of Bin Laden”; Simon Norfolk/Institute, for The New York Times

Yemen hardly ever makes the news unless a journalist wants to rail against the green-dribbling khat habit of grown men who wear skirts or trump with the terrorism card. In the Sunday Magazine of The New York Times, Robert F. Worth asks the provocative question: “Is Yemen the Next Afghanistan?” For an article that begins with a photograph of the valley “that is the ancestral home of Bin Laden” and mentions an American cruise missile in the first line, it hardly takes a Ph.D. to figure out what the answer is most likely to be in the mind of the reader. Worthy reporter that he is, The New York Times Middle East correspondent does not directly answer the question. He does not need to, since the Al Qaeda-laced narrative itself hinges on the comparison. The article ends with a visit to an “old man with a deeply lined face” and who walks with a cane. When asked if his son, an Al Qaeda figure described in the story, was really part of the plot in the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, the father responds:

‘No,’ he said, ‘ I don’t believe this.’ He was silent for a long time, staring at the closed door of the house, which was illuminated at its edges by a bright rectangle of afternoon sunlight. then he spoke again.
‘He is a mujahid,’ he said, or holy warrior. ‘He is fighting those who occupy Arab lands. He is fighting unbelievers.’

I have read a number of articles by journalist Worth, usually with a favorable view of his ability to introduce nuance into what is generally a black-and-white portrayal of things Arab and Islamic. For this article, he contacted diplomats (former Ambassador Hull) and scholars (Gregory Johnson) who are knowledgable about recent political events in Yemen. He is also to be commended for learning some Arabic, although I am not sure his year-long training in classical will be of much help in casual conversation in dialect. Yet he visited Yemen and actually talked to local people and not just the other reporters in the pool. In this sense, the reporting is not bad, certainly not like The Daily News or Fox News engineering. The problem is that neither is the article very good. The question in the title, which perhaps was not the journalist’s choosing given the control of editors, is blatantly rhetorical, not a genuine search for an answer that goes beyond the verbal War on Terror jousting on all sides of the aisle in Washington and in much of the media. Continue reading Worth a Response: Why Yemen is not Afghanistan →

Damn the Vuvuzelas

Islamic Law, Travel, United Arab Emirates


For those of us watching the World Cup in South Africa the din of the vuvuzelas is muted by the voices of the announcers. I can only imagine the deafening roar experienced by those attending the games in what has to be the noisiest World Cup ever. Now, courtesy of a fatwa from the United Arab Emirates, Muslims no longer need to put up with the noise. In Fatwa #11625 of July 6, the verdict is in. All this noise really is haram. The fatwa quotes Imam Malik as saying he disapproved of a festivity with loud horns, a handy precedent for the current noise pollution in the sporting world. Of course, Imam Malik did not measure decibels, but we sure can today.

For those who are interested, here is the argument: Continue reading Damn the Vuvuzelas →

Payback for No Pay

Afghanistan, Development, Iraq, Iraq War


Haji Layeq says an American company failed to pay a construction company he has ties to; photo by Adam Ferguson for The New York Times

Much of the world, despite what many Americans think, does not trust the United States intentions in either Afghanistan or Iraq. Both countries have seen corruption and favoritism at the highest levels. In theory “America” stands for citizens’ rights and equal treatment under the law, but in practice such principles may conveniently be ignored in war zones. Such a case was reported on yesterday in The New York Times by Carlotta Gall. She writes:

The failure of American companies to pay for contracted work has left hundreds of Afghan workers unpaid in southern Afghanistan, and dozens of factories and small businesses so deep in debt that Afghan and foreign officials fear the fallout will undermine the United States-led counterinsurgency effort to win the support of the Afghan people.

Continue reading Payback for No Pay →

Divorcing fundamentalism

Egypt, Ethics, Islam in Europe, Islamic Texts, Scholars


Nasr Abu Zaid was a brave and honest scholar disgracefully persecuted for his attempts to read the Quran historically

by Brian Whitaker, The Guardian, July 6

The divorce case was what made him famous, though it wasn’t the usual kind of celebrity divorce and Nasr Abu Zayd was still in love with his wife.

Abu Zayd, the liberal Muslim thinker who died yesterday, first came to the attention of Islamists while teaching Arabic literature at Cairo university in the early 1990s. They decided that his research contained “clear affronts to the Islamic faith” and accused him of apostasy.

That in turn inspired a group of Islamist lawyers to file a third-party (“hesba”) case, seeking to divorce him from his wife on the grounds that a Muslim woman cannot be married to an apostate – and after a series of court hearings his marriage was declared null and void.

Such was the controversy after the verdict that Cairo university was “turned into a military fortress” to protect him the next time he made an appearance there. Realising that it was impractical to continue teaching under those conditions, and after one of his guards was heard describing him as “the infidel”, Abu Zayd and his “ex-wife” left Egypt and settled in the Netherlands. Continue reading Divorcing fundamentalism →

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula

Saudi Arabia, Teaching Resources, Terrorism Issue, Yemen


The Amir [leader] of al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula, Abu Basir Nasir al-Wuhayshi (also transliterated, “Abu Baseer Nasir al-Wahayshi”), in front of a photograph of the al-Aqsa mosque, one of Islam’s holiest shrines, in Jerusalem. The text reads, “At al-Aqsa We Meet.”

Exploiting Grievances: Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula

Executive Summary
THE PAPER IN A NUTSHELL

• Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has been remarkably adept at exploiting the grievances of ordinary Yemenis. The group’s rhetoric, however, only goes so far and has not yet translated into a widespread base of support. In order to prevent AQAP from becoming more deeply entrenched, the Yemeni government must move swiftly to increase governmental visibility and improve the delivery of services at the local level. Failure to do so risks a growing al-Qaeda presence on the Arabian Peninsula with grave consequences for regional and international security.

VITAL STATISTICS
• Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is the product of a merger between al-Qaeda’s Saudi and Yemeni branches.
• Estimates of the size of AQAP in Yemen vary from 300 to several thousand. The lower figure likely represents the number of active militants within the organization, while the larger figure includes supporters not actively involved in the group’s day-to-day operations.
• AQAP employs targeted messaging that is consistent with the core tenets of al-Qaeda’s ideology but infused with themes that resonate locally within Yemen.
• According to AQAP, Muslims are suffering at the hands of foreign powers that prop up illegitimate and corrupt local regimes that have failed to provide for their citizens. Continue reading Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula →

July 4, 1187

Islam and Christianity, Islamic History, Syria


Guy de Lusignan and Saladin in Battle / Mathew Paris, c.1250

[Webshaykh’s Note: July 4 is famous for more than one reason, although firecracker bedlam covers both the annual American celebration as well as a devastating crusader defeat of the Knights Templar almost a millennium ago. The following account is from TemplarHistory.com.]

The Fourth of July, a time for Americans to celebrate their War of Independence from the English in 1776, had an entirely different meaning to medieval Europe. For the Fourth of July, 1187 was to be one of the bloodiest battles of the crusades, the Battle of the Horns of Hattin.

The area is called the Horns of Hattin for the two rocky peaks that rise over the brush covered slopes behind Tiberius on the Sea of Galilee. It was here that Saladin aligned 12,000 of his knights plus an army carrying regular provisions at Tiberius. An army as well mounted and armed as anything that could be assembled by the combined forces of the Templar and Hospitaller orders. On the other side of the battlefield were the crusading forces comprised of 20,000 foot soldiers but only about 1,000 knights. This force, small by comparison, was assembled by depleting the forces of many surrounding cities thus leaving the unarmed cities open to attack.

The Christian army had set out for Tiberius in the early morning hours of July 3rd, leaving in their wake their well-watered camp for the dust and dryness of the desert air. They carried with them that Holy relic so many would die for in coming battles, the True Cross, discovered in 326 CE by the mother of Constantine the Great.

As they made the trek in the hot desert sun they found no water to aid their thirst and in the heavy armor must have been near exhaustion. By evening of July 3rd, the crusading army arrived at a plateau below the Horns of Hattin, which jutted into the air 100 feet above them. Even at this resting spot the Templars and other crusading warriors found no water, as the well was dry and the only stream was blocked. Continue reading July 4, 1187 →

Faulkner in Iraq

CyberOrient, Iraq, Literature


Videoconferencing Faulkner in Iraq

By Jennifer Howard, The Chronicle Online, June 24

Thanks to videoconferencing, literary criticism is playing a small part in the rebuilding of Iraq.

At the end of last year, Steve Wilson, a professor of English at Texas State University at San Marcos, got an email from a U.S. official working on provincial reconstruction in Iraq. Through contacts at Iraqi universities, the official had met some professors of English who wanted to find a way to talk to their U.S. counterparts about literature. So he went looking on the Internet for American professors who had experience that might be relevant and found Mr. Wilson, who had taught in a largely Muslim country, Malaysia. Continue reading Faulkner in Iraq →