Category Archives: Syria

Confessionalization fundamentalism

"Arab Spring", Anthropology/Sociology, Syria


Bracketing Realities in Lebanon; photograph by Estella Carpi

Confessionalization fundamentalism: commodifying religious identities in the Middle East

by Estella Carpi, Open Democracy, 16 July 2012

Middle Eastern revolutionaries and spectators alike, deprived in the media of any representation of their own agency and denied the chance of producing their own new life chances, end up commodifying the identities they are exposed to within their social pattern.

As Maya Mikdashi has argued in an interview released to Istituto di Studi Politici Internazionali (ISPI), published on Jadaliyya on June 21, the uprising in Syria itself is becoming more sectarian now, packaged in a way such that ‘sect’ seems to be the political marker that matters the most.

This development could be taken as a starting point to point to a more widespread arbitrary confessionalization of Middle Eastern conflicts, and of the Syrian revolution in particular. “Crisis”, “sunnization of the revolt”, “new balance between Sunnis and Shiites” and “civil war” are key terms used by the media in reporting the current events.

Voices from think-tank and news analysts actually unfamiliar with the Arab world have largely contributed to portraying a patchwork image of the Middle East composed of ethnic and religious groups that do not fight each other only thanks to the power of dictators that discipline and guide these irrational individualities. Continue reading Confessionalization fundamentalism →

The Road to Damascus

"Arab Spring", Syria, Turkey


What a modern day Saul might hope to see

About 2000 years ago a zealot named Saul witnessed a blinding light on the road to Damascus; it was both a name changing and life changing experience. The great epistle writer and first missionary went on to create early Christianity, at least in the canonical sense. There are more blinding, life-and-death lights now ablaze on the road to Damascus as well as in Damascus. This time no one would mistake them for signs of the divine. While the world watched as the Egyptian people elected a leader with religious convictions, the last entrenched dictator (sparing the kings and emirs who still live as though the 1001 Nights never ended) to the north is spilling the blood of his own people. Asad, the dentist turned family potentate, is more like a modern-day Nero than a latter-day hero. His siege mentality, propped up by Russian economic and political interests, is not viable in the long run, but how long can Syrians survive the short run?

The issue is not if Asad can survive, but how long the drama will continue. Obviously he continues to rule because he and his minority have the guns and few qualms about using them. In February of 1982 his father was pitiless in ordering a slaughter in the city of Hama in which perhaps as many as 20,000 were killed. Although in many ways the gaunt and lackluster Bashir is not the charismatic clone of his father, his modus vivendi for taking the life out of his enemies is the same. There may not yet have been a blinding flash of light strong enough to overthrow Asad, but there is plenty of handwriting on the wall. Shooting down a Turkish plane, when relations with Turkey are as low as they can be without conflict , is a no-brainer dumb move. As a member of NATO, Turkey could call on its security allies to pull another Libya. If Asad thinks that such a provocation would stop Turkish support for the defectors from his regime, he is either desperate or deluded. Continue reading The Road to Damascus →

How much more blood will be spilled?

"Arab Spring", Afghanistan, Arab-Israeli Conflict, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia


Painting of St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre by François Dubois, a Huguenot painter born circa 1529 in Amiens

Here in America summer is well on its way as most colleges have already finished their spring terms, public schools will in less than a month and the beaches start to fill up. People will complain about the high price of gas and brace themselves for an onslaught of political advertising in which billions of dollars that might have helped the poor abroad will be wasted on the media madness we foolishly think is democracy at its best. Forget the dream of “one man/woman, one vote” in a system where corporations and billionaires see if they can buy elections in our red state/blue state electorality.

In Egypt the first round of voting is over and what a choice: the Brotherhood candidate or the old regime hack. Damn those Brits for not letting Saad Zaghlul take Egypt into the 20th century. Imagine if the map drawn up after World War I on that infamous Churchillian napkin had actually given autonomy to the various ethnic groups, including the Kurds, in the region instead of mandating the old Ottoman precincts. The protests that erupted over a year ago just about everywhere have a long fuse. Yes, the last dictators have fallen in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Yemen. But the future in all these countries is full of potholes that the IMF will not be able to pave over; nor will Saudi billions make life all that much better for the millions of people suffering economic hardship more than ever.

And the blood keeps spilling, a flood only matched by the tears of those who mourn the dead. Continue reading How much more blood will be spilled? →

Winter in Syria

Music and Dance, Syria


Maya Youssef, Syrian kanun player

Amidst all the strife that the Syrian people have been suffering over the past year, imagine a musical break. Imagine Vivaldi in Syria. Imagine a performance of Vivaldi’s “winter” from his Four Seasons. Imagine this played by the Syrian National Orchestra and accompanied by a kanun. Well, imagine no more. You can listen to Maya Youssef playing this right now. Enjoy.

For more information on Maya Youssef, click here.

For Whom the Death Toll tolls

Afghanistan, Anthropology/Sociology, Ethics, Iraq, Iraq War, Libya, Mali, Pakistan, Palestine, Syria, Terrorism Issue, Yemen


“John Donne and 1664 Dutch map of the world

“No man is an iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee….”
John Donne, Meditation 17, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, 1624

What was true some four centuries ago for the English metaphysical poet John Donne is timeless, even if his writ shows its linguistic age. Today it can also be said that no country is an island unto itself, no matter where or how you spin the globe. This is certainly the case for the United Sates, with our military still on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, targeted drones over Pakistan and Yemen, the smoldering aftermath of the bombs that brought down Qaddafi in Libya, the stench of made-in-the-USA arms just about everywhere. If, as Donne eloquently reflects, the death of any man (or woman or child) diminishes us, then why are we so hell-bent on adding to this diminishing by arming thugs and sending our military to die in other countries?

First, it is important to realize how much the death toll drones on daily. Take today, for example. On Al-Jazeera we learn there are “many dead in Afghanistan suicide blasts,” 18 dead and 45 wounded by the numbers. As the nominal peace part still fails to protect the dictator-weary people of Syria, reports are that some 9,000 have been killed so far by the Assad regime, including refugees over the border in Turkey. There are also “Pakistanis dead in apparent sectarian attack,“adding six more to the thousands who have been killed in the ongoing violence that plagues Pakistan. The see-saw fighting in Yemen’s troubled south leaves “Dozens killed in attack on Yemen army base.” And a few days ago “Hamas hangs three Gaza prisoners“. Continue reading For Whom the Death Toll tolls →

Anthony Shadid: An American Story

Journalism and Media, Lebanon, Syria


Dr. Michael Abraham Shadid (1882-1966), who founded the first medical cooperative in Elk City, Oklahoma in 1931.

By Anouar Majid 
 
The sudden and tragic death of Anthony Shadid affected me in ways I had not anticipated.  As a childhood asthma sufferer, I always pay attention when I hear about such death-causing attacks, but Mr. Shadid’s untimely death in Syria left me wondering about how a man who had endangered his life to report on the troubled region of the Middle East was destined to die in the land of his ancestors.  I don’t know much about his life beyond what has been reported, but through a brief exchange I had with him recently, I now read his death as part of the dramatic encounter between the Middle East and the United States since the late nineteenth century.
 
The story for me begins with Mr. Shadid’s relative, Dr. Michael Shadid, an unsung national hero.  A couple of years or so ago, I came across the story of one Michael Shadid, a progressive Syrian (as Arabs from the Levant were known at the turn of the 20th century) immigrant who tried to change healthcare in the United States and left a legacy that could inspire us today as we desperately search for the right solutions. I also wrote about him on TingisRedux .

Born in a tiny village on the slopes of Mount Lebanon in 1882, in a household of nine siblings and a widowed mother, Michael Abraham Shadid overcame nearly insurmountable odds to get an American education in Beirut before finding a way to get out of his native land in search of a better life in the United States. Like many immigrants, he was mesmerized by the sight of New York and America’s possibilities.  He worked hard peddling jewelry and trinkets, got a medical education, and, moved by the suffering of poor people in Oklahoma, fought against entrenched interests to establish the first cooperative medical facility in Elk City. Continue reading Anthony Shadid: An American Story →