Category Archives: Yemen

Anwar Al-Awlaki: The Jim Jones of Islam

Islam in America, Terrorism Issue, Yemen

by Kamran Pasha, The Huffington Post, May 23, 2010

As a Muslim and an American, let me say this loudly and clearly — Anwar al-Awlaki is a servant of evil and a traitor both to Islam and to America. He is intent on misleading the world by spreading the lie that Islam permits the killing of civilians. It does not.

Prophet Muhammad forbade the killing of non-combatants and reacted with horror when he heard of civilian deaths on the battlefield. In order to expound his own political agenda, Al-Awlaki is defaming the Prophet and the global Muslim community, which rejects terrorism. And in the process, he is revealing himself to be a modern Jim Jones — a narcissist creating a death cult.

In 1978, Jim Jones led 900 of his devoted followers to mass suicide by forcing them to drink cyanide mixed in a fruit beverage. The term “drinking the Kool-Aid” has since become synonymous with people who blindly follow their leaders to their doom. And it is clear that al-Awlaki’s followers are very much drinking his brand of Kool-Aid. Indeed, the alleged Fort Hood shooter, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, was apparently a follower of al-Awlaki before he turned on his fellow soldiers in an orgy of murder. Like Jim Jones, al-Awlaki has remarkable charisma and uses it to lead his followers down a very dark path.

I say all of this with great grief. Al-Awlaki was once a highly regarded Muslim scholar who taught a message of peace and brotherhood. But his story is like that of the archetypal villain of the movie Star Wars — Anakin Skywalker, a defender of justice, who devolves into Darth Vader, a monster who cares only for his own twisted quest for power. Continue reading Anwar Al-Awlaki: The Jim Jones of Islam →

Nutrition in Colonial Aden, #2

Aden, Development, Food and Drink, Yemen

Say what you will about colonial empires, but at least they generate reports. I recently came across a British report to Parliament in 1939 entitled “Summary of Information Regarding Nutrition in the Colonial Empire.” Four pages are devoted to Aden Colony, which is said to have an area of 75 square miles, a population in 1931 of 45,992, a birthrate in 1937 of 32.07 per 1,000, an infant mortality rate in 1937 of 196.61 per 1,000, and a death rate in 1937 of 31.72 per 1,000. For part 1, click here. I attach more excerpts below:

3. Diet and Health (deficiency diseases and other relevant considerations). – On the whole, Aden can boast a high standard of public health. The greatest drawback is overcrowding. Large families occupy inadequate and ill-ventilated accommodations in which, as often as not, the domestic goat also claims a quota of space. In consequence of these conditions, respiratory and alimentary diseases are all too common. Diseases directly attributable to qualitative dietary deficiency are not a prominent feature of hospital returns in Aden and the more classical of the tropical diseases – beriberi, scurvy and pellagra – do not occur. Evidence of qualitative deficiency is found, however, in the incidence of rickets among children and of certain eye infections. An examination of 527 unselected children (consecutive cases treated in the Civil Hospital) showed that 33, 0r 6.2 per cent, were suffering from rickets. Continue reading Nutrition in Colonial Aden, #2 →

Food Crisis in Yemen: A Rocky Road

Development, Food and Drink, Yemen


Shahara bridge in northern Yemen

Poverty and famine are old comrades in much of the world. Add to this drastically declining water tables and economic stagnation and you have a sense of Yemen today. But a recent World Bank project makes a virtue out of the rocky road by literally providing jobs for skilled Yemeni stone cutters to build roads. Check out the video on the website by clicking here.

Suicide bomber attacks UK ambassador’s convoy in Yemen

Terrorism Issue, Yemen


Ambassador Torlot

Suicide bomber attacks UK ambassador’s convoy in Yemen

Hugh Macleod in Sana’a and Adam Gabbatt, The Guardian, April 26, 2010

The British ambassador to Yemen escaped assassination this morning when a suicide bomber attacked his security convoy as it drove through a crowded street near the embassy.

The ambassador, Tim Torlot, was unharmed, but one person – believed to be the bomber – was killed in the blast. Two local men and a woman were injured.

Torlot’s armoured car was passing through a poor neighbourhood in the eastern part of the capital, Sana’a, when the explosion occurred.

Witnesses described the suspected bomber as a young men dressed in a tracksuit and trainers who was waiting by the side of a busy road for the convoy to pass. Continue reading Suicide bomber attacks UK ambassador’s convoy in Yemen →

Yosef Tobi at Hofstra

Books You Should Read, Conferences and Talks, Judaism, Scholars, Yemen, Zaydi

Professor Yosef Tobi of Haifa University will be presenting a talk entitled “The Legal Status of the Jews in Muslim Yemen, 897-1948” at Hofstra University on Tuesday, April 27 at 9:35 am in 201 Barnard Hall. This lecture is sponsored by the Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies Program and the program in Jewish Studies at Hofstra. Dr. Tobi is one of the leading experts on the history of Yemenite Jews and has written several important books on the topic, including The Jews of Yemen: Studies in their History and Culture (1999).

For a review of Dr. Tobi’s The Jews of Yemen, click here.

For an article by Dr. Tobi entitled “THE CONTRIBUTION OF YEMENITE
JEWISH WRITINGS TO YEMENITE HISTORY” click here.

ON MILITANCY AND THE ART OF THE EGG

Anthropology/Sociology, Conferences and Talks, Literature, Osama Bin Laden, Poetry, Yemen

The Colloquium for Unpopular Culture and NYU’s Program for Asian/ Pacific/ American Studies present a new series: AUSCULTATIONS: sound, noise, (nervous heart)beats

FLAGG MILLER (University of California at Davis)
ON MILITANCY AND THE ART OF THE EGG: THEOLOGICAL LESSONS FROM THE OSAMA BIN LADEN AUDIOCASSETTE COLLECTION

Cosponsored by NYU’s Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies

When: Monday 19 April 2010, 12:30pm
Where: Room 471, 20 Cooper Square (East 5th and Bowery)
Free and open to the public

The alleged fantasies of Islamic militants provide Western audiences with an ample repertoire not only for stereotyping Muslims but also for severing acts of terror from realms of human experience. With the aim of bringing Muslim militants’ narratives of violence back to the complexities of situated cultural interaction, Flagg Miller will investigate the ways in which militancy is conceptualized through audiocassette-mediated sound production. In the winter of 2002, over 1500 audiocassettes from Osama Bin Laden’s former compound in Qandahar, Afghanistan were acquired by Cable News Networks. Miller will focus on one cassette entitled “With the mujahidin” (ma` al-mujahidin) that features participants cooking breakfast in a makeshift Afghan Arab kitchen. Continue reading ON MILITANCY AND THE ART OF THE EGG →

Islamic Folk Astronomy #5

Afghanistan, Anthropology/Sociology, Folklore and Proverbs, Israel, Palestine, Yemen

The Pleiades Conjunction Calendar

One of the indigenous calendars from the Arabian Peninsula is based on the monthly conjunction of the Pleiades with the moon. The moon conjuncts with the Pleiades about once every 27 1/3 days. This conjunction was visible monthly from autumn through spring and occurred about the same time each year; thus it coincided with the main parts of the pastoral cycle on much of the Arabian Peninsula. According to Abû Laylî (in al-Marzûqî 1914:2:199), these conjunctions began at the time of the autumn wasmı rain. This observation is still found among contemporary Sinai Bedouins (Bailey 1974:588). Ibn Qutayba (1956:87) noted that when the moon conjuncts with the Pleiades on the fifth day of the lunar month, winter goes away. The new moon coincides with the Pleiades during the month of Nîsân or April during the naw’ of simâk. This was considered to be one of the most fortunate star movements in the sky, perhaps because of its unique annual character. Shortly thereafter the Pleiades disappears from view at the start of the heat. Continue reading Islamic Folk Astronomy #5 →