Iranian photographer Mohammad Reza Domri Ganji has compiled a beautiful portfolio of images taken inside landmarks like the Nasir al-mulk Mosque, in Shiraz, Iran.
A set of extraordinary photographs of mosques in Iran by Mohammad Reza Domri Ganji is available on the web. It is well worth checking out. More of his photographs of Iranian mosques can be found here.
Are the Houthis a symptom of regional mistrust?
by Abdullah Hammidaddin, alarabiya.net, Saturday, 20 September 2014
Ten years ago this month Ali Saleh had ordered the field execution of Husayn al-Houthi. This was after a three-month war between government forces and Husayn’s supporters in a remote village in northern Yemen. At the time, Husayn’s supporters were few and I believe the matter could have ended there. But Saleh decided to push on and confront the rest of Husayn’s family who then reacted by picking up arms again. They ended up surviving five wars waged by the government. Today Abdulmalik al-Houthi – Husayn’s younger brother – has forces in Sanaa and this time he is threating the Yemeni government, forcing it to make concessions.
In the past year alone, the Houthis have altered the political landscape of Yemen. They pushed the Ahmar family out of their homes and overthrew their three hundred year sheikhdom and authority in the tribal federation of Hashid. They took the al-Jawf area as a strategic last stronghold for their adversaries. They’ve forged alliances with most tribes in the northern region and also in the south. And now in Sanaa they are fighting against both the militias of the Islah party (Muslim Brotherhood branch in Yemen) and military factions loyal to General Ali Muhsin Al-Ahmar in what could escalate into a major war in the fragile capital city. Continue reading Here come the Huthis…
There is a very good Youtube video of interviews with a hundred British imams about the problems with ISIS and how it is doing damage to Islam, especially in Britain. It is well worth seeing. The video was posted on July 11, 2014.
When I first arrived in Yemen, early in 1978, I found a virtual janna, a country building itself up by the sandalstraps, people who were welcoming, tribesmen who did more than wear their honor on their sleeves, a sense that the future would bring good things. It was not a land frozen in time, despite the lack of infrastructure and Western amenities, but a force for change as Yemenis took to entrepreneurship as second nature (which it, of course, always was). Development was in the air and on the ground, as bilateral and United Nations agencies poured money into Yemen, much of it ineffectual and wasted. In 1978 USAID was sponsoring a major sorghum improvement project in Yemen, a boondoggle that did little more than collect seeds for the University of Arizona’s seed bank. Given what I learned about Yemeni farmers’ knowledge, they should have been giving advice to the United States on how to grow sorghum. Much ado was made about building up the capacity of the central government, although the money flowing in through the various programs invited corruption rather than sustainable growth. Still, I have felt over the years that Yemenis, by and large, have the resolve and grit to persevere.
In the past three and a half decades Yemen has experienced ups and downs. A population estimated around 6 million or less back then has skyrocketed to some 24 million today. With the decline in subsistence agriculture, which at least filled stomachs, poverty and malnutrition are greater today than they were in 1978. The devastating loss of remittance wealth, which fueled Yemen’s grass-roots development in the 1980s, has led to chronic unemployment. The much touted unification in 1990, a kalashnikov wedding in hindsight, could not overcome the power politics and regional rivalry that have played out in the last two decades. The removal, or at least side-lining, of Ali Abdullah Salih has thus far not resulted in progress towards a peaceful solution to Yemen’s agonizing conflicts. The problem is not so much the inability of Yemen to renew itself, but the continual interference from outside forces. Continue reading Yemen from Janna to Jahannam
When I was young and impressionable, one of my favorite movies was They Died with their Boots On, the Errol Flynn movie about Custer’s last stand. There was Flynn/Custer with his sword raised out in front of his troops heading for the savage Indians. Had it been a fair fight, of course he would have won, but he stood his ground and was the last man standing. Watching this film recently, apart from the totally ahistorical plot of the made-for-Hollywood battle scene, I wonder how many horses were maimed from the trip wires. In a sense Flynn represented a hero against impossible odds, but in another it perpetuated the notion of the white man’s manifest destiny at the expense of the savage “red man.” I doubt it inspired any sarsparilla party types to go out and shoot any Indians, but it certainly reinforced a cultural bias that remains to this day.
I recently came across a film about the death of Husayn, the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, at Karbala. This comes in Arabic and Urdu versions and is entitled “The Caravan of Pride” (موكب الاباء). Like the Flynn film, the bias in the film is evident from the start. This is a film highlighting the conservative Shi’a view of an evil and crazed Yazid. Watching the film creates sympathy for the tragic death of Husayn and his followers at the same time that it denigrates the incoming Umayyad caliphs as heretics. It is easy to forget that the event taking place happened in 61 AH/680 CE, before there were any of the Sunni law schools and five years before Abd al-Malik became caliph and authorized a new edition of the Qur’an. Continue reading They died with their sandals on
An Iraqi looks at a statue during his visit to the Najaf Heritage and 1920 Revolution Museum in the Khan al-Shilan building on February 27, 2014 in the holy city of Najaf, central Iraq © Haidar Hamdani – AFP
Iraq commemorates 1920 revolt against Britain in new museum
Your Middle East, February 27, 2014
Iraq opened a museum in the Shiite pilgrimage city of Najaf on Thursday commemorating a 1920 uprising against British occupation in a building that once housed captured soldiers.
Iraq opened a museum in the Shiite pilgrimage city of Najaf on Thursday commemorating a 1920 uprising against British occupation in a building that once housed captured soldiers.
The opening of the Najaf Heritage and 1920 Revolution Museum in the Khan al-Shilan building was attended by Tourism and Antiquities Minister Liwaa Smaisim, as well as tribal leaders and politicians.
“This is the first museum dedicated to the heritage and history of Najaf, and represents a symbol of the rejection of slavery and foreign occupation,” Smaisim told AFP. Continue reading Remembering 1920 in Iraq
Abd al-Malik al-Huthi, left; Hashid Shaykh Sadiq al-Ahmar, right
by Abdullah Hamidaddin, al-Arabiyya Online, February 8, 2014
Framing matters. It shapes the way we react to a story. It focuses our attention to some details and distracts us from others. It connects a story to another set of stories, and separates it from others. Framing can make a story relevant or irrelevant. Ideally framing would be made through a serious process of observation and analysis. But more than often it is guided by the interests of those framing or their audiences.
Sometimes writers lack the sophistication to see the complexity of the world, so they select simple frames. Other times politicians see that a certain frame serves their interests more than another. Thus they only hear stories framed in their preferred way.
Sticking to Nonsense
I am saying this because of the ways the conflicts in the Middle East are framed as a Sunni/Shiite conflict. And I keep asking myself; why this insistence on retaining such a superficial way of analyzing the region and its conflicts? Why insisting on reincarnating Huntington’s clash of civilization thesis albeit in a ‘clash of sects’ variety? Continue reading Yemen’s Houthi-Ahmar sectarian framing
Bodies of Yemenis killed by a drone attack last Thursday
The use of drones in Yemen has received a lot of attention this year, even though there has appeared to be a lull in their use since the summer. It is reported in Yemen Press that an American drone killed 8 Al-Qaida suspects in Ahwar Abyan. No details are given in the article. Nashwan News, quoting sources from Yemen’s security forces, describes a different strike the same day in al-Bayda’ in which a top al-Qa’ida figure is said to have been killed. Or was it really a wedding procession, as reported in Al-Masdar Online, which describes a drone (known in Arabic as a ta’ira bidun tiyar) that killed 13 and wounded 30 others in hitting cars in a wedding procession (zifaf). Aden Online reports the number of dead as 17 and 32 wounded. Another source gives a range of 12 dead and wounded. The province of al-Bayda’ has seen a lot of resistance to the government. The drone struck at 4:30 pm on Thursday, hitting cars carrying men from two tribes. Two prominent tribal shaykhs were said to be wounded in the process.
The stories differ because the sources differ, some eager to justify any drone attack as effective and others unwilling to admit that the strike was successful in eliminating a terrorist. Clearly, however, as the horrendous photograph of the dead documents, whether or not al-Qa’ida lost a leader, there were quite a few other people who were killed. Even if the government thought it legitimate to go after one man, is it worth depriving so many citizens of life and limb? Once again drones serve as the best recruiting tool for terrorists in Yemen and drag the name of the United States even further into the muck. Continue reading Of Drones and Reporting