Barack Hussein Obama: We can say it now

Election 2008, Islamophobia

If it ain’t over ‘til it’s over, it’s over at last. Yes, he did it. The next President of the United States, it is finally safe to say with a loud voice, is Barack Hussein Obama. Not just Barry for the ESPN fans, nor Barack H. for those frightened of prejudicial backlash from the Bible Belt, but a candidate who won decisively despite a middle name of Hussein. There is no reason why President Obama should use his middle name. Bill Clinton resonated without a Jeffersonian middle and Jack Kennedy marched into Camelot without his Bostonian f-word on the lips of reporters. But neither is there any need to disguise the fact that a name like Hussein, or even Muhammad, is as American as Tom, Dick, Harry, Mario, Chang, Hideki, Prideep or any of the myriad names that grace American passports.

Names do matter, but nothing matters more than getting over the name blame game that highlighted the Islamophobia in this tense, mercifully past tense now, presidential campaign. Continue reading Barack Hussein Obama: We can say it now →

Showcasing Palestinian cinema

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Film and Video, Israel, Palestine


Jackie Reem Salloum, the director of Slingshot Hip Hop, wants to encourage Palestinians to tell their stories through artistic expression.

Showcasing Palestinian cinema
By Deena Douara, Al-Jazeera, October 29, 2008

On the heels of the Toronto International Film Festival comes another motion picture fete about a people trying to carve out a state in a war-torn region.

From October 25 to November 1, Toronto will showcase 36 films about the Palestinians as part of year-long commemorations marking the 60th anniversary of the ‘Nakba’, or catastrophe.

Kole Kilibarda, one of the Toronto Palestine Film Festival (TPFF) organisers, believes audiences will be surprised by “the amazing cinema produced even under the most difficult of circumstances”.

The TPFF will include Canadian, North American, and world premieres of award-winning documentaries, features and short films.

Palestinian films have gained prominence on the international scene in recent years, beginning with the enigmatic Divine Intervention (2002) and the controversial Oscar-nominated Paradise Now (2005). Continue reading Showcasing Palestinian cinema →

Guilty of Befriending Muslims

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Election 2008, Islamophobia, Taliban


Professor Rashid Khalidi

by Mark LeVine, Tikkun, October 30, 2008

With less than a week left before the most important Presidential election in at least a generation, the McCain campaign has decided that, having failed to convince most Americans that Barack Obama is actually a closet Muslim, its best hope for winning undecided voters is to accuse Obama of having Muslim friends.

Not just Muslim friends, Muslim Palestinian friends. Apparently there are few more fearful combinations in the American ethno-religious lexicon.

And so a McCain spokesman has accused the Los Angeles Times of “intentionally suppressing” a video that would “show a clearer link” between the Democratic candidate and Professor Rashid Khalidi, the most important scholar of Palestinian history in the world, who at the time the video was shot, was a neighbor of Obama and a colleague at the University of Chicago. Continue reading Guilty of Befriending Muslims →

Pay Dirt for the RNC

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Election 2008, Luke R. E. Publican, Palestine, Terrorism Issue


Where the RNC found Joe the Plumber

Yesterday the RNC (also to be known as Really Nasty Condemnations) slid out yet more mud trying to fearmonger Senator Obama yet again as a terrorist. Since they cannot find any smoking guns from Obama’s record, the exit strategy has come down to throwing smoke-filled room stink bombs around Obama’s Chicago neighborhood. The latest mudpie comes at the expense of Professor Rashid Khalidi, who holds the Edward Said Chair of History at Columbia University. When Obama taught at the University of Chicago he was a colleague, neighbor and friend of Khalidi. For the RNC all it takes to be labeled terrorist these days is to be Palestinian. But they have chosen an individual who is a recognized international scholar and who is admired across a broad spectrum of the academy. His most recent book, The Iron Cage, attacks the excesses of Zionism on the Palestinian quest for statehood, but is also critical of the PLO and Palestinian violence. He writes as a historian, not a polemicist only interested in political spin. Continue reading Pay Dirt for the RNC →

More on Floods in Yemen

Environment, Yemen

Thousands of people displaced Hundreds of houses damaged

Abdul Aziz Oudah, Yemen Observer, October 28, 2008


Flood damage in the Hadramawt

Devastation in eastern Yemen after last Friday’s floods caused by heavier than usual rainfall.
Preliminary estimates from the floods in Hadramout and al-Maharah put the death toll at 184 with 100 others still missing.

Seventeen hundred houses were damaged, and ten thousand people have been displaced in the last three days.

The total cost of the damage is estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of YR. Continue reading More on Floods in Yemen →

Rethinking Jihad conference

Conferences and Talks, Islam and Christianity, Islamic Law, Islamophobia, Terrorism Issue

International Conference
“Rethinking Jihad: Ideas, Politics and Conflict In the Arab World and Beyond”

The University of Edinburgh, 7-9 September 2009

Especially since 11 September 2001, the notion of ‘jihad’ has assumed
centre-stage in public and academic discourses on Islam, Muslims, and the
Arab world, particularly as a byword for terrorism and violence. But
clearly jihad has meant different things to different people at different
times, whether as theory, as action or as metaphor. As a timely exploration
of this diversity, the Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World
(CASAW) is convening a major international conference on the subject of
jihad in its multiple dimensions. The conference has three overarching
goals. The first is to bring together academics and others from a variety
of disciplines and specialisations to generate an in-depth discussion of
jihad in its practical, theoretical, historical, juridical and symbolic
dimensions. It is hoped that by drawing on a diversity of perspectives
(methodological, historical and geographical) the conference will contribute
to a deeper and more critical understanding of jihad. The second goal is to
reflect critically on the importance of jihad, however defined, to the study
of the Arab and Islamic worlds: to what extent is jihad a useful analytical
concept? Have students of Islam and the Arab world minimised or overstated
its importance? How should jihad be located in future research agendas?
Finally, the conference will seek to engage with the broader knowledge
community and explore current understandings and representations of jihad
within policy and media circles internationally. It will critique these
representations, as well as explore ways in which academics might contribute
to an improved understanding and contextualisation of jihad in public
discourse. Continue reading Rethinking Jihad conference →

The Endorsement from Hell

Election 2008, Iraq War, Osama Bin Laden, Somalia, Terrorism Issue

The Endorsement From Hell
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, The New York Times, October 25, 2008

John McCain isn’t boasting about a new endorsement, one of the very, very few he has received from overseas. It came a few days ago:

“Al Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election,” read a commentary on a password-protected Islamist Web site that is closely linked to Al Qaeda and often disseminates the group’s propaganda.

The endorsement left the McCain campaign sputtering, and noting helplessly that Hamas appears to prefer Barack Obama. Al Qaeda’s apparent enthusiasm for Mr. McCain is manifestly not reciprocated. Continue reading The Endorsement from Hell →