Darkness Falls on the Middle East

Iraq War, Lebanon, Terrorism Issue

by Robert Fisk
The Independent, 24 November 2007

In Beirut, people are moving out of their homes, just as they have in Baghdad.

So where do we go from here? I am talking into blackness because there is no electricity in Beirut. And everyone, of course, is frightened. A president was supposed to be elected today. He was not elected. The corniche outside my home is empty. No one wants to walk beside the sea.

When I went to get my usual breakfast cheese manouche there were no other guests in the café. We are all afraid. My driver, Abed, who has loyally travelled with me across all the war zones of Lebanon, is frightened to drive by night. I was supposed to go to Rome yesterday. I spared him the journey to the airport.

It’s difficult to describe what it’s like to be in a country that sits on plate glass. It is impossible to be certain if the glass will break. When a constitution breaks – as it is beginning to break in Lebanon – you never know when the glass will give way. Continue reading Darkness Falls on the Middle East →

Pakistan’s tribal chieftains exploit state collapse to assert local power

Pakistan, Terrorism Issue

[Editor’s Note: there is an interesting new post by Hamid Hussain on Saudi Debate about the current strife in Pakistan and its relation to the situation in Afghanistan. Here is an excerpt from the end of his commentary, the full version available at http://www.saudidebate.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=952&Itemid=181.]

In general, Pakistani society is in a state of denial refusing to acknowledge the looming threat to the very national fabric of the society. Majority see current conflict only through the prism of anti-Americanism. In the absence of reliable information, opinions are being formed on the basis of rumors, suspicions and conspiracy theories. On one end of the spectrum is the opinion of use of overwhelming force to crush the challenge to government authority and on the other end some are advocating that government simply abandon its primary responsibility and pull out all security forces. Everyone is mute about what will happen next; i.e. after large scale destruction from a sledgehammer approach or after pulling security forces out without any mechanism in place and giving free hand to militants. Average citizen wakes up every morning to see another horrific case of brutality and wanton violence. Continue reading Pakistan’s tribal chieftains exploit state collapse to assert local power →

Déjà Voodoo

Iraq, Iraq War, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Terrorism Issue

Consider the opening line of the lead story in yesterday’s New York Times:

BAGHDAD — Saudi Arabia and Libya, both considered allies by the United States in its fight against terrorism, were the source of about 60 percent of the foreign fighters who came to Iraq in the past year to serve as suicide bombers or to facilitate other attacks, according to senior American military officials.

In the long durée, as Napoleon might say if he were alive today, politics makes strange embedded fellows of nation states. There are three nations at play here in the field of lording over by the world’s reigning super power. Iraq and Libya had European imposed (and later revolution-deposed) monarchs at mid-stream in the 20th century. At the same time Saudi Arabia’s royal line evolved an iconclastic religiously mandated kingship that has withstood toppling and seems likely to do so far into the security based future. All three states are where they are today largely because of the world’s thirst for crude oil. The same three states, should Iraq survive de facto federation, face a future defined by a mega-politicized war on terrorism, a war with no state-like enemies being fought by a coalition of nation states willing to arm themselves to the teeth with conventional weapons and make airline passengers take their shoes off each and every time they fly. Two centuries from now a future Napoleon, whatever his or her nationality, may look back on the current political climate and have a hindsight sense of déjà vu, or will it be more of the voodoo politics mass mediated today? Continue reading Déjà Voodoo →

The Search for Happiness

Humor and Satire

By Khalid Kishtainy
Translated by Ramsis Amun

Goodday!

My first intellectual foray as a child was an attempt to discover what happiness was and how I could find it. I was thirteen years old when I borrowed “The Story of Greek Thought”, hoping to find answers to this question from Greek philosophers. I was sorely disappointed. All I found were a few short paragraphs on the subject and I discovered that these philosophers only tasted misery in their lives and that one of them – I think his name was Socrates – ended his life by drinking a cup of hemlock. I closed the pages of the book and spent the next three months suffering from headaches. I still suffer from headaches and, of course, from that sickness called the search for happiness.

In my intellectual journey I came across many further speculations on the subject, of course. The English said that the happy man is one married to a Japanese woman, and who lives with her on the French Riviera, and employs a Chinese cook. I am still uncertain of the third stipulate. Do they mean to cook Chinese meals or to fulfill the needs of the Japanese woman? The Chinese themselves have their own view of happiness. Why not? Are we not enjoined as Muslims to “seek knowledge even in China”? The Chinese say that if you wish to be happy for an hour you need to drink a glass of fruit juice, and if you wish to be happy for three days, get married, and if you wish to be happy for eight days, slaughter a sheep and eat it, and if you wish to be happy for a lifetime, become a gardener! Continue reading The Search for Happiness →

What Makes a A Muslim Laugh?

Arabic Cartoons, Danish Cartoon Controversy, Humor and Satire, Islam in Europe, Islamophobia, Journalism and Media, Muhammad

Today’s BBC News has a story with the headline “Does Islam have a sense of humour?” This is the kind of question that makes me want to cry. “Islam”, like any religion, will “have” whatever people read into it. For a Christian or Hindu apologist just about everything that Muslims do is “funny” in the sense of being different and looked down upon, although it is not funny to non-Muslim fundamentalists when Muslims practice their faith in ways that are dismissed as violent or antagonistic. Muslims do not generally take their own faith as a joke, unless they are in the Enlightenment-mentored mode of rationalizing away whatever fixed dogma demands about the power of Allah. Islam is not inherently funny, especially to those who practice it, but neither is it opposed to laughter. Humor is a pan-human trait and it is highly contextual. Yes, there are Muslims who have a sense of humor and those who do not. In the real world how could it be otherwise?

The article’s hook-line teaser notes: “Muslims are often depicted as people who can’t take a joke. But as a stand-up comedy tour showcasing Islamic talent arrives in the UK, is that fair?” There is something quite different about looking for a sense of humor in an entire religious tradition compared to observing what individual Muslims do. Continue reading What Makes a A Muslim Laugh? →

Arabia, A Poem from 1815

Islamophobia, Orientalism, Poetry

While reading old books on Arabia in Oxford’s Bodleian Library two summers ago, I came across a rare book indeed. I had the privilege of being the first person ever to read the book, as the folios were still uncut. Considering that the book was published in 1815 and soon thereafter entered the library, it might be readily assumed that it is a book not worth reading. In fact it proved to be a delight and a rarity. The book is called Arabia, A Poem and the author is a man named Johnson Grant. The author was an Oxford chap of St. John’s and is billed as the Domestic Chaplain to the Countess Dowager of Balcarres. No doubt the Countess enjoyed the work, although generations of Oxford students and scholars have somehow passed it by.

It is a rather long poem with extensive commentary. Not surprisingly, the Christian chaplain does not think Islam is the right religion. Continue reading Arabia, A Poem from 1815 →

Sacrilege and Pilgrimage

Islamic Rituals, Saudi Arabia, Travel

One of the most odious acts for a non-Muslim to do is enter Mecca. The swash-buckling Captain Richard Burton (1821-1890) disguised himself as an Afghan (pre-Taliban, of course) Muslim and in 1853 joined pilgrims to Mecca. While not the first Westerner to sneak into the holy city, his account is the most notorious. Here is how Burton describes his participation:

“”Alhamdu Lillah!” Thanks be to God! we were now at length to gaze upon the Kiblah, to which every Mussulman has turned in prayer since before the days of Muhammed, and which, for long ages before the birth of Christianity was reverenced by the Patriarchs of the East. Soon after dawn arose from our midst the shout of ‘Labbaik! Labbaik!’ and passing between the rocks, we found ourselves in the main street of Mecca, and approached the ‘Gateway of Salvation,’ one of the thirty-nine portals of the ‘Temple of Salvation.’ Continue reading Sacrilege and Pilgrimage →

Want to Watch My Harem?

Gender and Sexuality, Music and Dance, Orientalism

Ah, vaudeville. Before Elvis, the Beatles and the Beastie Boys, there were those corny songs targeting recent immigrants to America. One of those immigrants with a Sicilian last name would have been my grandfather, Martin Varisco, who in 1913 left the Big Apple Blossom to work on the railroad and work his way west. He made it to Ohio, where he married and settled down. But the very year he left New York, the songwriter Irving Berlin produced one of his less memorable songs. This was for the Irish, not the Italians, an important distinction on the streets and in the bars at the time. But here’s what can happen when Tin Pan Alley gets confused with Midaq Alley: an Irishman named Pat Malone with rhyme running amok in a Turkish harem. Continue reading Want to Watch My Harem? →