Follow Us
From the Editors
Jadaliyya Launches DARS Page: Daily Acts of Resistance and Subversion
Tadween Publishing Blog is here! Check it out
Jadaliyya's first book is now available! Click here.
Want to find out about new books? Visit our expanding NEWTON page. Click here.
Interested in writing a Review for Jadaliyya? Visit our Call for Reviews here.
الآن . . . القسم العربي بحلة جديدة
Jadaliyya Launches Photography Page (click here!)
Call for Photos: Become a Contributing Photographer at Jadaliyya
Maya Mikdashi
The Space Between: March 14, March 8 and a Politics of Dissent
![[Pro-Syria Protestor; Image From Al-Manshour.org]](/content_images/3/sm_syria2.JPG "[Pro-Syria Protestor; Image From Al-Manshour.org]")
This week a pro-Syrian protest was staged at the Syrian Embassy in Beirut. A group of about fifty people gathered to express their solidarity with the Syrian people against the atrocities currently being committed by the Asad regime. As reported in Jadaliyya and elsewhere, this pro-Syrian protest was met violently by pro-Asad counter-demonstrators. Many of the pro-Syrian protestors sustained injuries, some of which were serious enough to require trips to the emergency ...
Keep Reading »What is a Citizen? (Or, What if Layla Were Prime Minister?)
On the surface, the question “What is a Citizen?” seems easy to answer. A citizen is a person who is endowed with legal rights by, and duties to, the country of which one is a citizen. Thus, a U.S. citizen is someone who is allowed to vote in U.S. state and federal elections, to serve in the U.S. armed forces, to pass that citizenship on to their spouse and/or children, is entitled to state and federal social services, and who must file state and federal taxes. Similarly, in ...
Keep Reading »Politics in a Time of Politicians
![[Hariri and Nasrallah Smiling; Images From Unknown Archives]](/content_images/3/sm_nasrallahandsa`dhariri.jpg "[Hariri and Nasrallah Smiling; Images From Unknown Archives]")
Last week the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) released the names of four men indicted in the assassination of Rafik al-Hariri to the Lebanese Ministry of Justice. For years now, the question of Hariri's assassination, the former Prime Minister of Lebanon, has been one of two topics that have saturated the political field in Lebanon. The other topic of interest has been the question of whether or not Hezbollah should be disarmed. Hariri and Hezbollah, that is all we have ...
Keep Reading »Top Ten List: What To Expect In Lebanon Now That The STL Indictment is Out
![[Lebanese Flag; Image From The CIA]](/content_images/3/sm_Lebflag.jpg "[Lebanese Flag; Image From The CIA]")
1-Sa`ad al-Hariri will release a videotaped statement from Paris saying that everyone in Lebanon must be brave and steadfast in pursuing justice for assassinated Prime Minister Rafik al Hariri. He will then go out for a five course meal, in Paris. 2-Hassan Nasrallah will release a videotaped statement from an unknown location where he announces that there will be peace and stability in Lebanon. He will sweat profusely, smile, and point his finger at the camera.He will then ...
Keep Reading »What Is [the] Left?
![[Anti and Pro-Bashar Protestors Separated by Lebanese Army; Image From Unknown Archive]](/content_images/3/sm_2011-04-12-ap-syria-protestsjpg-047c9620ca4c3183.jpg "[Anti and Pro-Bashar Protestors Separated by Lebanese Army; Image From Unknown Archive]")
Lebanon has been without a government for months. Finally, a thirty-member cabinet was formed two weeks ago. With a revolutionary uprising in Syria and the brutal response by the Syrian regime intensifying, there is now a Lebanese government whose sole function, it seems, is to weather the storm at the country's northern border, the increasing instability of its border to the south, and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon's indictment that approaches the country with the ...
Keep Reading »My Coming Out Story
![[Blue Arghile; Image From Unknown Archive]](/content_images/3/sm_arghile.jpg "[Blue Arghile; Image From Unknown Archive]")
I am a Sunni. Yes, I said it. I am a Sunni from Beirut, the capital of Lebanon. I was born in a hospital that no longer exists, having been torn down to make way for a tower that houses, most probably, more Sunnis. After being born in that hospital that no longer exists, I was bundled up and sent home with my parents to Tariq al-Jadidah, a neighborhood that is known as the “Sunni bastion of Beirut". I grew up there, a blonde little thing with a working mother who spoke, ...
Keep Reading »When An Act of War Is Not An Act Of War
![[Two Faces of Nakba: Palestinians Fleeing to Lebanon in 1948, Walking Back in 2011]](/content_images/3/sm_Screenshot2011-05-27at6.19.09PM.png "[Two Faces of Nakba: Palestinians Fleeing to Lebanon in 1948, Walking Back in 2011]")
Two weeks ago Israel attacked Lebanon. Troops opened fire on a large group of protestors at the border between these two states. The Israeli army used live ammunition, killing at least eleven civilians and wounding over 100 others, some critically. The Lebanese army also fired their weapons at, and over, the protestors who had arrived at the border in order to commemorate the Palestinian Nakba. Since May 15, 2011, the border has been quiet. Local and international powers ...
Keep Reading »Neoliberalism's Forked Tongue
![[Protest in Egypt; Image From Unknown Archive]](/content_images/3/sm_FIREWORKS_IN_EGYPT.jpg "[Protest in Egypt; Image From Unknown Archive]")
I want to start with an image of a protest that has revolutionary aspirations. This protest is full of people of all ages wearing different kinds of clothing and from all different regions of Lebanon, Egypt or Tunisia. As with all of the protests that the Arab Middle East witnessed in 2011, different signs are held up and different chants are shouted, often interrupting each other. As with protests in Egypt and in Tunis, signs are held up side by side demanding jobs for ...
Keep Reading »What is Sharia?
![[Sharia For Dummies. Image From Unknown Archive]](/content_images/3/sm_sharia_dummies.jpg "[Sharia For Dummies. Image From Unknown Archive]")
This question has animated scholarly, religious, and political debates for centuries. These debates have been lively, at times contentious, and have been held (under different circumstances and leading to different results) in different parts of the Muslim majority world as well as in parts of the world with few, if any, Muslims. More recently, it seems that the question “What is sharia?” has become a pressing concern in Western countries with growing Muslim minorities who ...
Keep Reading »The Ongoing War; Lebanese Leaders Against the Lebanese
![[Lebanese National Dialogue Table: Image From Unknown Archive]](/content_images/3/sm_nationaldialogue.jpg "[Lebanese National Dialogue Table: Image From Unknown Archive]")
It has been 21 years since the end of the Lebanese civil war. 21 years since the last spasms of violence reverberated through the country’s cities, towns and villages. More than two decades ago, a country torn apart, in ruins and in rubble, suddenly found itself at “peace.” Almost immediately, the reconstruction began. In these years, landmarks such as Nasser, Modca, Horshoe, and the Carlton were torn down and replaced with uniforms of the new global order; cheap clothing ...
Keep Reading »Bio
Maya Mikdashi is a PhD candidate at Columbia University's Department of Anthropology and Co-Director of the documentary film About Baghdad. Maya is currently a Faculty Fellow and Director of Graduate Studies at the NYU Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies. She is Co-Founder/Editor of Jadaliyya Ezine.
©2010-2013 by the Arab Studies Institute. All Rights Reserved. info@jadaliyya.com
site by concepcion design