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الآن . . . القسم العربي بحلة جديدة
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Reflections on Egypt after March 19
Return of Identity Politics The March 19 constitutional referendum and the lead-up to it have tempered the strong feeling of unity that Tahrir Square had instilled in the country’s political community. The referendum marked the return of adversity and competition to Egypt’s political arena, as political groups were actively supporting (if not campaigning on behalf of) the “yes” and “no” positions prior to the vote. Despite the unprecedented level of cohesion that the opposition showed immediately after January 25th, the fear-mongering tactics that some religious leaders adopted to encourage voters to approve the constitutional amendments has helped polarize the Egyptian ...
Keep Reading »Funeral of Tortured Syrian Child Hamza al-Khatib (Video)
Hamza Ali al-Khatib, a 13-year old boy, was attending a protest calling for the end of the siege of Der'a. He was one of the many individuals detained that day as part of a brutal crackdown on the protest. One month later, his body was released to his family with clear signs that he had been tortured. Videos of his bruised, battered, and tortured body circulated the internet, culminating in a "We Are All the Martyr Hamza Ali al-Khatib" Facebook page. As outrage over Hamza's torture and death spread, what appeared to be a dying protest movement has been re-energized this past weekend. In response, the Syrian regime arrested Hamza's father, Ali al-Khatib. There ...
Keep Reading »The Year of the Citizen
During the Spring of the so-called Arab Spring, the euphoria that characterized the Winter of 2010/2011 has increasingly given way to more somber attitudes associated with Winter. For those who were expecting a linear progression towards freedom, in which vain autocrats and sclerotic regimes would fall with growing ease and rapidity, despondency is an appropriate response to the increasing ferocity with which ruling elites seek to remain in power. Yet in the life of peoples, as in life itself, linear does not exist. There are no victories without defeat, hope is constantly shadowed by despair, the future consistently threatened by the combined weight of present and past. ...
Keep Reading »"To the Master of the Banquet" by Sargon Boulus
"Ila Sayyid al-Walima" appeared in Sargon Boulus' posthumous collection `Azma Ukhra li-Kalb al-Qabila (Another Bone for the Tribe's Dog) (Baghdad and Beirut: Dar al-Jamal, 2008) To the Master of the Banquet If you are a master give us some bread a drop of medicine for the sick! You, who call yourself a master, give to those who walked in all these funeral processions bewildered in the dream of disaster for whom a cloud passing through the sky of slaughter or a child’s skull, light as a paper boat is sufficient reward for their daily prayer For them spread a white sheet a page in a book no one has written The pure gravy of pains sopped ...
Keep Reading »Prose of a Growing Movement
Yassin Alsalman, The Diatribes of a Dying Tribe. Write or Wrong / Paranoid Arab Boy Publishing, 2011. www.iraqisthebomb.com It’s a good time for a lyric exposé from an Iraqi-Canadian aged 25. Not that there could be such a thing as a bad time for one. With the “Arab Spring” turning the volume up, so to speak, of voices from the Arab world, “Westerners” building new ideas about the “East” are looking for different speakers and new narratives. Increasingly, it’s becoming obvious that Arabs in the diaspora are opening doors for eager spectators looking East while beaming messages West. Those who’ve spent the past two decades living biculturally, daily bridging ...
Keep Reading »Entry Denied: Revolution in North Africa and the Continued Centrality of Migration to European Responses
The recent revolutions in Tunisia and Libya have brought the issue of trans-Mediterranean migration to the forefront of popular discussions about Europe’s relationship with its immediate neighbors in the Middle East and North Africa. It was on the back of hyperbolic and cataclysmic predictions of Europe being “swamped” by migrants that the case for intervention in Libya was partly made and following this, a number of EU member states have agreed on a temporary suspension of the Schengen Agreement. Schengen is an agreement that deals with the free movement of people throughout the European Union and was first signed on 14 June 1985 by five out of the ten members of what ...
Keep Reading »Yemen Update: May 27, 2011
Yemen’s uprising, which began in January with small, peaceful demonstrations, has now brought the country to the brink of civil war. On May 23, clashes broke out in the capital city, Sanaa, between army units loyal to President Ali Abdallah Saleh and opposition militias loyal to opposition leader and Sheikh Sadiq al-Ahmar, head of the Hashid tribal federation. By May 26, the death toll from the fighting approached 100, and further escalation seemed inevitable. Opposition supporters and army units fought for control of key government buildings, and tribesmen loyal to Sheikh al-Ahmar moved from the countryside into Sanaa to reinforce pro-Hashid militias. After months of ...
Keep Reading »When An Act of War Is Not An Act Of War
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 such as the Lebanese state, the UN, the State of Israel, Hezbollah, and the Syrian state are complicit in this silence. The killing of refugees does not warrant much outrage, it seems, by the countries ...
Keep Reading »A Good Week for Bibi, a Bad Week for Barack, an Opportunity for the Palestinians
The past week in Washington was an extraordinary one. It witnessed an American president give two speeches in which he offered further concessions to Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of a country that is a client of the United States. Netanyahu challenged the President from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, effectively seeking and receiving Congress's stamp of approval on his strikingly extreme positions. This end-run around the US Executive Branch followed an invitation from the head of the Republican congressional opposition to speak to a joint session of Congress. This invitation itself was in defiance of American constitutional principles and the hallowed ...
Keep Reading »Whither Palestinian Resistance? Part III Roundtable on Palestinian Diaspora and Representation
[This is PART III of a three-part roundtable on Palestinian Diaspora and Representation moderated by Jadaliyya Co-Editor Noura Erakat. It features Naseer Aruri, Seif Da'na, Karma Nabulsi, and Sherene Seikaly. Read the Keep Reading »
Letter from Saudi Citizens Calling on King to Free Manal al-Sharif
[The following letter was issued by a variety of Saudi citizens calling on King Abudllah to free Manal al-Sharif who revlead that she had been driving in the Kingdom (see video here) as part of a larger call for Saudi women to drive themselves on June 17, 2011. As of early morning on Wednesday May 25, 2011, the letter has received over 1100 signatures. The original Arabic version of the letter is reproduced below can be found here. The below English translation is an edited version of the translation found here.] In the name of god, most gracious, most merciful. To the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. Peace and god's blessings be upon you. We the children of ...
Keep Reading »The PLO: A Positive Model or Doomed for Failure? Part II Roundtable on Palestinian Diaspora and Representation
[This is PART II of a three-part roundtable on Palestinian Diaspora and Representation moderated by Jadaliyya Co-Editor Noura Erakat. It features Naseer Aruri, Seif Da'na, Karma Nabulsi, and Sherene Seikaly. Read the INTRO, PART I: Palestinians Organizing in Diaspora, Part II: The PLO: A Positive Model or Doomed for Failure?.] 2. Is it fair to say that prior to Oslo, Palestinians had effectively organized themselves in a transnational governing body in the form of the PLO and the PNC? What are some elements of this historical experience that may be taken for granted in the current discourse on representational politics? ...
Keep Reading »نصيبنا من كعكة الإقتصاد
إجراء مدهش ذلك الذي أعلنته الحكومة منذ أيام بتجميد الضريبة العقارية. لم تختر حكومة شرف التأجيل بل التجميد مما يعني أن أمده أطول وغير محدد. ووجه الدهشة فيه هو أن هذه الضريبة هي إجراء اقتصادي نادر من نوعه في حكومة نظيف من حيث إنه يضع العبء على الأغنياء لا الفقراء. وفي زمن ثورة قامت من أجل العدالة الاجتماعية وضد عدم المساواة، كان غريبا أن تختار حكومة، اختار الميدان رئيسها، أن تقدم بهذه السرعة والجرأة على إجراء يسعد كل هؤلاء المستفيدين الذين اشتروا عشرات العقارات للمضاربة والتجارة وتغازل أولئك الذين يمتلكون ...
Keep Reading »"V for Vendetta": The Other Face of Egypt's Youth Movement
“Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea […] and ideas are bulletproof.” - From the film V for Vendetta In the summer of 2010 the youth of Facebook, “shebab al-Facebook,” began a campaign of peaceful civil disobedience through the Arabic “We are all Khaled Said” Facebook Fan Page. The success of their “silent stands” throughout the country gave youth a media friendly face as a group that espouses peaceful non-violent forms of civil disobedience to confront ...
Keep Reading »Culture VII
Spring is about to end (not the Arab one though). Sarah Palin wants to be Empress, but we still have culture. This week's picks: * Prose of a Growing Movement by Rayya El Zein * The Persistence of Jokes by Elliott Colla * To the Master of the Banquet by Sargon Boulus (tr. Sinan Antoon) You can read last week's section here. All previous culture posts can be found here. We look forward to your comments, queries, and contributions. Please take a look at our Call for Posts and ...
Keep Reading »The Persistence of Jokes
My friends laughed and called me a “revolution tourist” — which wasn’t incorrect, since part of my reason for coming was to see what was happening up close. But the other reason, of course, was to visit the state archives to check on the status of my application. Last fall, I wrote up a vague proposal for research I intended to undertake on the inefficiencies of cotton pricing in the nineteenth-century. I submitted the proposal in triplicate: one to the head of the Ministry of Higher Education; one to ...
Keep Reading »Egypt's ‘Orderly Transition’? International Aid and the Rush to Structural Adjustment
Although press coverage of events in Egypt may have dropped off the front pages, discussion of the post-Mubarak period continues to dominate the financial news. Over the past few weeks, the economic direction of the interim Egyptian government has been the object of intense debate in the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). US President Obama’s 19 May speech on the Middle East and North Africa devoted much space to the question of ...
Keep Reading »Where is Khaled? The Story of a Disappeared Critic
The following is a BBC Arabic (with English subtitles) story about Khaled Mohammed, a Saudi citizen who walked up to and began speaking with reporters in Riyadh as they were being "shown" how calm and stable things were in the Kingdom on March 11, 2011. In his interview, Khaled spoke candidly about the lack of political freedoms in Saudi Arabia. He was subsequently disappeared with no indication as to his location. Click here to visit the Facebook page that was created for ...
Keep Reading »Tahrir Speaks: May 27th (Photos and Videos)
Today, May 27, 2011, Egyptians took to the streets in different parts of their country to affirm their continued commitment to the revolution that began on January 25, 2011. In Tahrir Square, approximately 150,000 protesters gathered to sing, laugh, chant, and assert their various demands. Preparations for the demonstrations began late Thursday night / early Friday morning and by mid-afternoon there was no doubt that a diverse array of Egyptians wanted much more than the resignation of Husni ...
Keep Reading »Return to Tahrir Square: May 27th (Ongoing Updates)
At 4 am, the two of us walked from Zamalik to Tahrir Square as protesters began to gather. We took some pictures and conducted some interviews. At this moment (7:00 am), we only have time to post a few of them (see three videos below, followed by images from Tahrir). UPDATE: Click here for our second post which features some of the signs, speeches, interviews, and music of the day's protests. Today, May 27, 2011, promises to be the largest mobilization across Egypt since Husni Mubarak was forced to ...
Keep Reading »Counter-Proposal from Yemen's Revolutionary Youth
While the Gulf Cooperation Council , the United States, the European Union, and the Yemeni president quibbled over who would sign a vague transfer-of-power concord President Ali Abdallah Salih nixed, the youth coalition of pro-democracy demonstrators have put together thirteen specific points for the coming transition (and had them translated into clear English). Their proposals are certainly not inspired by al-Qa’ida or the Muslim Brotherhood, as the discredited Salih regime asserts, nor any other ...
Keep Reading »Running on Empty: International Education Funding Gets Deep Cuts
Although education reform is a hallmark of the Obama presidency, we have just witnessed the largest cuts ever to the US Department of Education’s international education programs. In 2009, Obama and his Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, announced Race to the Top. A $4.3 billion program, it is one of the largest and most expensive education programs in US history. A central goal of Race to the Top is to “prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace and to compete in the global economy.” ...
Keep Reading »Manal al-Sharif: Saudi Woman Drives the Streets of al-Khobar (Video)
The video below shows Manal al-Sharif driving around the streets of al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia, while discussing the impact of women's inability to drive in Saudi Arabia. Manal is one of the women who are organizing the call for Saudi women to drive themeselves on June 17 as an act of protest. Click here to read the "I Will Drive Myself" for action. She was recently detained by Saudi authorities for her driving and her related statements. Click here to read the Letter Calling for Release of Manal ...
Keep Reading »Kenyon Review Interview with Sinan Antoon on Literature and Arab Uprisings
[The following interview was conducted with Jadaliyya Co-Editor Sinan Antoon on the relatonship between the Arab uprisings and literature. The interview was originally published on the Kenyon Review Blog.] 1. How do you think literature may or should respond to this spring’s events? What role (or roles) would you say literature has played, and how might those roles change? Literature always responds to history, of course, but works hastily written under the pressure of responding often risk being ...
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