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Allegory of a Revolution: José Clemente Orozco’s “The Trench”
![[Detail of José Clemente Orozco’s “The Trench” (1926). Photographed by the author.]](/content_images/3/sm_detailofthetrench.jpg "[Detail of José Clemente Orozco’s “The Trench” (1926). Photographed by the author.]")
José Clemente Orozco was the oldest of Los Tres Grandes, the celebrated modernist painters who led Mexico’s twentieth-century muralist movement. Among “The Big Three,” he was also the least politically dogmatic and the most outwardly pessimistic. Whereas Diego Rivera idealized the armed struggle of the Mexican Revolution (1910-20), having missed the deadliest periods of combat while active in Cubist circles in Paris, Orozco was haunted by the carnage and chaos he had witnessed firsthand. Like Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros—a brazen militant and diehard labor organizer—often depicted the revolution and the future of the nation through the image of the worker at the center ...
Keep Reading »New Texts Out Now: Vijay Prashad, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South
Vijay Prashad, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South, with a preface from Boutros Boutros Ghali. London and New York: Verso and New Delhi: LeftWord, 2013. Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book? Vijay Prashad (VP): When I finished The Darker Nations, I felt that the last section was not adequate. That book, published in 2007, told the story of the Third World Project from 1927-8 (the League Against Imperialism meeting in Brussels) to 1983 (the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Delhi). It gave an account of the complex and hopeful elements of the Project—the fight to create space for political sovereignty, economic development, and social ...
Keep Reading »Herstory Repeats Itself
There is always a beginning. I reflect my ancestry and hope to do it justice by continuing to survive creatively. The complexity of our post-modern lives has both limited and made limitless our capabilities to reference our past. While many of us are blessed with mobility and migration, we are similarly plagued with displacement, political corruption and social status-quos. We flock to museums and gawk over our inherited histories, spiritually disconnected from the artifacts of the deceased. We consume official narratives at every angle, whether it be through our history textbooks, television sets, radios, computer or mobile screens. But we rarely take the time to heal ...
Keep Reading »مالي الحرب الماحقة
![[جنود للقوات الفرنسية. المصدر الشروق تصوير ح.م]](/content_images/3/sm_malifrance.jpg "[جنود للقوات الفرنسية. المصدر الشروق تصوير ح.م]")
بدأت فرنسا حملتها في مالي ودس أنفها في شؤون مستعمرتها السابقة متعذرة بمحاربة "القوى الإسلامية المتطرفة" وضرورة وضع حد لسطوتها في مالي. خططت وأرست القواعد والجنود وقررت القصف ومطاردة هذه الجماعات، قتلت إلى حد الآن العشرات من عناصر" أنصار الدين" وقصفت بعض خزانات وقودها، وقال الجيش المالي إنه استعاد السيطرة على بعض المدن. أعلنت فرنسا أنها لن تتعدى الجنوب المالي، وإنه ليس من ضمن مخططاتها التوجه إلى الشمال، إنما ستمهد للقوات الأفريقية للقيام بتلك المهمة وتحرير الشمال من قبضة "الجماعات الإسلامية" المتطرفة. وفعلاً بدأت بعض الدول الإفريقية بإرسال قوات إلى مالي، لكن يبقى إعلان فرنسا مجرد وعد وتظل هناك حقيقة أنها دخلت من دون غطاء دولي شرعي. من ...
Keep Reading »Good Taliban, Bad Taliban: Pakistan’s Double Game and the US War on Terror
![[Maulvi Nazir, a militant leader close to the Pakistani military, was killed in a US drone strike. Image from AP.]](/content_images/3/sm_schmelztaliban11.jpg "[Maulvi Nazir, a militant leader close to the Pakistani military, was killed in a US drone strike. Image from AP.]")
The start of 2013 brought a fresh upsurge of US drone strikes in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan, killing between twenty-three and forty-four people. Since 2008, when President George W. Bush ordered increased strikes on “militants” and associated “infrastructure targets” in these areas, killings have been a constant occurrence. President Barack Obama not only continued this policy, but escalated it dramatically. Of the 360 total strikes documented by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 308 have occurred since Obama took office. It is no surprise, then, that individual drone strikes no longer cause much of a stir in the international press, ...
Keep Reading »Imagining Justice Beyond the ICC
![[The building of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands. Image from Wikimedia Commons.]](/content_images/3/sm_Building_of_the_International_Criminal_Court_in_The_Hague.jpg "[The building of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands. Image from Wikimedia Commons.]")
The International Criminal Court’s acquittal of Congolese militia leader Mathieu Ngudjolo on 18 December did not exactly make headlines in Palestine. Ngudjolo was accused of commanding fighters who raped and hacked to death approximately two hundred people, including children, in a single day in February 2003. Arguing that witness statements were unreliable, ICC judges determined that the Court did not have sufficient evidence to prove Ngudjolo’s complicity in these crimes. Not surprisingly, the Court’s verdict dealt a massive blow to the aspirations of thousands of Congolese who had rested their hopes for justice in the ICC. Though it is not often that Palestinian ...
Keep Reading »The Naked Bodies of Alia
![[Grafitti of Alia al-Mahdy and Samira Ibrahim in Cairo, Egypt. Image from suzeeinthecity.wordpress.com]](/content_images/3/sm_aliasamira.jpg "[Grafitti of Alia al-Mahdy and Samira Ibrahim in Cairo, Egypt. Image from suzeeinthecity.wordpress.com]")
Just as we started thinking that Alia al-Mahdy’s nude portrait was a thing of the past, new images surfaced on the web. On 20 December 2012, FEMEN—a Ukrainian women’s movement known for its controversial nude protest actions—posted photos of Alia and two FEMEN members posing naked in front of the Egyptian embassy in Stockholm on their Facebook page. The Facebook group cover photo was updated on the same day, showing a nude Alia raising the Egyptian flag, photo-shopped against a black, red, and white background representing the Egyptian national colors. The photos were stills from a one-minute-and-thirty-seconds-long video posted online that opens with the ...
Keep Reading »Batal: Fighting for Truth, Justice and the Armenian Way
![[Annual Armenian Genocide March in Achrafiyya, Beirut, 24 April 2007. Photo by author.]](/content_images/3/sm_P4230057TN.jpg "[Annual Armenian Genocide March in Achrafiyya, Beirut, 24 April 2007. Photo by author.]")
When I first moved to Beirut to start my doctoral research, I would spend hours at the apartment of my mother’s family in the neighborhood of Zarif. Sometimes I would bring work with me and sit on the chair reading as clouds of smoke from my aunts’ cigarettes and nargila varied in intensity around me. My attention would drift between conversing with my cousins and their mothers, and the reading at hand. I visited them almost daily. I did this, even though I had not grown up with them. I was not one of those Lebanese returnees - I mean I was, but not in what might be termed the traditional sense. I returned, but I was older than most people are when they make that ...
Keep Reading »New Texts Out Now: Jens Hanssen, Kafka and Arabs
Jens Hanssen, “Kafka and Arabs.” Critical Inquiry (Autumn 2012). Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this article? Jens Hanssen (JH): I have been carrying a dog-eared photocopy of Kafka’s three-page animal story “Schakale und Araber” in my luggage ever since a friend of mine at the German Institute in Beirut handed it to me to read. This was back in 1998, and I remember that when I read it I knew I would return to it one day. I think for anyone concerned about the tragedy of Palestine, Kafka’s story resonates. It is certainly not straightforward and at the time I did not fully know what it meant or ...
Keep Reading »Adorning Afghan Walls
![[Shamsia's ominous figures foreshadow Afghan wounds. Image from S. Hassani.]](/content_images/3/sm_pic4.jpg "[Shamsia's ominous figures foreshadow Afghan wounds. Image from S. Hassani.]")
After Tunisia and Egypt, it was Afghanistan’s turn to be covered in the bold and beautiful colors of graffiti. It all became possible because of one young woman’s unflinching determination. She stood up and vowed to help her country; she is Afghanistan’s first female graffiti artist. Her cry for freedom is an example of the serious changes she wants to see across the Middle East. But it was not an easy ride for the twenty-four year-old Shamsia Hassani—who highlights injustices against women in conservative Afghan society. Like all graffiti artists, she is no stranger to vitriolic criticism of her work, which highlights injustices against women. More importantly, she is ...
Keep Reading »South African Government Discourages Citizens from Traveling to Israel
[The following report was issued by BDS South Africa on 11 August 2012.] South Africa's Deputy Minister of International Relations and Cooperation has unequivocally communicated the South African government's position on "boycott-busting" trips to Israel (which the Israeli lobby has attempted to take students, journalists, sports people, CEOs, government officials, mayors and others on): "Because of the treatment and policies of Israel towards the Palestinian people, we strongly discourage South Africans from going there [to Israel]...[and] any South African company from having anything to do with strengthening the Israeli occupation of the ...
Keep Reading »Youth and Citizenship in the Digital Era: Critique of an Emerging Phenomenon
In a clip that is quite telling of how far relations between digital-savvy youth and power structures have come; the botched, now incarcerated, heir to Egypt’s throne, Gamal Mubarak, was asked a question on his view regarding the youth of Facebook. The young Mubarak dismissed the question mockingly by asking another reporter to answer it causing the audience to burst out in a fit of laughter. That was prior to the 25 January 2011 Egyptian Revolution. Today, as the leaked photograph of Egypt’s state security (right) illustrates, power structures no longer have as much time to laugh about as they dedicate resources to monitoring the Facebook profiles of young activists and ...
Keep Reading »A Tale of Two Movements: Divergent Trends at the World Social Forum-Free Palestine
From 28 November to 1 December 2012, around three thousand people from all over the world gathered in Porto Alegre, Brazil for the World Social Forum-Free Palestine (WSF-FP). Like any mass gathering, this Social Forum served both as a point of contact for activists to network and plan new initiatives, as well as bring out the movement’s inner tensions and challenges in strange—and sometimes uncomfortable—moments. In particular, the unprecedented size and ambition of this convergence spread a distinct air ...
Keep Reading »Bosnia's Dangerous Tango: Islam and Nationalism
[The following report was issued by International Crisis Group on 26 February 2013.] Bosnia's Dangerous Tango: Islam and Nationalism Overview The Bosniak community is deeply frustrated with the dysfunctional government, flawed constitution and economic stagnation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), as well as renewed Croat and Serb challenges to the state’s territorial integrity. The Islamic community has taken a leading role in channelling popular anger, filling a vacuum left by Bosniak political ...
Keep Reading »Slaying Saints and Torching Texts
When I first journeyed to Bamako to research Sufism in Mali in 2006, my American students generally asked two questions: Where is Mali and what is Sufism? Today, the answer to both of these questions is found daily in the headline news. Cultural heritage in Mali is under attack. But just as the armed conflict there is not simply a battle between Islamic extremists and a weak Malian army supported by the French, the destruction of Sufi shrines and Islamic manuscripts not merely the result of an ...
Keep Reading »On the Margins Media Roundup (January)
[This is a roundup of news articles and other materials circulating on Mali, South Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti, and Comoros Islands and reflects a wide variety of opinions. It does not reflect the views of the On the Margins Editors or of Jadaliyya. You may send your own recommendations for inclusion in each month's roundup to info@jadaliyya.com.] Somalia Potential goldmine for fishermen as piracy declines IRIN’s report explains how the improvements in security permit the increase of fishing and seafood ...
Keep Reading »Who Failed Rizana Nafeek?
Rizana Nafeek was beheaded on 9 January, less than two days after a final appeal made by Sri Lankan President Rajapakaa. The several clemency appeals made by Sri Lanka, other states, and human rights organizations failed largely due to the disastrous interplay between Saudi’s flawed legal system and Sri Lanka’s miserly support for migrant workers. Saudi Arabia holds one of the world’s highest execution rates, ranking second after China in 2011. Amnesty is granted to convicts only by “forgiveness” from ...
Keep Reading »Orientalist Feminism Rears its Head in India
The brutal rape and murder of a young medical student in Delhi by a gang of young men, followed closely by the suicide of a Delhi rape victim who was pressured into marrying her rapist by police, has provoked international criticism of the Indian government and widespread protests across India by a diverse strata of Indian society. In the melee of protests with the government, the Indian state has used tear gas and live ammunition, killing a reporter. Next to the police's horrible ...
Keep Reading »How Thomas Friedman Distorts Realities in Egypt, Pakistan, and India
In a recent New York Times op-ed, liberal icon Thomas Friedman asks if Egypt— currently in the midst of street demonstrations, violent repression, and a referendum all surrounding a controversial constitution—will develop into a secular, democratic, modern state—in his words, "the next India"—or an intolerant, Islamist military regime—also in his words, "the next Pakistan.” Both the question and the article are riddled with faulty assumptions and factual omissions. Pointing to ...
Keep Reading »"قراءة نقدية في مفهوم ''أوروبا المسيحية
لدى تناول موضوع أوروبا وفهمها لذاتها وبخاصةٍ لدى تناول قيمها، يبقى الحديث عن أوروبا "المسيحية" شائعًا وبشكل واسعٍ، وكما يبدو على نحوٍ متزايدٍ، أو تتم الإشارة على الأقل إلى جذورها المسيحية ويجري الإصرار على الطابع المسيحي الناتج عن ذلك. بيد أنَّ الاستقامة السياسية تقتضي حظر استخدام كلمة "مسيحي" في هذا السياق على نحو حصري، لذا تسارع أصوات حسنة النية جدًا إلى الحديث بدلاً عن ذلك عن تقاليد مسيحيةٍ-يهوديةٍ أو عن التراث اليهودي-المسيحي في أوروبا، ولكن هذا لا يبدل في خطأ الفهم كثيرا. إنما ...
Keep Reading »Anti-Apartheid: An Interview with Ronnie Kasrils
Ronnie Kasrils is a South African author and activist. He was Minister of Intelligence Services from 2004 to 2008, and member of the African National Congress (ANC) from 1987 to 2007. He was a founding member of Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) and lived in exile in London, Luanda, Maputo, Swaziland, Botswana and Lusaka where he served the ANC. He is currently a jury member of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine. I caught up with Kasrils in London where he participated in a book ...
Keep Reading »InCABI Statement on India-Israel Free Trade Agreement
[The following statement was issued by the Indian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel on 24 August 2012.] We, a group of academics, activists, and artists in India, came together in 2010 to campaign against yet another apartheid regime by extending support to the international campaign for the academic and cultural boycott of Israel. (Visit our website www.incacbi.in for more information.) In yet another instance of India turning a blind eye to Israel’s ...
Keep Reading »Exile and Memory in Contemporary Western Armenian Literature
A thick stack of black and white photographs flutters to the floor. A man stands over the jumbled pile and, looking past bent corners and nibbled edges, sees dozens of faces staring up at him. These faces are vaguely familiar—an old neighbor, a distant cousin, an aunt who used to spend summers with him. Some photos land face down and, from his height, the man can just make out the names and dates scribbled in purple ink across the backs. He kneels down and, with the tips of his fingers, quickly rakes ...
Keep Reading »القرآن ـ جزء من أوروبا؟
[نشر المقال في صحيفة فرانكفورتا الجماينة Frankfurter Allgemeine بتاريخ 16 ابريل 2012 وهي من أهم الصحف الألمانية وأكثرها توزيعا وتأثيرا. ترجم المقال كل من حامد فضل الله وعصام حداد.] إنها لمجازفة المطالبة بجعل القرآن الكريم مقبولا وواضحا كجزء من الثقافة الغربية إذ لا يوجد موضوع آخر يلهب العلاقة التي تربط بين العالم الإسلامي والغرب الأوروبي. وقد يبدو للوهلة الأولى أن هذا الجدل خاضع لحسابات سياسية مما يجعل التوصل إلى خلاصة مقنعة أمراً متعسراً. ولكن لا بد من الإقرار بادئ ذي بدء بأن هناك نواة ...
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