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Marcel Khalife: An Interview
![[Marcel Khalife, Mahmoud Darwish. Image from unknown archive]](/content_images/3/sm_tumblr_lv175tGRA71qhk8bko1_500.jpg "[Marcel Khalife, Mahmoud Darwish. Image from unknown archive]")
Marcel Khalife is one of the Arab world's most revered and celebrated cultural icons. Composer, singer, and oud player, he is best known as the musical voice of students, intellectuals, laborers, and all those committed to social justice, freedom, and human dignity. His arrangements, especially those inspired by the poems of Mahmud Darwish and performed by his band, the Mayadine Ensemble founded in 1976, became part of the daily cultural life of two generations. Since the early 1990s, Khalife has focused on orchestral music, occasionally writing innovative compositions for one, two and four ouds and instruments that were memorized by entire generations. With ...
Keep Reading »قراءة في الرحلة الرشدية بين شح الأمطار وشح الأفكار
إن المتتبع للخطاب السياسي للإسلاميين سيلاحظ ربطاً غريباً بين شح المطر وبخل السماء بمائها وبين انتشار السفور ونزع الحجاب وسياقة المرأة للسيارة، ولكأن ممارسة الحرية الفردية جريمة تستجلب قسوة السماء السحاء بحبس مائها وتجويع الناس والبهائم على حد سواء. ما كل هذه القوة الخارقة لقرار النساء التمتع بحرياتهم الفردية في ظل مجتمعات ترنو إلى الحداثة والعدالة والتقدم؟ فتخلي المرأة، حسب زعم هؤلاء، عن لباس يعتقدونه شرعياً أو استفادة الناس من مظاهر الحياة العصرية هي سبب شح الأمطار وكل الأذى الذي يلحق بمجتمعاتهم. لو صدقنا هذا الخطاب، فنتيجته ستكون وجوب تجريم كل أشكال الحرية ومحاولات الانخراط في الحداثة، رغم كل النقائص التي تعاني منها المجتمعات العربية، لعل السماء ترضى وتجود بمائها ...
Keep Reading »The Day Hafez al-Assad Died
![[Father and Sons. Image by amerune/Flickr]](/content_images/3/sm_assads.jpg "[Father and Sons. Image by amerune/Flickr]")
The day Hazfez al Assad died, I was having lunch with a friend. We were eating pasta at a family owned Italian restaurant in Ras Beirut when the news was announced. With everyone else, we stared at the small television. The owner kept changing the channel, and each time the news was confirmed. I don't remember if we finished lunch. But I do remember that when we went outside the streets seemed deserted. Beirut is not a quiet city, but that day it seemed as if sound had retreated from picture. My father called and demanded that I come home. Less than five minutes later my friend received the same call from her mother. No one knew what would happen next. The questions, I ...
Keep Reading »Announcing the New Issue of Middle East Report Spring 2012
![[Merip cover]](/content_images/3/sm_meripcover.jpg "[Merip cover]")
PULL OF THE POSSIBLE Are the upheavals in the Arab world revolutions? Uprisings? Perhaps all such terms are misnomers, in that they imply an end point to processes that may not have a terminus. Regimes may fall or stand; movements may sputter or succeed in establishing a more democratic system. It often seems as if there are two parallel universes, one of revolution and one of retrenchment, which periodically collide with varying degrees of violence. The key, as argued in the spring 2012 issue of Middle East Report, “Pull of the Possible,” is that the status quo ante cannot be restored. John Chalcraft searches through critical social theory to ...
Keep Reading »Reflections on Ideology After the Arab Uprisings
A key conceptual problem for observers of the Arab uprisings–academics and journalists alike–continues to be how to classify and assess the ideological transformations taking place. “The people want the downfall of the regime,” the central slogan of the uprisings, has been interpreted as anything from a return to pan-Arab sentiments to a new Arab liberalism. For some, it signaled the unification of action around a single idea that resisted the atomization of Arab societies under the neoliberal-military-Western nexus of power. Many in the West now regard the revolutionary potential more skeptically, not least due to Islamist parties winning elections. The question is ...
Keep Reading »Jadaliyya Roundtable on Targeted Killing: Introduction
![[Reaper drone screen. Image from unknown archive.]](/content_images/3/sm_reaperdronekellan.jpg "[Reaper drone screen. Image from unknown archive.]")
[This is the first part of a six-part series associated with a Jadaliyya roundtable discussing targeted killings. Participants include Richard Falk, Nathan Freed Wessler, Pardiss Kabriaei, Leonard Small, and Lisa Hajjar.] On 5 March 2012, Attorney General Eric Holder delivered a speech in which he laid out the US position on law and national security. The second half of his speech was devoted to the targeted killing program, which has escalated dramatically during the Obama administration. Although the military and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have been engaged in such attacks for years, rarely have government officials acknowledged the ...
Keep Reading »Finding Bayt Across Borders of Stone
![[Cover of House of Stone, by Anthony Shadid.]](/content_images/3/sm_Shadid-goes-home-in-House-of-Stone-K212EI0J-x-large.jpg "[Cover of House of Stone, by Anthony Shadid.]")
No roads, not a single one, lead to the place where we had gotten ourselves.* I “met” Anthony Shadid the only way someone like me, a mere reader, can meet a journalist she admires: I emailed him a fan letter. I sent him my short note through the New York Times website and didn’t expect an answer. The next day, he emailed me a brief but warm thank you. Two days later, on May 10th, I read Anthony’s article on Rami Makhlouf—Bashar al-Assad’s cousin and the regime’s crony-in-chief. In the interview, Makhlouf claimed, “If there is no stability here, there’s no way there will be stability in Israel.” His confession embarrassed the regime which was forced to distance ...
Keep Reading »Lecture on Arab Uprisings by Fawwaz Traboulsi at AUB's Issam Fares Institute
![[Professor Fawwaz Traboulsi. Image from video posted below.]](/content_images/3/sm_AUBthumbnail.jpg "[Professor Fawwaz Traboulsi. Image from video posted below.]")
As part of its Arab Uprisings Lecture Series, the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs recently hosted Fawwaz Trabulsi. In his presentation, entitled: “Revolutions Also Topple Ideas: How the Uprisings Shattered the Prevailing Political Constructs of the Arab world,” Traboulsi critically reviewed how the uprisings have called into question the main concepts that have dominated intellectual production and public practices in the Arab world over the past quarter of a century, including the state-society binary, governance, corruption, human rights, and neoliberalism. The Arab Uprisings Lecture Series at the American University of ...
Keep Reading »Remembering Anthony Shadid
![[Anthony Shadid. Image from Wikipedia.]](/content_images/3/sm_AnthonyShadid.jpg "[Anthony Shadid. Image from Wikipedia.]")
His untimely death silences one of the best Middle East reporters. We at the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore, along with the global Middle East Studies community, mourn the loss of the brilliant, gifted Anthony Shadid, whose reporting of the Middle East over the past two decades enlightened all of us. Perhaps he was not well known in Southeast Asia, except for readers of The New York Times, the Washington Post, and Boston Globe. But Shadid was a “must” for anybody seriously following the often bloody events in our region. The Middle East is a dangerous beat for journalists. Anthony, quietly fearless, braved ...
Keep Reading »New Texts Out Now: Lila Abu-Lughod and Anupama Rao, Women's Rights, Muslim Family Law, and the Politics of Consent
Lila Abu-Lughod and Anupama Rao, editors, Women’s Rights, Muslim Family Law, and the Politics of Consent. Special issue of SOCIALDIFFERENCE-ONLINE (December 2011). [SOCIALDIFFERENCE-ONLINE is a publication of the Center for the Critical Analysis of Social Difference at Columbia University, an advanced study center that promotes innovative interdisciplinary scholarship on the role of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and race in global dynamics of power and inequality.] Jadaliyya (J): What made you organize the workshop that led to this special issue? Lila Abu-Lughod and Anupama Rao (LA-L and AR): The workshop grew out of a project called “Who’s Afraid of Sharia?” that we ...
Keep Reading »What Is Cultural Terrorism?
![[Stop Cultural Terrorism in Lebanon. Image from the group's Facebook page.]](/content_images/3/sm_Screenshot2012-02-11at5.26.57PM.png "[Stop Cultural Terrorism in Lebanon. Image from the group's Facebook page.]")
As a well disciplined anthropologist I have learned to be weary of the word “culture.” In fact, it is difficult for me to write the word without using scare quotes. But after Lebanese boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) activists scored an important victory last month, the word has been everywhere in my online universe. Following BDS actions that highlighted Lara Fabian's recent Israeli Independence Day (which marks the Palestinian naqba) performance, Fabian cancelled her planned concert at the Casino du Liban. In response to her cancellation, an online group called Stop Cultural Terrorism in Lebanon (SCTL) went into overdrive. Members of the group were convinced ...
Keep Reading »Theses on the "Arab Spring"
![[Map from arabbay.com]](/content_images/3/sm_Screenshot2012-01-29at8.52.37PM.png "[Map from arabbay.com]")
The gigantic upheaval that is shaking the entire Arab world since its initial tremors started in Tunisia on 17 December 2010 was determined by a long and deep accumulation of explosive factors: the lack of economic growth, massive unemployment (the highest average rate of all world regions), widespread endemic corruption, huge social inequalities, despotic governments void of democratic legitimacy, citizens treated as servile subjects, etc. The mass of people who entered into action across the Arab region is a composite, encompassing a wide range of social layers and categories that are affected to various degrees by elements of this complex set of determining ...
Keep Reading »Contesting Narratives, Locating Power: Updates from Jadaliyya's Second Co-Sponsored Conference on the Arab Uprisings
Jadaliyya and Lund University's Center for Middle Eastern Studies are co-sponosring a conference entited "Arab Uprisings: Contestining Narratives, Locating Power," being held in Lund, Sweden, on 25-28 April 2012. Over the span of two-and-a-half days, over forty scholars, artists, activists, and opposition figures will meet in roundtable formatt to discuss a range of themes, case-studies, and issues related to the Arab uprisings. Those in attendence include Haytham Manna', Alaa Shehabi, and ...
Keep Reading »Art and Subversion: An Interview with Omar Kholeif
Subversion. Featuring work by Akram Zaatari, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Khaled Hafez, Larissa Sansour, Marwa Arsanios, Sharif Waked, Sherif El-Azma, Tarzan and Arab, and Wafaa Bilal. Curated by Omar Kholeif. Cornerhouse, 70 Oxford Street, Manchester, UK. 14 April - 5 June 2012, preview/symposium 13 April 2012. [Omar Kholeif is Curator of Subversion, a large-scale exhibition and public program, which runs until 5 June 2012 at Cornerhouse, Manchester, UK. More about Omar Kholeif here; follow ...
Keep Reading »NEWTONs You Might Have Missed
Since we have featured so much remarkable work in New Texts Out Now (NEWTON), we wanted to pause for a second to let you catch up. Here are a few great posts that you might have missed from the past several months: Nadje Al-Ali and Nicola Pratt, "Between Nationalism and Women's Rights: The Kurdish Women's Movement in Iraq" Paul Amar, “Middle East Masculinity Studies: Discourses of ‘Men in Crisis,’ Industries of Gender in Revolution” James L. Gelvin, The Modern Middle East: A History, Third ...
Keep Reading »How Not to Study Gender in the Middle East
One: Gender is not the study of what is evident, it is an analysis of how what is evident came to be. Two: Before resolving to write about gender, sexuality, or any other practice or aspect of subjectivity in the Middle East, one must first define what exactly the object of study is. Be specific. What country, region, and time period forms the background picture of your study? Furthermore, the terms “Middle East,” “the Islamic World” and the “Arab world” do not refer to the same place, peoples, or ...
Keep Reading »The Myth of Middle East Reporting
The tragic death of Anthony Shadid and Marie Colvin, two celebrated American reporters in chaotic Syria last month, has generated due tributes from colleagues and readers who admired their Middle East coverage over more than two decades. Shadid, a New York Times reporter, who died of an apparent asthma attack, and Colvin of the Sunday Times, who was killed in shelling in Homs, were also praised for their sense of duty to go on secret assignments, braving Bashar Al-Assad's dictatorship and defying ...
Keep Reading »Roundtable on Targeted Killing: Lawfare and Targeted Killing Revisited--A Response
[This is the sixth part of a six-part series associated with a Jadaliyya roundtable discussing targeted killings . Participants include Richard Falk, Nathan Freed Wessler, Pardiss Kabriaei, Leonard Small, and Lisa Hajjar. Click here for the introduction to the roundtable.] The speech that Attorney General Eric Holder delivered on 5 March 2012 in which he outlined the Obama administration’s position on the legality of the targeted killing program ...
Keep Reading »O.I.L. Media Roundup (February 27)
[This is the first installment of the O.I.L. Page Media Roundup, dealing with Occupation, Intervention, and Law. The O.I.L. page can be accessed here and can be clicked on the bar above] In her article, “Exploiting A ‘Dynamic’ Interpretation? The Israeli High Court of Justice Accepts the Legality of Israel’s Quarrying Activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” Valentina Azarov examines the Israeli High Court’s decision legitimating Israeli extraction of natural resources in the Occupied ...
Keep Reading »The Arab Uprisings One Year On: Voices from the Ground (Oxford, 29 February 2012)
Oxford University and the Weidenfeld Scholars would like to invite you to the 2012 Weidenfeld Debates Conference. This year’s event will commemorate the anniversary of the beginning of the Arab Spring and will present 7 unique voices from the streets who witnessed and took part in the popular uprisings. Who? Tunisia - Yassine Ayari, cyber activist, Yemen - Atiaf AlWazir, Researcher, NGO consultant & blogger Syria - Joseph Daher, activist and author of 'The People Demand: a ...
Keep Reading »Our Friend Anthony Shadid's Stories
I feel like I need to write the stories, he would say, or the stories will not get told. And so often Anthony Shadid did write the stories no one else would—the stories from Iraq, from Lebanon, from Libya, from Syria. In the end, he died on a dirt road in Syria, carried by a fellow journalist across the border to Turkey, like a fallen hero. To many, he was a hero, but he was also a beloved friend, a son who adored his parents, a father who lived for his children, a husband who beamed at mention of his ...
Keep Reading »New Texts Out Now: Pascale Ghazaleh, Held in Trust: Waqf in the Islamic World
Pascale Ghazaleh, editor, Held in Trust: Waqf in the Islamic World. Cairo and New York: American University of Cairo Press, 2011. Jadaliyya (J): What made you put together this book? Pascale Ghazaleh (PG): This book brings together articles written by scholars from different countries, working on different aspects of waqf during different periods. These articles were originally papers submitted to the annual seminar organized by Dr. Nelly Hanna of the American University in Cairo's Arab and ...
Keep Reading »Pictures from a Camera
Here in this region, amid the initial, proven, lasting fervor that sends our bodies into perpetual (welcome) disturbance; from these variously perplexing, disappointing, exhilarating, terrible, or inspired moments—from these moments on, we see ourselves on display, and we shed our museums of obsolescence, and in the truest effort to stand up, we are uniquely reshaped. How to compensate for so many lost hours, years, decades of looking at our lives through the lens of wretchedness? And ...
Keep Reading »Happy NEWTON Year: New Texts by Ella Shohat and Joseph Sassoon, the Egyptian Revolution, and More
New Texts Out Now (NEWTON) is gearing up for 2012, featuring an array of new and forthcoming texts that are sure to be of interest to Jadaliyya readers. This week, we are delighted to feature two important books: Joseph Sassoon’s Saddam Hussein’s Ba‘th Party: Inside an Authoritarian Regime, which was just published by Cambridge University Press, and the new edition of Ella Shohat’s Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation, with a new postscript by the author, recently published by I. ...
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