Maghreb Media Roundup (May 3)

[This is a roundup of news articles and other materials circulating on the Maghreb and reflects a wide variety of opinions. It does not reflect the views of the Maghreb Page Editors or of Jadaliyya. You may send your own recommendations for inclusion in each week's roundup to maghreb@jadaliyya.com by Thursday night of every week.]  Algeria Algerians in London protest against shale gas the lack of a national debate The Algeria Solidarity Campaign and Algerian Cultural Collective highlight ...

عيد العمال

Libya: Which Fate for Gaddafi’s Henchmen?

On 24 March 2013, about 200 former rebel fighters in Libya besieged the prime minister's office, demanding that he resign in accordance with a political isolation law banning members of the former regime from political life. Ali Zeidan, the current prime minister of Libya, served as a diplomat under Gaddafi. The draft political isolation law being debated applies to anybody who held an official position during the final two decades of Gaddafi’s rule, which includes many who have played a prominent ...

New Texts Out Now: Charles Tripp, The Power and the People: Paths of Resistance in the Middle East

Charles Tripp, The Power and the People: Paths of Resistance in the Middle East. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book? Charles Tripp (CT): The origins of the book lay initially in my feeling that a great deal of space had been devoted to the analysis of elites, the resilience of regimes, and the dominance of the state in the Middle East. This is perfectly understandable and has produced some outstanding studies. However, there did ...

Justice Is Universal: A Panel Discussion on Palestine, Comparative Frameworks, and Solidarity

Though some may find it easy to use terms like “apartheid,” understanding the material relationships that ground the comparison between Palestine and South Africa is a more difficult endeavor. Similarly, the ease with which activists link the struggles of indigenous peoples in the Americas to the Palestinian cause often belies the everyday details that make this relationship so powerful. With that in mind, Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of California Los Angeles organized a panel on ...

Alternative Worlds at the 2013 World Social Forum in Tunis

Last month, I attended my first World Social Forum (WSF) in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia. I study social movements and teach about the WSF and the very different and more established annual scrum of the powerful in Davos: the World Economic Forum. I was eager to attend the 2013 WSF (26-30 March) because of its location, chosen by activists during the February 2011 World Social Forum in Dakar to honor the Tunisian Jasmine revolution that overthrew the Ben Ali regime. The WSF slogan, “Another World is ...

Not in the Revolution's Name: Egypt's New Judicial Authority Bill

  Amid the recurrent standoffs between the Egyptian opposition on the one hand and President Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood group from which he hails on the other, the opposition is often characterized as incompetent, opportunistic and unwilling to accept the outcome of democracy, in reference to the results of the elections that brought Morsi to the presidency and handed the Muslim Brotherhoods' Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) a majority in parliament. But the policies and steps taken ...

Le Sahara, l’identité et l’africanité dans la littérature francophone du Sud-est: Moha Souag s’exprime

Moha Souag est un écrivain francophone qui a gagné une place prestigieuse dans le paysage littéraire francophone au Maroc grâce à sa persévérance, à l’abondance des ses écrits et à son style d’écriture innovant ; « polygraphe confirmé, il a touché/visité (tâté de) tous les genres littéraires, la poésie, la nouvelle, le roman, le conte. Il a obtenu des prix littéraires tels que le grand prix Atlas, le prix de la nouvelle octroyé par RFI. » Moha n’est pas uniquement une figure de proue de la ...

From “Islamic Art” to “Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and Later South Asia”: Reliving the Distortions of History

This is the exceptional collection in all America, and it is being neglected. I urge you to make the reinstallation of Islam your highest priority. If you were to create an Islamic wing, you’d find that our holdings – splendid bronzes, excellent silver, majestic tiles, gorgeous carpets, intricate woodcarving, masterful pottery, and glorious miniatures – would become as popular as the European paintings. You laugh? [1] These words were recollected by the influential former director of the Metropolitan ...

The Active Feminine: Performance Art in Lebanon with Reference to Marya Kazoun

In the setting of the current Arab art boom and the political flux ignited by regional uprisings, the difficulty in differentiating between performance art and activism increases, further intertwining the abstract borders that divide them. Nonetheless, while activism pushes its way as a societal form of rejection, performance art conversely sneaks into the social sphere as an accepted method of protest, encouraged by the public as a sign of cultural sophistication.  Within the context of Lebanon, ...

First as Shadow, Then as Farce: An Evening with Medieval Puppeteer Ibn Daniyal at CUNY in New York

The thirteenth-century occulist Muhammad Ibn Daniyal, said to have occasionally blinded his patients, is remembered both for his tragic optometry and for his comedic shadow puppet plays. A refugee from Mosul, Ibn Daniyal once entertained Sultans and urchins alike in the streets and salons of medieval Cairo. Perhaps he was better at summoning the shadows than the light. His Tayf al-Khayāl trilogy (“The Shadow Spirit”) is known as the only work of Arabic drama to have survived from the pre-modern period in ...

The Terror of Capitalism

Delhi. On Wednesday, 24 April, a day after Bangladeshi authorities asked the owners to evacuate their garment factory that employed almost three thousand workers, the building collapsed. The building, Rana Plaza, located in the Dhaka suburb of Savar, produced garments for the commodity chain that stretches from the cotton fields of South Asia through Bangladesh’s machines and workers to the retail houses in the Atlantic world. Famous name brands were stitched here, as are clothes that hang on the ...