Middle East Quarterly articles from December 2000

Middle East Quarterly archives from December 2000

Want Democracy? Get a King (1).
December 1, 2000... From time to time, the U.S. government has found itself protecting the interests of Middle Eastern monarchs--most notably in 1990-91, when it rescued Kuwait from Iraq's clutches. This is invariably a controversial step: President Bush had to...

Want Democracy? Get a King (2).
December 1, 2000... Legitimacy may serve as a better explanation for the endurance of the monarchies. Their vitality stems from having preserved a link to valued traditions and mores of a rapidly receding past while withstanding the vagaries of political and...

E-commerce in Egypt.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2000... CAIRO--Hind Sa`id's eyes widened at a rumor that made her set down her bottle of Coca-Cola. Seconds later, with a look of absolute longing, she snatched it up again. "I won't give this up," Sa`id, 21, said as she slurped down a healthy gulp....

Why the Middle East Is So Volatile (1).
December 1, 2000... In the four centuries before World War I, the Middle East was a singularly unchanging place. Since that time, it has been perhaps the most hyperactive of regions. Why this dramatic change? When scholars debate the reasons for twentieth-century...

Why the Middle East Is So Volatile (2).
December 1, 2000... The other great challenge to state ideals was voiced by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, spiritual father of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which he created in 1979 on the ruins of the Pahlavi monarchy. Like pan-Arab ideologues, Khomeini viewed...

Longing for a "Reasonable Arab World".
December 1, 2000... It is bad Arab governance--and its causes--and not pan-Arab aspirations, with which Efraim Karsh should be concerned. About one thing Karsh is absolutely right: successive modern Arab rulers have exploited both pan-Arab ideology and the...

Don't Absolve the Great Powers.
December 1, 2000... Yes, the states created after World War I persist because their borders approximate the fault-lines that crisscross the Arab and Muslim worlds--fault-lines that are religious, sectarian, ethnic, linguistic, and cultural. Colonial borders are...

A Richer Pedigree.
December 1, 2000... The basic premise forwarded by Karsh's article is both sound and important. Currency given the concept of unity in Arab politics has retarded the emergence of a modern and stable state system. Only when Arab countries begin to construct limited...

Anyone Remember Amy Carter?(Brief Article)
December 1, 2000... President Bill Clinton turned to his 20-year-old daughter for advice and counsel during recent Mideast peace negotiations, the Drudge Report has learned. Details of Chelsea Clinton's involvement emerged less than a week after Israeli Prime...

Did Israel Betray Its Lebanese Allies? (1).
December 1, 2000... With its national survival so immediately and persistently at stake, Israel has occasionally adopted unsparing measures, such as a nuclear program and the pursuit of terrorists on foreign soil, that recognize the requirements of the country's...

Did Israel Betray Its Lebanese Allies? (2).(Brief Article)
December 1, 2000... Appearing before a parliamentary lobby on behalf of the SLA in Israel, Abu Arz declared that the government of Israel had betrayed its allies.(19) In a different vein, Uri Lubrani, the coordinator of Israeli activities in Lebanon and a key...

Politically Correct Islam.
December 1, 2000... DUBAI -- Smoking and selling tobacco are violations of Islamic law, the ministry of justice, Islamic affairs and property in the United Arab Emirates said Friday [June 11]. The announcement was made during the main weekly Muslim prayers at...

"Honor" Murders--Why the Perps Get off Easy (1).
December 1, 2000... On May 31, 1994, Kifaya Husayn, a 16-year-old Jordanian girl, was lashed to a chair by her 32-year-old brother. He gave her a drink of water and told her to recite an Islamic prayer. Then he slashed her throat. Immediately afterward, he ran out...

A New Kind of Honor Killing?(Brief Article)
December 1, 2000... TEHRAN--A couple in northern Iran forced their 8-year-old girl to drink poisonous weed killer, killing her for getting bad grades, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported Monday. `Abbas Rajabalizadeh and his wife Seyedeh Tahereh...

The United States and Egypt -- How Allied? A Debate (2).(Interview)
December 1, 2000... Hochstein: Steven, you talk as though nothing has changed since the 1950s. Cook: No, I am not saying that, only that the regime remains the same. I am not saying society has stayed the same. It certainly has evolved and become more...

Next, Lee Harvey Oswald Avenue?(Brief Article)
December 1, 2000... ASYUT, Egypt--A Tehran street named after one of President Anwar Sadat's assassins is a barrier to improving Iranian-Egyptian ties, President Husni Mubarak of Egypt said in remarks published on Monday [May 17]. "The presence in the Iranian...

Charles Schumer: "The Peace Process Has Been One-Sided" (2).(Interview)
December 1, 2000... I sometimes ask myself what has caused this upsurge in fundamentalism. I wonder if it is a backlash, similar to the sort of fundamentalist backlashes that have recurred in the history of the United States. The sociologist Edward Shils argued...

Iraq's Secret Weapon.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2000... BAGHDAD--Iraqi leaders have joined a military training course in response to an appeal by President Saddam Husayn, Iraqi newspapers reported on Sunday. The papers said Vice-President Taha Yasin Ramadan and Deputy Prime Minister Tariq `Aziz, as...

Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas.(Review)
December 1, 2000... Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas. By Sylviane A. Diouf. New York: New York University Press, 1998.254 pp. $55 (paper $18.50). Slowly, out of the surprisingly full records of slavery, an important fact is coming...

Track-Two Diplomacy?(Brief Article)
December 1, 2000... STOCKHOLM--Israel's participation in the popular Eurovision song contest is in doubt after the Israeli band Ping Pong waved Syrian flags at their rehearsal on stage yesterday, on Israel's Independence Day. The band members pulled the flags out...

America in an Arab Mirror: Images of America in Arabic Travel Literature, An Anthology.(Review)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2000... America in an Arab Mirror: Images of America in Arabic Travel Literature, An Anthology. Edited by Kamal Abdel-Malek. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000. 152 pp. $45. "Our tendency in Egypt [is] to describe anything that is strange or...

Arabs in America: Building a New Future.(Review)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2000... Arabs in America: Building a New Future. Edited by Michael W. Suleiman. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000. 355 pp. $69.50 ($29.95, paper). "Occasionally, when a parent described religious characteristics for defining the Arab...

Islam in America.(Review)
December 1, 2000... Islam in America. By Jane I. Smith. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.251 pp. $35. Smith's highly uneven book does a masterful job of making the controversial look uncontroversial. Specialists may be delighted to see an American...

The Lebanese in Ecuador: A History of Emerging Leadership.(Review)
December 1, 2000... The Lebanese in Ecuador: A History of Emerging Leadership. By Lois J. Roberts. Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 2000. 243 pp. $60. The same wave of immigrants that brought the first Levantines to the United States also brought them to other...

Marianne et le Prophete: L'Islam dans la France laique.(Review)
December 1, 2000... Marianne et le Prophete: L'Islam dans la France laique. By Soheib Bencheikh. Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1998.282 pp. FF109.25. Islam is more evolved in France than One obvious difference is in the education and social standing of the...

The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People: An Untold Story of Ethnic Cleansing in America.(Review)
December 1, 2000... The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People: An Untold Story of Ethnic Cleansing in America. By N. Brent Kennedy, with Robin Vaughan Kennedy. Rev. ed. Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1997. 180 pp. $17.95. Melungeons are a...

The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad.(Review)
December 1, 2000... The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad. By Karl Evanzz. New York: Pantheon Books, 1999. 667 pp. $28.50. by Claude A. Clegg, III Indiana University at Bloomington Elijah Muhammad was the longtime Nation of Islam leader and...

Muslim Women: Crafting a North American Identity.(Review)
December 1, 2000... Muslim Women: Crafting a North American Identity. By Shahnaz Khan. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000. 152 pp. $49.95. Although Khan herself writes in the pseudo-complex language of post-modernism (the cute puns, the slashes,...

Muslims and Islamization in North America: Problems and Prospects.(Review)
December 1, 2000... Muslims and Islamization in North America: Problems and Prospects. Edited by Amber Haque. Beltsville, Md.: Amana, 1420/1999.491 pp. $19.95. In a "stock-taking of how American Muslims have fared thus far and what the future holds for them,"...

Post Gibran: Anthology of New Arab American Writing.(Review)
December 1, 2000... Post Gibran: Anthology of New Arab American Writing. Edited by Khaled Mattawa and Munir Akash. W. Bethesda, Md.: Kitab, Inc., Jusoor Books, 1999.460 pp. $19.95, paper. Jusoor, a literary quarterly published in Bethesda, Maryland, boasts an...

The Sun is Rising in the West: New Muslims Tell about Their Journey to Islam.(Review)
December 1, 2000... The Sun is Rising in the West: New Muslims Tell about Their Journey to Islam. By Muzaffar Haleem and Betty Bowman. Beltsville, Md.: Amana, 1420/1999.321 pp. $12.95. A Pakistani immigrant and a convert to Islam of Christian European origins...

To Be a European Muslim: A Study of Islamic Sources in the European Context.(Review)
December 1, 2000... To Be a European Muslim: A Study of Islamic Sources in the European Context. By Tariq Ramadan. Leicester, U.K.: Islamic Foundation, 1999/1420. 273 pp. 19.95 [pounds sterling] (9.95 [pounds sterling], paper). The presence of a substantial...

United Nations Impartiality.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2000... KAWKABA, Lebanon--United Nations peacekeepers handed back to Hizbullah two vehicles its fighters had used to capture three Israeli soldiers, and then abandoned, an AFP correspondent witnessed. Soldiers from the Indian contingent of the...

Who Are the Active Terrorists?(Brief Article)
December 1, 2000... A recent report published by the Congressional Research Service(1) included a list of seventeen "foreign terrorist organizations" operating out of the Middle East as of October 1999. Arranged in order of most active to least, a very clear...

Syria: Back to the Future?(Brief Article)
December 1, 2000... The Daily Star, an English-language Beirut newspaper, published "An Appeal from a Syrian to His President," by Sami Moubayed,(1) on August 15, 2000. Soon after, the open letter to Bashshar al-Asad spread widely in Syria itself. The author is a...

A Qadhdhafi Sampler.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2000... He Reflects on Christianity and Judaism N'DJAMENA, Chad--Libyan leader Mu'ammar al-Qadhdhafi blasted Jews and Christians Friday, accusing them of hating Muslims and insulting the Prophet Muhammad. In a sermon at Friday prayer services...

Egyptian Tanks.(Brief Article)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2000... To the Editor: Steven A. Cook provided a welcome dose of reality in his analysis (MEQ, June 2000) that U.S. relations with Egypt are not what they appear to be. But I was puzzled by his characterization of the Egyptian military and...

Want Democracy? Get a King.
December 1, 2000... From time to time, the U.S. government has found itself protecting the interests of Middle Eastern monarchs--most notably in 1990-91, when it rescued Kuwait from Iraq's clutches. This is invariably a controversial step: President Bush had to...

E-commerce in Egypt.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2000... CAIRO--Hind Sa`id's eyes widened at a rumor that made her set down her bottle of Coca-Cola. Seconds later, with a look of absolute longing, she snatched it up again. "I won't give this up," Sa`id, 21, said as she slurped down a healthy gulp....

Why the Middle East Is So Volatile.
December 1, 2000... In the four centuries before World War I, the Middle East was a singularly unchanging place. Since that time, it has been perhaps the most hyperactive of regions. Why this dramatic change? When scholars debate the reasons for twentieth-century...

Longing for a "Reasonable Arab World".
December 1, 2000... It is bad Arab governance--and its causes--and not pan-Arab aspirations, with which Efraim Karsh should be concerned. About one thing Karsh is absolutely right: successive modern Arab rulers have exploited both pan-Arab ideology and the...

Don't Absolve the Great Powers.
December 1, 2000... Yes, the states created after World War I persist because their borders approximate the fault-lines that crisscross the Arab and Muslim worlds--fault-lines that are religious, sectarian, ethnic, linguistic, and cultural. Colonial borders are...

A Richer Pedigree.
December 1, 2000... The basic premise forwarded by Karsh's article is both sound and important. Currency given the concept of unity in Arab politics has retarded the emergence of a modern and stable state system. Only when Arab countries begin to construct limited...

Did Israel Betray Its Lebanese Allies?
December 1, 2000... With its national survival so immediately and persistently at stake, Israel has occasionally adopted unsparing measures, such as a nuclear program and the pursuit of terrorists on foreign soil, that recognize the requirements of the country's...

Politically Correct Islam.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2000... DUBAI -- Smoking and selling tobacco are violations of Islamic law, the ministry of justice, Islamic affairs and property in the United Arab Emirates said Friday [June 11]. The announcement was made during the main weekly Muslim prayers at...

"Honor" Murders--Why the Perps Get off Easy.
December 1, 2000... On May 31, 1994, Kifaya Husayn, a 16-year-old Jordanian girl, was lashed to a chair by her 32-year-old brother. He gave her a drink of water and told her to recite an Islamic prayer. Then he slashed her throat. Immediately afterward, he ran out...

The United States and Egypt -- How Allied? A Debate.
December 1, 2000... Year after year, the American people send around $2 billion in public aid to Egypt; U.S. government spokesmen talk warmly of the now-quarter-century-old alliance with Cairo; and the relationship is seen as a cornerstone of American policy in...

Charles Schumer: "The Peace Process Has Been One-Sided".(Interview)
December 1, 2000... Charles E. Schumer, a Democrat, is the junior United States senator from New York. Born in 1950 and a product of the Brooklyn public schools, he is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. Schumer was elected to the New York State...

Track-Two Diplomacy?(Brief Article)
December 1, 2000... STOCKHOLM--Israel's participation in the popular Eurovision song contest is in doubt after the Israeli band Ping Pong waved Syrian flags at their rehearsal on stage yesterday, on Israel's Independence Day. The band members pulled the flags out...

Islam in America.
December 1, 2000... Islam in America. By Jane I. Smith. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.251 pp. $35. Smith's highly uneven book does a masterful job of making the controversial look uncontroversial. Specialists may be delighted to see an American...

The Lebanese in Ecuador: A History of Emerging Leadership.
December 1, 2000... The Lebanese in Ecuador: A History of Emerging Leadership. By Lois J. Roberts. Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 2000. 243 pp. $60. The same wave of immigrants that brought the first Levantines to the United States also brought them to other...

Marianne et le Prophete: L'Islam dans la France laique.
December 1, 2000... Marianne et le Prophete: L'Islam dans la France laique. By Soheib Bencheikh. Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1998.282 pp. FF109.25. Islam is more evolved in France than One obvious difference is in the education and social standing of the...

The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People: An Untold Story of Ethnic Cleansing in America.
December 1, 2000... The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People: An Untold Story of Ethnic Cleansing in America. By N. Brent Kennedy, with Robin Vaughan Kennedy. Rev. ed. Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1997. 180 pp. $17.95. Melungeons are a...

The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad.
December 1, 2000... The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad. By Karl Evanzz. New York: Pantheon Books, 1999. 667 pp. $28.50. by Claude A. Clegg, III Indiana University at Bloomington Elijah Muhammad was the longtime Nation of Islam leader and...

Muslim Women: Crafting a North American Identity.
December 1, 2000... Muslim Women: Crafting a North American Identity. By Shahnaz Khan. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000. 152 pp. $49.95. Although Khan herself writes in the pseudo-complex language of post-modernism (the cute puns, the slashes,...

Muslims and Islamization in North America: Problems and Prospects.
December 1, 2000... Muslims and Islamization in North America: Problems and Prospects. Edited by Amber Haque. Beltsville, Md.: Amana, 1420/1999.491 pp. $19.95. In a "stock-taking of how American Muslims have fared thus far and what the future holds for them,"...

Post Gibran: Anthology of New Arab American Writing.
December 1, 2000... Post Gibran: Anthology of New Arab American Writing. Edited by Khaled Mattawa and Munir Akash. W. Bethesda, Md.: Kitab, Inc., Jusoor Books, 1999.460 pp. $19.95, paper. Jusoor, a literary quarterly published in Bethesda, Maryland, boasts an...

The Sun is Rising in the West: New Muslims Tell about Their Journey to Islam.
December 1, 2000... The Sun is Rising in the West: New Muslims Tell about Their Journey to Islam. By Muzaffar Haleem and Betty Bowman. Beltsville, Md.: Amana, 1420/1999.321 pp. $12.95. A Pakistani immigrant and a convert to Islam of Christian European origins...

To Be a European Muslim: A Study of Islamic Sources in the European Context.
December 1, 2000... To Be a European Muslim: A Study of Islamic Sources in the European Context. By Tariq Ramadan. Leicester, U.K.: Islamic Foundation, 1999/1420. 273 pp. 19.95 [pounds sterling] (9.95 [pounds sterling], paper). The presence of a substantial...

Who Are the Active Terrorists?(Brief Article)
December 1, 2000... A recent report published by the Congressional Research Service(1) included a list of seventeen "foreign terrorist organizations" operating out of the Middle East as of October 1999. Arranged in order of most active to least, a very clear...

Syria: Back to the Future?(Excerpt)
December 1, 2000... The Daily Star, an English-language Beirut newspaper, published "An Appeal from a Syrian to His President," by Sami Moubayed,(1) on August 15, 2000. Soon after, the open letter to Bashshar al-Asad spread widely in Syria itself. The author is a...

A Qadhdhafi Sampler.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2000... He Reflects on Christianity and Judaism N'DJAMENA, Chad--Libyan leader Mu'ammar al-Qadhdhafi blasted Jews and Christians Friday, accusing them of hating Muslims and insulting the Prophet Muhammad. In a sermon at Friday prayer services...

Egyptian Tanks.
December 1, 2000... To the Editor: Steven A. Cook provided a welcome dose of reality in his analysis (MEQ, June 2000) that U.S. relations with Egypt are not what they appear to be. But I was puzzled by his characterization of the Egyptian military and...