Middle East Quarterly articles from January 2005

Middle East Quarterly archives from January 2005

Tablighi Jamaat: Jihad's stealthy legions.(Islamism on the Offensive)
January 1, 2005... Every fall, over a million almost identically dressed, bearded Muslim men from around the world descend on the small Pakistani town of Raiwind for a three-day celebration of faith. Similar gatherings take place annually outside of Dhaka,...

Jehovah's Witnesses convert Muslims.(Islamism of the Offensive)
January 1, 2005... DEARBORN--Recina Ward will wake up early to get there, clutching her Bible, brushing up on her Arabic... "Arabic is very difficult," Ward says. "The alphabet is nothing like ours at all. We learned the alphabet in two weekends. In six months,...

Green money, Islamist politics in Turkey.(Islamism on the Offensive)
January 1, 2005... Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Reconciliation Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, AKP) swept to victory in Turkey's parliamentary elections on November 3, 2002. More than two years later, the Islamic-oriented party finds itself more popular...

The Muslim Brotherhood's conquest of Europe.(Islamism on the Offensive)
January 1, 2005... Since its founding in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood (Hizb al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun) has profoundly influenced the political life of the Middle East. Its motto is telling: "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur'an is our law....

How to beat the global Islamist insurgency.(Islamism on the Offensive)
January 1, 2005... Every day in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Philippines, and elsewhere, U.S. soldiers are working to win the global war on terrorism. But are they winning? Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has wondered out loud about this, asking if the U.S....

Al-Qaeda in the Balkans.(Islamism on the Offensive)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2005... European peacekeepers set to replace NATO troops in Bosnia next week could come face-to-face with Al-Qaeda militants amid reports that cells linked to Osama bin Laden are operating in the Balkan country. The commander of the outgoing...

Missing the target on nonproliferation?(Weapons of mass destruction)
January 1, 2005... In September 2002, President George W. Bush unveiled a new national security strategy that underscored the dangers posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). "The gravest danger our nation faces lies at the crossroads of...

Putin's pro-Israel policy.(Vladimir Putin)
January 1, 2005... Russian government remains the greatest facilitator for Iranian nuclear ambitions. It has had close ties to terror-sponsoring regimes such as Syria and Saddam's Iraq. Russian president Vladimir Putin has not hesitated to oppose U.S. foreign...

Syrian reform: what lies beneath.(Government resistance)
January 1, 2005... It has been almost five years since Bashar al-Assad came to power. At the time, many Western analysts and pundits suggested that the accession of a 34-year-old Western-educated ophthalmologist to the Syrian presidency would usher in a new era...

"Allah will not change the condition of a people.(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Culture, Civilization and Humanity. By Tarek Heggy. London and Portland, Ore.: Frank Cass, 2003. 391 pp. $64.50 ($26.50, paper). Western Muslims and the Future of Islam. By Tariq Ramadan. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 272 pp....

You cannot build a bridge with an extremist.
January 1, 2005... We know in Islam, Prophet Muhammad... mentioned in many places in the Holy Qur'an... [that] there is no compulsion in religion, that people are free to take any religion they like. These extremists are not thinking with the holy verses of...

Natan Sharansky: "peace will only come after freedom and democracy".(Interview)(Interview)
January 1, 2005... Natan Sharansky is among the world's most consistent advocates' of democratization as a basis for foreign policy. Born in Ukraine in 1948, he received a degree in mathematics' from Moscow's Physical Technical Institute. A brilliant...

Arab liberals: prosecute clerics who promote murder.(Document)
January 1, 2005... On October 24, 2004, Arabic websites Middle East Transparent (1) and Elaph (2) posted a petition from Arab liberals to United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan and the Security Council. Written primarily by the Tunisian intellectual Lafif...

"Insulting the leader".(Document)
January 1, 2005... TRIPOLI, Libya--Few people dare cross the aging army colonel who runs this repressive oil patch, but Fathi al-Jahmi is one. Interviewed on an Arabic satellite television station shortly after his release from prison in March, Mr. Jahmi, a...

Dissident watch: Ahmad Batebi.(Commentary)
January 1, 2005... On July 7, 1999, the Iranian government banned the popular reformist daily Salam. The next evening, students at Tehran University staged a peaceful demonstration against regime censorship. In the early morning hours of July 9, hard-line...

On Funding Evil.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... To the Editor: Evan Kohlmann's criticism of my book Funding Evil (1) is self-contradictory. How can the book be, as he writes and I agree, a "valuable contribution to the study of how money eventually appears in the pockets of terrorists"...

Human rights watch denies bias.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... To the Editor: Rather than acknowledge Israel's troubling human rights record, Gerald M. Steinberg tries to tar organizations that speak of it as biased ("NGOs Make War on Israel, Summer 2004). Anyone who addresses Israeli abuses,...

MADRE's view on Iraq.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... September 11,2001, stands in the American mind as the day that "changed everything," but the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003 marks a more significant turning point for U.S. empire. The invasion with its three-pronged goal of testing Bush's...

The Arab-Israeli Conflict in Israeli History Textbooks, 1948-2000.(book)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... The Arab-Israeli Conflict in Israeli History Textbooks, 1948-2000. By Elie Podeh. New York: Bergin and Garvey, 2002.216 pp. $81.95. How do Israelis learn about the Arab-Israeli conflict? Israeli television and newspapers discuss the...

Covering the Intifada--How the Media Reported the Palestinian Uprising.(book)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Covering the Intifada--How the Media Reported the Palestinian Uprising. By Joshua Muravchik. Washington, D.C.: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2003.125 pp. $19.95, paper. Muravchik, a resident scholar at the American...

Islam: a Mosaic, Not a Monolith.(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Islam: A Mosaic, Not a Monolith. By Vartan Gregorian. Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 2003.164 pp. $19.95 ($12.95, paper). Gregorian's survey of contemporary Islam is well intentioned and disheartening. Its introduction...

Peace under Fire: Israel/Palestine and the International Solidarity Movement.(book)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Peace under Fire: Israel/Palestine and the International Solidarity Movement. Edited by Josie Sandercock, Radhika Sainath, Marissa McLaughlin, Hussein Khalili, Nicholas Blincoe, Huwaida Arraf, Ghassan Andoni. London: Verso Books, 2004. 297 pp....

Wahhabi Islam: from Revival to Global Jihad.(book)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Wahhabi Islam: From Revival to Global Jihad. By Natana J. Delong-Bas. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.359 pp. $35. Even in the topsy-turvy world of the American academy, and particularly its Middle East studies branch, Wahhabi Islam...

Spicy politics boil over at couscous fest.(Not a Parody)
January 1, 2005... SAN VITO LO CAPO, Italy--An international couscous festival billed as a bridge-building event among "cooks for peace" degenerated into recriminations when Palestinian chefs accused their Israeli counterparts of using chicanery to obtain a...