Middle East Quarterly articles from June 2006

Middle East Quarterly archives from June 2006

Will U.S. democratization policy work?
June 22, 2006... After 9-11, the Bush administration concluded that decades of U.S. support for non-democratic leaders in the Middle East led not to stability but rather contributed to terrorism. (1) While U.S. government support for democracy promotion is not...

Democratize but stabilize.(Democracy in the Middle East)
June 22, 2006... European policymakers resent the insinuation that they are less committed to Middle East democratization than their U.S. counterparts. European officials take a more cautious approach both because of philosophical qualms about top-down...

Tired of male domination, five Saudi women change sex.(Brief article)
June 22, 2006... RIYADH -- Tired of playing second fiddle to men in conservative Saudi Arabia, five women decided if you can't beat them, join them. Al-Watan newspaper said the five women underwent sex change surgery abroad over the past 12 months after...

Quantifying Arab democracy.
June 22, 2006... Debates over democracy continue to occupy not only U.S. and European policymakers but Arabs as well. Arguments rage about the merits of top-down versus bottom-up democratization. In coffeehouses and in taxis, Arabs discuss the issue. Can...

"Democracy is about more than elections".(Democracy in the Middle East)(Discussion)
June 22, 2006... President George W. Bush has made democratization a central focus of his administration's Middle East policy. He declared during his second-term inauguration: "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic...

Middlebury's Arabic morass.(Middlebury College)
June 22, 2006... Ata time when Arabic language training lags at many universities, the Arabic summer school at Middlebury College in Vermont retains its reputation for quality language instruction. Indeed, it could be said to define the gold standard of Arabic...

$450,000 stolen from PA foreign minister.(foreign minister Mahmoud al-Zahar)(Brief article)
June 22, 2006... Palestinian foreign minister Mahmoud al-Zahar has had $450,000 stolen from his hotel room during his current visit to Kuwait, the Itim news agency quoted the Kuwaiti media as saying Wednesday. According to the report, al-Zahar had asked the...

Israel and Azerbaijan's furtive embrace.
June 22, 2006... The disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 changed the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East. Within weeks, six predominantly Muslim countries along the southern rim of the Soviet Union gained independence. Israel, along with Turkey,...

Palestine or peace? A 1960 Jordanian peace initiative.(Reexamining History)
June 22, 2006... For years before Jordan signed its 1994 peace treaty with Israel, the conventional wisdom among diplomats and Middle East analysts had been that King Hussein would be the second Arab leader to establish formal diplomatic relations with Israel....

Jordan: Hamas smuggling weapons.(Brief article)
June 22, 2006... Jordan accused Hamas activists of smuggling missiles and other weapons into the kingdom and said Tuesday it was canceling a planned visit of the Palestinian foreign minister--the second diplomatic snub for the Hamas-led government in a week....

Armenian massacres: new records undercut old blame.(Reexamining History)
June 22, 2006... The debate about the World War I deportation and massacre of Armenians in eastern Anatolia has become more contentious with time. Opponents of Turkey's European Union accession treat the Armenian question as original sin. Yet much of the...

Assessing the Islamist threat, circa 1946.
June 22, 2006... In 1946, U.S. power was on the ascent. A U.S. nuclear bomb had hastened the end of World War II and, while the Cold War was beginning, the United States remained the world's only nuclear power. As the international community rebuilt from the...

Confronting Islamist totalitarianism.
June 22, 2006... On October 22, 2005, the France 2 television talk show Tout le Monde en Parle aired an interview with writer Salman Rushdie and French actor and Islamist Sami Naceri. Left on the cutting room floor was an ugly incident during taping when Naceri...

Turkey's new neighbor.(Letter to the editor)
June 22, 2006... To the Editor: I was disappointed to read Michael Rubin's recent review [MEQ, Spring 2006, pp. 77-8] of Brendan O'Leary et al., The Future of Kurdistan in Iraq, where he wrote that my chapter on "Turkey's New Neighbor, Kurdistan"...

The Battle of Ideas in the War on Terror: Essays on U.S. Public Diplomacy in the Middle East.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2006... The Battle of Ideas in the War on Terror: Essays on U.S. Public Diplomacy in the Middle East. By Robert Satloff. Washington, D.C.: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2004.106 pp. $19.95. Subtitled Essays on U.S. Public Diplomacy in...

The Challenge of Islam: Encounters in Interfaith Dialogue.(Book review)
June 22, 2006... The Challenge of Islam: Encounters in Interfaith Dialogue. By Douglas Pratt. Aldershot, Eng.: Ashgate Publishing, 2005. 266 pp. $29.95. Pratt has worked "in the field of Christian-Muslim encounter over the past decade" during which he has...

Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide.(Book review)
June 22, 2006... Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide. By Gerard Prunier. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005. 213 pp. $24. Prunier rightly labels the response of the international community to the atrocities in Darfur, a "regression of civilization," a...

Energy and Security: Toward a New Foreign Policy Strategy.(Book review)
June 22, 2006... Energy and Security: Toward a New Foreign Policy Strategy. Edited by Jan Kalicki and David Goldwyn. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. 604 pp. $65 ($24.95, paper). Energy and Security provides a definitive account of the...

The Death of Feminism: What's Next in the Struggle for Women's Freedom.(Book review)
June 22, 2006... The Death of Feminism: What's Next in the Struggle for Women's Freedom. By Phyllis Chesler. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. 241 pp. $24.95. Chesler, a psychologist by training and a self-identified feminist, sets out to explain how and...

Finishing Business: Ten Steps to Defeat Global Terror.(Book review)
June 22, 2006... Finishing Business: Ten Steps to Defeat Global Terror. By Harlan Ullman. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2004. 241 pp. $29.95. Ullman states in his introduction: "What can and must be done to defeat this grave and gathering danger...

De Hofstadgroep--Portret van een radical Islamitisch netwerk.(Book review)
June 22, 2006... De Hofstadgroep--Portret van een radical Islamitisch netwerk [De Hofstadgroep--Portrait of a Radical Islamist Network]. By Emerson Vermaat. Soesterberg, The Netherlands: Aspekt Publishers, 2005.144 pp. 13.95 [euro]. In De Hofstadgroep,...

Jihad: From Qur'an to Bin Laden.(Book review)
June 22, 2006... Jihad: From Qur'an to Bin Laden. By Richard Bonney. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. 594 pp. $35. Bonney acknowledges that "the traditional reading of the Qur'an outlines four 'stages'" in the development of the concept of jihad within...

Lebanon: The Politics of Frustration--The Failed Coup of 1961.(Book review)
June 22, 2006... Lebanon: The Polities of Frustration--The Failed Coup of 1961. By Adel Beshara. London and New York: Routledge and Curzon, 2005. 228 pp. $60. Beshara provides a thorough, well-documented account of a curious punctuation in Lebanon's modern...

Morocco: The Islamist Awakening and Other Challenges.(Book review)
June 22, 2006... Morocco: The Islamist Awakening and Other Challenges. By Marvine Howe. Oxford University Press, 2005.448 pp. $29.95, paper. Morocco has been praised by the World Bank for having "one of the most successful programs of human development and...

The Road to Kerbala.(Book review)
June 22, 2006... The Road to Kerbala. By Katia Jarjoura. New York: First Run/Icarus Films, 2005. 53 min. $390 ($75, rental). For insight into what drives Iraqi Shi'ite passions, Jarjoura's documentary film takes us inside their defining ritual, banned for...

The War of Western Europe against Israel.(Book review)
June 22, 2006... The War of Western Europe against Israel. By Joseph and Arie Carmi. Jerusalem-New York: Devora Publishing, 2003. 144 pp. $14.95, paper. The Carmis' book has great merit in exposing Europe's ongoing war against the State of Israel since its...

Woman's Identity and the Qur'an: A New Reading.(Book review)
June 22, 2006... Woman's Identity and the Qur'an: A New Reading. By Nimat Hafez Barazangi. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004. 172 pp. $59.95. Elegantly written and intelligently argued, this is an exceptional book in which the title, for once,...

Dissident watch: Yucel Askin.
June 22, 2006... On October 14, 2005, police in the eastern Turkish city of Van arrested Yucel Askin, the rector of Yazuncu Yil University, on charges stemming from alleged corruption involving purchase of medical equipment. In an effort to humiliate the...