Middle East Quarterly articles from June 2007

Middle East Quarterly archives from June 2007

Jihad's new leaders.
June 22, 2007... The recent deaths of prominent Al-Qaeda terrorists such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq and Abu Hafs al-Urdani in Dagestan, as well as a host of less publicized kills and captures, have hastened the arrival of a new generation of jihadist...

Deciphering Ahmadinejad's Holocaust revisionism.(Mahmoud Ahmadinejad)
June 22, 2007... Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad went beyond previous rhetorical attacks on the United States and Israel when, on December 14, 2005, he suggested that the Holocaust was a myth. Many European officials, among Iran's most lucrative trading...

Iranian court acquits serial killers.(Brief article)
June 22, 2007... Iran's supreme court has acquitted a group of men charged over a series of gruesome killings in 2002, according to lawyers for the victims' families. The vigilantes were not guilty because their victims were involved in un-Islamic activities,...

Iraqi Kurdistan's downward spiral.(Focus on Iraq)
June 22, 2007... Many Western commentators say Iraqi Kurdistan is a beacon of democracy in an otherwise uncertain Iraq. (1) As much of the rest of Iraq descends into violence if not civil war, it is tempting for U.S. officials to point to the placidity of...

Is Iraq in a civil war?(Focus on Iraq)
June 22, 2007... Many politicians have determined Iraq to be in a civil war. "We're not fighting terrorism in Iraq," Rep. John Murtha (Democrat-Penn.) said on January 27, 2006, We re fighting a civil war in Iraq." (1) He is not alone. On November 27, 2006, NBC...

Culture in post-Saddam Iraq.(Focus on Iraq)
June 22, 2007... The culture of a nation embodies its institutions, values, and norms of behavior rooted in history and collective memory. As U.S. and coalition forces work to stabilize Iraq and transform Iraqi society, the nature of Iraqi identity and culture...

Terrorists target barbers of Baghdad.
June 22, 2007... Baghdad They came for Nabras Hamid just alter sunset, one car blocking the entrance to Dabbash street, the other two stopping outside his shop. Witnesses did not hear the gunmen say anything before opening fire. There was no need. Harold's...

My cyber counter-jihad.(Personal account)
June 22, 2007... On September 3, 2004, a nine-member officer's panel at Fort Lewis, Washington, found Specialist Ryan G. Anderson guilty of five counts of seeking to aid the enemy during a time of war and attempted espionage. The court martial subsequently...

Afghans hang up on deadly cell phone virus.(Brief article)
June 22, 2007... KABUL -- Rumors swept through Afghanistan on Monday that a deadly virus was being spread by mobile telephone calls, and government officials scrambled to reassure the public the talk was rubbish. Many worried Afghan mobile phone users...

Palestinians, Jebusites, and evangelicals.
June 22, 2007... Many Palestinian Arabs, including such prominent figures as Yasir Arafat and Faisal Husseini, claim that Palestinians descended from the Canaanite tribe of the Jebusites. (1) Such declarations should not surprise. History is political. Many...

Pakistani man must divorce 4-year-old wife.(Brief article)
June 22, 2007... Islamabad--Public and media pressure and threat of action by the police forced a man, 45, to divorce a 4-year-old child whom he had married under a tribal custom in Dera Ismail Khan. Local police arrested 13 people, including members of the...

How Israel bungled the second Lebanon war.
June 22, 2007... Israel's leadership was ill-prepared for the summer 2006 war against Hezbollah. Israeli politicians and planners displayed strategic blindness. While denying the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) victory, they squandered an opportunity to destroy the...

Alexandr Vondra: "radical Islam poses a major challenge to Europe".(DOCUMENT)
June 22, 2007... On November 3, 2006, Alexandr Vondra, foreign minister of the Czech Republic, addressed a conference in Prague on "Religion and Politics--Islam in Europe, Europe in Islam," organized by the Obeansky Institut (Civic Institute), the Czech...

Quebec village forbids stoning of women.(Brief article)
June 22, 2007... Town councilors say they were just trying to let immigrants know what to expect if they move to the Quebec village of Herouxville: Stoning of women won't be tolerated while alcohol and Christmas trees are socially acceptable. Instead, the...

Anglo-Iranian Relations since 1800.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Anglo-Iranian Relations since 1800. Edited by Vanessa Martin. London and New York: Routledge, 2005. 170 pp. $104. Great Britain has a long history in Iran; the first British ambassador visited the country at the end of the sixteenth...

Arab Reform and Foreign Aid: Lessons from Morocco.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Arab Reform and Foreign Aid: Lessons from Morocco. By Haim Malka and Jon B. Alterman. Significant Issues Series, Vol. 28, No. 4. Washington, D.C.: The CSIS Press, 2006. 112 pp. $16.95. Morocco has emerged in recent years as the most...

Beyond the Arab Disease: New Perspectives in Politics and Culture.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Beyond the Arab Disease: New Perspectives in Politics and Culture. By Riad Nourallah. London and New York: Routledge, Advances in Middle East and Islamic Studies, 2006. 144 pp. $105. Beyond the Arab Disease represents the worst coming...

Bioethics and Armed Conflict. Moral Dilemmas of Medicine and War.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Bioethics and Armed Conflict. Moral Dilemmas of Medicine and War. By Michael L. Gross. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006. 384 pp. $26, paper. In 2004, the World Medical Association declared that "medical ethics in times of armed conflict is...

Blind into Baghdad. America's War in Iraq.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Blind into Baghdad. America's War in Iraq. By James Fallows. New York: Vintage Books, 2006. 256 pp. $13.95. In Blind into Baghdad, Fallows, national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, cobbles together a series of articles he wrote...

Company C: An American's Life as a Citizen-Soldier in Israel.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Company C: An American's Life as a Citizen-Soldier in Israel. By Haim Watzman. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005. 387 pp. $26. I know just where Watzman is coming from because, as we learn in his autobiographical account, his story parallels...

The Egyptian Economy, 1952-2000: Performance, Policies, and Issues.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... The Egyptian Economy, 1952-2000: Performance, Policies, and Issues. By Khalid Ikram. London: Routledge, 2006. 360 pp. $105. World Bank economists are easy to criticize for wearing narrow economic blinders that block vision of the broader...

The Emergence of States in a Tribal Society.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... The Emergence of States in a Tribal Society. By Uzi Rabi. Portland, Ore.: Sussex University Press, 2006. 299 pp. $75. In The Emergence of States in a Tribal Society, Rabi, a lecturer in history at Tel Aviv University, provides a history of...

Fratricide in the Holy Land. A Psychoanalytic View of the Arab-Israeli Conflict.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Fratricide in the Holy Land. A Psychoanalytic View of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. By Avner Falk. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004. 271 pp. $35. A biblical commandment tells Jews to remember what the Amalek desert tribe did to...

Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah. By Olivier Roy. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. 364 pp. $18.95, paper. Since its first publication, Roy's survey of the present crisis in Islam has won much praise. From his position...

Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq. By Ahmad S. Hashim. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006.482 pp. + xxviii. $29.95. The Iraqi insurgency continues to bedevil U.S. plans for a new Iraq. Hashim, a professor at the Naval War...

Iran's Rivalry with Saudi Arabia between the Gulf Wars.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Iran's Rivalry with Saudi Arabia between the Gulf Wars. By Henner Furtig. New Reading, United Kingdom: Ithaca Press, 2006.288 pp. 35 [pounds sterling]. As the sovereign power over Mecca and Medina, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia claims special...

Iraq and Back: Inside the War to Win the Peace.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Iraq and Back: Inside the War to Win the Peace. By Kim Olson. Annapolis: Navel Institute Press, 2006.232 pp. $26.95. For a month after Baghdad's fall, Gen. Jay Garner's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) led Iraq....

Islam and Liberty: The Historical Misunderstanding.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Islam and Liberty: The Historical Misunderstanding. By Mohamed Charfi. Translated from French, Islam et Liberte, by Patrick Camiller. London and New York: Zed Books, 2005. 186 pp. $25, paper. Michael Novak, a Catholic political philosopher,...

Israel's Nuclear Option: Behind the Scenes Diplomacy between Dimona and Washington.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Israel's Nuclear Option: Behind the Scenes Diplomacy between Dimona and Washington. By Zaki Shalom. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2005.220 pp. $69.95 ($32.50, paper). Shalom focuses on the reciprocal relations between Jerusalem and...

The Jewish Divide over Israel: Accusers and Defenders.(Brief article)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... The Jewish Divide over Israel: Accusers and Defenders. Edited by Edward Alexander and Paul Bogdanor. Piscataway: Transaction, 2006. 310pp. $39.95. In Norwich, in the year 1144, one finds the first recorded case in which Jews were accused...

The Kurdish Nationalist Movement.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... The Kurdish Nationalist Movement. By David Romano. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 277 pp. $75 ($30, paper). Romano, a young Canadian researcher, spent a year teaching and researching in Iraqi Kurdistan and Turkey and his book,...

The Kurds: A People in Search of Their Homeland.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... The Kurds: A People in Search of Their Homeland. By Kevin McKiernan. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2006. 390 pp. $27.95. In The Kurds, journalist and filmmaker McKiernan offers a gripping tale of travel among the Kurds of northern Iraq,...

Landscape of Hope and Despair: Palestinian Refugee Camps.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Landscape of Hope and Despair: Palestinian Refugee Camps. By Julie Peteet. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. 280 pp. $55. Anthropologist Peteet focuses on the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon in her Landscape of Hope and...

Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity.
June 22, 2007... Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity. By Eric Davis. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. 385 pp. $24.95. In a publishing atmosphere saturated by instant Iraq experts, Rutgers University political...

A Muslim in Victorian America: The Life of Alexander Russell Webb.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... A Muslim in Victorian America: The Life of Alexander Russell Webb. By Umar F. Abd-Allah. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. 388 pp. $35. Abd-Allah, chair of the Chicago-based Nawawi Foundation, an organization promoting education...

My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope. By L. Paul Bremer III with Malcohn McConnell. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006. 417pp. $27. Bremer arrived in Baghdad on May 12, 2003, to take charge of reconstruction and...

Nadir Shah's Quest for Legitimacy in Post-Safavid Iran.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Nadir Shah's Quest for Legitimacy in Post-Safavid Iran. By Ernest S. Tucker. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006. 150 pp. $55. In the early eighteenth century, Nadir Shah tore like a whirlwind across the Iranian plateau. The...

Nasser and the Missile Age in the Middle East.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Nasser and the Missile Age in the Middle East. By Owen L. Sirrs. London and New York: Routledge, 2006.264 pp. $37.95. In Nasser and the Missile Age in the Middle East, Sirrs, an analyst at the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, offers a...

Nederlandse Jihad: Het proces tegen de Hofstadgroep.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Nederlandse Jihad: Het proces tegen de Hofstadgroep (Jihad in the Netherlands: The Hofstad trial). By Emerson Vermaat. Soesterberg: Aspekt Publishers, 2006.311 pp. 22,95 [euro]. Dutch journalist and terrorism expert Vermaat spent two years...

The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace. By Ali A. Allawi. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.518 pp. $28. There is no shortage of accounts by U.S. and British diplomats, military officers, and political appointees of...

Persia: The Cradle of Infidels.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Persia: The Cradle of Infidels. By Ali Sadeghi. Berlin: Saraye Andische, 2006.257 pp. 20 [euro]. In Persia: The Cradle of Infidels, Sadeghi relates his imprisonment and torture at the hands of Iranian security and his eventual flight from...

A Thousand Barrels a Second: The Coming Oil Break Point and the Challenges Facing an Energy Dependent World.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... A Thousand Barrels a Second: The Coming Oil Break Point and the Challenges Facing an Energy Dependent World. By Peter Tertzakian. New York: McGraw Hill, 2006.272 pp. $27.95. With world demand for oil now at a thousand barrels per second,...

Oops, which way is Mecca?(Brief article)
June 22, 2007... Muslim arrestees held in a windowless cell in The Hague have been praying West instead of East, facing Washington DC instead of Mecca. The Dutch press agency ANP revealed today that the compass which the Dutch police painted on the ceiling of...

Shadi Sadr and Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh.(Dissident Watch)
June 22, 2007... On March 4, 2007, Shadi Sadr and Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh were among nearly three-dozen Iranian women detained after they participated in a peaceful demonstration in protest of the trial of several women's rights activists arrested nine months...