Middle East Quarterly articles from March 2003

Middle East Quarterly archives from March 2003

Reading Lolita in Tehran.
March 22, 2003... Reading Lolita in Tehran, a new memoir by Azar Nafisi, is the story of Iran 's revolution from the unusual vantage point of an Iranian-born, American-schooled instructor of English literature, who arrived at Tehran University in the...

Must innocents die? The Islamic debate over suicide attacks.
March 22, 2003... Over the last two years, the issue of suicide attacks or "martyrdom operations" against Israel has dominated public discussion throughout the Arab world. Since the outbreak of the current Palestinian intifada, in September 2000, the Palestinian...

The challenge of Hamas to Fatah.
March 22, 2003... The international press lavished attention on the Fatah-Hamas summit held in Cairo in mid-November 2002. According to reports, Fatah (the leading faction backing Yasir Arafat's Palestinian Authority) and Hamas (the leading Islamist opposition)...

Negotiating the Palestinian refugees.
March 22, 2003... The Palestinian refugee problem has been one of the most painful and complex tissues in Israeli-Arab relations. The problem came into being during Israel's war of independence--from November 1947 until January 1949--when, according to United...

Drove him nuts.(Brief Article)
March 22, 2003... SAN'A, Yemen--A Yemeni man irritated by noisy nut sellers outside his house threw a bomb at them Friday, seriously wounding four of the peddlers, security officials said. The blast rocked a crowded marketplace in downtown San'a, near the...

Oil: who's really over a barrel?
March 22, 2003... Has the world entered a new era of endemic oil shortages and escalating prices? Since the early 1970s, shortages and price hikes have been related to bouts of political instability in oil-producing countries. (1) So it is at present: it is only...

Vacation House of Saud.
March 22, 2003... MARBELLA, Spain--King Fahd, leader of one of the world's strictest Muslim nations, has come to his vacation residence in Marbella, the Mediterranean capital of sun and sin, bringing along thousands of members of the House of Saud. As...

Coming to terms: fundamentalists or islamists?
March 22, 2003... No one who reads or writes about events in the Muslim world can avoid the question of how to label those Muslims who invoke Islam as the source of authority for all political and social action. Should they be labeled Islamic (or Muslim)...

Canine clampdown.(Brief Article)
March 22, 2003... TEHRAN--A conservative Iranian cleric has denounced the "moral depravity" of owning a dog, and called for the arrest of all dogs and their owners. Dogs are considered unclean in Islamic law. The spread of dog ownership in Westernized...

Qadhafi's angel.
March 22, 2003... In November 2002, Libya hosted an Internet beauty contest, featuring twenty-three women from around the world Act I: Contestants visit the former compound of Libyan ruler Mu'ammar Qadhafi, bombed by the United States in 1986: ...

Middle Eastern studies in the United Kingdom.
March 22, 2003... Editors' Preface: Since September 11, 2001, public interest in Middle Eastern studies has surged worldwide. In the United States, the government has responded with a large public investment in Middle Eastern studies, pumping tens of...

Istan-Bull.(Brief Article)
March 22, 2003... ISTANBUL--Vets in Turkey's biggest city Istanbul said Tuesday they were launching a hotline and a special bull-catching unit to round up rampaging animals during the Muslim Festival of the Sacrifice next week. Turkish cities fill with...

The Armed Forces of Pakistan.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2003... The Armed Forces of Pakistan. By Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema. New York: New York University Press, 2003.240 pp. $38. Cheema sketches the regular armed forces of Pakistan adequately enough but his description of Pakistan's nuclear capability is...

The Arab World Facing the Challenge of the New Millennium.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2003... The Arab World Facing the Challenge of the New Millennium. By Henry T. Azzam. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2002.240 pp. $59.50. Azzam, a new breed of Arab entrepreneur and economist, concerned more with growth than with grievance, has come out...

Crossing the Green Line between the West Bank and Israel.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2003... Crossing the Green Line between the West Bank and Israel. By Avram S. Bornstein. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. 192 pages. $36.50. Perhaps the fastest way to make sense of this book by an anthropologist at John Jay...

David Ben-Gurion, the State of Israel and the Arab World, 1949-1956.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2003... David Ben-Gurion, the State of Israel and the Arab World, 1949-1956. By Zaki Shalom. Brighton and Portland: Sussex Academic Press, 2002.216 pp. $69.95. Living at Ben-Gurion's kibbutz and working at the Heritage Institute, which focus on...

The Global Political Economy of Israel.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2003... The Global Political Economy of Israel. By Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler. London and Sterling, Va.: Pluto Press, 2002.396 pp. $95.95 ($24.95, paper). The term "political economy" in Nitzan and Bichler's work gives the book away. It...

Hizbu'llah: Politics and Religion.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2003... Hizbu'llah: Politics and Religion. By Amal Saad-Ghorayeb. London: Pluto Press, 2002. 254 pp. $69.95 ($22.50, paper). Saad-Ghorayeb's brilliant study on Hizbullah is a must read for any serious student of the Lebanese "Party of God."...

Islam at the Crossroads: Understanding it Beliefs, History and Conflicts.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2003... Islam at the Crossroads: Understanding its Beliefs, History and Conflicts. By Paul Marshall, Roberta Green, and Lela Gilbert. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 2002. 121 pp. $11.99, paper. Assuming that most Americans know little about...

Mobilizing Islam: Religion, Activism, and Political Change in Egypt.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2003... Mobilizing Islam: Religion, Activism, and Political Change in Egypt. By Carrie Rosefsky Wickham. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. 300 pp. $49.50 ($22.50, paper). Wickham, a political scientist, seeks to extend and fill lacunae in...

The Road to Jerusalem: Glubb Pasha, Palestine and the Jews.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2003... The Road to Jerusalem: Glubb Pasha, Palestine and the Jews. By Benny Morris. London: I.B. Tauris, 2002.320 pp. $35. Morris charts the involvement of Lieutenant-General Sir John Glubb (or Glubb Pasha as he was commonly known) in the...

Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2003... Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity. By Timothy Mitchell. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.423 pp. $49.95 ($19.95, paper). For more than a decade, academia has been enthralled by critical theory, setting out to...

Under the Spell of Arabia.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2003... Under the Spell of Arabia. By Mathias T. Oppersdorff (photographer). Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2001.121 pp. $49.95. It is a privilege to comment on Oppersdorff's epiphany of the people and landscapes of Arabia and Jordan. This...

What Everyone Needs to Know About Islam.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2003... What Everyone Needs To Know about Islam. By John L. Esposito. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. 144 pp. $17.95. Esposito's new contribution to the barrage of post-September 11 publications on Islam offers a fine example of...

The Saddam Soliloquy.(Parody)(Poem)
March 22, 2003... To be or not to be: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No...