Middle East Quarterly articles from September 2006

Middle East Quarterly archives from September 2006

Al-Qaeda's Saudi origins.
September 22, 2006... From where did Al-Qaeda come? While its actions are well known, its intellectual origins are not. Many scholars and analysts depict the group as a new phenomenon. They cite its international recruitment, its message of global jihad, its lack of...

Saudis nix pictures of women in newspapers.(Brief article)
September 22, 2006... RIYADH -- King Abdullah has told Saudi editors to stop publishing pictures of women as they could make young men go astray, newspapers reported Tuesday. The king's directive, made in a meeting with local editors, caused surprise as the...

Why do Muslims execute innocent people?
September 22, 2006... While often ignored in the Western media, human rights abuses in the Islamic world are a daily occurrence. Both Muslim states and ad hoc religious courts order mutilation and execution, not only of criminals but also of individuals--mainly...

The religious foundations of suicide bombings.
September 22, 2006... Suicide terrorism has been the scourge of the last quarter century. A suicide bomb attack on the U.S. marine barracks in Beirut compelled Ronald Reagan in 1983 to withdrawal peacekeepers from Beirut. Palestinian leaders deploy suicide bombers...

Statue attack fuels fears of an Islamist Egypt.
September 22, 2006... A religiously motivated attack on statues at a museum in Cairo has sparked an outcry in Egypt and fuelled fears that the country is veering towards an Islamic state. The attack on three artworks, by a black-clad and veiled woman screaming,...

How important is the Israel lobby?
September 22, 2006... Two well-known academics, Stephen Walt of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, published a working paper in March 2006 arguing that "the Israel lobby" wields a disproportionate and...

Saudi Arabia woos China and India.
September 22, 2006... In January 2006, Saudi king Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz al-Saud visited China and India, a trip some commentators labeled "a strategic shift" in Saudi foreign policy and reflective of "a new era" for the kingdom. (1) It was King Abdullah's first...

How Iraqi oil smuggling greases violence.
September 22, 2006... Oil is the lifeblood of Iraq. As Iraqis work to emerge from years of war and sanctions, oil exports are the government's greatest source of revenue. Since 2003, the new Iraqi government has exported US$33 billion in oil. (1) But rather than...

Bashar al-Assad's gamble.
September 22, 2006

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: "I will continue to ask uncomfortable questions".
September 22, 2006... On May 15, 2006, Dutch parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali resigned from her seat and announced that she would depart the Netherlands. She had long been politically controversial. Her renunciation of her religion and her criticism of Islamic...

10 percent growth in Middle East millionaires.(DOCUMENT)
September 22, 2006... DUBAI, UAE -- The increasing ease of becoming a millionaire became clear Tuesday, with the announcement that the ranks of world millionaires had swelled to 8.7 million last year, half a million more than the population of New York City. ...

Henry Kissinger to Iraq in 1975: "we can reduce Israel's size".
September 22, 2006... The December 1975 memorandum of conversation between U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger and Iraqi foreign minister Sa'dun Hammadi reflects deep U.S.-Iraqi tensions at a time when Baghdad was widely considered the most radical Arab capital....

Crossroads to Islam: The Origins of the Arab Religion and the Arab State.(Book review)
September 22, 2006... Crossroads to Islam: The Origins of the Arab Religion and the Arab State. By Yehuda D. Nevo and Judith Koren. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2003. 462 pp. $32. Nevo's work falls squarely into the "Hagarist" tradition that radically...

De Dodelijk Planning van Al-Qaeda [Al-Qaeda's Deadly Planning].(Book review)
September 22, 2006... De Dodelijk Planning van Al-Qaeda [Al-Qaeda's Deadly Planning]. By Emerson Vermaat. Soesterberg, The Netherlands: Aspekt Publishers, 2005.243 pp. 22.95 [euro]. Dutch counterterrorism expert and investigative journalist Vermaat, the first...

Defense and Diplomacy in Israel's National Security Experience: Tactics, Partnerships, and Motives.(Book review)
September 22, 2006... Defense and Diplomacy in Israel's National Security Experience: Tactics, Partnerships, and Motives. By David Rodman. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2005.160 pp. $52.50. In a short, insightful book about Israel's strategic thinking,...

Haderech Lagan Eden [The Path to the Garden of Eden].(Book review)
September 22, 2006... Haderech Lagan Eden [The Path to the Garden of Eden]. By Anat Berko. Tel Aviv: Yedi'ot Aharonot, 2004.214 pp. $24.95, paper. What makes a woman become a suicide bomber? Berko, a retired Israel Defense Forces lieutenant colonel, explores the...

The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan.(Book review)
September 22, 2006... The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan. By Ben MacIntyre. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005.351 pp. $14. In Rudyard Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King, a young adventurer named Daniel Dravot penetrates feudal...

New Heavens: My Life as a Fighter Pilot and a Founder of the Israel Air Force.(Book review)
September 22, 2006... New Heavens: My Life as a Fighter Pilot and a Founder of the Israel Air Force. By Boris Senior. Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, Inc., 2005.256 pp. $25.95. Israel's air force and its advanced aero-technology helped define the country in...

On Point: The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom.(Book review)
September 22, 2006... On Point: The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom. By Gregory Fontenot, E.J. Degen, and David Tohn. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2005.539 pp. $34.95. Sensational video feeds and embedded journalist accounts shaped public...

Orientalism and the Hebrew Imagination.(Book review)
September 22, 2006... Orientalism and the Hebrew Imagination. By Yaron Peleg. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005. 153 pp. $35. As the specter of Edward Said's Orientalism persists in casting a defining imprint on Middle East studies, Peleg argues that...

Princes of Darkness: The Saudi Assault on the West.(Book review)
September 22, 2006... Princes of Darkness: The Saudi Assault on the West. By Laurent Murawiec, trans. George Holoch. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2005.305 pp. $25.95. Murawiec gave a 2002 briefing to the Defense Science Board that carried the...

Reclaiming a Plundered Past: Archaeology and Nation Building in Modern Iraq.(Book review)
September 22, 2006... Reclaiming a Plundered Past: Archaeology and Nation Building in Modern Iraq. By Magnus T. Bernhardsson. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006. 327 pp. $45. Archaeology is invariably politicized; in this revision of a Yale University...

The Saudi Enigma: A History.(Book review)
September 22, 2006... The Saudi Enigma: A History. By Pascal Menoret, trans. Patrick Camiller. London: Zed Books, 2005. 255 pp. $75 ($22.50, paper). Saudi Arabia need not be an enigma. French scholar Menoret demonstrates the wide array of information available...

The Scorpion's Gate.(Book review)
September 22, 2006... The Scorpion's Gate. By Richard Clarke. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2005.305 pp. $24.95. No one has ever accused Clarke of being lacking in the ego department. He became a key player in both the Clinton and Bush White Houses precisely...

Shattering the Stereotypes: Muslim Women Speak Out.(Book review)
September 22, 2006... Shattering the Stereotypes: Muslim Women Speak Out. Edited by Fawzia Afzal-Khan. Northampton: Olive Branch Press, 2005.338 pp. $20. I approached this volume with some hope. As an anthology compiled and edited by a scholar, and describing...

The Shi'is of Jabal 'Amil and the New Lebanon.(Book review)
September 22, 2006... The Shi'is of Jabal 'Amil and the New Lebanon. By Tamara Chalabi. New York: Palgrave, 2006. 227 pp. +xvii. $69.95. Both Western and Arabic-language histories have neglected the Shi'ites of modern Lebanon. Chalabi masterfully brings this...

Shi'ism: Waiting for the Hidden Imam.(Book review)
September 22, 2006... Shi'ism: Waiting for the Hidden Imam. By Said Bakhtaoui and Mohammad Bailout. First Run/ Icarus Films, 2005.53 min. Shi'ism: Waiting for the Hidden Imam, a film, presents a fine portrayal of the origins, defining features, and contemporary...

Dissident Watch: Muhammad al-Sharqawi.
September 22, 2006... On May 25, 2006, Egyptian security forces detained 24-year-old Muhammad al-Sharqawi, a weblogger and member of the reformist Kifaya (Arabic for "enough") movement's Youth for Change offshoot, as he left a peaceful demonstration in Cairo where...