Here’s a few notes on some recent stories that have come out about Iraq’s elections following the recent confusion about whether they might take place in January as planned, later, not at all, or only in the half of the country that is not under the control of insurgents.
Time reveals, probably for the first [...]

The Guardian’s Middle East editor, Brian Whitaker, continues his look at Arab publishing and literature in Language barrier.
I would only add that the state of affairs that Whitaker describes is not true for French publishers, which do quite often publish Arabic novels, either in translation or those written in French by Arab authors from North [...]

Al hamdulillah.
Al-Jazeera Says 2 Italian Hostages Freed (AP):
AP – The Arab television network Al-Jazeera announced that two Italian aid workers kidnapped earlier this month were released Tuesday in Iraq. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi confirmed the women had been freed, Italian news reports said.
“The two girls are well and will be able to embrace [...]

A little break from coverage of the Arab world, but worth noting:
Minister: N. Korea Has Nuclear Deterrent:

UNITED NATIONS – North Korea says it has turned the plutonium from 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods into nuclear weapons to serve as a deterrent against increasing U.S. nuclear threats and to prevent a nuclear war in northeast [...]

Peter Bergen, the only Western journalist to have met Osama Bin Laden, wrote an important article on the hunt for the Al Qaeda leader in The Atlantic (via The Agonist), where he wonders if OBL (and presumably top aides like Ayman Al Zawahri) might not be hiding near Kashmir rather than the northern Pakistan-Afghanistan order [...]

George Packer holds no punches in a recent New Yorker article, which is well worth a read for a clear look at what should be the central issue of the election and why Kerry seems to be losing it.
The New Yorker: The Talk of the Town:
“He forced a congressional vote on the war just [...]

The French-language Moroccan magazine Tel Quel — a great read on a country little covered elsewhere on the web — has a cover story on the history of underground negotiations between the Moroccan political class and the Sahraoui independence movement since the 1970s. Timely reading in context of South Africa’s recent controversial decision to recognize [...]

The Guardian is running excerpts from Seymour Hersh’s new book, Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib. The one linked to below is particularly interesting for those of us who have been following this from Egypt, explaining how US intelligence kidnapped two Egyptian Islamists (at least one of whom was a member [...]

Egypt’s foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, made the case last friday for a permanent Arab seat (most probably filled by… wait for it… Egypt) at the UN Security Council. Not a bad idea, although scrapping the power of the veto would be better — or at least making the General Assembly or a plurality of [...]

Sounds like the Sudanese regime is acting preemptively…
Deadly Coup Plot Is Alleged in Sudan:
“KHARTOUM, Sudan — Sudanese authorities accused an opposition party Saturday of plotting to kill more than three dozen senior government officials and blow up key sites in the capital, where heavily armed troops were out in force for a second day.

The [...]

Hamas: Arab State May Have Helped in Syria Killing:
“We were not convinced initially, this would be treason for an Arab security apparatus to be involved in this,” Hamas Lebanon head Osama Hamdan said of a report in the Al-Hayat daily.

The Arabic daily said an Arab country had given the Israeli spy agency Mossad information about [...]

Many of the things I love and hate about Cairo are mentioned in this essay about the great, mind-boggling city.
Although I have just finished reading a fantastic new book on the same subject (Cairo, City of Sand, by Maria Golia) which puts my piddling effort to shame. Expect a review of Maria’s book–which I [...]

Following is an email from a WSJ reporter in Baghdad that was forwarded me through a long chain of people. Worth reading in its entirety.
Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being under virtual house arrest. Forget about the reasons that lured me to this job: a chance to see the [...]

Mahmoud gives background of an arrest of a human rights activist in Bahrain.
Something’s amiss (redux!): “The papers are full this morning of the King and the Crown Prince visiting the Prime Minister at his office. When this sort of thing happens, you just know that someone somewhere has “talked bad” about the ruling family or [...]

I was at the Administrative Court in Giza this morning to witness (as it turned out) the aspiring Hizb Al Ghad (Party of Tomorrow) once again not get permission to be registered as a political party. The Party Affairs Committee has turned down five attempts for this group to register, as it does with [...]

Iraqi newspaper identifies insurgent groups – (UPI):
“There are three main Sunni groups, and five separate factions within them; two Baathist groups; and two Shiite insurgent organizations, according to a recent issue of the Baghdad al-Zawra in Arabic — a weekly published by the Iraqi Journalists Association and translated into English by the CIA.
The groups [...]

This is the kind of stupid thing that gives Muslims a bad name:
A religious edict saps the energy out of yoga enthusiasts in Egypt, where clerics say the 5,000-year-old practice violates Islamic law.
Answering a religious question put forward, Egypt’s highest theological authority called yoga an “ascetic Hindu practice that should not be used in any [...]

If you’re interested in the Al Azhar book-banning issue that I wrote about here, read this fine opinion piece by Hossam Bahgat in today’s Daily Star. Bahgat reminds us that Al Azhar is a state institution and questions the “secular intellectuals vs. Islamizing state” phenomenon.

You gotta love that headline. What a sad state of affairs.
Major Powers Wring Hands Discreetly on Middle East: “Reuters – The world’s major powers wrung
their hands discreetly on Wednesday at the lack of progress
toward peace in the Middle East, chiding Israel and the
Palestinians in equal measure but offering no new ideas.”

Bob Novak, the conservative columnist who outed Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s wife Valerie Plame as a CIA agent, says he believes the Bush administration, if re-elected, will leave Iraq as quick as it can:
“Well-placed sources in the administration are confident Bush’s decision will be to get out. They believe that is the recommendation of his [...]

For the past two days and until tomorrow, Egypt’s ruling National Democratic Party has been holding its annual convention, putting a strong emphasis on what it calls “New Thinking” and the need for reform. And there have indeed been some important reforms introduced over the past two days, for instance the complete overhaul of the [...]

It’s not new, but on a similar topic as the post below you could do no better than read Max Rodenbeck’s review of new books on Islamic reform.

Gamal Al Banna is one of Egypt’s most prominent thinkers on Islam, although you wouldn’t think so from the treatment he gets from the “official” Islam of Al Azhar, the oldest Islamic university which is based in Cairo but influences all Sunni Muslims. Al Azhar has decided to ban a new book by Al Banna [...]

Via Talking Points Memo:
Surprise, surprise …

“A year from now, I’ll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush.”
Richard PerleAEI Keynote speech
September 22, 2003
From the same guy who memorably brought us:
“This is total war. If we just let our vision of the world go forth… our [...]

The Chicago Tribune ran this interesting article on the Muslim Brotherhood’s US chapter a few days ago. It’s worth reading, if only to see the reach of one of the oldest modern political movements in the Middle East — one that continues to have much influence in its birthplace, Egypt, and far beyond:

Many Muslims believe [...]

It’s seems that now it’s official: Iraq had no WMD.
Actually, it’s about the third time someone reports this — I think the last time was the Kay report presented to Congress. It may not be that important in the face of the fait accompli that is the occupation of Iraq, but it’s worth remembering that [...]

Read this good piece by Kareem Fahim in the Village Voice on Sudanese refugees in Cairo. It’s a good overview of the situation.

As you can see in the post below, there is a new poster on arabist.net. This website was never meant to be a personal blog, and Ursula Lindsey, who has written about Egypt for various newspapers and magazines, is the first of hopefully many other contributors you will see as the site matures. It is [...]

The Beirut Review (a literary supplement to the Daily Star) just ran a review I wrote of Galal Amin’s sequel to “Whatever Happened to the Egyptians?” (entitled, creatively, “Whatever Else Happened to the Egyptians?”). Amin is an economics professor at the American University in Cairo, and he analyzes changes in Egyptian society and culture [...]

Is Syria testing chemical weapons in Darfur People shouldn’t get excited when it’s based on a single anonymous intelligence source. Remember all those intelligence sources two years ago that were talking about Saddam’s WMD stash? Still, one to investigate…

I’ve been doing a bunch of reading on the FBI-AIPAC spy affair that broke about two weeks ago now, and while I don’t have any particular insight to add, there are some tremendously good articles on the subject around. If there is anything to be gained from this episode, it is that it will shed [...]

The French-language Moroccan magazine Tel Quel — one of the most provocative in the region — is running an interesting piece on Al Jazeera, looking at its financing, its relationship with Islamist groups and with the Bush administration. I found the last section of the magazine, on how (according to an Al Jazeera employee) the [...]

Still warming up to next week’s National Democratic Party congress, where economic and political reforms are expected to be announced, now banking reform is underway. This has been expected for a while — Egypt has been working discreetly with the IMG and World Bank on how to reform the banking sector for over a year [...]

Don’t miss this great article by Brian Whitaker, the Middle East editor of the Guardian, where he looks at the often-repeated claims that the Arab world is trailing far behind the rest of the world in knowledge production. Spurious statistics have been used over the past three years by people running from President Bush to [...]

A new Israeli party is calling for expulsion of non-Jews from Israel and the Occupied Territories, Al Jazeera reports:

According to Ben Elyaho, a co-founder of the new party, the expulsion of non-Jews from Israel would “resolve all of Israel’s political, economic and social problems”.

“Our party calls for cleansing the region extending from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean [...]

Or why it’s needed…

Bodyguard accidentally kills senator

AN Egyptian wedding feast turned to tragedy when the bodyguard of one of the guests accidentally killed him with a celebratory burst of gunfire and then committed suicide.

Mohammed Abu Okail, a member of Egypt’s Consultative Council, or senate, was gunned down in the village of Abis, 190km north of [...]

Islam Online reports that, for the first time, foreign observers from human rights groups, academia and elsewhere have been invited to the forthcoming National Democratic Party conference. This suggest they want to make a big show of it, showcasing the new Nazif government and Egypt’s commitment to reform. It also dicusses some of the “limited [...]

Ahead of the ruling National Democratic Party’s convention in a little over a week’s time, the new Nazif government is unleashing a wave of new policies to get the message out that it is serious about reform. Just consider that since the beginning of this week, we’ve had:

An impressive reduction in tariffs and customs duties, [...]

Peter Galbraith on how the Bush administration lost the peace and why Iraq will probably end up as a loose federation — if civil war can be averted. His conclusion:

The United States faces a near-impossible dilemma in Iraq. If it withdraws prematurely, it risks leaving behind a weak government unable to cope with the chaos [...]

This is a piece I’ve published a while back but that is not available on the internet. It sheds a little light on why the issue of subsidies, mentioned in this post, is important.
Aside from the occasional protest over regional events, such as the war on Iraq or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, ordinary Egyptians often take [...]