I was just reading Jackie Spinner’s article in yesterday’s Washington Post on the trend among Iraqi girls to wear the hijab so as to avoid standing out in the crowd, and thus becoming targets of kidnappings, shootings, etc… It’s a fine article, except for this statement of fact by the author:
Conservative Muslims believe that [...]

An interesting story today on the front page of Al Misry Al Yom about the National Council for Human Rights (NCHR). At its end of the year performance review board members accused the Council’s leaders of hindering the NCHR’s work, taking unilateral decisions without consulting the rest of the Council, and failing to respond to [...]

The plot thickens… Here’s the Reuters story.

CAIRO (Reuters) – One man died and two others were injured in uncertain circumstances in southern Egypt, a police source said on Thursday, in the latest in a series of clashes between Muslims and Christians in Egypt.
The source said the clash took place on Wednesday when dozens [...]

Gamal Mubarak is quoted in the December 25 Al Hayat as saying that the Fall parliamentary elections would be “important and decisive.” He said they would be “different” and added that “it is unimaginable to conduct the new elections in an air of suspicion as happened during the past elections.”
The Gamal quotes in Al [...]

Al Misry Al Yom reported last Sunday that the Sheikh of Al Azhar, Muhammad Sayid Tantawi, issued a fatwa declaring that a woman could be president of Egypt, but could not become a sheikh at Al Azhar. According to the article the fatwa was a response to Nawal Al Saadawi’s announcement that she would be [...]

Nader Fergany heads the team of scholars and researchers that has worked on the Arab Human Development Report (AHDR) series. The third report in that series, on freedom and governance, will not be published under the aegis of the UNDP after attempts by the US and Egyptian governments to alter its contents. The first two [...]

A few quick thoughts on the Tariq Ramadan controversy. The debate is largely one of definitions. What defines a moderate Muslim? Is Tariq Ramadan, or anyone for that matter, moderate simply because he doesn’t support suicide bombers, and isn’t calling for armed confrontation with the West, or infidel regimes, or whatever other looming entities are [...]

I don’t usually like to post about Israeli internal affairs here unless they have an Arab angle, but two stories in the past few days drew my attention. One was that Israeli banks and Bank Leumi in particular are conspiring with the government not to return money that belongs to Holocaust survivors and their descendants. [...]

One of my favorite sites, the Agonist, posted this flawed piece on Tariq Ramadan yesterday. I’d like to explain a few of the issues that I have with it.
First, the reliance on Lee Smith’s analysis in Slate is highly dubious. Smith is a poor source of expertise on the Arab world, and the reasons why [...]

Saad Eddin Ibrahim, the noted Egyptian-American political scientist who was imprisoned for nearly a year and a half before being acquitted, has penned a new editorial for the Daily Star. It’s on the status of Christians in various Arab countries and is well-timed to coincide with the current sectarian tension in Egypt over church construction [...]

The World Bank is linking a new $500 million in Palestinian aid to Israel lifting travel restrictions and Palestinian reform:
The president, James Wolfensohn, said the bank is not imposing conditions, but that international donors want to see conditions improve to make the aid more effective.
“The donors, essentially, today, having gone through the intefadeh (Palestinian uprising), [...]

I’ve just come back from the interview with Nader Fergany, the lead author of the Arab Human Development Report. As promised before, it will be posted here after I’ve had a chance to transcribe it.
In the meantime, see this Al Hayat column by Jihad Al Khazen, which has more information. According to my meeting with [...]

I have a long-delayed story in the Daily Star on Arab comic book superheroes. Not a new topic, but I think I discuss a few things that weren’t raised before. Here is my friend Paul Schemm’s story on this a few months ago, which quickly made it around the blogosphere.

Evan Osnos of the Chicago Tribune has a long piece on French Muslims here, which is part of a wider series on the “Struggle for the soul of Islam.”
I have to say these pieces on Islam, while often interesting and educational, are getting a bit tiring. Which is why I was glad to see that [...]

A survey finds that nearly half of Americans are in favor of curtailing American Muslims’ liberties:
The survey found 44 percent favored at least some restrictions on the civil liberties of Muslim Americans. Forty-eight percent said liberties should not be restricted in any way.
The survey showed that 27 percent of respondents supported requiring all Muslim Americans [...]

The Independent reports that the Brits are secretly taking the US side on getting Mohamed Al Baradei out of the IAEA:
It had been assumed that Britain was also well-disposed towards Dr ElBaradei, who has said he plans to seek a third term next year as IAEA chief, but a well-placed Whitehall source revealed that officials [...]

I’ve just received the following message via email:
Egyptian journalist Abdou Al Maghrabi, who works for the Sout Al Umma (’Voice of the Nation’) broadsheet, faced a violent attack by a police officer in Abd el Moneim Riad square, next to Cairo’s main square, Midan Al Tahrir, on Saturday night. The area was tightly guarded as Gamal Mubarak, [...]

Daily Star Editor Rami Khouri provides some new information on the suppression of the third Arab Human Development Report by the US and apparently Egypt, who is also pressuring the UNDP not to publish it in its current form.
Authoritative sources directly involved in the matter revealed that the U.S. State Department had accused the [...]

I suppose it’s worth noting that Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif gave his first address to Parliament today (Sunday) since assuming office in July. It provides us an opportunity to reflect on the progress of the new government. In terms of political reform, I don’t think there is really much to say, because nothing has [...]

Who says Islam and modernity can’t go hand and hand? Al Masry Al Yom reported yesterday that Cairo University announced at a press conference last friday that it will begin work in January on the Islamic Satellite. Due to be launched in mid-2006, the satellite will unify the lunar calendar throughout the Islamic world. For [...]

Who would have thought?
Asked about the view of some U.S. conservatives that a stable democracy in Iraq would act as a lighthouse for the whole region, Mubarak said: “Probably not much more will come out of that than the light of the Moon.”

It was not meant to last. After the praised I heaped on Thomas Friedman last week for revealing that the Bush administration was holding back the publication of the third installment of the Arab Human Development Report, he’s back to his old hamster ways with this gem of Orientalism:
What I worry about most right now [...]

Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak said in an interview to be published in Der Spiegel that he expects a Palestinian state in 2008, by the end of Bush’s second term. How many times has a Palestinian state been postponed now? Considering that there are several near-final agreements in place and agreed on (Geneva is just the latest, [...]

As Issandr mentioned a few days ago, Egyptian feminist Nawal El Saadawi has announced herself as a candidate for the 2005 presidential elections. Here’s her platform. It seems pretty reasonable.
The aim she wishes to attain in presenting herself as [...]

Obviously peeved at poor press reviews, the admin is responding that some good did come out of the Moroccan-held “Fourm of the Future,” according to the post this morning.
The key passage:
“The Arab-Israeli issue is a very important issue in that region, just to state the obvious,” one official acknowledged at a briefing for about [...]

Today’s Guadian Reports that the Tariq Ramadan saga in the States is ending. Ramadan, swiss citizen and grand-son of Egyptian MB founder Hassan al-Banna, is one of Europe’s most important Islamist thinkers. He won joint- appointments at Notre Dame last spring to teach Islamic studies and religion, conflict, and peace-building. A week before arriving [...]

This is from the NYT today:
Basically, The UN’s version of events coyly supports Friedman’s editorial while the State department is denying the pressure.
From the text of the story:
“A senior State Department official, asking not to be identified, said some officials at the department had made “a couple of inquiries” about when the [...]

The Guardian reports:
Hollywood has joined the war. Universal Pictures announced yesterday that it is to make The Battle for Falluja. To prove it is serious, it has enlisted Indiana Jones himself, actor Harrison Ford, to help defeat the insurgency.
The article goes on to say that the movie will tell the story of the Battle [...]

In what I assume is a response to Monday’s broadcast on Saudi television about the five star treatment inside Saudi penitentiaries, I found this statement on a Saudi Islamist message board today. It is purportedly from prisoners in Alisha Prison in Saudi Arabia, and was posted to Al Qalaa Web site by a group [...]

Today’s Al Misry Al Yom reports that at a press conference yesterday following a meeting of the policies secretariat Gamal Mubarak denied that he spoke on behalf of Egypt during his travels abroad, and insisted he only spoke on behalf of the National Democratic Party.
A quick thought: It seems worth noting the existance [...]

More from Al Misry Al Yom: Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit told the American Chamber of Commerce in Cairo yesterday that the Egyptian ambassador would return to Tel Aviv at the soonest possible time, and that the fate of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was in American hands alone.

US and Iraqi security forces today raided the Baghdad home of two Egyptian employees of an Iraqi mobile phone company belonging to Egypt’s telecommunications giant Orascom, Dina Abu Neda, a spokeswoman for Orascom Telecom, said. She said thousands of US dollars were confiscated from the men’s home.

Brian Whitaker has a funny story about how Saudi Arabia had broadcast a documentary about its most famous jail to convince Islamist rebels to turn themselves in:
“I swear to God, they [the jailers] are nicer than our parents,” said Othman al-Amri, once No 21 on the kingdom’s list of most-wanted terror suspects.
The programme, broadcast on [...]

Yesterday the Post published an editorial entitled “Straight Talk”.
It seems to getting some play over here. People keep mentioning it to me.
Frankly, it seems a bit hostile and unrepresentative of the current situation. Also dispite criticizing the US Admin for not financially backing reform, the blame was laid on the regimes.
Also, [...]

Partially an addendum to Issandr’s note on the NCHR and the Emergency law
Just had a meeting with Bahay al-Din Hassan of the Cairo Institute for the Study of HR and Egypt’s national council for HR (NCHR). He told me there are two memos are going to the president.
1) repealing Emergency law. He said there was [...]

A friend email me the hilarious picture below, apparently taken from a manual for a translation device to be used by the Pentagon:

This raises two immediate questions:
1. Are the preparations to invade Iran really that advanced?
2. Why will American soldiers speak Farsi to Indian women?

It’s been a hectic week, so I am putting various bits and pieces I’ve noted over the past week here with little commentary:
Visit Daoud Kuttab’s homepage and his blog, which contains an archive of his writings and other material. Kuttab, whom I had the opportunity to meet in Cairo in late 2002, is the Arab [...]

I’d never thought I’d write this, but Thomas Friedman actually has something interesting to say in his latest column! Friedman is revealing, for the first time I think, that the Bush administration is behind the delay of the release of the third installment of the Arab Human Development Report, which is on governance:
Then I started [...]

Take a look at this remarkable message from the “Media Platoon of the Islamic Jihad Army” of Iraq — aka the Iraqi resistance. There is a video at the link, but I am reposting the transcript in full:
People of the world! These words come to you from those who up to the day [...]

The Washington Times has an in-depth article looking at how the Israeli intelligence community has re-assessed its attitude towards Al Qaeda’s influence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in light of the Taba bombings. Talking to many Israeli intelligence experts in academia and government, as well as Palestinian and Saudi analysts, it draws a picture of Al [...]