Laila Lalami has a nice post about the opening of the Rif Cinematheque in Tangiers, which is perhaps Morocco’s first art house cinema. I visited the Rif while it was still being renovated last summer and spent time with the couple behind it, Moroccan photographer Yto Barrada and her American husband Sean Gullette (the main [...]

When you’ve developed something of an expertise on a topic, you become a hot commodity for people starting out their own research. A few friends of mine have lately gotten tired of being providers of (free) info, bibliographies and contacts for the latest newcomers and penned this funny standard template for freeloaders.
Dear Mr. X,
My name [...]

Update: Got it, thanks!
There’s an interesting-looking new article on “The Moderate New Muslim Brotherhood” at Foreign Affairs, but it’s subscribers-only. Can readers with access send me a copy?
The Muslim Brotherhood is the world’s oldest, largest, and most influential Islamist organization. It is also the most controversial, condemned by both conventional opinion in the West and [...]

Syria—well, Damascus—doesn’t feel like a place ready to come apart at the seams just yet. The mess of swish new cafes and expensive clothing stores, the shiny new cars and a general air of confidence belie the rumors of fraying domestic security and an unhappy economy. Maybe the feeling is deceptive. The flash is largely [...]

The great, independent Lebanese editorialist had died. Asa’ad AbuKhalil knew him well.

As some of you may remember, I mentioned last week that Israeli Apartheid Week was held in New York. As we’ve all seen from the reaction to former President Carter’s recent book, some people find the use of the word “apartheid” offensive, shocking, or far-fetched. Even within the Palestinian solidarity movement, there has been some [...]

For at least the last few years now, friends have been mentioning their suspicions that the popular US TV show “24″ has a right-wing agenda of some sort, or at the very least legitimizes torture by showing its hero constantly “having to” torture terrorists to save LA from a nucler bomb or some such threat. [...]

This is a strong message to Egypt’s bloggosphere.
In a first trial against a blogger, Kareem has been sentenced to four years in jail for insulting Islamic institutions and the President.
A very sad day for freedom of expression in Egypt.

I am catching a plane to Rome in about 20 minutes and have just discovered that Cairo airport finally has free wi-fi. Because of my travels I probably won’t be posting much until Tuesday. I did want to mention a debate I went to at AUC last night about the constitutional amendments and the Muslim [...]

The charts below from a Mother Jones study on the increase of terrorism since the invasion of Iraq.

The ‘crime’ of blogging in Egypt:
Egyptian authorities have made a mistake in prosecuting Soliman. It is Egypt that will be hurt if he is convicted and sent to prison. That’s why sincere friends of Egypt call on the government to drop the charges against him. It is the right thing to do, and it [...]

I don’t have a link for this (Update: Here is the story on the MB website), but thought it was worth posting — it’s telling of the anger at the regime for its support of Israel these days:
An Egyptian policeman has been referred to a military court because he refused to guard the Israeli embassy [...]

The Project on Defense Alternatives has a long list of links on Iran, from all sides of the debate and all of the issues that have been in the news lately — the nuclear program, intervention in Iraq, regional ambitions as well as the inner political debate in Iran and the US and an assessment [...]

Bakchich has an article explaining how the ministry of interior is rigging Morocco’s electoral map to favor rural areas, where the moderate Islamist PJD has made little inroads, to contain the success polls have been predicting since last year. In a sense, this is ethnic electioneering, with the mostly Berber / tribal countryside long loyal [...]

Should I be surprised that so many Israeli political figures seem to be criminals of one kind or another? I suppose not, the country has been at the center of many illicit trades for a while now (human trafficking, conflict diamonds, drugs, weapons), obviously with politicians/officials’ support. And in any case, politicians worldwide seem to [...]

Simon Tisdall offers a decent if run-of-the-mill analysis of Egypt’s backpedaling on reform. More interesting is the comment below his piece.

Abdel Monem Mahmoud, the webmaster of the Muslim Brotherhood’s English-language website, has a post on his English blog with a list of Ikhwan youth blogs.
Until not too long ago there were very few Islamist bloggers in Egypt; it seems this is changing fast.

Has been made in Algeria:
ALGIERS (Reuters) – Algeria has translated the Koran into the Berber language, Tamazight, for the first time, to promote Islam among a community that has long campaigned for more language and cultural rights, an official said on Monday.
Religious Affairs Ministry spokesman Abdellah Tamine said the ministry had funded the printing this [...]

Here’s an interesting newish political blog from Gaza: Tabula Gaza.

Abu Muqawama has a question about recent Israeli reports that Hizbullah has recovered its pre-war firepower:
doesn’t this report shoot holes in all those claims made by the IDF in the aftermath of the summer’s war about how this wasn’t a Hizbollah victory on account of all the damage Israel did to Hizbollah’s infrastructure? If Hizbollah [...]

I was reading this op-ed by Hala Mustafa and A.R. Norton and was struck by several things. First, this assertion:
One of the dirty little secrets of Egyptian politics is that government squashes secular opponents while allowing Islamist opposition (and leftist groups) freer rein, including privileged access to the media and more scope to campaign for [...]

I go to the wrong cafés and don’t spend enough time in bazaars. Or perhaps my hearing is just not what it was:
The question whispered in the bazaars and cafes of Cairo these days is who will be the successor to President Hosni Mubarak.
Strange, though, that I see this issue being discussed out loud in [...]

One of the weirder sides of globalization:
Egypt-animal-protest
Giant chicken loses head outside Cairo KFC
CAIRO, Feb 17, 2007 (AFP) – A man dressed in a bright yellow chicken suit protesting cruelty to animals outside a fried chicken outlet in downtown Cairo Saturday was knocked down and had his chicken head yanked off by restaurant employees before being [...]

Ouch:
Mauritanian hijacker gets in hot water
By JUAN MANUEL PARDELLAS, Associated Press Writer Fri Feb 16, 2:12 PM ET
SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Canary Islands – A fast-thinking pilot with passengers in cahoots fooled a hijacker by braking hard upon landing, then accelerating to knock the man down. When he fell, flight attendants threw boiling water in [...]

You’d think that when Congress wants to debate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they’d get experts to testify who were either independent, dispassionate analysts or represented a range of thinking about the issue at hand — particularly as the Baker-Hamilton report just recommended more pro-active American diplomacy to resolve the conflict and the Secretary of State recently [...]

I have a favor to ask readers with access to academic databases. The new issue of the Middle East Journal is out, I’d like to read it but there is no way to get it from their website other than ordering a paper copy, which won’t get to Egypt for ages. I asked a friend [...]

Omar Sharif, the man who famously bullied Edward Said when they were at school together, has done it again:

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. – Omar Sharif pleaded no contest Tuesday to misdemeanor battery and was ordered to take an anger management course for punching a parking valet who refused to accept his European currency.
The Egyptian-born actor, known [...]

This is the latest Israel Lobby initiative to sully the image of Middle Easterners:

Ali Abunimah writes:
The Terror-Free Oil Initiative claims on its website that it is “dedicated to encouraging Americans to buy gasoline that originated from countries that do not export or finance terrorism.” It states, “We educate the public by promoting those companies that [...]

Chalmers Johnson, one of the key articulators of the “imperial overstretch” argument (I liked his book The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic) argues that military Keynesianism and an unchecked presidency on the warpath will lead to a non-democratic United States and, eventually, bankruptcy. From Harpers:
The United States remains, for [...]

A very nice post by Laila Lalami on the landmark Moroccan intellectual magazines Lamalif and Souffles.

Let’s take a break from this sectarian warfare, go see our pals in Iran, and let the Americans take out the Sunnis for us. We can come back when they’re ready to leave. That’s seems to be the thinking of the Mahdi Army and their allies in the Iraqi government, anyway:
Senior commanders of the Mahdi [...]

So Israel occupied the West Bank and then decides who can or can’t build huts:
Israel razes Bedouin huts in West Bank
Wed Feb 14, 2:27 PM ET
HATHALEEN, West Bank – The Israeli army on Wednesday demolished seven huts and tents belonging to Bedouin Arabs who live near Jewish settlements in the southern West Bank, residents and [...]

I should have posted this earlier but have been just too busy. Israeli Apartheid Week is being held for the first time in New York this year (it’s a three-year-old event and is being held in several cities in Canada and the UK).
You can visit www.endisraeliapartheid.net to read all about it, including schedules, informational materials [...]

As my friend Hugh Miles notes in this Telegraph piece, something of a landmark constitutional change has taken place in Saudi Arabia:
Saudi Arabia has significantly reduced the powers of its absolute monarchy by quietly removing the king’s authority to choose his own successor.
This landmark constitutional reform, enacted by royal order last October but only disclosed [...]

Go here for a series of lectures on Iran, including:
William Beeman,
The “Great Satan” vs. the “Mad Mullahs”:
How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other
Gary Sick
The United States and Iran:
Is a Military Clash Inevitable?
Minoo Moallem
Between Warrior Brother and Veiled Sister:
Transnational Formations of Islamic Nationalism and Fundamentalism in Iran
Scott Sagan
How to [...]

Mahmoud is the “grandfather” of Bahraini bloggers and is now being sued by a minister for a critical comment he wrote on Mahmoud’s Den. Read all about it here:
I was a guest of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in Adliya this morning. I was called yesterday and asked – very politely – to present myself [...]

Update: See comments, there is some confusion as to which MPs people are referring to here.
Update 2: Haaretz picks up an AP story that has the same confusion about the names.
The Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot’s website, Ynetnews.com, had a piece today accusing two NDP members of calling for the development of a nuclear bomb as [...]

A tenuous connection to what is generally discussed on this blog, but it’s not everyday that you come across science fiction stories by Primo Levi, and the New Yorker has a lovely one.

The Israelis are so brazen in their extortion racket on US politicians this is what you find in a newspaper like Haaretz:
Israel has started pondering a question that can’t be avoided for long, and whose strategic significance is not in doubt: How much American money should Israel ask for?
Read all of it, very instructive.

The great Moroccan magazine Le Journal Hebdomadaire (which recently lost its editor-in-chief, Abou Bakr Jamai, a fact that saddens me deeply and on which I will write about at a later point) is one of the few publications on the planet — that’s no exaggeration — that will publish long, critical pieces on the Tunisian [...]