Automatically posted links for November 29th:

Toward a New U.S.-Middle East Strategy – Saban Center (eeekh!) and CFR team up for Mideast policy recommendations for next prez
Foes Use Obama’s Muslim Ties to Fuel Rumors About Him – washingtonpost.com – “Obama aides sharply disputed the initial stories suggesting that he was a Muslim, and in Iowa, the [...]

Interesting interview with the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood leader, suggesting Syria would abandon Iran alliance if the regime fell:

Ikhwanweb: Farouk Al-Sharaa described the Saudi role in the region as “paralyzed” while he backs Iran . How do you expect the balance of power in the region will be if a change happens and an [...]

Needless to say, this is complete bull and an obvious and pathetic attempt by the barbaric Sudanese government to get another negotiating card as it heads into yet another round of talks on Darfur and the South. Memo to the Mufti of Egypt, Sheikh al-Azhar and the Muslim Brotherhood: now’s the time to speak up [...]

Automatically posted links for November 27-28th:

Critical writer jailed in Tunisia – On Monday, police in Sfax, Tunisia’s second largest city, detained Slim Boukhdhir, a well-known blogger and contributor to the London-based Al-Quds Al Arabi.
‘Aqoul: Hirsi Ali: Ideological Chameleon – Holy CRAP! Hirsi Ali’s rightward shift
tabsir.net » Al Qaeda?s generational split – Yemeni tactics for splitting [...]

Reading the New York Times’ editorials on Annapolis, full of praise for “moderates” and worrying about who shook whose hand, I am reminded of why I barely read that newspaper anymore. The reporting is occasionally good, such as the very nice long feature on radicalism in northern Morocco a few days ago, but when it [...]

From Scott Horton’s very erudite blog at Harpers:

Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, Ibn Khaldūn Meets Sultan al-Narir, ink drawing (ca. 1650)
“Politics is the ordering of the household or the city as they ought to be according to the requirements of ethics and wisdom so that the multitude could be made [...]

Mitt Romney, who increasingly appears to be the likely Republican candidate for the 2008 US presidential elections, doesn’t want Muslims in his cabinet. He has given at least two reasons, both outrageous:

TPM Election Central has learned that at a private fundraising lunchleon in Los Vegas three months ago, Romney said a second time he would [...]

Via the always useful friday-lunch-club.

I have recently been using a combination of del.icio.us and a Wordpress plugin called Postalicious to generate a daily list of my bookmarked links. As many of you may have noticed (unless you have more intelligent browsers than mine), Arabic script comes out as gibberish. If anyone knows a solution to this, I’d love to [...]

Al-Ahram announced this morning that Mahmoud Gabali, the chairman of Mahalla for Spinning and Weaving, has been sacked and that workers would be given 135 days of pay. The decision, taken by the company’s board, was based on accounting inconsistencies detected by the Central Auditing Agency, a government watchdog. Apparently the audit uncovered irregularities in [...]

Automatically posted links for November 26th:

أول صحفي مسيحي مصري يجري حوارًا مع مرشد الإخوان المسلمين مهدي عاكف – The first interview of MB Guide Mahdi Akef by an Egyptian Christian, apparently
Foul times ahead for Egypt’s bean staple – Alarmist predictions for fuul. Actually a lot comes from China nowadays, like everything else
Why the Arab street? [...]

I can’t find it online, so I am republishing below this fine op-ed by Mona al-Tahawy where she makes the obvious yet crucial point that Saudi Arabia’s medieval practices (only one manifestation of its backwards ideology) have been tolerated far too long:
Gender Apartheid
by Mona Eltahawy
NEW YORK — Once upon a time, in a country called [...]

Automatically posted links for November 25th:

Angry Arab on Eric’s Hobsbawm’s memoirs – “I have no emotional obligation to the practices of an ancestral religion and even less to the small, militarist, culturally disappointing and politically aggressive nation-state which asks for my solidarity on racial grounds.”
“If Annapolis fails, smash me,” souvenir mug says – Brillant! I [...]

I just got my satellite dish repaired and was surfing the channels. I came across Rob Satloff interviewing Dennis Ross about the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. So basically Satloff, head of the pro-Israel think tank WINEP, interviews Ross, former pro-Israel American diplomat who is spending his exile at… wait for it… WINEP. What channel was this? [...]

Automatically posted links for November 24th:

Pakistan Alerted U.S. It Planned Emergency Rule – WSJ.com – Bhutto: “My question is: If the U.S., which is giving more than $10 billion in aid, can’t get him to lift emergency rule… what’s the point of my negotiating with him?”
WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE BUT NOT A DROP TO DRINK – [...]

Beyond the Veil:
When the French government invaded Algeria, in 1830, it started a vast campaign of military “pacification,” which was quickly followed by the imposition of French laws deemed necessary for the civilizing mission to succeed. Women were crucial to that enterprise. In articles, stories and novels of the day, Algerian women were universally depicted [...]

The Guardian’s Brian Whitaker has highlighted YouTube’s decision to block the Egypt torture videos page, which we recently covered. In his post Brian says points how this removes a crucial tool at the hands of bloggers to distribute and publicize cases of human rights abuses and build a campaign against Egypt’s systematic use of torture.
Reading [...]

Automatically posted links for November 23rd:

Arab Countries to Send Senior Delegations to Peace Talks – Saudi reluctantly coming along, other Arab states breathe sifh of relief
Hands Off Iran – “I will not pay my income tax if we go to war with Iran.”
U.S. Navy steps up fuel deliveries to Gulf forces | Reuters – Increased [...]

Automatically posted links for November 22nd:

Le Monde.fr : Le patriarche maronite libanais, Nasrallah Sfeir, politique malgré lui – What a ridiculous headline… poor Sfeir, pushed into politics!
Women in Muslim Brotherhood ..Towards More Political Participation – MB article on growing role for women in political activism
Report: Syria has decided not to attend Annapolis peace conference – [...]

Palestinian source: Wide gaps remain as summit nears – Haaretz:
A Palestinian source has told Haaretz that there is still too much of a gulf between the positions of Israel and the Palestinians, who are currently working on a joint document ahead of a peace conference set for next Tuesday in Annapolis, Maryland.
The sources says that [...]

Since the beginning of Pakistan’s constitutional crisis, I’ve been thinking of potential parallels with Egypt. These remain fairly superficial, since after all the general political and strategic situation is quite different, and arguable opposition politics are more vibrant in Pakistan than they are in Egypt. Still, there are some similarities, notably the central role the [...]

Egypt: Bloggers Plan Parallel Film Festival on Police Torture:
Egyptian bloggers have announced that, while the Cairo film festival is taking place from 27 November to 7 December, they will hold a parallel festival in which a “Golden Whip” will be awarded to the best video showing “controversial acts of torture allegedly committed by the security [...]

Automatically posted links for November 21st:

مجمع البحوث الإسلامية يوافق علي نشر «الإسلام هو الحل» وكتب إخوانية لـ«البنا» و«مشهور» – Egypt Islamic council authorizes publication of Ikhwan publications – this will have the conspiracy theorists going!
“U.S. Seeks to Prosecute Pulitzer Prize Winning A.P. Photographer” by Scott Horton (Harper’s Magazine) – Pentagon to put AP photog on [...]

Automatically posted links for November 20th:

List of invitees to Mideast peace talks – Yahoo! News – How do I get an invite?
Obama: I tried drugs as a teen (AP) – Kids: do drugs and drink, it doesn’t matter you might still be president or at least senator.
Divorce in Egypt every [...]

Our friend and former Cairo mag contributor G. Willow Wilson has released her graphic novel, Cairo, and NPR interviewed her about it. Here’s the blurb from the book:
Journalist G. Willow Wilson brings an extraordinary fable to Vertigo in October with CAIRO, an original graphic novel illustrated by Turkish artist M.K. Perker, himself a contributor to [...]

Automatically posted links for November 19th:

Una persecucion escandalosa - Spanish intellectuals speak out for Algerian dissident placed under arrest
Am I to blame for his private war? | The Observer – A photographer and a soldier’s story from Iraq
Mideast Conference Nears, With Few Plans – washingtonpost.com – No one has any idea of what’s going on [...]

U.S. hopes to arm Pakistani tribes against Al Qaeda:
WASHINGTON: A new and classified American military proposal outlines an intensified effort to enlist tribal leaders in the frontier areas of Pakistan in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, as part of a broader effort to bolster Pakistani forces against an expanding militancy, American military [...]

The new issue of Middle East Report is out, with a focus on youth. It features an excellent piece by Marc Lynch on young Muslim Brothers, which is available online, as is a reflection on how Arab youths are perceived as a sociological / political unit (one for instance sometimes presumed to always be a [...]

Yamli Search is very intriguing new search engine that transliterates Arabic written in the Latin alphabet into Arabic proper, and then runs that query through Google. It’s really quite neat — for instance if you type “ikhwan al muslimeen” it will search for “اخوان المسلمين“. You have to try it out to see what I [...]

Divisions in Muslim Brotherhood:
THE lowly shoe is considered a degrading weapon in Egypt. To be beaten with a shoe adds insult to injury.
So when Mohamed Mahdi Akef, the Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, the banned Islamist group whose members have frequent encounters with the police, threatened critics with his shoes last year, it was [...]

 Arabist.net is trailing in second place for the Best English Weblog award, so if you can spare a few minutes do go and vote for us!  Update: It’s over, we came second, thanks to those who voted! 

I went up the tubes that make up the internets and found these:
Letter from Iraq: Inside the Surge – The New Yorker – The new US strategy in Iraq
Hidden Costs’ Double Price Of Two Wars, Democrats Say – WaPo – Bush lied about that too
Good news from Gaza – Haaretz – Hamas getting more like [...]

A few days ago, Human Rights Watch and the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights published a report entitled “Prohibited Identities” about the discrimination of the Egyptian governments against those who either wish to identify as something other than the three “revealed” religions (Islam, Christianity, and Judaism) or those who wish to change their religion from [...]

2 Egyptian police officers under investigation for allegedly ordering 2 teens raped:
Two police officers are under investigation after two teenagers alleged that the officers ordered other prisoners to rape them at a police station, prosecution officials said Wednesday.
A lieutenant and first lieutenant at the Kafr el-Sheik station allegedly ordered older prisoners to rape the teenage [...]

Remember Karim Soliman, the blogger who has sentenced to four years in prison for insulting Islam and President Mubarak? He is now being tortured because he uncovered corruption among prison officials:
Karim reported his torture to his lawyers in the Arabic Network and Hisham Mubarak Center. The torture was perpetrated by another prisoner and a prison [...]

For a lazy Sunday:

Egypt’s Coptic Pope needs more time in hospital: church – Baba Shenouda continues to be seriously ill
The crescent and the cross – FT review destroys “Eurabia” books
What’s Behind the Reversal of Tunisia Hijab Ban? – A look at a recent court decision to reverse longstanding ban
When the bikini line turned to a [...]

From a recent report by the Carnegie Endowment:

As a result of reform efforts, and over the past three years, Egypt has managed to stabilize the economy, increase foreign currency reserves, and achieve steady growth. Reform programs have introduced effective amendments in the social contract between the state, market, and society. Yet little if any progress [...]

A rather convenient fatwa:
CAIRO, Nov 8 (Reuters) – Egypt’s highest authority on Islamic law said on Thursday that drivers cannot be blamed for killing people who stand in front of their vehicles, just days after a police van ran over a woman who tried to stop it.
Dar al-Iftaa, the government agency which issues around 1,000 [...]

La Tunisie des illusions perdues – excellent article on 20 years of Ben Ali
AIPAC Court Adopts Silent Witness Rule – Testimonies in AIPAC spying case to be secret
What today’s Islamists want by Ibrahim El Houdaiby – Muslim Brother explains views
The United States’ new backyard, by Alain Gresh – America’s new near-abroad
Rice in Lebanon: Hard to [...]