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 - [...]