This NYT piece on the relationship between Courageous Reformist Arab Personalities (CRAP) Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji seizes the non-relevance of these people to the problems of the Islamic world yet, admitting that, continues to find them enthralling.
First there is this paragraph:
Yet though they are allies on one level, their approaches to Islam [...]

Syrian Blogger and opposition activist Ammar Abdulhamid has a very different take on prospects for change in Syria, which he says will be driven by economic factors. I would not be so optimistic (I see the same kind of thinking over Egypt’s current economic crisis) because just like you can’t control a country entirely through [...]

Links from my del.icio.us account for April 23rd through April 26th:

Al Kamen - The Baghdad Embassy, a W Hotel - washingtonpost.com - Scroll down to read about Doug Feith's Georgetown teaching job not being renewed
U.S. arms sales to OPEC at risk over oil: senators
U.S. arms sales to OPEC at risk over [...]

It’s not exactly Sudan’s biggest problem, but the government there should think of getting new copy editors. On the occasion of the fifth Sudan Population and Housing Census:

Yet in some ways it works, doesn’t it?
[Thanks, Diana]

Yesterday several of the opposition-minded papers in Egypt ran with front-page stories about Bilal Diab, a Cairo University student who heckled Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif as the latter was delivering a speech to students about how great things were going in Egypt. I love this story, as does the Egyptian media, because it is reminiscent [...]

Links from my del.icio.us account for April 22nd:

TelQuel : L?incroyable évasion - Detailed story on Islamist jailbreak in Morocco
Al Hayat - Three Arab Oil Phenomena in 2008 - Walid Khadduri on developments in Arab petroleum market
Jackson Diehl - Hunger Pains for Mubarak - washingtonpost.com - Diehl as back at Mubarak-bashing
The Daily Star - Arts [...]

Links from my del.icio.us account for April 21st through April 22nd:

Maghreb : qui sont les hommes d'influence ? : Portraits des vrais maîtres du sérail - Algérie - Egypte - Libye - Maroc - Tunisie - Afrique - The strongmen of North Africa: who's who in the corridors of power
FT.com /Egypt grapples with pressures on [...]

From Electronic Intifada:
A pro-Israel pressure group is orchestrating a secret, long-term campaign to infiltrate the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia to rewrite Palestinian history, pass off crude propaganda as fact, and take over Wikipedia administrative structures to ensure these changes go either undetected or unchallenged.

A series of emails by members and associates of the pro-Israel group [...]

Search around Project Guttenberg, the excellent repository of free ebooks, and you’re bound to find dozens of books that in some way have to do with Egypt. One thing most of these have in common — particularly those from the 19th and early 20th century, when the Victorian fad was to write travel diaries — [...]

Links from my del.icio.us account for April 18th through April 20th:

Strikes in Egypt: Female Workers on the Frontline | Mediterranean | Culture et politique en Méditerranée: information et identité Méditerranéennes avec Babelmed - Our Eman on the role of women in Egypt's strikes
The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict - [...]

Links from my del.icio.us account for April 16th through April 17th:

The Bwog: Lisa Anderson, former SIPA Dean, named Provost of American University in Cairo - Top Middle East Studies academic moves to AUC
Egypt grapples with Palestinian dilemma - Guardian look at Omar Suleiman and Egypt's Palestine problem
J Street - New US Israel lobby says it's [...]

Doug Feith trots out a line about Saddam Hussein being part of an “international terrorist network” just as dangerous as al-Qaeda. This guy is truly shameless.

The Guardian writes on the occasion of the London Palestine Film Festival:
Perhaps Palestinian cinema cannot help but be ironic, when the most widely known cinematic images of Palestine are those that close Otto Preminger’s 1960 film Exodus and Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List. In Exodus, youthful Israeli forces win a decisive battle against the old-world savagery [...]

Former Arabist contributor to the blog and all-around smart guy Josh Stacher has penned a report on Egypt’s Muslim Brothers for the UK’s Institute for Public Policy Research:
Within and between western governments, a heated policy debate is raging over the question of whether or not to engage with the world’s oldest and most influential political [...]

Links from my del.icio.us account for April 15th through April 16th:

Strategic Insights — The Arab Minority in Israel: Motivations for Collective Action - Interesting academic article on 48 Palestinians and their potential for action
Arab world sees U.S. in poor light: poll - Yahoo! News - No kidding
"Bilal Hussein to Be Released Wednesday" by Scott Horton [...]

The London Book Fair, which this year shines a spotlight on Arab literature, ends tomorrow. Here are selected links to related stories:
✯ PUBLISH AND BE DAMNED - On religion and censorship for Egypt’s independent publishing houses.
✯ Pigs raid Sharqawi’s publishing house; confiscate books خنازير الداخلية تداهم دار ملامح للنشر وتصادر كتب at 3arabawy - Hossam [...]

From Hillary Clinton’s website, her position on the two-state solution:
Hillary Clinton believes that Israel’s right to exist in safety as a Jewish state, with defensible borders and an undivided Jerusalem as its capital, secure from violence and terrorism, must never be questioned.
The fact that the Clintons, after George W. Bush, are the worse thing that [...]

Just in from Reuters: EGYPTIAN MILITARY COURT HANDS JAIL TERMS TO 25 FROM MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, ACQUITS 15 - BROTHERHOOD LAWYER
Ikhwanonline has special front page for occasion. Some background in English from Ikhwanweb at “Final Session of MB Military Tribunal today” and “Journalists and MB Supporters Harrassed Prior to Military Verdict”
Pending detail of who got [...]

Links from my del.icio.us account for April 13th through April 14th:

Ministers under pressure to reopen BAE corruption probe | The Guardian - Get Bandar!
Bread Crisis Escalates; Shots Fired At Bakery - "Governor Nabil el- Ezaby asked the women of the governorate to make bread at home"
Zaqzouq To Imams Of Mosques: "Denounce Vandalism And Rebellion." - [...]

Links from my del.icio.us account for April 11th through April 13th:

Egypt bread price up nearly 50 percent in 12 months - Yahoo! News - Official stats say
al-Jazeera English report on bread crisis - Good coverage
The Mac Guru of Damascus in the Case of the Missing Laptops - Of Mukhabarat and Macs
To Veil or Not to [...]