The Arabist

The Arabist

By Issandr El Amrani and friends.

So angry, so Arab

This is just to give a tip of the hat to As'ad AbuKhalil, aka the Angry Arab, whose insane blog I've been reading more and more often these days. I don't agree with everything on it, but I actually like the caustic, grating language and his blunt and funny denunciations of things and people he doesn't like (a long list). It's not an easy blog to follow if you don't have some background on what he's talking about -- his posts are usually very short -- but there are some great finds there. For instance this note on Sudan's Hassan Turabi, who decided that the veil was not Islamic, or little footnotes like this.

And every time he mentions Hosni Mubarak, he links his name to this. "La Vache Qui Rit," a French processed cheese spread widely available in the region (perhaps worldwide?), is the nickname Egyptians gave their jocular leader in the early 1980s, when he appeared in TV interviews and try to charm them with his joviality. I think perhaps that Egyptian and Arab bloggers should start a campaign to always link to that site when mentioning the name Hosni Mubarak. Think Google bomb. He certainly deserves it after that comment on Shias.

He's also finally left those dull Impressionists behind and is showing some wonderful Kandinskys these days.