Unlike other ascribed and self-described "people of color" in the United States, Arabs are often hidden under the Caucasian label, if not forgotten altogether. But eleven months after September 11, 2001, the Arab-American is no longer invisible. Whether traveling, driving, working, walking through a neighborhood or sitting in their homes, Arabs in America — citizens and non-citizens — are now subject to special scrutiny in American society. The violence, discrimination, defamation and intolerance now faced by Arabs in American society has reached a level unparalleled in their over 100-year history in the US.
In the face of a post-September 11 wave of racially motivated attacks against people from the Middle East and South Asia, the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division announced in a September 13, 2001 press release that "any threats of violence or discrimination against Arab or Muslim Americans or Americans of South Asian descent are not just wrong and un-American, but also are unlawful and will be treated as such."
The 1979 Camp David peace treaty may have brought an end to formal hostilities between Egypt and Israel, but their peace is a cold one. Moreover, there has always been a wide gap between how this treaty shapes Egyptian foreign policy and popular Egyptian sentiment toward Israel. Since Camp David, Egyptian academics, artists and professionals have expressed their opposition primarily through a policy of “anti-normalization,” whose logic is simple. While Egyptian citizens cannot erase President Anwar Sadat’s signature from the accord, they can ensure — by refusing to travel to Israel, by blocking the kind of cultural and professional ties expected of neighbors at peace — that relations between the two countries will remain distinctly abnormal.
Israel has launched a comprehensive war of attrition in the Occupied Territories, whose objective is a decisive military victory leading to prolonged interim arrangements dictated by Israel. Facing these overwhelming odds, the Palestinians remain plagued by a crisis of leadership that has already exacted a high price indeed.
As the winds of war steadily gather strength in the West, the Iraqi Kurds walk a tightrope between US interests and Iraqi government threats. Recognizing that it has little control over US decision-making, the Kurdish leadership is struggling to strike a delicate balance between a US-led "regime change" and the preservation of hard-won gains in two self-rule enclaves in northern Iraq.
With great fanfare and evident satisfaction, the UN Development Program and the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development in June released the "Arab Human Development Report 2002" (AHDR). The Report, authored by a team of Arab scholars and policymakers with an advisory committee of "well-known Arabs in international public life," is the first UN Human Development Report devoted to a single region. Its release in Cairo was accompanied by a London press conference which received significant attention in the Western media.
On June 26, Jordan's King Abdallah II issued a royal decree pardoning former parliamentarian Toujan Faisal, who had been sentenced on May 16 to 18 months in jail for "seditious libel" and "spreading information deemed harmful to the reputation of the state." Faisal's release "on humanitarian grounds" was welcome not only because of her failing health, but because the charges against her were dubious.
Abdul-Jabar, Faleh. Ayatollahs, Sufis and Ideologues: State, Religion and Social Movements in Iraq (London: Saqi Books, 2002).
Arkoun, Mohammed. The Unthought in Contemporary Islamic Thought (London: Saqi Books, 2002).
Barlow, Maude and Tony Clarke. Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World’s Water (New York: New Press, 2002).
Council on American-Islamic Relations. The Status of Muslim Civil Rights in the United States 2002 (Washington, April 2002).
Two months ago, my hairdresser confessed to me that he was a sniper. During his last trip to downtown Jerusalem, Jake told me, he had seen sharpshooters on top of all the buildings.
"I had never noticed them," I admitted. "How did you know they were there?"
"Well, if you really want to know," he said haltingly, "I was a sniper during the first intifada. They used to put me on top of a building and say, 'See that guy in the yellow shirt? Take him out.' Now the Palestinians are doing the same thing in our cities, only using live bullets instead of rubber-coated ones."
