Abi-Aad, Naji and Michel Grenon. Instability and Conflict in the Middle East: People, Petroleum and Security Threats (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997).
Amanat, Abbas. The Pivot of the Universe: Nasir al-Din Shah Qajar and the Iranian Monarchy, 1831-1896 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997).
Amnesty International. Saudi Arabia Behind Closed Doors: Unfair Trials in Saudi Arabia (London, November 1997).
Anscombe, Frederick. The Ottoman Gulf: The Creation of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997).
Barkey, Henri, ed. Reluctant Neighbor: Turkey’s Role in the Middle East (Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace, 1997).
We are writing to inform you of a Women’s Action Alert for Nuban Women and Children. As MERIP readers know, an unabated civil war has been in progress in Sudan for decades. However, since the National Islamic Front and its military wing took power in 1989, the viciousness of the war has intensified. The relentless attacks by government forces and Islamist militias on the Nuba mountains area of southwestern Sudan have produced some of the worst atrocities of the war. The situation in the area has reaches crisis proportions in which large portions of the civilian population are trapped and starving. Aid corridors have been blocked, as have various relief agencies.
In the last decade, the Egyptian state in collaboration with international donor agencies has embarked on an ambitious population control program. According to this program, Egypt’s rapid population growth is the prime obstacle to the development goals set by Egyptian authorities. Between 1980 and 1992, the program increased current contraceptive use among couples, primarily in the form of IUDs and birth control pills, from 24 percent to 47 percent. At the same time, it reduced the total fertility rate from above 5 to 3.9 percent. [1]
Mordechai Bar-On, In Pursuit of Peace: A History of the Israeli Peace Movement (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1996).
Iman Abdel Megid Hamdy, “Dissenters in Zion: The Bi-nationalist and Partitionist Trends in the Politics of Israel,” unpublished PhD dissertation (Cairo University, Department of Political Science, 1996).
Reuven Kaminer, The Politics of Protest: The Israeli Peace Movement and the Palestinian Intifada (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 1996).
Simona Sharoni, Gender and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The Politics of Women’s Resistance (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1995).
Hajar in America
We came over together
I spoke no English
He had a mission: grad school, then it’s back to save the masses
Here I am now with the baby on my hip,
alone in Newark, on foot, looking for milk at the all-night Exxon
I hear he’s marrying her,
the teaching assistant with the frosted hair
I have to learn how to drive.
Hijab Scenes #7
No I’m not bald
No I’m not from that country where women can’t drive cars
No I would not like to defect. Thank you,
I’m already American
What else would you like me to explain
relevant to my opening a bank account,
buying insurance,
reserving a seat on a flight?
A disturbing rumor made the rounds this summer at the Cafe de Paris, the Hotel Africa and the other haunts of Tunisia’s classe politique. Word had it that a constitutional commission was considering legislation allowing the government to revoke the citizenship rights of some political opponents. True or not, the rumor’s existence — and the widespread belief that the government started it — says much about political life on the tenth anniversary of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s “tranquil revolution.”
In the past two decades, there has been growing interest in the study of women and gender issues in the Middle East, reflected in the greater number of books, journal articles, dissertations and conference panels devoted to such topics. [1] As a result, many scholars in Middle East studies have come to view the study of women and gender in the Middle East as a field in and of itself. [2] Elizabeth Fernea’s 1986 presidential address to the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) is considered a milestone in the evolution of Middle East women’s studies as a distinct field of inquiry.
Although direct encounters between the two extremes of Asia began in the seventh century [1] and the Imperial Treasures contain many items from the Middle East dating back more than a thousand years, systematic study of the Middle East in Japan did not emerge until the “modernization process” of the Meiji period, which began in 1868. [2] The Meiji restoration addressed, among other things, a number of capitulation treaties signed by the late Tokugawa regime with the Western powers. As part of their efforts to minimize Western influence, Meiji officials undertook numerous foreign studies.
In 1990, an umbrella organization was created to promote Middle East studies in Europe. The European Association for Middle East Studies (EURAMES) has modest goals and virtually no budget. It has published a directory of Middle East scholars in Europe (with EU funds) and has initiated triennial conferences in cooperation with its member societies. [1] The foundation of EURAMES has encouraged the creation of new national associations in Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium and Poland. [2]
The Institute for Oriental Studies in Moscow, once headed by the current Russian foreign minister, Yevgenii Primakov, [1] used to be the premier research establishment for modem history and Soviet policy making concerning the Arab world, Africa and Asia. Like other state-funded academic institutions, it has not fared well under the Yeltsin budgetary boondoggles and chaotic privatization measures. Salaries are so low that the academic and nonacademic staff spend most of their working hours at other jobs in the private sector. At the end of August 1997, all salaries were arbitrarily suspended for a month.
Salim Nasr, a Lebanese sociologist, is a Ford Foundation program officer in the Middle East and North Africa office in Cairo. He spoke with Lisa Hajjar in New York City on May 29, 1997.
How would you assess Middle East studies as it is undertaken by scholars based in the region?
Over the last few decades, Islam has become a central point of reference for a wide range of political activities, arguments and opposition movements. The term “political Islam” has been adopted by many scholars in order to identify this seemingly unprecedented irruption of Islamic religion into the secular domain of politics and thus to distinguish these practices from the forms of personal piety, belief and ritual conventionally subsumed in Western scholarship under the unmarked category “Islam.” In the brief comments that follow, I suggest why we might need to rethink this basic framework.
In a recent volume, The Cold War and the University, the prominent biologist R. C. Lewontin argued that the Cold War was the “high road to professional prosperity for the great majority.” [1] He is referring to those academics who prospered from extraordinary government largesse in a period when the ideological atmosphere inspired “an unprecedented and explosive expansion of the academy.” Those who were in a position to act as conduits for such support, as a result, acquired extraordinary power within the academic bureaucracy and its allied instruments of communication.
Over the last two decades, a number of presidents of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) have used their platform at annual meetings to express concern about decline in the field. [1] One is reminded of the Ottomans who, according to many (now discredited) accounts, were also in perpetual decline. Recently, though, this theme has acquired a new tenor of urgency as people involved in area studies wrestle with the implications of what is popularly termed “globalization.” The question is if area studies as a distinct form of international scholarship has outlived its utility. Rashid Khalidi captured the mood with the title of his 1994 MESA presidential address: “Is there a future for Middle East studies?” [2]
Our intent with this issue is simple: to present a critical evaluation of the current state of the field of Middle East studies. We focus centrally on the United States but also look at Middle East studies in other parts of the world, highlighting some of the important issues that have shaped the field. A 1975 issue of this magazine addressed the determining imprint of US policy interests on the development of a “Middle East Studies network” of institutions, foundations, security agencies and influential scholars. This issue charts some of the key developments since that time — new trends, debates and greater diversity as well as the continuing influence of state policy and power.
B’tselem. A Policy of Discrimination: Land Expropriation, Planning and Building in East Jerusalem (Jerusalem, 1997).
B’tselem. Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories as a Violation of Human Rights: Legal and Conceptual Aspects (Jerusalem, March 1997).
B’tselem. The Quiet Deportation: Revocation of Residency of East Jerusalem Palestinians (Jerusalem, 1997).
Celik, Zeynep. Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations: Algiers Under French Rule (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997).
Chaudhry, Kiren Aziz. The Price of Wealth: Economics and Institutions in the Middle East (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997).
The special report on Afghanistan (MER 202) left me somewhat bemused. The author, Olivier Roy, may be a skilled anthropologist, but his political analysis can be seriously flawed and quite inconsistent. I was glad to see his article identify US economic and political interests (the oil and gas pipeline) in Afghanistan, but Roy never before questioned American motives — certainly not when the US government and the CIA were aiding the mujahidin during the 10-year civil war (1979-1989) and afterwards.
Muhammad Malas’ al-Layl and Ryad Chaia’s al-Lajat
History is back in fashion in Syria. The last few years have seen a flurry of Syrian films and TV series treating historical epochs from Zenobia’s Palmyra to the French occupation (1920-1946). The latter has been especially well represented in this “return to history” (al-‘awda ila al-tarikh). In particular, two films stand out: Muhammad Malas’ al-Layl (The Night) and Ryad Chaia’s al-Lejat (referring to both the name of the region of Suwayda in which the film takes place and the black volcanic rock common to the region). Previously screened in Europe, both have appeared recently in US film festivals.
In the days before globalization, when the US Air Force operated the only television station in his magic kingdom and the adventures of Davy Crockett were standard fare, the Saudi king loved to shower visitors with gifts. While heads of tribes received sacks of gold, Westerners often took home wrist watches stamped with the royal profile. These were known colloquially as “:Mickey Sa‘uds.” Today, his nephew Walid bin Talal, a grandson of &lsquo:Abd al-‘Aziz, and the son of the man who once looked to spark a revolution inside Saudi Arabia, has joined with Mickey Mouse and friends as a junior partner in American capital’s conquest of global consumers’ desires.
