Democracy’s succinct definition, and perhaps its best attribute, is majority rule. But it is unclear that majority rule equates to democracy in places like Lebanon, Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries that are contending with past and present religious or ethnic conflict. Clearly, democracy in such diverse societies would minimally require that citizens of all ethnic and religious backgrounds enjoy the same civil and human rights; it would also require that the government refrain from religious or ethnic persecution. A democracy should also allow its citizens to practice their faith or express their cultural traditions, provided such practices do not contradict other fundamental values the state is bound to uphold.
Afary, Janet and Kevin B. Anderson. Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
Dodge, Toby. “Iraq’s Future: The Aftermath of Regime Change.” Adelphi Paper 372 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2005).
Human Rights Watch. Egypt: Margins of Repression (New York, July 2005).
Rushdi Said, Science and Politics in Egypt: A Life’s Journey (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2004).
Persons of Interest (Allison Maclean and Tobias Perse). New York: First Run/ Icarus Films, 2004.
Inundated by “theories” about the putative role of Islamic and Arab culture in shaping Middle East politics, one might ask: what role does American culture play in US foreign policy? In recent years, some of the most innovative contributions to the study of US relations with the Middle East have come from investigations into the role of culture, identity and space.
“We have a problem here. There is no real [opposition] party except for the Muslim Brotherhood.” [1] So an official of Jordan’s new Ministry of Political Development and Parliamentary Affairs summed up the raison d’etre of his place of employment.
The events following the assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri and Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon have not discernibly changed the situation of Palestinians in Lebanon. While a surprising government edict has made it easier for Palestinians to get clerical and manual jobs, calls for disarming them and permanently settling them in Lebanon grow louder.
“Lebanon was built with Syrian muscles,” declared an elderly Lebanese in the early 1990s. He was referring to the hundreds of thousands of semi- and unskilled Syrians who have worked in Lebanon on a temporary basis in construction, agriculture, manufacturing and services since the mid-twentieth century.
Preface
Like most places in the world that, time and time again, have been fit into the journalist’s script or forced into the novelist’s frame, Lebanon has been tirelessly taxed with metaphors and allegories. Simultaneously, it has been presented as the terrain for metaphorical and allegorical construction. In its pre-war heyday, Lebanon was the "Paris of the Orient," the "Switzerland of the Middle East," the "land of milk and honey." During its 17-year civil war, Beirut became itself the metaphor for the no man’s land of destruction, captive to a self-sustaining cycle of armed conflict. Mikhail Gorbachev warned of the "Lebanonization" of Yugoslavia as that country’s dismemberment into ethnic, religious and cultural cantons loomed.
Unlike its incremental intervention in Lebanon throughout early 1976, Syria’s withdrawal from Lebanon in late April 2005 was swift, unplanned and humiliating. On both occasions, Lebanese, regional and international factors overlapped to shape Syrian behavior. But whereas the 1976 intervention consolidated Syria’s position in the Arab-Israeli conflict and elicited implicit US gratitude and Israeli cooperation, the 2005 withdrawal undermined Syria’s regional security interests and left it besieged in the international arena.
Seasoned observers of Syria have learned not to make much of apparent political changes in the country. This lesson holds true today, but with a twist.
We mourn the passing of Samih Farsoun on June 9, 2005 and offer our heartfelt condolences to his partner Katha Kissman, his daughter Rudi, and his other family and friends. A long-time professor of sociology at American University in Washington, DC, Samih was one of the earliest members of the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) collective. He brought his formidable skills as a thinker and teacher to the meetings convened to produce this magazine, then titled MERIP Reports.
Anderson, Betty. Nationalist Voices in Jordan: The Street and the State (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2005).
Anderson, Irvine. Biblical Interpretation and Middle East Policy: The Promised Land, America and Israel, 1917-2002 (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2005).
Arat, Yeşim. Rethinking Islam and Liberal Democracy: Islamist Women in Turkey (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2005).
Atabaki, Touraj and Erik Zürcher, eds. Men of Order: Authoritarian Modernization Under Atatürk and Reza Shah (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004).
Texts Reviewed:
Roy Armes, Postcolonial Images: Studies in North African Film (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2005).
Kevin Dwyer, Beyond Casablanca: M. A. Tazi and the Adventure of Moroccan Cinema (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004).
Oil is by its very nature a finite commodity. The question has always been not whether it would run out, but when it would. The doomsday scenarios that some predict –mass blackouts and the imminent demise of suburbia — may be far-fetched, but the era of “peak oil” is here.
One year after a failed referendum on reunification, divisions on the island of Cyprus are widening. In both the Turkish north and the majority-Greek south, ethnic nationalism is on the rise.
Turkey passed a milestone in its long and arduous journey toward acceptance into the exclusive club of the European Union when the EU gave Turkey a date for the start of accession talks. But major obstacles remain — chiefly resurgent anti-Muslim feeling in Europe and resurgent ethnic nationalism in Turkey.
