The 2004 law banning "conspicuous" religious symbols (read, headscarves) in French public schools cast France as an intolerant and radically secular state hostile to the manifestation of difference, especially Muslim difference, in the public sphere. During debates about the new law, a clear distinction was drawn between French republicanism and an "Anglo-Saxon" multiculturalism decried by many French as a sure path to national disintegration. President Jacques Chirac even declared that France "would lose her soul" if she went the way of an Anglo-American pluralism that recognizes and accepts internal difference.
The murder of the controversial filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a radical Islamist youth induced a deep national trauma in the Netherlands. Very quickly, debate about the murder and the subsequent outbreak of anti-Muslim violence led to a larger and disturbing debate about the place of Muslims and Islam in the traditionally tolerant country — and the meaning of tolerance itself.
On April 14, 2005, Ibrahim Isneiri, a member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, was shot dead by Israeli forces in the Balata refugee camp on the outskirts of Nablus, a town located between two mountains in the northern West Bank. Palestinian eyewitnesses said Israeli forces opened fire first, while the Israeli military claimed that they were returning the Palestinian’s fire. Israeli soldiers had entered the camp looking for Isneiri because, Israeli security sources alleged, he was planning an armed operation to be carried out inside Israel.
The inaugural report of Egypt's state-sponsored National Council for Human Rights raised eyebrows when it was released in April 2005. The 358-page document acknowledged claims of torture in the country's police stations and called for an end to the emergency laws that have effectively suspended the Egyptian constitution since the assassination of President Anwar al-Sadat on October 6, 1981. It was tempting to believe that the report was more evidence that President Husni Mubarak's regime is beginning to bow to popular pressure for reform.
There is one cliché about the killing field that is US-occupied Iraq that rings true. There is no “good option,” no magic wand that will make the violence bedeviling the country disappear. The question ought to be which of the bad options offers the best hope for achieving a sovereign Iraq with a minimum of additional suffering for the Iraqi people.
Abu-Lughod, Lila. Dramas of Nationhood: The Politics of Television in Egypt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).
Beck, Lois and Guity Nashat, eds. Women in Iran from 1800 to the Islamic Republic (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2004).
Btselem. Forbidden Roads: Israel’s Discriminatory Road Regime in the West Bank (Jerusalem, August 2004).
Burbach, Roger and Jim Tarbell. Imperial Overstretch: George W. Bush and the Hubris of Empire (New York: Zed Books, 2004).
The controversy over Iraq’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction, the prime justification for the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq, has apparently been laid to rest. A succession of US-commissioned reports have failed to confirm the Bush administration’s claims.
Israel seems to have gotten the message that Palestinian land, in any final resolution to the conflict, cannot simply be divided into isolated cantons. But Prime Minister Ariel Sharon still intends to hold onto large chunks of the West Bank. How can Israel link Palestinian enclaves and dampen criticism of its closure policy while maintaining its hold on the Occupied Territories?
In his 2005 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush, hailing “the beginnings of reform and democracy in the Palestinian territories,” pledged $350 million in US aid to the Palestinian Authority. One day before the heralded meeting of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at Sharm al-Sheikh on February 8, the State Department announced the immediate transfer of another $40 million in aid to the Palestinians.
Iraq now has an elected provisional national assembly and elected provincial councils. In the end, the $467 million given to a US contractor to build democracy had little to do with these achievements.
From time to time, the boring economic data regurgitated by Jordan’s amply staffed ministries offers up a tantalizing mystery. In the Monthly Statistical Bulletin (May 2004) published by the Central Bank of Jordan, for example, one learns that Jordanian export of refined oil products increased 46 times over from 2002 to 2003 — a trend that continued well into 2004. This is certainly odd, since Jordan has no proven oil reserves.
Jordan is the poster child for the Bush administration project of “transforming” the political order in the Middle East through free trade. If Jordan is any guide, however, economic liberalization does not lead inexorably to the diffusion of political power.
On September 20, 2001, just nine days after the attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) laid out a consensus agenda for President George W. Bush’s “war on terrorism.” In addition to military action to oust the Taliban in Afghanistan and “capture or kill” Osama bin Laden, PNAC called for regime change in Iraq “even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack,” and “appropriate measures of retaliation” against Iran and Syria if they refused to comply with US demands to cut off support for Hizballah.
Just once, one wishes, events in post-invasion Iraq could transpire without instantly being spun as helping or hurting President George W. Bush. There was no such luck after images of Iraqis cheerfully — even joyously — voting in the January 30, 2005 elections for a provisional national assembly zipped around the world. Bush, not surprisingly, claimed the images as vindication of the 2003 invasion and proof that his promised “forward march of freedom” in the Middle East is just getting started.
Mustafa Barghouthi is the secretary and co-founder of the Palestinian National Initiative (Mubadara), formed in 2002 to advocate for an immediate end to the occupation of Palestinian territories occupied by Israel in 1967, a Palestinian state on those territories, and expedited reform of Palestinian Authority governance. Mubadara called from its formation for “free, democratic elections for all political posts” in the Palestinian Authority (PA). A physician, Barghouthi is the long-time president of the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees and founder of the Health, Development, Information and Policy Institute, a think tank focused on public health and public policy and based in Ramallah in the West Bank. During the second Palestinian intifada, he helped to organize the Grassroots International Protection for the Palestinian People program, which, like the International Solidarity Movement, brings activists from around the world to the Occupied Territories to bear witness to and attempt to deter Israeli army and settler violence directed at Palestinian civilians. Mustafa Barghouthi was a candidate for president in the Palestinian election held on January 9, 2005. He finished second to President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen). James E. Bishara, an editor of Middle East Report, spoke with Barghouthi on February 20, 2005.
Taha Sa‘d ‘Uthman (1916–2004), a life-long trade union and leftist political organizer, passed away at the age of 88 last November. His funeral in Cairo’s ‘Umar Makram mosque was attended by over 1,000 people representing the spectrum of Egypt’s progressive forces — trade unionists, lawyers, human rights activists, feminists, parliamentarians, intellectuals and leaders of the “legal left” National Progressive Union Party (NPUP).
MERIP mourns the passing in mid-January 2005 of Hisham Sharabi, a formidable thinker and extraordinary teacher who, along with Edward Said and Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, led a generation of activist Palestinian intellectuals who lived and worked in the United States. Sharabi died of cancer at the age of 78 in Beirut.
I never saw Hadi Salih (1949–2005) without his trademark innocent grin. Perhaps he was born wearing a smile and simply forgot it was there.
