MER Article From the Editors (Summer 2008) Like the Palestinians, the Kurds are routinely described as a “question.” The label refers, in one sense, to their status as a people who sought self-determination in the wake of World War I but whose claim is still unsettled. From the standpoint of the states that divided the population of Kurdista The Editors • 4 min read
MER Article Editor's Picks (Spring 2008) B’tselem/Association for Civil Rights in Israel. Ghost Town: Israel’s Separation Policy and Forced Eviction of Palestinians from the Center of Hebron (Jerusalem, May 2007). Colla, Elliott. Conflicted Antiquities: Egyptology, Egyptomania, Egyptian Modernity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007). (Author not identified) • 1 min read
MER Article On Women’s Captivity in the Islamic World In the unprecedented flourishing of writings about Islam in the United States in recent years, one category of books—life stories of women—has been the most popular, attracting the attention of politicians, publishers, the media and the reading public alike. In an old narrative frame of captivity re Farzaneh Milani • 25 min read
MER Article A Letter Misaddressed Benazir Bhutto, Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West (New York: Harper Collins, 2008). Kamran Asdar Ali • 6 min read
MER Article Demographic Surprises Foreshadow Change in Neoliberal Egypt In the Egypt of 2008, half the population has known only one president, Husni Mubarak. And the rate of population growth, at its peak when Mubarak assumed office in 1981, has stopped declining as it had been in the 1990s. A new kind of population increase has begun. Such are the lessons of the provi Eric Denis • 11 min read
MER Article Washington's New Arms Bazaar On January 14, 2008, the State Department officially notified Congress of its intent to sell 900 Joint Direct Attack Munitions kits to Saudi Arabia. Though some in Congress balked at transferring such advanced military technology to a country still in a formal state of war with Israel, their protest Sean L. Yom • 24 min read
MER Article Power and Patronage Only a dead nation remembers its heroes when they die. Real nations respect them when they are alive. ―Abdul Ghaffar Khan The assassination of Benazir Bhutto on December 27, 2007 sparked outrage and mourning, not least in the Western media. Exhibiting the overstated piety one might expect upon the Sameer Dossani • 9 min read
MER Article The Struggle for Pakistan Continues At around 5 pm on February 18 a dozen or so supporters of ex-premier Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) burst into song along the serpentine streets of Lahore’s old city. Down the road stood a phalanx of police and, behind them, a busload of flag-waving Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) activ Graham Usher • 18 min read
MER Article Being Muslim at the Margins On January 6, 2008, newspapers in the province of Tunceli in eastern Turkey appeared festooned with the holiday wishes, “May your Gaghand be merry.” [1] Celebrated on the same day as Armenian Christmas and bearing the same name, Gaghand is an important, if almost forgotten event in the religious cal Kerem Öktem • 11 min read
