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
MER Article Bush in Jerusalem The first leg of President George W. Bush’s whirlwind January tour of the Middle East took him to Jerusalem, where, in his first visit as president, he tried to breathe life into the renewed Israeli-Palestinian negotiations launched under US auspices at Annapolis, Maryland in November 2007. The talk Josh Ruebner • 8 min read
MER Article From the Editor (Spring 2008) From December 2006 through the late summer of 2007, four foreign policy commentators reached for the same 1980s movie title, Back to the Future, to describe the peregrinations of US Middle East policy in the oft-proclaimed twilight of the neo-conservative moment. There was confusion, however, as to The Editors • 6 min read
MER Article Editor's Picks (Winter 2007) Boyar, Ebru. Ottomans, Turks and the Balkans: Empire Lost, Relations Altered (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007). Cockburn, Patrick. The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq (London: Verso, 2006). Daly, M. W. Darfur’s Sorrow: A History of Destruction and Genocide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, (Author not identified) • 1 min read
MER Article Khalili, Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine Laleh Khalili, Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine: The Politics of National Commemoration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Rosemary Sayigh • 4 min read
MER Article Massad, Desiring Arabs Joseph Massad, Desiring Arabs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). Khaled El-Rouayheb • 3 min read
MER Article Paradise Lost, Gone Shopping Shahram Khosravi, Young and Defiant in Tehran (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). Norma Claire Moruzzi • 6 min read
MER Article After the War Spring in Algeria was unseasonably wintry. After all the rain and snow, the city parks of Algiers were a profusion of color and birdsong in the summertime, the countryside a vibrant shade of green. Wildflowers surrounded the parking enclosure at the busy new international airport. “Things are coming along,” says James McDougall • 23 min read
