MER Article Louder Than Bombs Political posters and banners are not new in Beirut. Activists have long hung portraits of party leaders or hastily spray-painted party symbols to claim territory, mark special events or simply insist on being recognized. At certain city intersections, these images are nearly always layered thickly, Lara Deeb • 4 min read
MER Article Deconstructing Hizballah and Its Suburb During the Israeli war against Hizballah in the summer of 2006, the innocuous Arabic word dahiya, meaning simply “suburb,” achieved an unprecedented notoriety. For several days, Israeli warplanes pounded one particular dahiya, the southern suburb of Beirut, whose neighborhood of Harat Hurayk contain Mona Harb • 14 min read
MER Article Signs of a New Arab Cold War During and after the 34 days of intense fighting between Hizballah and Israel in July and August 2006, observers advanced competing interpretations of the varied reactions in the Middle East. One popular narrative pointed to an emerging Sunni-Shi‘i divide in what one might label a “post-Arab” Middle Andre Bank, Morten Valbjorn • 15 min read
MER Article The Muslim World Is Not Flat This 1995 CIA map, often used in the media and in classrooms, reminds us that today Shi‘i Muslims are concentrated in only a few nation-states—Iran, Iraq, the Arab Gulf states, Azerbaijan and Lebanon in the Middle East, and Afghanistan, Pakistan and India in South Asia. There are also numerous ‘Alaw Arang Keshavarzian • 2 min read
MER Article From the Editor (Spring 2007) Twin specters hang over the Middle East of the American imagination -- the perceived rise in the geopolitical power of the region’s Shi‘i Muslims and the dark shadow cast by the sectarian reprisals that increasingly propel the Iraqi civil war. In the United States, pundits and Democratic presidential candidates The Editors • 15 min read
