MER Article Editor's Picks (Summer 2015) Amiry, Suad. Golda Slept Here (London: Bloomsbury, 2015). Bowering, Gerhard, ed. Islamic Political Thought: An Introduction (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015). Cuno, Kenneth. Modernizing Marriage: Family, Ideology and Law in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Egypt (Syracuse, N The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article Migrant Workers and the US Military in the Middle East Over the past 15 years, the United States has waged two major land wars in the greater Middle East with hundreds of thousands of ground troops. Shadowing these armies and rivaling them in size has been a labor force of private contractors. The security company once called Blackwater has played an ou Darryl Li • 14 min read
MER Article Status-less in Cyber City When refugees from the Syrian war first began to stream into Jordan, the Jordanian Ministry of Interior registered the newcomers and placed them in the care of families, under the kafala system, mainly in the capital of Amman. The kafala or guardianship system has roots in Bedouin customs, but in mo Maisam Alahmed • 6 min read
MER Article Send My Regards to Your Mother I. I sometimes refer to my college years in Saudi Arabia as “doing time.” But early in those years I did some time that almost did me in—and my mother, too. I had spent high school in Bahrain as a boarder. My father pressured me to attend university near our house in Dhahran, where he worked as a Zein El-Amine • 25 min read
