MER Article Editor's Picks (Winter 2014) Al-Arian, Abdallah. Answering the Call: Popular Islamic Activism in Sadat’s Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). Alexander, Anne and Mostafa Bassiouny. Bread, Freedom, Social Justice: Workers in the Egyptian Revolution (London: Zed Books, 2014). Baram, Amatzia. Saddam Husayn and Islam, 1 (Author not identified) • 1 min read
MER Article The Wretched Revolution “We live in a country where liberals renege on democracy, Islamists harm Islam and human rights activists champion oppression,” an Islamic television producer cynically remarked three months after Muhammad Mursi was ousted from Egypt’s presidency in July 2013. That summer, the televised images of mu Yasmin Moll • 17 min read
MER Article Starvation, Submission and Survival On December 23, 2012, following a week of imposed scarcity, the Syrian town of Halfaya received 100 sacks of flour from an Islamic charity. The town’s main bakery started churning out bread, an all too infrequent occurrence since violence between the Asad regime and opposition forces escalated earli Brent Eng, Jose Ciro Martinez • 14 min read
MER Article Muhammad 'Abd al-Malik al-Mutawakkil Muhammad ‘Abd al-Malik al-Mutawakkil, Yemeni political thinker, activist and university professor, was assassinated by gunmen on a motorbike on November 2, 2014 in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa. Iris Glosemeyer and Anna Würth, researchers of contemporary Yemen based in Berlin, were his friends from th Iris Glosemeyer, Anna Wurth • 5 min read
MER Article The Yemeni UFW Martyr In the summer of 2014, director Diego Luna released Cesar Chavez, a feature-length retelling of the story of the 1973 grape pickers’ strike in California that inspired an international grape boycott and made Cesar Chavez a household name. In the film, the first person killed on a farm worker picket Nadine Naber • 3 min read
MER Article The Long Shadow of the CIA at Guantanamo ‘Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a designated “high-value detainee” in US government parlance, is on trial in the Guantánamo Bay military commissions. The 49-year old Saudi Arabian is accused of directing the October 2000 al-Qaeda suicide boat bombing of the USS Cole off the coast of Aden, Yemen, which killed 17 sailors Lisa Hajjar • 18 min read
