MER Article Editor's Picks (Winter 2013) Abu Lughod, Lila. Do Muslim Women Need Saving? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013). Amar, Paul and Vijay Prashad, eds. Dispatches from the Arab Spring (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013). Atia, Mona. Building a House in Heaven: Pious Neoliberalism and Islamic Charity in (Author not identified) • 2 min read
MER Article Maxime Rodinson Looks Back Maxime Rodinson (1915-2004) was a pioneering scholar of Islam and the Middle East, as well as a prominent Marxian public intellectual. A product of classical Orientalist training, he was professor of Old Ethiopic and South Arabian languages at the Sorbonne. His scholarly sensibility was historical-m Joan Mandell, Joe Stork • 23 min read
MER Article Securing Oslo On a Friday afternoon in September 2013, dozens of Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces looked exasperated as they tried to move Palestinian youth away from the wall near Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem. Attempting to corral hundreds of children, the PA troops pushed them down the hill toward Aida Andy Clarno • 14 min read
MER Article Settlement Secularism Scan the headlines for news about Israeli settlers, and you are likely to be overwhelmed by stories of a radical and violent religious nationalism: extremists marching on the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, guarded by Israeli soldiers, to pray atop the Temple Mount; West Bank colonists torching olive t Callie Maidhof • 13 min read
MER Article "Open for Business" The Republic of South Sudan is undergoing its most devastating round of violence since declaring its independence in July 2011. The fighting broke out in mid-December 2013, some five months after President Salva Kiir fired his vice president, Riek Machar, along with the entire cabinet. At a December Khalid Mustafa Medani • 12 min read
