MER Article Al Miskin Shut Up! From the Wall Street Journal of March 22, 1990: “More than half of Cairo’s 12 million residents use sleeping pills and other sedatives to escape the city’s deafening noise, the semi-official al-Ahram newspaper said. The incessant blare of car horns and loudspeakers at mosques has forced 62 Al Miskin • 4 min read
Al Miskin The Law Is the Law! That was the headline of the following news item, published in late December 1989 in the Egyptian opposition newspaper al-Ahali: “The [Egyptian] Passports and Travel Documents Administration refused to issue a travel document and residency permit to Libyan citizen Mus‘ab Muhammad Al Miskin • 4 min read
MER Article Al Miskin Satanic Comics A Tunisian writer’s attempt to spread the message of the Qur’an in comic book form has incurred greater wrath than he could have anticipated. Youssef Seddik, a Tunisian academic living in Paris, has been branded “a new Salman Rushdie” by the head of Islamic jurisprudence at Kuwait Uni Al Miskin • 3 min read
MER Article Al Miskin Foreign Aid? In a story which the US media largely ignored, sources within the CIA say that the French government loaned two of its top chemists to Lebanese drug dealers early in 1988 as part of a deal to secure the release of three French hostages. The Toronto Star reported in mid-November 1989 tha Al Miskin • 3 min read
MER Article Mediations Intifada Chic We’re not really sure what this tells us about the present state of the Israeli Jewish psyche, almost two years into the intifada, but here are some of the designer T-shirts being sold these days in Jerusalem: Al Miskin • 3 min read
MER Article Al Miskin In Israel a new computer game called Intifada -- developed by a Russian-born supporter of Meir Kahane who immigrated to Israel from the US after a stint in the Jewish Defense League -- has become a bestseller. Players score points for successfully using tear gas, plastic bullets, rubber bullets and/ Al Miskin • 3 min read
MER Article Column These days the mainstream media in the US generally thinks twice before publishing crude slurs against entire ethnic or racial groups. But there remain those whom it is still apparently respectable to denigrate, foremost among them Arabs and Iranians. Al Miskin • 3 min read
MER Article Column Tony’s Price A disturbing characteristic of much of US liberal commentary on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the frequency with which, even when its prescriptions are on target, its framework of interpretation and premises are flawed, if not racist. A good example is Anthony Lewis’ column in the Al Miskin • 3 min read
MER Article Column Passing the Test On October 13, 1988, the Nobel Prize committee in Stockholm announced that the 1988 prize in literature had been awarded to Egyptian novelist and playwright Naguib Mahfouz -- the first time an Arab writer had received this honor. In its front-page story on the award, the New York Ti Al Miskin • 5 min read
MER Article Column “Al Miskin” is a new Middle East Report column that keeps one eye focused on how the major media cover the Middle East, and the other looking out for choice items that the arbiters of information have buried. Readers should send Al things they would like to see in print: confidential memos that need Al Miskin • 3 min read
