Middle East Research and Information Project

Critical Coverage of the Middle East Since 1971

Sign In Sign Up

Asef Bayat

Asef Bayat, a contributing editor of Middle East Report, teaches sociology at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana.

MER Article

The "Street" and the Politics of Dissent in the Arab World

In the tense weeks between the September 11 attacks and the first US bombing raids over Afghanistan, and continuing until the fall of the Taliban, commentators raised serious concerns about what the Wall Street Journal later called the "irrational Arab street." [1] If the US attacked a Muslim

Asef Bayat • 18 min read

MER Article

Cairo's Poor

The proliferation of more than 100 squatter communities with some 6 million inhabitants signifies only one, but perhaps the starkest, component of the growing socioeconomic disparity [1] in Cairo since Sadat’s infitah (“opening up” or economic liberalization) in 1974 and the more recent implementation of the IMF’s structural

Asef Bayat • 12 min read

MER Article

Squatters and the State

The early 1990s saw a period of renewed urban popular uprisings in Iran, unprecedented since the 1979 revolution. From August 1991 to August 1994, six major upheavals took place in Tehran, Shiraz, Arak, Mashhad, Ghazvin and Tabriz, and there were frequent minor clashes in many other urban centers. M

Asef Bayat • 14 min read

MER Article

Workers' Control After the Revolution

In the months preceeding the February armed insurrection which led to the downfall of the Pahlavi regime, the term shura (council) appeared frequently in the speeches and literature of various political tendencies ranging from the Islamic right to the leftist organizations. The most ardent advocates

Asef Bayat • 19 min read