Current Analysis Syria's Torment There are two political-intellectual prisms through which the recurrent conflagrations of the modern Middle East are conventionally seen. One casts the region’s stubborn ills as internally caused -- by the outsize role of religion in public life, the persistence of primordial identities like sect an The Editors • 9 min read
MER Article Understanding the Political Economy of the Arab Revolts The revolts sweeping the Arab Middle East and North Africa in early 2011 have been characterized as uprisings against neoliberal economic policies as well as authoritarian rule. But while there is widespread agreement on the political dimension of the revolts, there has been some confusion regarding Omar S. Dahi • 10 min read
Current Analysis A Web Smaller Than a Divide At first glance, there’s a clear need for expanding the Web beyond the Latin alphabet, including in the Arabic-speaking world. According to the Madar Research Group, about 56 million Arabs, or 17 percent of the Arab world, use the Internet, and those numbers are expected to grow 50 percent over the Sinan Antoon • 2 min read
Current Analysis US Stays with Egyptian Dictator “America will stand with the allies of freedom to support democratic movements in the Middle East and beyond, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.” With these soaring words in the 2005 State of the Union Address, President George W. Bush swore to overturn the long-standing US polic Chris Toensing • 3 min read
Current Analysis For Arab World Peace, More Voices Need Attention Pundits on the right have been quick to say the Bush administration deserves credit for sparking democratic rumblings across the Middle East. They note the popular protests against Syrian influence in Lebanon and Egyptian President Husni Mubarak ’s pledge to allow multiple candidates to run in the p Waleed Hazbun, Michelle Woodward • 2 min read
Current Analysis What Is Wrong with What Went Wrong? It is no exaggeration to say that Bernard Lewis is the most influential writer on Middle Eastern history and politics in the United States today. Not only has he authored more than two dozen books on the Middle East, he trained large numbers of two subsequent generations of historians of the region. Adam Sabra • 15 min read
MER Article Problems of Dependency On January 7, 2000, Lisa Hajjar spoke with Abdallahi An-Na'im, a lawyer from Sudan and a prominent human rights scholar and activist. He is professor of law at Emory University. Transcription was provided by Zachary Kidd and funded by the Morehouse College sociology department. Can you highlight so Lisa Hajjar • 16 min read
MER Article Behind the Ballot Box The last decade has seen multi-party competition for elected legislatures initiated or expanded in Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Kuwait, Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority. Executive authority in most cases remains an uncontested, if not completely unelected, post. Nevertheless Marsha Pripstein Posusney • 11 min read
MER Article Arab Perspectives on US Hegemony in the Middle East Since the Gulf war, the Arab Middle East has experienced a sustained trauma. The Arab world is back where it began a century ago, when Great Britain was the uncontested master of the Arabs’ destiny. Today, the United States dominates the region and bluntly dictates its will to most Arab Georges Corm • 8 min read
MER Article Middle East Studies in the Arab World Salim Nasr, a Lebanese sociologist, is a Ford Foundation program officer in the Middle East and North Africa office in Cairo. He spoke with Lisa Hajjar in New York City on May 29, 1997. How would you assess Middle East studies as it is undertaken by scholars based in the region? Salim Nasr • 8 min read
MER Article The NGO Phenomenon in the Arab World Ghanem Bibi is co-founder and coordinator of the Arab Resource Collective based in Nicosia. ARC generates Arabic-language resources for use in community health and childhood development projects, and serves as a networking resource for Arab NGOs. Julie Peteet spoke with him in August 1994, shortly a Julie Peteet, Joe Stork • 5 min read
Makiya, Cruelty and Silence Kanan Makiya, Cruelty and Silence: War, Tyranny, Uprising and the Arab World (W. W. Norton, 1993). The absence of basic human rights and democratic freedoms in the Arab world for most of the post-colonial era, and the failure of the region’s inhabitants to successfully contest this deficit, has app Mouin Rabbani • 12 min read
