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 The Grand (Hip-Hop) Chessboard In November 2006, the film The Making of a Kamikaze by Nouri Bouzid, a respected Tunisian director, was screened to great fanfare at the Carthage Film Festival. The film, a collaboration between the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Tunisian Ministries of Interior, Defense and Culture, examines the grievances Hisham Aïdi • 46 min read
Current Analysis Of Principle and Peril Reasonable, principled people can disagree about whether, in an ideal world, Western military intervention in Libya’s internal war would be a moral imperative. With Saddam Hussein dead and gone, there is arguably no more capricious and overbearing dictator in the Arab world than Col. Muammar al-Qadd The Editors • 10 min read
Current Analysis Urban Violence in France Dorénavant la rue ne pardonne plus From now on the street will not forgive Nous n’avons rien à perdre car nous n’avons jamais rien eu We have nothing to lose for we have nothing Chantal Tetreault, Paul Silverstein • 18 min read
Current Analysis The Imperial Lament Niall Ferguson, Colossus: The Price of America’s Empire (New York: Penguin Press, 2004). There is something refreshing about British historian Niall Ferguson’s argument “not merely that the United States is an empire, but that it has always been an empire.” For a certain kind of American liberal, t Joel Beinin • 18 min read
Current Analysis Headscarves and the French Tricolor France is in the process of passing a law that would ban "signs and dress that ostensibly denote the religious belonging of students" in public elementary and high schools beginning in the 2004-2005 school year. Lawmakers are scheduled to vote on the bill on February 3. According to Paul Silverstein • 14 min read
Current Analysis Letter from France Despite intense pressure from Washington, several weeks into negotiations at the Security Council of the United Nations, France is holding to its position on how to resolve the current crisis in international policy toward Iraq. As stated by the minister of foreign affairs before the National Assembly, France prefers a Jean-Paul Chagnollaud • 6 min read
MER Article Francophonie and Femininity Mary Jean Green, Karen Gould, Micheline Rice-Maximin et al, eds., Postcolonial Subjects: Francophone Women Writers (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996). Winifred Woodhull, Transfigurations of the Maghreb: Feminism, Decolonization and Literatures (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Pr Nada Elia • 6 min read
MER Article Boys in the Mud For migrants of Maghrebi (North African) origin, the internal barriers of popular prejudices among the “host” population are often as difficult to surmount as the external frontiers of fortress Europe. Dominated by majority ethnic groups, the media have played a powerful role in disseminating largely negative images of immigrant minorities. Alec C. Hargreaves • 4 min read
MER Article Berbers in France and Algeria When the summer 1995 bombings in France brought the Algerian civil war across the Mediterranean, many began to recognize the permeability of political, social and cultural boundaries between the two countries and the extent to which the 1.5 million post-colonial immigrants and their mostly binational children in France functioned Paul Silverstein • 19 min read
MER Article Nuclear Counterproliferation in the Middle East The United States and France are developing strategies for using nuclear weapons in developing countries, ostensibly to counter proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, chemical and biological). The Middle East in particular has become a testing ground for nuclear war games. [1] This w Hans M. Kristensen, Joshua Handler • 13 min read
MER Article Keeping Up with the French Foreign policy insiders in Washington are fond of describing France as a uniquely amoral weapons-trafficking nation that will sell anything to anyone. This harsh judgement seemed to be confirmed last August, when the latest Congressional Research Service report on arms transfers revealed that France William D. Hartung • 3 min read
