MER Article Fischer and Abedi, Debating Muslims Michael M.J. Fischer and Mehdi Abedi, Debating Muslims: Cultural Dialogues in Postmodernity and Tradition (Wisconsin, 1990). In the older literature on the Middle East and the Muslim world, Islam almost invariably appeared as a religion of fanaticism: austere in its outlook, menacing in its prosely Vinay Lal • 4 min read
MER Article Qashqa'i Nomads and the Islamic Republic The Qashqa’i, an important tribal confederacy of approximately 400,000 people in the Zagros Mountains of southwestern Iran, are one of Iran’s national minorities. They speak Turkish and are Shi‘i Muslims. The nomads’ low-altitude winter pastures and high-altitude summer pastures are separated by hundreds of kilometers, and Lois Beck • 13 min read
MER Article Amirahmadi, Revolution and Economic Transition Hooshang Amirahmadi, Revolution and Economic Transition: The Iranian Experience (SUNY, 1990). Misagh Parsa • 3 min read
MER Article Iranian Populism and Political Change in the Gulf From the political perspective, the main consequence of the Persian Gulf War has been the restoration of the status quo ante. In Iraq and Kuwait, dissidents who had expected the military defeat of Saddam Hussein to usher in a new era of freedom and democracy have been sorely disillusioned. In the sh Eric Hooglund • 7 min read
MER Article Parsa, Social Origins of the Iranian Revolution Misagh Parsa, Social Origins of the Iranian Revolution (Rutgers, 1989). Misagh Parsa’s work successfully lays out the essential factors behind the Iranian revolution and the subsequent triumph of the clergy in establishing a consolidated Islamic state. His text provides a sharp analysis of the soci Mostafa Vaziri • 1 min read
MER Article Continuity and Change in Soviet Policy The day after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze and US Secretary of State James Baker announced what they termed “an unusual step.” They issued a communique “jointly urging the international community to join them and suspend all supplies of arms to Iraq on an in Alain Gresh • 18 min read
MER Article Abrahamian, Radical Islam: The Iranian Mojahedin The roots of the People's Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI) reach back to the Liberation Movement of Iran (LMI), a modernist liberal-religious party formed in 1961. The founders of the LMI, virtually all educated members of the traditional middle class, opposed the Shah’s rule on both political and moral gro Mansour Farhang • 4 min read
MER Article Report from Paris: The Kurdish Conference “There’s not much talk about the Kurds because we have never taken any hostages, never hijacked a plane. But I am proud of this.” So wrote Abd al-Rahman Qassemlou, the Iranian Kurdish leader who was assassinated in Vienna last July. The Kurdish Institute of Paris and France-Libertes, a human rights Sami Zubaida • 4 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 Human Rights Watch Perhaps the saddest commentary on the situation in Iran is Amnesty International’s recent statement that “some former prisoners of conscience held during the 1970s when the late Shah was in power, for whose unconditional release [Amnesty] then worked, now figure among those with responsibility for t Ömer Karasapan • 3 min read
MER Article Revolutionary Posters and Cultural Signs All revolutions require aesthetic means for representing changes in consciousness. The French Revolution saw itself as something new and universal, and generated a rich elaboration of aesthetic categories of the sublime (storms of nature, volcanoes, earthquakes), the beautiful (island of calm, meado Mehdi Abedi, Michael M.J. Fischer • 6 min read
