MER Article Women and the Political Process in Twentieth Century Iran Parvenu Paidar, Women and the Political Process in Twentieth Century Iran (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995). This book argues that in neither the Pahlavi nor the Islamic eras have Iranian women enjoyed direct and independent control over the establishment of gender policies. “By destroyi Shiva Balaghi • 1 min read
MER Article Review Barbara Daly Metcalf, ed., Making Muslim Space in North America and Europe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). JoAnn D'Alisera • 6 min read
MER Article Between Clash and Cooptation As the specter of Communism has receded with the end of the Cold War, few international developments have generated more anxiety in US public imagination than the perceived threat of "Islamic fundamentalism" in the Middle East and elsewhere. Samuel Huntington’s warning of a coming “clash of civilizations” Steve Niva • 12 min read
MER Article Moroccan Youth, Sex and Islam According to official statistics from Morocco’s Ministry of Public Health, from the beginning of the AlDS pandemic to 1997, 450 cases of HIV infection had been recorded in the country. At the same time, a minimum of 100,000 new cases of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) such as syphilis, gonorrhe Abdessamad Dialmy • 7 min read
MER Article Power and Sexuality in the Middle East In early 1993, news of President Clinton’s proposal to end the US military’s ban on service by homosexuals prompted a young Egyptian man in Cairo, eager to practice his English, to ask me why the president wanted “to ruin the American army” by admitting “those who are not men or women.” When asked i Bruce Dunne • 11 min read
MER Article An Islamic Women's Liberation Movement? Heba Ra’uf ‘Izzat, 29, is a teaching assistant in the Political Science Department at Cairo University. Active in the Islamist movement, she is known for her academic research on women’s political role from the perspective of political Islam and its theory. She edits the women’s page in al-Sha‘b, a Karim El-Gawhary • 4 min read
MER Article Universalism and Solidarity Fatima Mernissi, The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women’s Rights in Islam (Addison-Wesley, 1991). Hisham Sharabi, ed., Theory, Politics and the Arab World: Critical Responses (Routledge, 1990). Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo and Lourdes Torres, eds., Third World Women Barbara Harlow • 7 min read
MER Article Is the "Fatwa" a Fatwa? In saluting author Salman Rushdie and expressing solidarity with his plight, I would like to put on the table the question of whether the notorious “fatwa” issued by Ayatollah Khomeini against Rushdie is really a fatwa in the first place. This is neither an academic exercise nor a purely theoretical Sadiq al-Azm • 3 min read
MER Article The New Orientalism and the Democracy Debate The “collapse of communism” in 1989 and the victory over Iraq in 1991 sparked a wave of triumphal declarations by Western pundits and analysts who believed that all “viable systemic alternatives to Western liberalism” had now been exhausted and discredited. Some then tried to sketch a foreign policy Yahya Sadowski • 31 min read
MER Article Jerusalem, The Islamic City Fulfilling almost every imaginable cliche of the city as palimpsest, one embedded layer of Jerusalem has been further and further marginalized in a discourse within which gratuitous tourism has replaced the ritual of pilgrimage. Despite the short shrift given to Muslims by the Hachette Blue Guide, during the 1,310-year Ammiel Alcalay • 8 min read
MER Article Islam and Human Rights Kevin Dwyer, Arab Voices: The Human Rights Debate in the Middle East (Routledge, 1991). Ann Elizabeth Mayer, Islam and Human Rights: Tradition and Politics (Westview, 1991). Naseer Aruri • 5 min read
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
