MER Article Rethinking Palestinian Politics During the Gulf war the entire population of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip lived under total curfew for 36 days, with brief and erratic periods of relaxation toward the end of the ordeal. Most inhabitants had no secure supply of food and fuel, no gas masks and no Joel Beinin • 5 min read
MER Article Basri et al, Revision de la constitution marocaine 1992 Driss Basri, Michel Rousset and Georges Vedel, eds., Revision de la constitution marocaine 1992: analyses et commentaires (Imprimerie Royale, 1992). Darrow Zeidenstein • 2 min read
MER Article Fawcett, Iran and the Cold War Louise L’Estrange Fawcett, Iran and the Cold War: The Azerbaijani Crisis of 1946 (Cambridge, 1992). Moyara de Moraes Ruehsen • 3 min read
MER Article Korn, Stalemate David A. Korn, Stalemate: The War of Attrition and Great Power Diplomacy in the Middle East, 1967-1970 (Westview, 1992). In a world conditioned to perceive the rhythm of the Arab-Israeli conflict from the vantage point of downtown Tel Aviv, the Egyptian-Israeli war of attrition of 1969-1970 along t Mouin Rabbani • 2 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 ADL's Spy Ring The scandal has not yet received the national media attention it deserves, but West Coast activists are up in arms about revelations that the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith secretly employed a self-styled art dealer named Roy Bullock to collect information on a wide range of individuals and Al Miskin • 4 min read
MER Article Secularism, Integralism and Political Islam “The sheikh of al-Azhar should thank God profusely that the shari‘a is not in force in Egypt, for it it were he would certainly be in for a good flogging in punishment for smearing virtuous people,” wrote Farag Fawda in March 1988 -- thus contributing to a debate that had been raging since the begin Alexander Flores • 20 min read
MER Article Egypt's Islamists and the State It has been 20 years since the Egyptian state first unleashed the Islamists against the left. Today the Islamic upsurge has taken on dimensions far beyond state manipulation. The mid-term confrontation, marked by the assassination of Anwar al-Sadat in 1981, ended in a draw. Now, more than a decade later, Ahmed Abdalla • 9 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 Gender and Civil Society Suad Joseph, an editor of this magazine, teaches anthropology at the University of California-Davis and is a founder of the Association of Middle East Women’s Studies and the Middle East Research Group in Anthropology. She has published extensively on sectarianism, gender and the family, and constru Joe Stork • 11 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 The Islamist Movements in the Occupied Territories Iyad Barghouti, professor of sociology at al-Najah University in Nablus, is the author of The Palestinian Islamic Movement and the New World Order (1992) and Islamization and Politics in the Palestinian Territories (1990). He spoke with Lisa Hajjar on May 5, 1993. How would you describe the appeal Lisa Hajjar • 8 min read
