MER Article Editor's Picks (Fall 2010) Abi-Mershed, Osama. Apostles of Modernity: Saint-Simonians and the Civilizing Mission in Algeria (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010). Albrecht, Holger. Contentious Politics in the Middle East: Political Opposition Under Authoritarianism (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 201 The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, the Qur’anic scholar and public intellectual whose bravery greatly inspired us at MERIP, passed away on July 5 in Cairo at the age of 66. (Author not identified) • 11 min read
MER Article Enloe, Nimo's War, Emma's War Cynthia Enloe, Nimo’s War, Emma’s War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010). War is usually presented as all about hard power and weaponry. In school, students are taught about generals, battlefields, advances in armaments and innovations in milita Lauren Geiser • 4 min read
MER Article Barfield, Afghanistan Thomas Barfield, Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010). B. D. Hopkins • 3 min read
MER Article The Politics of Aid to Iraqi Refugees in Jordan The school in Dahiyat Amir Hasan in East Amman is only half-finished, but even through the rubble and the clouds of concrete dust it is clear that the education there will be very different than in Jordan’s other government-run schools. The classrooms are spacious and positioned around multi-purpose Nicholas Seeley • 18 min read
MER Article Egyptian Labor Activists Assess Their Achievements On August 3, the AFL-CIO presented its Meany-Kirkland Human Rights Award to the workers of Egypt. It was the first time in the award’s 20-year history that the recipient was from an Arab country. In its award resolution, the American labor federation cited the remarkable burst of Egyptian worker act Lauren Geiser • 6 min read
MER Article The Snake with a Thousand Heads In the summer of 2007, a lively and non-violent movement sprang up in the southern provinces of Yemen to protest the south’s marginalization by the north. The movement was sparked by demonstrations held that spring by forcibly retired members of the army, soon to be accompanied by retired state offi Susanne Dahlgren • 14 min read
MER Article China and the Arabian Sea “As I speak,” said Khalid al-Falih, the chief executive of Saudi Aramco, in an address at Tsinghua University in Beijing in November 2009, “a tanker full of Saudi Aramco petroleum is passing a container ship laden with Chinese manufactured goods bound for the Kingdom’s ports.” As he went on to remin Philip McCrum • 10 min read
MER Article A Modern-Day Pirate's Port of Call Not far from Fort Jesus, the sixteenth-century fort erected by the Portuguese to mark their violent entry into the world of Indian Ocean commerce, is a small office near the old port of Mombasa. Scattered inside are copies of Seatrade and other maritime trade magazines. An old desktop computer displ Jatin Dua • 7 min read
MER Article On Piracy and the Afterlives of Failed States Until the resurgence of naval predation in the late 2000s, pirates were confined to the realm of the fantastic -- novels, films and stage productions. Since Western states last worried about pirates in the eighteenth century, the intrinsic, man-bites-dog interest of contemporary pirates for the popu George R. Trumbull • 14 min read
MER Article Scenarios of Southern Sudanese Secession In January 2011, if they are allowed to, the people of the southern provinces of Sudan will almost certainly vote to declare the independence of South Sudan from the north. The referendum is to be the culmination of an armistice in the longest-running civil conflict in Africa, between the Sudanese g Amanda Ufheil-Somers, Chris Toensing • 12 min read
