MER Article Hadi al-`Alawi, Scion of the Two Civilizations In the 1950s, the People’s Republic of China began to host a small community of Arab scholars and journalists, recruited mostly through “revolutionary” channels like the FLN, the PLO, and the Iraqi and Sudanese Communist Parties. These experts were brought to China with the explicit purpose of editi Mohammed al-Sudairi • 6 min read
MER Article The China-Africa Axis in Relation to Other Regional Axes China and Africa grosso modo are often seen as standing at two ends of the spectrum of developing countries, the former having acquired enormous industrial capacity in short order, and the latter not. In this view, a great potential for exchange exists between the two: manufactures and infrastructur Engseng Ho • 11 min read
MER Article Muslim Activist Encounters in Meiji Japan As one of the political, commercial and intellectual centers of Asia, Japan at the turn of the twentieth century was an important arena for the intersection of ideas about modernism, nationalism and anti-colonial politics. Though Cairo, Istanbul and Mecca had long been the capitals of scholarship an Shuang Wen • 4 min read
MER Article Changing Modes of Political Dialogue Across the Middle East and East Asia, 1880-2010 East Asia’s relationship with the Middle East today is based mainly on economics and is devoid of grand political projects of solidarity and intellectual dialogue. Countries such as China, Japan and Korea present the Middle East with a model of neoliberal economic development. At the same time, the Cemil Aydin • 14 min read
MER Article From the Editors (Spring 2014) “Will China dominate the twenty-first century?” So asks the title of a short book by Jonathan Fenby, a British journalist who was editor of Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post during the period when that bustling entrepôt was being transferred from British control to the sovereignty of the People’s The Editors • 9 min read
MER Article Editor's Picks (Winter 2013) Abu Lughod, Lila. Do Muslim Women Need Saving? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013). Amar, Paul and Vijay Prashad, eds. Dispatches from the Arab Spring (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013). Atia, Mona. Building a House in Heaven: Pious Neoliberalism and Islamic Charity in (Author not identified) • 2 min read
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 Securing Oslo On a Friday afternoon in September 2013, dozens of Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces looked exasperated as they tried to move Palestinian youth away from the wall near Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem. Attempting to corral hundreds of children, the PA troops pushed them down the hill toward Aida Andy Clarno • 14 min read
MER Article Settlement Secularism Scan the headlines for news about Israeli settlers, and you are likely to be overwhelmed by stories of a radical and violent religious nationalism: extremists marching on the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, guarded by Israeli soldiers, to pray atop the Temple Mount; West Bank colonists torching olive t Callie Maidhof • 13 min read
MER Article "Open for Business" The Republic of South Sudan is undergoing its most devastating round of violence since declaring its independence in July 2011. The fighting broke out in mid-December 2013, some five months after President Salva Kiir fired his vice president, Riek Machar, along with the entire cabinet. At a December Khalid Mustafa Medani • 12 min read
MER Article The Middle East Despot's 13-Point Guide to Longevity and Prosperity Only a few dictators are blessed with a security apparatus powerful enough to suppress any and all challenges to their rule. The wretched remainder have to turn to Machiavelli’s Il Principe -- a handy companion for political realists -- for answers to the question of how to forestall their otherwise Tobias Thiel • 3 min read
MER Article Demonstrators, Dialogues, Drones and Dialectics In 2011 Yemenis shared a vision of revolutionary change with protesters in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria demanding the downfall of cruel, corrupt presidential regimes. Today, like many of their cousins, the peaceful youth (shabab silmiyya) of Yemen face a counter-revolutionary maelstrom from withi Sheila Carapico • 8 min read
