MER Article The Kurds' Secret Scenarios Never have the gardens of Sarchinar and the slopes of Mount Azmar welcomed so many Kurdish families fleeing the heat of Suleimaniya than during the exceptionally long Indian summer of 2002. Squatting on the ground or sitting around tables, grilling shish-kebabs on improvised barbecues or unpacking h Chris Kutschera • 14 min read
MER Article Using and Abusing the UN, Redux On September 12, 2002, George W. Bush delivered a forceful address to the United Nations General Assembly to rally support for an American campaign against Iraq. Challenging the UN to enforce its own resolutions, Bush warned the assembled delegates that failure to back the US war against Iraq would Marc Lynch • 19 min read
MER Article Two Miles into Limbo As many as five million Sudanese displaced by the country’s 19-year civil war live in Egypt, many on the urban margins of Cairo. Mostly poor and unemployed, the Sudanese displaced get by in an environment where no one -- the Egyptian government, civil society or the UN -- seems willing or able to he Pascale Ghazaleh • 15 min read
MER Article From the Editors (Winter 2002) If there is to be a US-led conquest of Iraq, the American public and the world are entitled to know why. Unable to demonstrate that Iraq's putative weapons of mass destruction pose a "mortal threat" to the United States or to provide evidence implicating Iraq in The Editors • 9 min read
MER Article Uzbek Islamism Addressing a joint session of Congress and a national TV audience on September 20, 2001, George W. Bush declared that the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) had “links” to Osama bin Laden, prime suspect in the September 11 attacks in the United States. Henceforth, the US would consider the IMU an Alisher Ilkhamov • 17 min read
MER Article Editor's Picks (Fall 2002) Abdo, Nahla and Ronit Lentin, eds. Women and the Politics of Military Confrontation: Palestinian and Israeli Gendered Narratives of Dislocation (New York: Berghahn Books, 2002). Amin, Camron M. The Making of the Modern Iranian Woman: Gender, State Policy and Popular Culture, 1865-1946 (Gainesville, (Author not identified) • 1 min read
MER Article The Post-September 11 Arab Wave in World Music Music from the Arab world has traditionally been a minor player within world music, the marketing category encompassing a wide variety of international music that emerged in the late 1980s. Aimed at an NPR listening “adult” audience, world music has a small market share of roughly 2-3 percent (compa Ted Swedenburg • 12 min read
MER Article Jihadis in the Hood In his classic novel Mumbo Jumbo, Ishmael Reed satirizes white America's age-old anxiety about the "infectiousness" of black culture with "Jus Grew," an indefinable, irresistible carrier of "soul" and "blackness" that spreads like a virus contaminating everyone in its wake Hisham Aïdi • 24 min read
MER Article A Part of US or Apart from US? Is the American public willing to accept suspended freedoms, if not for everyone, then for a select few disfavored groups, such as Muslims and Arab-Americans? Much press reporting has said yes, but a survey conducted directly after the September 11 attacks says no. Kathleen Moore • 8 min read
MER Article American Justice, Ashcroft-Style The Bush administration's large-scale detentions of Arab and Muslim men -- without charge -- and draconian immigration restrictions are only two of its initiatives to erode civil liberties, civil rights and norms of procedural justice under cover of the "war on terrorism." Many initiatives were enab Keith Feldman • 6 min read
MER Article No Longer Invisible Unlike other ascribed and self-described "people of color" in the United States, Arabs are often hidden under the Caucasian label, if not forgotten altogether. But eleven months after September 11, 2001, the Arab-American is no longer invisible. Whether traveling, driving, working, walking through a Louise Cainkar • 16 min read
MER Article Arabs, Race and the Post-September 11 National Security State In the face of a post-September 11 wave of racially motivated attacks against people from the Middle East and South Asia, the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division announced in a September 13, 2001 press release that "any threats of violence or discrimination against Arab or Muslim Americans or Salah Hassan • 14 min read
