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{ Monthly Archives } April 2008

Web Sites Tracking Casualties in Iraq

Web sites tracking casualties in Iraq include:
iCasualties.org
iraqbodycount.net
 

2008 04 30 Ted Thornton Iraq Comments (0)

Can the U.N. Help the Kurds?

See the article below:
The Economist, “A Kurdish Conundrum,” April 19, 2008

2008 04 29 Ted Thornton Iraq Comments (0)

New York Times Feature on Iraq

Today’s web issue of the New York Times features an in-depth look at life in and around Baghdad.  —– go to site.

2008 04 29 Ted Thornton Iraq Comments (0)

Millions of Dollars Wasted On Iraq Reconstruction Projects

See the story at the BBC.

2008 04 28 Ted Thornton Foreign Policy
Iraq Comments (0)

Egyptian Novelist Alaa al-Aswany Profiled

Egyptian novelist (he is also a dentist in Cairo) Alaa al-Aswany, author of the best selling 2002 novel The Yacoubian Building (on our reading list in the syllabus), is profiled in today’s Sunday New York Times Magazine in an article by Pankaj Mishra (”Where Alaa al-Aswany is Writing From”).  Among the comments al-Aswany made to Mishra:  [...]

2008 04 27 Ted Thornton Arab World
Culture
Egypt Comments (0)

Review of New Books by Olivier Roy and Noah Feldman

Dexter Filkins in today’s New York Times Book Review looks at two recent volumes:  Olivier Roy. The Politics of Chaos in the Middle East, trans. by Ros Schwartz. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008; and Noah Feldman, The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008.
Roy’s book comes out ahead [...]

2008 04 27 Ted Thornton Arab-Israeli Conflict
Foreign Policy
Islam and Politics
Middle East Comments (0)

New Book About Ahmad Chalabi

Leslie Gelb reviews a new book about Ahmad Chalabi in today’s New York Times Book Review.  Gelb captures the essence of Chalabi’s character and ambition well when he says, “…this improbable, chunky, merry-eyed dynamo tirelessly connived and schemed on behalf of two dreams: for American military might to drive Saddam Hussein from power and to [...]

2008 04 27 Ted Thornton Foreign Policy
Iraq Comments (0)

Profile of Two Prominent Muslim Women: Irshad Manji and Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Barry Gewen profiles Irshad Manji and Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the “Week in Review” section of today’s New York Times.  Both women are feminists and strong critics of Islam.  Ali, who was born in Somalia, rejected Islam and became an atheist. Manji, born in Uganda but raised in Canada, remains a Muslim, but, is advocating “an [...]

2008 04 27 Ted Thornton Islam and the West
Women Comments (0)

Muslims in Algeria Protest Government Ban on Veils and Beards in Passport Pictures

Muslim clerics in Algeria, a country where a civil war raged between the government and Islamists in the 1990s, are protesting a government ban on the wearing of veils and beards in passport pictures.
Story from BBC

2008 04 27 Ted Thornton Algeria
Islam
Women Comments (0)

Is the War in Iraq a Religious War?

The New York Times today is running a story about an American soldier who had been deployed to Iraq and who is an avowed atheist.  The soldier was sent home early from his tour after being threatened by his fellow soldiers and superior officers, and is filing a lawsuit against the Army.  The suit complains [...]

2008 04 26 Ted Thornton Christianity
Islam and the West Comments (0)