This Blog is intended for use by students in the Islamic Middle East course at Northfield Mount Hermon School and guest students and teachers from other participating schools.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was recently elected the new leader of the Kadima party, replacing Ehud Olmert(September 17). As he is in the process of resigning as Prime Minister, she has 42 days to form a coalition within the Knesset. The Kadima party currenntly holds 29 seats and must form a coalition of 61 seats, [...]
Ehud Olmert, Israel’s “lame-duck” Prime Minister, says Israel should pull out of the West Bank and East Jerusalem as the price for peace with the Palestinians. What’s ironic about this is that Olmert cut his political teeth in the Likud Party, where he was a protege of former Prime Minister (and Likud Party founder) Ariel [...]
Veil wearing Muslim girls in France are finding Catholic schools more welcoming than French public schools:
Katrin Bennhold, “Spurning Secularism, Many French Muslims Find Haven in Catholic Schools,” New York Times, Sept. 30, 2008, A6
More on Muslims in Europe
The “Durand Line,” drawn by the British in 1893 to divide Afghanistan from territory that eventually became part of Pakistan, has contributed to the instability in that part of the world. Patrick Seale explains:
“The Durand Line was a British creation. It was demarcated and then signed into a treaty on Nov. 12 1893, between the [...]
Dexter Filkins says it was Pakistan’s regional foreign policy since the mid-nineties (which we have characterized in our class discussions as at least in part ”jihadist”) that landed Pakistan where it finds itself today. One could make an argument that jihadism in Pakistan’s foreign policy goes back even further: to the mid-seventies and the regime of Zia al-Haq.
Dexter Filkins, [...]
Syria, a majority Sunni country tightly ruled by a family belonging to a minority non-Sunni sect (the Alawis), may be entering another unstable phase.
Robert F. Worth, “Car Bomb Kills 17 Near Intelligence Office,” New York Times, September 28, 2008
More on Syria
1982 Hama Uprising
A review of Orhan Pamuk’s memoir Istanbul, written in 2005, offers another interesting glimpse into the life and work of the author we have been reading a lot of this semester. The reviewer, Christopher De Bellaigue, writes:
“Pamuk’s achievement in ‘Istanbul’ is to show the human damage done by Ataturk’s revolution without succumbing to the benighted [...]
The Arab media are exploring new boundaries of what Arab consumers are willing to consume.
Robert F. Worth, “Arab TV Tests Societies’ Limits With Depictions of Sex and Equality,” New York Times, Sept. 27, 2008
Via ProQuest on the NMH Virtual Desktop, see, The Economist, “Asia: A Wild Frontier; Pakistan’s Tribal Areas,” Sept. 20, 2008, 55f.
More on Pakistan
UK suspects that arms of Taliban are being given to them by Irans. Taliban members say they are receiving Iranian-made arms from Iran and Iranian smugglers. These weapons are deadly; “The Dragon” can be adapted to fire grenades strong enough to destroy a whole bus. These arms are improving Taliban’s ability to attack American military [...]
BBC Middle East