Daniel Nassif: “We Do Not Spread Propaganda for the United States”

Posted by Middle East Quarterly - March 1, 2008 on 11:00 am | In Middle East Forum | No Comments Daniel Nassif is the news director of Alhurra, a U.S.-funded Arabic satellite television news network created in 2004, and has also been news director of its sister network, Radio Sawa, launched in 2002. Nassif was born in Lebanon in 1958. He immigrated to the United States in 1977 and finished his undergraduate and graduate studies in political science and public policy for international affairs at the University of Michigan in 1986.

 


Review of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

Posted by Middle East Quarterly - March 1, 2008 on 11:00 am | In Middle East Forum | No Comments Flunking History Among many Israeli academics and Western revisionists, it has become fashionable to examine Israel's war of independence from an Arab perspective in which Jews were the aggressors and Arabs the victims.[1] This trend began in 1989 with works by Ben-Gurion University professor Benny Morris[2] and Oxford University professor Avi Shlaim,[3] and developed further with the writings of the late Hebrew University anthropologist Baruch Kimmerling,[4] Neve Gordon[5] at Ben-

 


Dissident Watch: Abdul Rahman al-Lahim

Posted by Middle East Quarterly - March 1, 2008 on 11:00 am | In Middle East Forum | No Comments A Saudi court's sentence of 200 lashes and six-months' imprisonment for a 19-year-old victim of gang rape, known only as the "Qatif girl," recently made headlines across the United States. Her story would never have come to outside attention without the efforts of her lawyer, Abdul Rahman al-Lahim. A specialist in commercial law, the 36-year-old Saudi also takes human rights cases on a pro-bono basis.[1]

 


Review of World War IV: The Long Struggle against Islamofascism

Posted by Middle East Quarterly - March 1, 2008 on 11:00 am | In Middle East Forum | No Comments In World War IV, Podhoretz, a doyen of the neoconservative intellectual movement, places the struggle against Islamism in its historical context. He suggests that U.S. inaction in the face of decades of Middle Eastern terrorism served to embolden terrorists and that while 9-11 shocked U.S. policymakers and the public, it was in fact only the most sensational of a string of terrorist attacks that had seldom drawn reprisals. For George W. Bush, however, 9-

 


Review of Water Resources in Jordan: Evolving Policies for Development, the Environment, and Conflict Resolution

Posted by Middle East Quarterly - March 1, 2008 on 11:00 am | In Middle East Forum | No Comments Few issues are more emotional to Middle Easterners than water, partly, because the region is so short of this vital resource. But water seems to engender strong feelings among peoples the world over. The history of the American West, for example, is full of bitter battles (both judicial and armed) over water. In the Middle East, few countries face greater threats of water shortages than does Jordan.

 


Review of The United Arab Emirates: A Study in Survival

Posted by Middle East Quarterly - March 1, 2008 on 11:00 am | In Middle East Forum | No Comments The United Arab Emirates (UAE) not only has more than 10 percent of the world's oil reserves, but it is also the home to Dubai, the world's most talked about city these days. From its indoor ski slope to its 7-star hotels and the world's tallest building, Dubai defines excess. The bid of Dubai Ports World, owned by the ruling family, to buy the firm running several U.S. ports ran into a buzz saw of opposition from those worried about Dubai's reliability as a counterterrorism partner.

 


Review of Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the U.S.

Posted by Middle East Quarterly - March 1, 2008 on 11:00 am | In Middle East Forum | No Comments The trilateral relationship between Israel, Iran, and the United States is complex. Alas, Treacherous Alliance does not explain it. Based on the Johns Hopkins University doctoral thesis of Trita Parsi, best known as a Washington-based Iran lobbyist who trades on his connections to officials within the Islamic Republic, the narrative wallows in half-truths and conspiracy rather than fact. Parsi begins, for example, by stating that neoconservatives "desperately wish" for a U.S. war with Iran.

 


Review of Religion of Peace?: Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn’t

Posted by Middle East Quarterly - March 1, 2008 on 11:00 am | In Middle East Forum | No Comments Spencer, director of JihadWatch.org, is not a man to recoil from difficulties. In his most recent, solid study, he examines the current state of controversies in the United States relating to Islam and Christianity. He exposes the ignorance and misunderstanding that riddle many discourses on religions.

 


Review of A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq, and the Gassing of Halabja

Posted by Middle East Quarterly - March 1, 2008 on 11:00 am | In Middle East Forum | No Comments In the course of a few minutes on March 16, 1988, Saddam Hussein's regime murdered thousands of civilians in poison gas attacks on the town of Halabja in an ethnic cleansing campaign against Iraq's Kurds.

 


Scientific Training and Radical Islam

Posted by Middle East Quarterly - March 1, 2008 on 10:00 am | In Middle East Forum | No Comments The involvement of Muslim physicians in the London and Glasgow airport terror conspiracy on June 29-30, 2007, forced both non-Muslims and moderate Muslims to question how those trained to heal could embrace terrorism. The doctors involved in the attempt to detonate car bombs in London and blow up a passenger terminal at the Glasgow airport did not represent an isolated phenomenon.

 


Sovereign Wealth Funds: Investment Vehicles for the Persian Gulf Countries

Posted by Middle East Quarterly - March 1, 2008 on 10:00 am | In Middle East Forum | No Comments Countries have used sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) as instruments through which to buy assets with their surplus foreign exchange since the 1950s when Norway and Singapore, and soon after Kuwait, sought new strategies to insulate themselves from exchange rate fluctuation. Central banks employed SWFs only as buffers for currency stabilization when countries had little or no international debt and large current account surpluses. Today, SWFs have become quite common.

 


Sovereign Wealth Funds: Investment Vehicles for the Persian Gulf Countries

Posted by Middle East Quarterly - March 1, 2008 on 10:00 am | In Middle East Forum | No Comments Countries have used sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) as instruments through which to buy assets with their surplus foreign exchange since the 1950s when Norway and Singapore, and soon after Kuwait, sought new strategies to insulate themselves from exchange rate fluctuation. Central banks employed SWFs only as buffers for currency stabilization when countries had little or no international debt and large current account surpluses. Today, SWFs have become quite common.

 


Scientific Training and Radical Islam

Posted by Middle East Quarterly - March 1, 2008 on 10:00 am | In Middle East Forum | No Comments The involvement of Muslim physicians in the London and Glasgow airport terror conspiracy on June 29-30, 2007, forced both non-Muslims and moderate Muslims to question how those trained to heal could embrace terrorism. The doctors involved in the attempt to detonate car bombs in London and blow up a passenger terminal at the Glasgow airport did not represent an isolated phenomenon.

 


The Psychological Asymmetry of Islamist Warfare

Posted by Middle East Quarterly - March 1, 2008 on 10:00 am | In Middle East Forum | No Comments U.S. military lawyers acknowledge that "civilians may not be used Â… to render an area immune from military operationsÂ… [or] to shield a defensive position, to hide military objectives, or to screen an attack. Neither may they be forced to leave their homes or shelters in order to disrupt the movement of an adversary."[1] Such restraint is not unique to the United States but also extends to Europe, Israel, and in the post-World War II era, many Asian countries as well.

 


Mohamed Sifaoui: “I Consider Islamism to Be Fascism”

Posted by Middle East Quarterly - March 1, 2008 on 10:00 am | In Middle East Forum | No Comments Mohamed Sifaoui was born on July 4, 1967, and spent most of his childhood in Algeria. He holds a master's degree in political science and studied theology for two years at the University of Algiers and for two additional years at Zeitouna University's Institute of Theology in Tunis. In 1994, he began work for the Algerian daily Le Soir and survived a February 11, 1996 bomb attack at Le Soir's headquarters at the Maison de la Presse.

 


Fatah’s Embrace of Islamism

Posted by Middle East Quarterly - March 1, 2008 on 10:00 am | In Middle East Forum | No Comments Many U.S. and European diplomats contrast Fatah's Palestinian nationalism with Hamas's Islamism. At a November 28, 2007 press conference, U.S. national security advisor Stephen Hadley praised Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas and cited President George W. Bush's argument that "Hamas, Hezbollah, and Al-Qaeda [are] different faces of the same evil: a radical ideology seeking to impose its world-view throughout the Middle East and beyond."[1]

 


Is Al-Qaeda’s Central Leadership Still Relevant?

Posted by Middle East Quarterly - March 1, 2008 on 10:00 am | In Middle East Forum | No Comments Government officials, scholars, and analysts continue to debate the extent to which Al-Qaeda's central leadership remains relevant to today's battle against terrorism. After U.S. forces eliminated the group's safe haven in Afghanistan in late 2001, many argued that Al-Qaeda had transformed into a decentralized organization with little vertical hierarchy, that it had become "more of an ideology than an organization."[1] In the words of one analyst, Al-Qaeda was seen as "

 


Exposing the “Flying Imams”

Posted by Middle East Quarterly - January 1, 2008 on 10:00 am | In Middle East Forum | No Comments On November 20, 2006, airline officials in Minneapolis removed six imams from U.S. Airways flight 300 to Phoenix after their behavior raised the suspicion of fellow travelers.[1] The imams decried the incident as racist and evidence of discrimination. On March 12, 2007, they filed suit against the airline, airport, and fellow passengers. Some of the imams' claims are exaggerated; many are false.

 


Where Is Bashar al-Assad Heading?

Posted by Middle East Quarterly - January 1, 2008 on 10:00 am | In Middle East Forum | No Comments On May 27, 2007, Syrians elected Bashar al-Assad to a second 7-year term as president in a referendum in which, according to results published two days later by the Ministry of Interior, Assad received the support of 97.62 percent of the voters, a slight improvement upon the 97.24 percent support he received in the first referendum.[1] Such results, though, have little significance. Syrian referendums are a government-orchestrated show and have nothing in common with normal democratic procedure.

 


The Middle East’s Tribal DNA

Posted by Middle East Quarterly - January 1, 2008 on 10:00 am | In Middle East Forum | No Comments Conflicts within the Middle East cannot be separated from its peoples' culture. Seventh-century Arab tribal culture influenced Islam and its adherents' attitudes toward non-Muslims. Today, the embodiment of Arab culture and tribalism within Islam impacts everything from family relations, to governance, to conflict. While many diplomats and analysts view the Arab-Israeli dispute and conflicts between Muslim and non-

 


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