Posted in Iran on February 29, 2008 | No Comments »
There has been much discussion over the proper way to pronounce — and even transliterate — the current Iranian president’s last name. Most news outlets use Ahmadinejad. Others, such as Financial Times, prefer Ahmadi-Nejad. In the Persian alphabet, the president’s name is spelled احمدینژاد (alef-Ha-mim-dal-ye-nun-zhe-alef-dal). It is a combination of Ahmad and Nejad. The ﻯ [...]
Posted in Africa, Algeria, France, Grand Strategy, Maghreb, Morocco, Russia, balance of power, gas on February 29, 2008 | No Comments »
Picking up where the previous post left off, I want to explore some reasons that may have contributed to Algeria’s refusal to recognize Kosovo. As noted before, Algeria, like many countries, has a strong relationship with Russia. Russia is the source of most of Algeria’s military materiel, and it shares many geopolitical interests with the [...]
Posted in Europe, Muslims, Russia, Western Muslims, realism, religion on February 29, 2008 | 1 Comment »
After the declaration, America and most European Union countries began the process of recognition. Muslim states will follow. Like the people of Albania, Kosovars are that rare combination, a majority Muslim people who are also passionately pro-American. Russia, and of course Serbia, reacted angrily. Russia argues that Kosovo’s independence will open a Pandora’s box of [...]
Posted in Arab Americans, Obama on February 27, 2008 | No Comments »
Khalidi said he supports Obama for president “because he is the only candidate who has expressed sympathy for the Palestinian cause.”
This is an assumption that many American-Arabs are working off of when supporting Senator Obama’s candidacy. Many have heard that he was involved in the local Arab-American community in Chicago when he was a state [...]
Posted in Arabs, Orthodox, Syria, culture, history, religion on February 26, 2008 | No Comments »
A survey in al-Akhbar newspaper asked Lebanese Sunnis, Shias, Druzes, and Christians if they supported “action for the overthrow of the Zionist regime”. The results show 77.4% for Lebanese Christians, the lowest out of all the sample groups except the Druze (65.9%). A classmate who also saw this survey told me she was surprised that [...]
Posted in Arabs, Orthodox, culture, history, nationalism, religion on February 25, 2008 | No Comments »
Traditionally, dissent within the Christian churches of the East had been expressed through doctrinal disputes. In the nineteenth century dissent took a new form, ethnic-linguistic division. In the Greek Orthodox patriarchate of Jerusalem and Antioch, the hierarchy, drawn from the monastic clergy, spoke Greek, while the parish priests and the parishioners spoke Arabic. The vast [...]
Posted in Arabs, Armenia, Levant, Maronite, Orthodox, Syria, culture, history on February 25, 2008 | No Comments »
Graham E. Fuller’s “A World without Islam” piece in Foreign Policy is well worth reading. It smashes the icons of those who believe that the world would be much better of without Islam. AWI puts the Middle East and its peoples in terms of interests due to geopolitical factors that would exist regardless of their [...]
Posted in Arab Americans, Obama, bigotry on February 20, 2008 | No Comments »
On Saturday, I will be attending a birthday party for a cousin’s one year old daughter. I will inevitably find myself in mind numbing conversation with a pompous uncle,* who told me during `Eid that he would not support Barack Obama because black person could never get through a primary, let alone a general election. [...]
Posted in Latin America, history on February 19, 2008 | No Comments »
Good bye, Fidel.
I remember a time when right wingers routinely derided Marxism and leftist thinking because it was “emotional” and “irrational”. Attempting to use the state to create utopia was bound to fail because there was not feasible means by which this could be, that human nature was too strong, and that socialism was incapable of creating [...]
