From Ya Libnan, May 15: Beirut & Damascus — Prominent writer and democracy campaigner Michel Kilo was detained after calling for better relations between Syria and Lebanon. Syria detained Kilo days after he signed a petition calling for radical reform… Read moreSyrian dissident detained
From the Egyptian NGO, Civil Monitors for Human Rights, in Cairo, May 11: Egyptian Authorities Continue Crackdown on Opposition Today Continuing in their policy of oppression, the Egyptian authorities are trying to prevent protests which the Egyptian opposition is organizing… Read moreEgypt: opposition crackdown continues
Note that this Reuters report on the Sinai bombings offhandedly mentions more sweeps of the peninsula’s Bedouin inhabitants. The Bedouin, their lands divided by Egypt and Israel, have been kicked around plenty on both sides of the border. The situation… Read moreEgypt: Bedouin face sweeps after Sinai terror
As in recent similar cases in Bangkok and Nazareth, the attacks on religious targets in Alexandria are being dismissed as the work of a “mentally disturbed” loner. Could be (although note that in this case there were three near-simultaneous attacks)…. Read moreSectarian violence in Egypt
From DPA, April 3: ANKARA – Three people were killed and one badly injured when suspected Kurdish assailants threw Molotov cocktails at a bus in Istanbul Sunday night, the NTV television station reported. NTV reported that the suspected Kurdish assailants… Read moreTurkey: re-escalation in Kurdish conflict
How heartwarming to see the new Pontiff lining up with Europe’s current Islamophobic zeitgeist. From the London Times, March 20: Vatican change of heart over ‘barbaric’ Crusades The Vatican has begun moves to rehabilitate the Crusaders by sponsoring a conference… Read moreVatican confab “rehabilitates” Crusades
Our contributor Mahmood Ketabchi offers another critique of the US left’s reponse to the “cartoon controversy.” Interestingly, he finds reflexive support for any forces ostensibly opposing the US to be a paradoxical form of nationalism, that places the United States… Read moreUS “left nationalism” and the cartoon crisis
As we recently noted in the case of Iran, the Bush administration seems divided between Pentagon hardliners who seek a military solution and State Department pragmatists who would pursue a peaceful “regime change” scenario in Syria. But these are not… Read moreUS to fund Syria “regime change”
The overwhelming majority of those protesting the notorious Danish cartoons have, of course, never seen them. The same goes for the overwhelming majority of those defending them. Whatever one thinks of them, there is a strong case that newspapers by… Read moreThe cartoon controversy deconstructed
From Reuters, via The Star of Malaysia, Feb. 14 (emphasis added): BEIRUT – Uproar in the Islamic world over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad has prompted many in the Middle East to ask why Muslims have rarely mobilised to address… Read moreArab dissent in cartoon controversy
Violence continues to grow throughout the Muslim world in protests against the anti-Islamic cartoons published in Denmark. In Nairobi, police opened fire as hundreds of protesters advanced on the Danish ambassador’s residence, leaving one injured. Another was killed and four… Read moreViolence escalates in cartoon imbroglio
An informative and insightful, if somewhat problematic, commentary from Egypt’s Al-Ahram Weekly. Anjali Kamat argues that the cartoons are not merely “offensive” but propagandistic, and that leaving racism out of the simplistic “free speech/Islamic intolerance” equation is to miss the… Read morePropaganda and the cartoon controversy, Pt. 2
