The Wedding
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Telematic Installation Mirrors Postmodern Warfare
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Take Lessons: An Intellectual Master Class
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Twelve Tales of Trial and Tribulation
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Young, Female - and Arab American
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Photo of a Nation
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New Media and the Arab Spring
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The Veiling of the City
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I Mourn my Wife and Friend, Samira Chalala
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Embracing Inbetweenness
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The Donkey Killers
"Untitled" by Mohammed Bushara

One might wonder about the title of this article at a time when Syria is paying a heavy human cost on a daily basis. The environment of killing created by the Assad regime is producing a culture of death, as many of us have witnessed via graphic images on satellite TV, Facebook and YouTube, video which amounts to some sort of terrible Reality Television.

The Arab Spring—The Original Arab Revolution?
"Hamza Ali al-Khateeb," by Carlos Latuff (via Wikimedia Commons)

In my Middle East politics class, I used to tell my students that, aside from the 1979 Iranian case, there had been no genuine popular revolution in the modern Middle East. Now, I can lengthen that list to include the Tunisian, Egyptian, Libyan, Yemeni, and Syrian revolutions, regardless of whether they are ultimately successful or not.

The Modesty of the Intellectual: Waiting For Abu Zayd
Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd by Mamoun Sakkal for Al Jadid

Contemporary debates about the role of Islam in modern Middle-Eastern societies are often captive to the vocabulary of “moderate vs. extremist,” leaving little room for discussions that move beyond these black and white distinctions.  Fortunately, Mohammed Ali Atassi’s recently released documentary about the late Egyptian “liberal” Islamic intellectual Dr. Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd is a rare exception.  

Presently Reading the Past: A Look at Early Arab-American Literature
Amin Rihani by Mamoun Sakkal and Gebran Kahlil Gebran by Emile Menhem

In his article “Ethnic Identity and Imperative Patriotism,” eminent Arab-American literary critic and scholar Steven Salaita explores the question: “How has the pedagogy of Arab American Studies changed?” Salaita suggests that it has changed considerably, and that Arab- American Studies now receive the sort of attention for which its scholars once clamored.

Saad Ardash: Life in the Theater and in Exile

One would be hard-pressed to overstate the role of Saad Ardash as a pioneer of modern Egyptian theatre; indeed, throughout a five-decade career he was unarguably its principal architect. As a young man and founder of Egypt’s Free Theatre he was the first to introduce both traditional and experimental forms of western theatre to Egyptian audiences.

Iraqi Actor Jawad Shukraji on Childhood, Working Under Saddam and His Recent TV Series
Iraqi Actor Jawad Shukraji

When you think back on your childhood, what is the first thing that strikes you?

I was born in Baghdad in 1951 near the shrine of Abdel Ghader al-Gaylani, a Sunni holy man. My mother was from Karbala and my father from Najaf. I was born Shii, yet I spent the early days of my childhood near this Sunni holy shrine.

40 Year-Old Classic Remains Influential: Sadiq Jalal al-Azm’s ‘The Critique of Religious Thought’
Cover of the newest Arabic edition of al-Azm's "Critique of Religious Thought"

For over 40 years now, Sadiq Jalal al-Azm’s “Naqd al-Fikr al-Dini” (“Critique of Religious Thought”) has been one of the most controversial and influential books about the role of religion in Arab politics. Originally published in 1969 by Dar Al Talia and reprinted in 2009 by the same publisher, al-Azm’s work has been cited in countless articles and books about Arab politics and, according to the Qatari weekly,

Clearing a Path for Mainstream Arab-American Literature
"Untitled" by Youssef Abdelki

Arab-American literature was already growing by leaps and bounds in the late 1990s, but the Sept. 11, 2001, hijacking attacks fueled an upsurge of interest in all things Arab and Muslim, and helped broaden the mainstream appeal of poetry and prose by American authors of Arab descent. More Arab-American writers are getting published, and their work is finding its way into more anthologies of women’s writing and other postcolonial collections, albeit slowly. Challenges remain, to be sure, but we are watching a vibrant new genre of Arab-American literature emerge after a century of struggle for recognition. 

A Conversation with Alaa al-Aswany on “The Yacoubian Building”
Director Alaa al-Aswany

So spoke the police officer overseeing the retrieval of my debit card from an ATM machine in Cairo. We had five hours to kill before the process would be successful, so I decided to interview him in his office about his reaction to “The Yacoubian Building.” He gladly obliged me. His comment above was in response to my question about the police brutality in the film version – actually a scene where a young political protester was tortured in a prison, with Mubarak’s picture in the background. 

Mansour Rahbani, Legacy of a Family and a Generation

Modern Arab music was shaped by a few highly creative individuals throughout the 20th century. Three of them were members of one family: the Rahbanis of Lebanon, comprised of the two brothers Assi and Mansour, and a singer named Nuhad Haddad who married Assi and took the name Fairuz.

Silencing the Singer

A day after he had sang in protest in the square of his hometown, Ibrahim Kashoush was found dead, floating in the Orontes River (Al Asi). The fate of Ibrahim Kashoush expresses in the simplest terms the anger that has been driving Syrians in almost every corner of the country onto the streets and in front of the bullets of the security forces.

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On Arkon’s “Towards a Critique of Islamic Reason”

When Mohammad Arkon published his book, “Towards a Critique of Islamic Reason,” in French in 1984, he intended to subject Islamic thought to the same type of intellectual criticism.

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Persecution Complex: Arab Intellectuals Remain Apart from Arab Spring

Whether in Egypt or in Syria, intellectuals are rarely paid any attention by the state, and the reason for this is that they have never been allowed to be part of a civil society.

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Liberating Public Space in Beirut

Beirut’s pine forest, the Horsh Al-Sanawbar, has been no less a victim of Lebanon’s social and political challenges than its citizens have.  Nominally public property since Ottoman times, the park has been shut down since the civil war. During the 1990s, its greenest and most attractive section was remodeled and replanted,

Writing Their Own Stories, Becoming Visible

Consider that one of the main thrusts of what would obliquely be termed “Arab Diaspora Studies” is to wrest Arabs out of the simplistic dichotomy of being invisible as racially white, or visible as a problematic cultural other. Layla al-Maleh’s edited collection, 

Killing Yourself to Write
"Street Fighting, Beirut 1976. Training for 1982," from Tony Clifton and Catherine Leroy's "God Cried" (Quartet Books 1983)

Richard Millet’s recent work “La Confession Negative” is a harrowing tale based on the author’s participation in the Lebanese civil war in 1976. Residing in a grey area between memoir and novel, the book’s central theme is Millet’s becoming an author through the experience of war. Millet has previously written of this experience, albeit in a more roundabout fashion, in his first novel, “Sur un Balcon a Beyrouth.”

Understanding Who We Are

Alia Malek’s “A Country Called Amreeka: Arab Roots, American Stories” is another collection ofArab American narratives in the tradition of Evelyn Shakir’s “Bint Arab” and Moustafa Bayoumi’s “How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America.”

The Other Prison
“Freedom” by Yasser Ganem, 2004(Indian ink and water-color,29cm/44cm)

Can one understand the experience of being a prisoner without ever being in a prison cell? This question might seem strange at first, but those who have met and talked with the family members of political prisoners in Syria will definitely know the answer.

Riyadh al-Turk: In and Out of Syrian Prison
Riyadh al-Turk

As a person, prisoner, and leader, Riyadh al-Turk has few parallels in politics. He is a professional politician in the noblest sense of the word. Politics for al-Turk is a means of attaining the greatest degree of justice, human nobility, and freedom. He has dedicated the bulk of his time and effort to politics, only to be repaid with a lengthy prison sentence. 

Ghayath Mattar: ‘Rain Flower’ of Syria
"Your Silence is Killing Us"
The “Confessions of a Dog”
Adonis Reflects on the Arab Spring
Light vs. Darkness: How the Syrian Opposition & Assad Regime Approach the Media
Syria's "Infiltration" Myth
The Fear of Throats
Doublespeak On Syria By Lebanese "Rejectionist Media"
AT LAST: Lebanese Cultural and Artistic Community Protest Syrian Atrocities
Mahmoud Darwish in "Fi Hadrat al Ghiyab"

Touch
By Adania Shibli
Reviewed By Lynne Rogers
Of Irony and Empire
By Laura Rice
Reviewed By Lynne Rogers
I Want to Get Married
By Ghada Abdel Al
Reviewed By Rebecca Joubin
Child in Jerusalem
By Felicity Ashbee
Reviewed By Rebecca Joubin
B as in Beirut
By Iman Humaydan Younes
Reviewed By Lynne Rogers
I Shall Not Hate
By Izzeldin Abuelaish
Reviewed By Frances Khirallah Noble
Origin
By Diana Abu-Jaber
Reviewed By Andrea Shala-Esa
I'jaam, an Iraqi Rhapsody
By Sinan Antoon
Reviewed By Zaid Shlah
The Arab American Handbook
By Nawar Shora
Reviewed By D.W. Aossey
Loom
By Thérèse Soukar Chehade
Reviewed By Theri Alyce Pickens
An Hour In Hama
Balloon seller in the park along the Orontes River, Hama, Syria, November 2010; photo by David R. Muerdter

Hama is the city where I stopped on a journey from Palmyra to Aleppo, where I photographed the ancient wooden water wheels that jigsaw the curving riverbed of the Orontes...

Iman C. Bennani Speaks with Arab-American Poet Lahab Assef al-Jundi
Poet Lahab Assef al-Jundi

I thought I would pursue a career in the scientific disciplines and I came to the States to study electrical engineering.  However, as I grew older, I began to discover my love for poetry. By age 30, I had started writing what I thought of as “love scribbles.”

Drawing Conclusions: Shedding a Vital Light on Middle Eastern Art
From: "Art of the Middle East: Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World and Iran"

Amid so much hubbub and controversy surrounding the politics of the Middle East, one might think that the region’s visual arts are uncultivated, and the role that Middle Eastern artists play in the broader world negligible.

From Documentary to Fiction – Stories of Lebanese Immigrant Women

Remember Me to Lebanon: Stories of Lebanese Women in America

Those who know of Evelyn Shakir’s writing from her seminal 1997 book, “Bint Arab: Arab and Arab-American Women in the United States,” know her to be a skilled chronicler of the lives of Arab women immigrants and their daughters in America. By recording the words of various women across three generations, beginning with the 19th century, Shakir has given public visibility to the presence of strong, active and well-defined communities of Arab women in America.
“Imaginary Homelands”—Lebanese American Prose

I take my title from an essay by Salman Rushdie, in which he reflects on the need many expatriates, exiles, and just plain emigrants feel to look over their shoulder at the land that they have left behind and that now seems lost to them. And, if they’re writers, to try to recreate it in the literature they produce. But Rushdie issues a warning:  “We will not be capable of reclaiming precisely the thing that was lost.” Instead, “we will create fictions, not actual cities or villages but invisible ones, imaginary homelands.”

The Passing of a Great Syrian Writer: Ilfat Idilbi, 1912-2007

It was on a day, much like today (Saturday, June 30), the day of the Gay Pride Parade in Paris, that I met my friend, the writer Ilfat Idilbi, for lunch at Les Deux Magots a few years ago. I had not realized that the Gay Pride Parade would be taking place when I’d first proposed that date for our meeting – I dreaded crowds and noise, both things that did not bother Ilfat Idilbi in the least. As soon as we settled on the terrace, the parade floats began turning down Boulevard St. Germain.

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