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Bridging the Divide: US Efforts to Engage the Muslim World Review Article by Mona Yacoubian

Engaging the Muslim World, by Juan Cole. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. ix + 247 pages. Notes to p. 270. $26.95.

A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim World, by Emile Nakhleh. Princeton, NJ and Oxford, UK: Princeton University Press, 2009. xix + 144 pages. Acknowledgements to p. 146. Gloss. to p. 150. Sources to p. 153. Index to p. 162. $26.95.

In the first six months of his presidency, Barack Obama has clearly signaled his administration’s desire to turn a new page in America’s relations with the Muslim world. The new President has promoted several dramatic measures designed to restore the United States’ tarnished image in the Middle East and beyond. In his inaugural address, Obama issued a call to the Muslim world for “a new way forward based on mutual interest and mutual respect.” He signed an executive order to shut down Guantanamo as well as the Central Intel- ligence Agency’s (CIA) network of secret prisons. He banned the use of torture. He named well-respected diplomat George Mitchell as special envoy to the Middle East, once again elevating the Middle East peace process as a key foreign policy priority. The new President opted to give his first press interview toAl-Arabiya , an Arabic language satellite television station. The interview was noteworthy in several respects, not least in the President men- tioning his Muslim family members and the portion of his childhood spent living in the Muslim world. He underscored the need to listen rather than dictate, and acknowledged the importance of backing words with action. And that was just his first week in office. President Obama’s promise to improve US relations with the Muslim world predates his election. During the campaign, candidate Obama vowed to give an address in a Mus- lim capital within his 100 days in office. In early April, the President delivered a speech (not the speech) in Ankara that echoed some of the themes of his Al-Arabiya interview. He insisted that the United States “is not and will never be at war with Islam” and stressed America’s “desire for broader engagement” based on the mantra of “mutual interest and mutual respect.” On June 4, President Obama visited Cairo and gave the much-anticipated speech defining his views on America and the Muslim world. Entitled “On a New Beginning,” the 55-minute address is only the latest contribution to President Obama’s ongoing dialogue with the Muslim world; more speeches (perhaps the next one in Indonesia) are sure to come. Speaking eloquently and at times quoting from the Qur’an, President Obama sought to bridge the divide between the United States and the Muslim world. Rather than shy- ing away from differences, the President spoke openly about the need to confront seven

MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL M Volume 63, No. 3, summer 2009 DOI: 10.3751/63.3.3 middle east journal M 495 key sources of tension, highlighting among other issues, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.1 This passage of the speech — in which President Obama spoke compassionately about the suffering on both sides of the conflict and likened the Palestinian struggle to that of African- Americans in the United States — provoked the greatest reaction (both positive and negative). While many in the Muslim world applauded the speech, most also underscored the need for the President to back his powerful words with action. In the midst of this flurry of diplomacy, two new books offer both an historical perspective and forward-looking insights into how the United States should pursue engagement with the Muslim world. Taken together, they provide an important retrospective of the Bush Administration policies that damaged America’s image in the Muslim world as well as concrete recommendations on how to promote engagement between the United States and the Muslim world. In Engaging the Muslim World, Juan Cole, the University of Michigan historian and author of Informed Comment, the well-known Middle East-related blog, traces the roots of the mirror-image afflictions that he terms “Islam Anxiety” in the West and “America Anxiety” in the Muslim world. Cole challenges many of the pervasive myths that have come to define Americans’ misinformed understanding of Islam. Written in a blog-like, informal style, the book is equal parts primer on Middle East history and politics and personal essay analyzing the origins of mutual mistrust between America and the Muslim world. Emile Nakhleh, a senior intelligence officer and director of the CIA’s Political Intel- ligence Strategic Analysis program, brings a somewhat different perspective to the issue in his book, A Necessary Engagement. A native Arabic speaker born in Galilee, Nakhleh reports on his wide-ranging travels throughout the Muslim world that informed his work at the highest levels of the US government. Nakhleh draws extensively on his government background in this slim, must-read volume, which combines cogent and balanced analysis with well-reasoned policy recommendations culminating in a useful “blueprint” for US public diplomacy that offers some novel suggestions. The Obama Administration seems keenly aware of the fallout from misguided policies highlighted by both Cole and Nakhleh. Its nascent strategy vis à vis the Muslim world includes important policy departures from the previous administration. These include engagement with Syria, marked by a number of diplomatic exchanges and the anticipated appoint- ment of a US Ambassador to Damascus, as well as outreach to Iran, marked by President Obama’s surprise videotaped Nowruz greetings and an invitation to Tehran to participate in six-party talks on Afghanistan. Recognizing the pitfalls of relying too heavily on the US military for achieving policy objectives, President Obama has repeatedly emphasized the planned US withdrawal from Iraq. The “Global War on Terror” terminology also has been quietly dropped from the administration’s lexicon. The President is on solid ground in attempting to reach out and redefine America’s relations with the Muslim world. After the Bush Administration’s eight years of steadily declining favorability ratings in the Muslim world, Americans seem ready to bridge the yawning chasm that has opened between the United States and Muslim-majority countries. An April 2009 ABC News/Washington Post poll of US attitudes toward Islam and the Mus- lim world found that 81% of Americans believe that it is important for President Obama to try to improve relations between the United States and the Muslim world. Despite this popular mandate, the President — who views himself as a “bridge” between the US and the Muslim world — faces a major challenge to achieving this goal. A significant proportion of Americans — 48% — holds an unfavorable view of Islam, according to the ABC News/

1. The seven sources of tension addressed by President Obama in the Cairo speech are “violent extremism in all its forms,” “the situation between Israelis, Palestinians and the Arab world,” “our shared interest in the rights and responsibilities of nations on nuclear weapons,” “democracy,” “religious freedom,” “women’s rights,” and “economic development and opportunity.” 496 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL

Washington Post poll. The percentage represents the highest unfavorable rating since the poll was first conducted in 2001. A poor understanding of Islam is pinpointed as a critical shortcoming, with fully 55% of those polled stating that they lack basic knowledge about the religion. Both Cole and Nakhleh acknowledge this gap, and their books seek to dispel popular misconceptions and bring greater understanding of Islam’s complexity. In the Middle East, Obama faces obstacles as well. The most recent Arab public opinion polling conducted by the University of Maryland with Zogby International suggests that the United States remains plagued by high unfavorable ratings (77%) across all six countries polled (Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates). Similarly, 66% of those polled professed having no confidence in the United States. Mean- while, 77% listed the United States as one of the two countries (behind Israel) deemed to pose the biggest threat to their security. Yet, the polling also indicates that Obama’s election may have opened a critical win- dow of opportunity for improving relations with the Arab world — a key component of the broader Muslim world. The poll’s principal investigator, Shibley Telhami, notes that 45% (60%, if Egypt is taken out) held positive views of Barack Obama. Likewise, 51% had hopeful attitudes toward US policy in the Middle East in the Obama Administration’s opening weeks; only a relatively small 14% expressed discouragement. Three key themes emerge from the polling: the presence of hope, the need to build trust, and the importance of dignity. Taken together, the polling results (acknowledging their limitations) depict an Arab world (and perhaps Muslim world more broadly) that holds out hope that the new American President may bring positive change to the region and its relations with the West. This hope, however, is tempered by deep skepticism and a fundamental lack of trust that the United States will follow through on its promises. While Iraq and the Arab- Israeli conflict ranked highest on the list of concerns, the polling also suggests that key issues associated with dignity in the Muslim world — human rights and attitudes toward the Muslim world — are also critically important. Taken together, these three key elements — hope, trust, and dignity — offer some insight into what matters in the Muslim world and how the Obama Administration will be judged in its quest to engage the region. This important moment in the region underscores the timeliness of books such as those written by Cole and Nakhleh. Together, they seek to remind us of the perils of past mistakes and the critical importance of a nuanced understanding of a complex region. As the Obama Administration grapples with how to capitalize on the Muslim world’s moment of hope, Cole and Nakhleh add useful perspectives on moving the agenda forward. Cole’s book opens by seeking to understand the deep lack of trust that characterizes relations between the Muslim world and the West, noting that “the Muslim world and the West are at a stand-off.” He underscores the importance of dialogue as a bridge to understanding and asserts that “engagement” does not equate to “surrender or accommodation.” Moreover, Cole’s argument continues, the division between the Muslim world and the West is itself artificial when the lines between them are blurred at best. He presents President Obama, with his multiple ethnic and religious heritages, as the very embodiment of these blurred divisions. The majority of Engaging the Muslim World seeks to unpack the root causes of “Islam Anxiety.” In a series of issue-oriented chapters, Cole attempts to clarify the complex reality underlying the deep mistrust that characterizes US-Muslim world relations. He examines the role of the Iraq war, Iran’s ascendance, and mounting extremism in Pakistan and Af- ghanistan. Other chapters are devoted to understanding the nuances that distinguish Muslim activism from Muslim radicalism and the complexities that obscure an accurate understanding of Wahhabist Islam. Unfortunately, by choosing to open the book with a chapter entitled “The Struggle for Islamic Oil,” Cole undermines some of the very arguments he makes in favor of dispelling long-held myths about the Middle East. Indeed, later in the book, Cole points out that “few Muslims live in petroleum states.” Yet, the premise of this first chapter — that the US will increasingly depend on “Islamic oil,” which, in turn, could lead to more middle east journal M 497 military interventions in the region — seems more likely to fan flames of anxiety than to assuage fears. The most compelling chapter of the book addresses the historic roots of political Islam and its many and varied manifestations. Underscoring the importance of terminology, Cole warns against using terms such as “Islamic fascists” or “Islamofascists.” He highlights the differences between violent and non-violent activists, tracing the evolution of Egypt’s Mus- lim Brotherhood from its founding in 1928 to its current embodiment. Along the way, he offers an important analysis of Sayyid Qutb, the “ideological godfather of al-Qaeda,” and notes that the Sunni mainstream has rejected Qutbist doctrine, underscoring the point that violent extremists are a distinct, fringe minority in the Muslim world. In the case of Egypt, he emphasizes the divergent paths taken by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which has renounced violence, and the extremist organization Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Cole offers sound advice to US policymakers, arguing that “A Muslim Brotherhood willing to participate in civil politics and forswear violence is an asset, not a danger.” He rightly recommends that “If the United States continues to be committed to democratization in the Middle East, the Brotherhood cannot be denied a role in Egyptian politics.” Cole concludes Engaging the Muslim World with an important set of recommendations, calling for more nuanced understanding between the two cultures, highlighting the need for the US to follow through on its promises to withdraw from Iraq, pursue Middle East democratization, engage Iran, and accelerate the Middle East peace process. He suggests an important way forward, enjoining the United States to define its role in the Muslim world as one of engagement and peacemaking. Emile Nakhleh’s A Necessary Engagement is an informative complement to Engaging the Muslim World. While Cole delves deeper into Islamic history, Nakhleh provides an engaging, thoughtful, and policy-relevant analysis of contemporary political Islam. The opening chapter explores the growth of Islamic activism and its many manifestations across the Muslim world, building a solid foundation for the book’s policy recommendations in later chapters. Like Cole, Nakhleh strives to distinguish between various types of Islamist organizations and their modes of Islamic activism, which run the gamut from charitable work to violent extremism. Most importantly, he clarifies critical differences between what he terms “territorial” activists — those who see the rise of Islamization as an important vehicle in their struggle to regain control over land — and global jihadists bent on re-establishing a pan-Islamic caliphate. Indeed, later in the book, Nakhleh points out: “In most Muslim countries, religious identity invariably is an expression of indigenous and local agendas that do not necessarily correspond to the global ideologies of al-Qaeda and other radical groups.” Nakhleh draws on his extensive travels throughout the Muslim world to illustrate numerous points, providing concrete evidence for his analytic judgments. He refers to numerous interviews conducted to depict what he describes as a six-stage process of Islamization. He references interviews with activists across the Muslim world from Turkey to Nigeria, Central Asia, and beyond. However, as laid out, the process is overly simplistic, assuming a linear progression from awareness at stage one and culminating with violent action in the final stage. Nakhleh correctly asserts that only a minority of activists end up at this sixth stage. Nonetheless, he fails to fully capture the dynamism of Islamic activism, a phenomenon that evolves and adapts in unpredictable ways. The second chapter, entitled “Intelligence, Political Islam, and Policymakers,” is perhaps the weakest in the book. It offers some interesting context for readers not familiar with the intelligence and policymaking worlds, but also appears to overplay the CIA’s efforts to build expertise on political Islam. While Nakhleh commends the Agency for engaging in academic outreach and investing in analyst training, he does not acknowledge the CIA’s many shortcomings. These include an over-reliance on young, inexperienced analysts who spend little time developing expertise in one area as well as a bureaucratic culture that does not reward analytic risk-taking or genuinely creative thinking. Moreover, he makes no mention of the CIA’s use of “enhanced interrogation” techniques, or its secret network of 498 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL prisons and its reliance on extraordinary renditions as part of its counter-terrorism strategy. In the Muslim world, these policies have been associated with what is commonly termed America’s “double standards” and a lack of respect for basic human rights — key factors that have contributed to the United States’ low standing in the much of the Muslim world. The second half of the book provides a detailed exploration of US policies that have inhibited public diplomacy efforts. Specifically, Nakhleh identifies five key policy areas — the Global War on Terror, the invasion of Muslim countries, democratization, the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, and unilateralism — that have contributed to negative attitudes toward the United States. Nakhleh clarifies that Muslims differ with the United States, not over America’s values, but over US policies in the region — a conclusion repeatedly borne out by polling. He specifically outlines how contradictory policies in these areas have undercut America’s standing in the region and key opportunities lost as a result. The final chapter ofA Necessary Engagement should be mandatory reading for Obama Administration officials charged with creating a new public diplomacy effort geared toward the Muslim world. It lays out a concrete “blueprint” for future public diplomacy efforts, including several concrete policy recommendations. Nakhleh introduces ten points or “core themes” that he argues should be woven together into a common narrative inform- ing US policy in the region. Among the key themes: The United States is not at war with Islam; Islam, Christianity, and Judaism share many common values; people should be able to select their government freely, and that government should be transparent, accountable, and just; the United States is committed to engaging Muslim communities and fostering debate about a future vision of Islam, but “Muslims should be the primary participants in this debate;” and that the United States is committed to engaging indigenous and credible Muslim activists, including mainstream Islamic political parties. Specific components of Nakhleh’s blueprint include conducting a dialogue with mainstream Islamic parties, developing a parliamentarians’ exchange program, expanding educational exchange, and empowering Muslim reformist thinkers. Nakhleh rightly advocates that these policies be viewed as a national security priority and be supported and coordinated across all US government agencies. It remains to be seen whether the Obama Administration will succeed in its quest to bridge the divide between the United States and the Muslim world. As both authors argue, any new approach, no matter how energetic and creative, must be accompanied by significant progress on the Middle East peace process, US military withdrawal from Iraq, and credible attempts at engagement with Iran. Meanwhile, three key themes will continue to resonate in the region: hope, trust, and dignity. If the Obama Administration can work towards building and sustaining these three critical elements, it may indeed achieve results and help to redefine US relations with the Muslim world.

Dr. Mona Yacoubian is a Special Advisor to the Muslim World Initiative at the US Insti- tute of Peace. middle east journal M 499

ARAB-ISRAELI nation-state out of place in the Arab Middle East” (p. 144). CONFLICT While Stein looks briefly at Israeli views of Arab tourism to Israel as both a promise Itineraries in Conflict: Israelis, Palestin- of business and a threat of cultural infiltra- ians, and the Political Lives of Tourism, tion and illegal labor migration, the chief by Rebecca L. Stein. Durham, NC: Duke focus of the book is on the ways Jewish University Press, 2008. x + 152 pages. tourists and agencies conceptualized Arabs Notes to p. 178. Bibl. to 204. Index to p. from surrounding countries and Israel itself 219. $79.95 cloth; $22.95 paper. as objects for touristic consumption. Here Stein uses the concept of “national intelli- Reviewed by Glenn Bowman gibility” — “that which is recognizable according to the dominant national script” (p. This is an intelligent and exciting book 3) — to good effect, analyzing in Chapter that maps the post-Oslo extension of Is- One the way Jordan, Egypt, and Syria were raeli tourism into the Arab world. The book presented and perceived as “uncharted” (p. uncovers logics of place, leisure, and con- 31) territories that, while open to penetra- sumption which ensured that this “opening” tion by Israeli markets, were simultaneously would rapidly collapse into closure and bel- so culturally distinct that they served to “sta- ligerent isolation. Based on Stein’s anthro- bilize the Israeli border as both a geographic pological fieldwork, Itineraries in Conflict and a cultural divide” (p. 37). It was only focuses on changes in Israeli conceptions after tourism to neighboring countries took of nation, territory, and coexistence that, off (Stein notes that an earlier history of between 1993 and 2000, encouraged Ash- Jewish travel to these regions, some preced- kenazi Israelis to “view the Middle East as ing the founding of Israel, was effectively a unified geography of leisure” (p. 25). That “forgotten” in the post-Oslo period in sup- perception was grounded on the assump- port of the myth of the “new” Middle East), tion that Israelis could finally experience that Israelis turned their attention to Arab “authentic Arab culture without political neighbors within Israel (the West Bank and threat” (p. 2). Stein shows through a theoret- Gaza, visited before the first intifada, never ically sophisticated and politically informed re-entered Israeli tourist itineraries). Chap- analysis that Israeli tourism after Oslo (and ter Three investigates Israeli tourism’s quest before the al-Aqsa intifada) produced a fan- for “authenticity” within Israeli Arab villag- tasy version of the Middle East for Israelis es, noting that, insofar as “authenticity was in which they would be able to engage with palatable only in the absence of Palestinian- Arabs and consume Arab culture (the book inflected politics” (p. 59), Palestinians desir- is rich with terms such as “edibility” [p. 99]) ous of attracting the cash and development without either extending rights or privileges that tourism brought into a systematically to Israeli Arabs (much less West Bank and peripheralized economy were forced “not Gazan Palestinians) or giving up on the to be themselves but to be somebody like desideratum of a “Jewish state.” When the themselves” (p. 62). Here Stein discusses Israeli failure to respect the concessions the state’s post-1948 de-urbanization of made in Oslo brought the “peace” crashing Palestinians as a disavowed backdrop to down, “Jewish Israeli society … renounced tourists’ orientalist recognition of the time- the politics of coexistence, returning to the less authenticity of Arab village life; she conflict paradigm that had characterized Is- also shows how Israeli projects of remak- rael’s relations with neighboring states prior ing Arab villages as tourist destinations to the onset of regional diplomacy” (p. 150). emphasized “interiority” (p. 72), display- Israel’s brief courtship with its Arab neigh- ing Arab culture as taking place within the bors, and with the Arabs resident within its confined spaces of homes and courtyards. own borders, was broken off by mutual con- This “fix[ed] Palestinians in space, … di- sent, and Israelis returned to seeing them- minishing their perceived threat in the era of selves as enclaved residents of “a European a newly transnational Middle East” (p. 73) 500 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL and was structurally opposed to tourism to Reviewed by James Jankowski Israeli locales which “trafficked in exterior- ity and spatial expansiveness, stressing both “Peasant” is a word that has had different outdoor leisure and spiritual awakening” connotations at different times and in differ- (p. 90). Chapter Four examines the “melan- ent contexts. Such has certainly been the case cholic citizenship” (p. 98) of the residents in Egypt. The Power of Representation ana- of Abu Ghosh, a village with a long history lyzes the diverse understandings of the Egyp- of collaboration with Zionism, in their re- tian fallah, and occasionally the fallaha, as buffed attempts to be treated as co-nationals expressed in elite literature from the late 19th of a state which both uses and rejects them. until the early 20th century. But it does more The villagers’ attempts to produce food pal- as well: Through a close examination of rep- atable to the “culinary patriotism” (p. 97) of resentations of the peasantry, it also offers Israelis are presented as counterpoint “to the an illuminating account of the emergence of resistance paradigm which has dominated Egyptian national identity as well as a valu- scholarly work on Palestine” (p. 99) as well able emphasis on the continuing presence as to “the literature of performativity with and significance of Islamic sensibilities and its disproportionate investment in the resis- concepts in much of the era’s thought. tive effects of iterative processes” (p. 100). Originally a doctoral dissertation, the The final chapter moves forward to 2002 study is based on a wide assemblage of orig- and examines the effects of Palestinian inal sources, some previously untapped by bombings of civilian targets within Israel. Western scholars (including some relatively Stein claims that the media, in line with a unknown periodicals of the late 19th centu- particular class agenda, concentrated on ry, manuals of agricultural instruction, and attacks on cafes rather than on buses, and short stories and picaresque literature of the “told a story about Israeli consumption un- period). Solidly informed by the perspec- der attack” (p. 130). Israelis shifted from a tives found in contemporary anti-colonial discourse “remaking Arab spaces as proxi- scholarship, the study is remarkably skillful mate” (p. 8) to one once again emphasizing at teasing meaning out of these diverse ma- the “civilisational war” (p. 133) between terials. The result is an original and sophisti- European society and the Middle East. cated reinterpretation of the formative era of Stein, imbricating cultural theory and eth- Egyptian modernism and nationalism. nographic instantiation in a highly readable The work’s primary subject is the elite’s text, shows that this retreat into antagonism changing understanding of the Egyptian was an unavoidable consequence of seeing peasantry from the 1870s to the first decade peace as an opportunity for consumption of the 20th century and how the peasantry rather than as a time for concession, com- eventually became one of the mechanisms promise, and understanding. through which a modern nationalist understanding of the “imagined community” — Glenn Bowman, Senior Lecturer in Anthro- to borrow Benedict Anderson’s term — of pology at the University of Kent in Can- the Egyptian nation took shape. Successive terbury, United Kingdom, has worked in chapters trace a fascinating evolution. Elite Palestine since 1983. images of the Egyptian peasant and his con- dition in the 1870s and 1880s were over- whelmingly negative: The Egyptian peasant EGYPT was backward, benighted, and badly in need of “reform” directed by Egypt’s literate The Power of Representation: Publics, ‘afandi class. With a growing awareness of Peasants, and Islam in Egypt, by Michael Egypt as an agricultural country whose des- Ezekiel Gasper. Stanford, CA: Stanford tiny was in the hands of its rural cultivators, University Press, 2009. xi + 255 pages. by the 1890s a more positive assessment of Notes to p. 261. Bibl. to p. 281. Index to p. the fallah developed. The peasantry, while 294. $55. still in need of reform and guidance from above, was now portrayed as representative middle east journal M 501 of Egyptian permanence and authenticity, draws on only a few writings of the decade as having the truest understanding of rural from 1908 to 1918, when influential writers conditions, and simultaneously as capable such as Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid and Salama of acquiring “civilized” ‘afandi ways. By Musa and avant-garde journals such as al- the early 20th century yet other images took Sufur articulated their vision of the nation. shape: those of the peasant representing A fuller examination of the concepts of the genuine Egyptian values and virtues and of peasantry, reform, and the nation expressed peasantry and elite as part of the same pur- in this fruitful decade of intellectual pro- poseful national collective, “a single people duction would have been useful both for with a unitary fate” (p. 191). Thus evolving understanding the place of the peasant in images of the peasantry played a central Egyptian national consciousness, and for role in the consolidation of a firm sense of comprehending the respective importance Egyptian national identity. of religious versus secular strands in mod- Woven through these chapters discuss- ern Egyptian thought. ing representations of the fallah is an equal- ly important theme. Repeatedly, the study James Jankowski, University of Colorado demonstrates the presence and relevance of Islamic modernist thought in Egyptian Inside Egypt: The Land of the Pharaohs reformist literature of the period. The con- on the Brink of a Revolution, by John R. cept of the necessity of a balance between Bradley. Hampshire, UK and New York: the extremes of rigid adherence to past pat- Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. 229 pages. terns and blind imitation of the West, ini- Notes to p. 231. Index to p. 242. $24.95. tially articulated by Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and promoted thereafter by his disciples, is Reviewed by Jason Brownlee shown to have resonated through elite representations of themselves as well as through Inside Egypt depicts a callous police their views regarding peasant conditions state, pervaded by violence and ripe for revo- and agricultural reform. On the one hand, lution. Only a takeover by the Muslim Broth- ‘afandi understandings of their own leading ers, which author John Bradley deems un- role in society combined ideas of personal likely, could be worse than the despotism of rights, national duties, and Muslim virtue President Husni Mubarak and his ilk. Brad- in a self-representation that was simultane- ley lightens this bleak diagnosis with com- ously religious and modern; on the other, mentary from a recent tour. Nearly all of his their writings on the peasant and his condi- eight chapters include at least one interview tion viewed agricultural reform not merely with an Egyptian notable (such as religious in terms of technological improvements thinker Gamal al-Banna or columnist Salama made for the good of the nation, but also as Ahmed Salama) or a story about his travel a moral obligation imposed by Islam. companions (“Abbas” of Aswan, “Alaa” of This revisionist interpretation of modern Luxor). Beyond these tantalizing anecdotes, Egyptian intellectual history is convinc- specialists will find Bradley’s empirical ma- ingly demonstrated in the texts selected for terial offers much that they already knew or, analysis. Whether these texts tell the whole in some cases, already wrote. story of the reformist thought of the later In a “Note on Sources,” Bradley explains 19th and early 20th centuries is another ques- he opted against footnotes or “other aca- tion. The study deals only briefly with a demic clutter,” but names six authors whose few writers of the period whom it acknowl- writings “were particularly useful” (p. 231). edges as secularists (i.e., the discussion of Missing from the list is Ha’aretz journalist Shibli and Amin Shumayyil on p. 168), Zvi Bar’el, whose reporting appears to have and makes only passing reference to lead- been useful enough that it opens “Chapter ing intellectual journals of the era such as Four: The Bedouin” and provides discus- al-Hilal or al-Muqtataf. Although the work sion of the Sinai Bedouin’s suspect fealty states that it treats the period from the later 1870s to the Egyptian revolution of 1919, it 502 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL

(pp. 101-102, pp. 111-112).12 Bradley only written, when the plot details could be lifted credits Bar’el after these passages (for a sin- from three earlier news stories.67 gle quote on page 114). In the same chapter, The chapter closes with a recounting Bradley understates his debt to a study by of a media firestorm over two Egyptians the International Crisis Group (ICG), from tortured in Kuwait (pp. 145-146). As with which he appears to lift two sentences, in- the ICG and Saad Eddin Ibrahim excerpts, cluding 37 words of translated text from an Bradley’s quotes and associated text closely Al-Wafd newspaper article, without acknowl- match those of an English language passage edging they came from ICG (p. 107).23 available online.78In the next chapter, “Cor- The phenomenon of insufficient attribu- ruption,” he cites a Kefaya study for its data tion recurs in “Chapter Five: Torture,” where but not for the surrounding paragraphs he Bradley stitches together prior investiga- also uses (pp. 156-157).89 tions rather than offering new research. A Bradley’s undisclosed reliance on story of lethal police brutality comes across translations and other writers’ work partly through a patchwork of accounts by Marwa explains why he perceives a “grim reality Al-A’sar, Aziz El-Kaissouni, and Karim El- the people … can do little about” (p. 5). Khashab (pp. 121-124).34Language from Recent political critiques hardly register El-Khashab’s article features again, after inside his book, leaving Bradley ill-suited non-credited portions of a Washington Post to assess, much less build upon, a vibrant column by Saad Eddin Ibrahim, when Brad- literature — led by Abdel Halim Qandil, ley profiles the Egyptian security forces Tarek El-Bishri, and Ibrahim Eissa, among (pp. 140-141).45Between these passages, others — that has castigated the Egyptian the tales of extraordinary rendition victims state and expanded opportunities for dis- Mamdouh Habib and Usama Mostafa Has- sent. Content with his collage of second- san Nasr (aka “Abu Omar”) (pp. 132-135) ary texts, Bradley is nonplussed when he read almost verbatim, like Amnesty Inter- catches someone exploring ideas first- national’s exposé on torture in Egypt, right hand: “I had befriended [Ehab] on the train down to the “tiny cell with a dim amber to Cairo from Upper Egypt … A tall, thin, light” (p. 133) in which Habib was reported- and vulnerable-looking young man, he had ly confined after American agents brought been reading a newspaper in the train car- him to Cairo.56Soon after that section, Brad- riage I was traveling in. A young Egyptian ley turns a gruesome multiple murder in reading anything is enough of an oddity to southern Egypt (pp. 141-143) into a kind draw immediate attention; and I became of crime scene investigation (CSI): Beni more curious still when I noticed that he Mazar — easily read but even more easily was reading the opinion (rather than the sports or crime) page” (pp. 39-40). While Bradley ponders Ehab’s fondness for op-eds, his readers may wonder why his 1. Zvi Bar’el, “The tribal rules of the game,” Ha’aretz (online), October 22, 2007. 2. International Crisis Group (ICG), “Egypt’s Sinai Question,” January 30, 2007, p. 19. 6. Staff, “Key suspect in Egypt mass-mutila- 3. Karim El-Khashab, “No smoke without tion killings found innocent,” Daily News, Egypt fire?” Al-Ahram Weekly (online), August 23-29, (online), September 7, 2006; Unnamed staff, 2007; Marwa Al-A’sar, “Egyptian mother seeks “Innocent,” Al-Ahram Weekly (online), Septem- justice in child torture case,” http//: www.mon- ber 7-13, 2006; Pierre Loza, “Reasonable doubt stersandcritics.com, August 24, 2007; Aziz El- abounds,” Al-Ahram Weely (online), September Kaissouni, “Egyptian panel clears police of child 14-20, 2006. torture,” Reuters, September 6, 2007. 7. Eman Goma, “Egypt, Kuwait media trade 4. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, “Egypt’s Unchecked insults in war of words,” Kuwait Times (online), Repression,” Washington Post, August 21, 2007. September 5, 2007. 5. Amnesty International USA, “Egypt: Sys- 8. Kifaya, “Corruption in Egypt: The Black tematic abuses in the name of security,” April Cloud is Not Disappearing,” July 2006, pp. 120- 2007, pp. 33-34, 36-39. 121. middle east journal M 503 quotes from Arabic newspapers conform to the ex-air force general Husni Mubarak, online translations, even when he claims to who is approaching his 28th year in power. have “read [the article] through” (p. 181), and And now Egyptians face the prospect that why he ascribes his need for an interpreter to the President will seek to hand power over an interviewee’s “dogma” (p. 57).910Bradley’s to his son, Gamal, dusting off a succession basic problem, though, is not language but model last seen in Cairo in 1936, when King laziness — a failure to appreciate the state of Farouk inherited the throne from his father, the field and advance it through careful origi- Fuad. nal research. Hapless buyers of Inside Egypt As Colgate political scientist Bruce may regard it as an unsung paean to the local Rutherford’s new book suggests, Egyptian journalists, activists, and analysts whose bold democrats might instead prefer that Muba- sleuthing Bradley has repackaged. rak revive one or more institutions of the same so-called liberal constitutional era that Jason Brownlee is Assistant Professor of worked to check, rather than enhance, au- Government at the University of Texas at tocratic rule. It was a time when the press Austin and author of Authoritarianism in was freer than it is now, and when business, an Age of Democratization (Cambridge labor, and professional associations oper- University Press, 2007). ated outside stultifying state control, the Parliament mattered, and parties contested Egypt after Mubarak: Liberalism, Is- for power through meaningful elections. As lam, and Democracy in the Arab World, Rutherford shows, it is no accident that the by Bruce K. Rutherford. Princeton, NJ: most resilient counter to authoritarianism Princeton University Press, 2008. ix + 260 today is an Egyptian judiciary with roots pages. Bibl. to p. 278. Index. $35. in that same period. Somewhat more sur- prising, the weightiest opposition force in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, has moved Reviewed by Robert Vitalis closer to the liberals. The Brotherhood also has its origins in the 1920s, but as a move- So far, the autocrat who has governed ment with an ambiguous relationship at best modern Egypt longest is its “founder,” the to the constitution (“The Qur’an is our con- Albanian mercenary Mehmet ‘Ali Pasha. Af- stitution” was one of its original slogans). ter serving in the expeditionary force sent to According to Rutherford, the Brotherhood’s repel the invasion by Napoleon Bonaparte, vision of Islamic governance today parallels in 1805 Mehmet Ali went on to rule as the liberalism’s respect for rule of law, a cir- empire’s vassal or wali for the next 43 years. cumscribed role for the state, and respect for Nine of his descendants would succeed him, at least some basic rights. Business leaders variously, as walis, khedives, sultans, and pushing for a deepening of market reforms nominally sovereign kings, until a clique might be counted as allies of a sort to the of military officers overthrew the dynasty judges and the Brothers, and these partially and declared Egypt a republic in June 1953. converging ideological tendencies represent None of the progeny of Mehmet ‘Ali, how- one possible and — Rutherford hedges his ever, ruled as long as the current incumbent, bets — slow path away from autocracy, although not necessarily to democracy. Rutherford frames Egypt after Mubarak 9. “Foreign women threaten social fabric of as a contribution to two fields. One is to po- Luxor,” Al Bawaba website, n.d., http://www. litical science and its study of “hybrid” au- albawaba.com/en/news/210260/&mod=print, thoritarian systems. The other is to debates based on: Haggag Salama, “hamla fi madinat in Egypt and neighboring countries about al-aqsur li al-hadd min zawaj shababiha min the resiliency of Middle Eastern autocrats ajnabiyat” (“A Campaign in Luxor to Stop and what, if anything — short of invasion — the City’s Young Men from Marrying Foreign can and should be done to bring their rule to Women”), Asharq Al-Awsat (online), Febru- an end. Hybrid regimes are those in which ary 27, 2007. autocrats govern but do so while maintain- 504 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL ing a semblance of parliamentary life. Egypt the same claim about the resiliency of hybrid is one case among many inside and outside regimes (Jason Brownlee most recently) be- the Middle East. Rutherford says political fore ever going to the field or holing up in scientists have “long” been concerned with some archive, is it the method that really this type of regime, at least as far back as matters?212I wish that Rutherford had turned Juan Linz’s “classic” work Totalitarian and to a specific institution of social scientific Authoritarian Regimes (2000) and analysis investigation, namely a test his argument’s of the “long-lived” example of Mexico and “validity,” which would increase my confi- Malaysia. It was the contrast between, as they dence that the relationship he posits is a real were viewed then, the pure one-party states rather than spurious one. of Austria, Bulgaria, Greece, and Portugal Rutherford is much better at and more and the multiparty style authoritarian orders passionate about Egypt-watching (which is of Hungary, Rumania, Yugoslavia, Latvia, what readers of The Middle East Journal are and Lithuania that drove the original theo- likely to care about) than he is at theoriz- rizing by the professors of political science ing. His comparative analytical advantages, back in the 1930s. This was long before Ru- including his Arabic skills, really shine therford’s own teachers began their careers, through in his extended readings of Egyp- thus facilitating the discipline’s regular rein- tian court decisions from the 1990s. He of- vention of research programs.111Rutherford fers an invaluable account of judges strug- criticizes the newest scholarship and its gling to rein in the power of the executive puzzling over what turns out to be an old and extend civil liberties. His even more problem for its seemingly single-minded fo- impressive, parallel account of an evolving cus on election dynamics and, consequently, doctrine of a “liberal Islamic state” turns to its failure to analyze when particular hybrid the writings of Yusuf al-Qaradrawi, Tarik systems emerged and how the historical al-Bishri, Kamal Abu al-Majd, and Muham- context constrains the course of change. The mad Salim al-‘Awwa. Rutherford argues that criticism may be somewhat valid; however, a new generation in the Brotherhood began it is excessively broad and, as those who do to act on the principles put forth by these this work demonstrate, out of date. thinkers in promoting specific kinds of in- How does bringing history back matter stitutional reforms, for example, the proper to the validity and robustness of the work of drafting of legislation, in recognition of the his peers and their rival modes of analysis? limitations of Islamic constitutionalism in The best Rutherford can offer is the claim the abstract. It was a process that was “cut that knowledge of context would have led short” by the imprisonment of “the most dy- others to revise their exaggerated estimates namic leaders in the mid-1990s” (p. 130). of a government’s downward control of a In the later chapters of the book, Ru- polity, and revise estimates about the ob- therford reports on the political activities of stacles to consolidating democracy upward, Egyptian judges, the Muslim Brotherhood, since hybrid regimes have dashed the hopes and, in less detail, a part of the business of those who imagined the Middle East fol- community. As previously noted, he sees a lowing the path of Eastern European and certain affinity in the agendas of ostensibly Latin American “transitions.” (See pages rival liberal and Islamic constitutional polit- 22-23.) How does he know this? Did studies ical currents. And in tracing a third, weaker of other places go wrong for the same rea- commitment to liberalism — of the market, sons, or get the story right by studying institutional origins and path dependent change? He doesn’t say. And since others have made 2. Jason Brownlee, Authoritarianism in an Age of Democratization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Brownlee’s work com- 1. See Karl Loewenstein, “Militant Democ- bines historical and statistical methods, and he racy and Fundamental Rights” I and II, American makes clear that scholars have long concerned Political Science Review, Vol. 31, Nos. 3 and 4 themselves with the origins of authoritarian re- (1937), pp. 417-432 and 638-658. gimes. middle east journal M 505 if not the political variety — on the part of The conclusions of Egypt after Mubarak reform-minded business leaders in the past reinforce my argument. Instead of a discus- decade or so, he imagines the possibility of sion of the significance of his findings and increased, if tacit and piecemeal, forms of how they might be generalized, and the pos- cooperation among these groups in the fu- sible extensions and limits of, generously, ture. He also doubts that this convergence his theory, in the conventional fashion of the will amount to much, at least in the short social sciences, one instead finds Ruther- term. This reinforces the conclusion of the ford discussing “Egypt’s Political Future” newest wave of authoritarian Egypt stud- as if his audience is not professors but US ies — and few ever really doubted it — that policymakers. Rutherford reinforces the Mubarak’s security services and clientelistic emerging line that “liberal autocracy” is the NDP provides him with a formidable advan- better and more realistic alternative to “illib- tage over his opponents. eral democracy” that one increasingly finds Rutherford is most deeply engaged with repeated in the pundits’ blogs and position the recent scholarship on Egyptian consti- papers of the foreign policy think tanks. tutionalism by Nathan Brown and Tamir Moustafa and on Islamists and politics by Robert Vitalis, Professor of Political Sci- Raymond William Baker and Carrie Rosof- ence, University of Pennsylvania sky-Wickham. But Rutherford would have done a service had he clarified what new analysis he was bringing to the table. The IRAQ choice to frame Egypt after Mubarak as a broad theoretical alternative to authoritarian What Kind of Liberation? Women and election studies, with findings applicable the Occupation of Iraq, by Nadje Al-Ali across the Arab world, may be the price he and Nicola Pratt. Berkeley, CA and Lon- had to pay to a discipline that considers the don, UK: University of California Press, close readings of texts and getting the story 2009. xviii + 180 pages. Notes to p. 185. right to be of dubious value. Bibl. to p. 206. Index to p. 221. $24.95. It is regrettable that Rutherford chose to position the book in relation to a debate in Reviewed by Joyce N. Wiley political science to which he does not add much, and to offer an alternative “analytical This book is a “sophisticated one-coun- framework” that turns out to be a perfunc- try feminist case study” (p. xi), to use the tory history of the “historical-institutional words of Cynthia Enloe, who wrote the origins” of the Islamists and liberal constitu- Foreword. Authors Nadje Al-Ali, who has tionalists in the 1920s (although, strangely, family in Iraq, and Nicola Pratt highlight not of the organized Egyptian business sec- the ways US actions in Iraq have combined tor that dates back to the same decade).313 with pervasive violence and lawlessness to deprive Iraqi women of rights and freedoms they previously had, despite the vocal commitment of US officials to Iraqi women. The 3. Egypt’s oldest industrial interest group, the As- authors document the deterioration in Iraqi sociation and later Federation of Egyptian Industries women’s circumstances and position and was founded in 1922 and is no more a “product of show that the causes were “discriminatory Nasser-era corporatism” (p. 205, fn. 25), than is the policies, oppressive practices, and violence” Bar Association. Most of the research done in the 1990s contradicts his image of a business communi- (p. 2), not religion and culture as some ty, or at least a big business community, distinct from would have it. They note the wide range of the state and seeking to enlarge its distance from it. Islamic opinion on gender roles and rela- My own old work on the liberal era makes clear that tions and argue that President George W. what John Waterbury in 1983 called a “symbiosis” Bush’s talk about “women’s rights” while of businessmen and state officials during the infitah American troops occupied Iraq created a era is traceable to the colonial era for foreign capital- backlash against women’s rights and under- ists and the 1920s for the Egyptian upstarts. mined Islamic opinions more favorable to 506 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL women’s rights (p. 14). the 1959 law had treated all communities The authors’ methodology consisted of as one, promoting national unity and giving interviewing over 100 Iraqi women between state protection to women, the reversion to 2004 and 2007, a period during which in- communal laws does the opposite. Women’s security in the 15 Arab-majority provinces efforts to abolish Article 41 got little outside of Iraq forced the researchers to concentrate support, but they did manage to “change the on the women of Iraqi Kurdistan and the position of some political parties, including diaspora. Their interview data is supple- Fadila,” a Shi‘a party (p. 118). mented with internationally available statis- The last chapter is devoted to con- tics and good academic sources. In Chapter clusions about the relationship between one the position of Iraqi women before the women’s rights and military intervention. 2003 invasion is described, with justifiable The authors conclude that Iraqi women are weight accorded to the 1959 Personal Sta- suffering because no one is defending their tus Code, which was based on a progressive rights, because the occupation has eroded interpretation of Islam, which gave Iraqi the institutions that contribute to national women equal inheritance rights while limit- unity, and because military intervention ing polygamy and unilateral divorce. legitimizes violence, silencing those who The 2003 invasion brought profound would defend human rights and challenge losses for Iraqi women as public safety van- patriarchal practices. Even so, the authors ished and unemployment soared. Violence see “rays of hope in grassroots-based activi- and criminality prevented women from parties and campaigns of Iraqi women activists ticipating in public life. Communal groups across the country” (p. 180), an optimism controlling various parts of the country that may prove warranted if law and order forced female university students to don replace war in Iraq. veils and even killed professional women and female political candidates and their Joyce N. Wiley, Distinguished Professor family members. Trafficking in women for Emerita, University of South Carolina prostitution became a feature of the criminal Upstate economy. Trapped in their homes, women were increasingly the victims of domestic The Other Iraq: Pluralism and Culture violence, so-called “honor killings,” and sui- in Hashemite Iraq, by Orit Bashkin. Stan- cide. The country’s falling standard of living ford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. disproportionately affected women. Of the 274 pages. Notes to p. 324. Bibl. to p. 348. 11% of Iraqi households headed by women, Index to p. 364. $65. 27.8% were “extremely poor” in 2004 com- pared to 13.4% of male-headed households Reviewed by Donna Robinson Divine (p. 74). Better off women activists responded by starting charities for the extremely poor A book written to explain an earlier era women and orphans of Baghdad. sometimes takes on a new and startling rel- Groups represented on the US-appoint- evance in a later one. This is the case with ed Iraqi Governing Council voted in Decem- Orit Bashkin’s ambitious and meticulous ber 2003 to replace the 1959 personal status anatomy of Iraq’s political culture under the law with a more conservative interpretation Hashemite monarchs. Bashkin focuses on of Islam. Women activists protested by the how intellectuals and political activists in thousands, and after ten weeks the head of Iraq understood the nation-building project the Coalition Provisional Authority, L. Paul thrust upon them in the aftermath of World Bremer, decided not to sign the decree into War I and the dismantling of the Ottoman force. Communal groups were in a strong Empire. Bashkin’s book not only antici- position after the 2005 elections, however, pates many of the troubles encountered in and Article 41 of the hastily written 2005 Iraq today, but it also supplies a vocabulary Constitution abolished the Personal Status with which to talk about them and about the Law of 1959, giving control over family law breach between political theory and political back to clerics in the various sects. Whereas middle east journal M 507 practice. ate, to fight against oppression and colonial- Bashkin addresses the vexed questions ism; to reshape Iraqi culture; and for some, to still raised in discussions of contempo- liberate women. Many embraced the study of rary Iraq of whether the country’s politi- history as not only worthy of sustained schol- cal discourse embraces both the nation as arship but also as a sacred task. History was geographically configured and the norms understood to be a basic component of Arab and values associated with democratic free- identity. Without knowing their own history, doms. Admittedly, to locate these political these intellectuals argued, Arabs could not and cultural norms, Bashkin elevates certain know who they were or what they would be works and kinds of writing at the expense of able to do. But the books about Iraq’s history others, but what she has assembled and ex- were, of course, written in the shadow of ad- amined — major and minor studies of his- justing to the country’s newly defined status tory and society published during the years and territorial configuration. Thus, although of Hashemite rule, newspaper articles, and the intellectuals Bashkin studies called Iraq poetry that served as a call to arms against their homeland and spoke about an Iraq that a British-sponsored monarch whose origins could instill a national identity and loyalty in in another Arab land seemed to contradict its citizens, they did not all map their home- the supposed post-Ottoman correspondence land in accordance with its borders. They between nation and state — is absolutely sometimes charted it through language, tribe, critical to understanding Iraq then and now. urban culture, or even as a consequence of Who were the people who created and minority status. deployed this humanistic discourse? They Writing truthfully about Iraq and its were teachers, journalists, writers, and po- political failures entailed serious risk and ets. Some came to work in Iraq from other physical danger, but it nonetheless marked Arab countries; some, born in Iraq, lived in a narrative present in many newspapers and exile, physically cut off from their home- championed by several prominent political land but still connected to it through their movements. Indeed, the ideas disseminated writing. They were the educated and privi- through the media often sprang from the leged who understood that the residents of discussions in club meetings or from infor- the worst slums or the most impoverished mal salon-type gatherings. One prominent villages must surely have felt a sense of social-democratic movement — al-Ahali — despair as the gulf between rich and poor was also the name of a newspaper. For some, widened during Hashemite rule. Intellectu- journalism became their career and advocacy als offered valuable insight into the diverse for a free press their mission. “Representing and complex social structures within Iraq’s themselves as both democratic and patriotic, borders and the many forms of injustice and journalists hoped that newspapers would give suffering experienced by those marginalized voice to popular grievances. The concept of by class, gender, and social status. public opinion (ra’y ‘amm) was thus central Bashkin is not the first scholar to raise in all newspaper editorials ... The self-image questions about Iraq’s failure to establish a of journalists as national speakers of popular democracy or its seemingly aborted attempts anti-British sentiment was prevalent through- to instill in its citizens an absolute commit- out the 1920s” (p. 28). For others, movements ment to the state’s institutions. Nor is she the backing social justice set the agenda for their first to excavate and interpret the writings of life’s work and the tone of their opposition to the country’s writers and thinkers. But she is the established regime and the policies that the first to suggest that while the intelligentsia wreaked so much havoc and did so much enshrined freedom as an ideal and spoke of damage to the poor. In the stirring words of Iraq as homeland, it could not find ways to Ma’ruf al-Rusafi, “I speak my mind about the overcome the breach between the theories it government, and do not fear those who argue embraced and the policymaking realities it that I am an extremist” (p 46). too often conceded as necessary. Many intellectuals were attracted to Most Iraqi intellectuals believed they had ideologies that brought together European multiple missions: to help educate the illiter- ideas with local Arab and Muslim traditions. 508 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL

Ijtihad was often defined as reason and de- The Iraqi Refugees: The New Crisis in mocracy was said to allow every individual the Middle East, by Joseph Sassoon. Lon- the opportunity to fulfill the Muslim writ “to don, UK and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2009. command Right and forbid Wrong” (p. 22). xvi + 170 pages. Notes to p. 211. Bibl to p. Still, the complex ideology that attracted in- 238. Index to p. 247. $75. tellectuals often made it difficult to recruit a mass following. Not surprisingly, some Reviewed by Sarah Kenyon Lischer thinkers, distressed at the glacial pace of change in the country, argued that circum- Since 2003, an estimated two million Iraq- stances demanded ideological compromise is have fled to neighboring countries, creating and collaboration with the dictators who at a massive humanitarian crisis and a risk of least claimed to share some of their progres- regional destabilization.114Overall, the interna- sive social and economic goals. But such tional reaction to the crisis has been apathetic, expectations were doomed as military rulers stingy, and sometimes hostile. Joseph Sassoon were prepared to co-opt the progressive left convincingly demonstrates the pressing need while barring its members from designing to address the plight of the refugees, for both and implementing projects of social change humanitarian and political reasons. His com- that involved redistributing resources or that prehensive treatment of the current Iraqi dis- made a difference for the masses. Hence placement crisis provides a valuable service Bashkin’s observation: “Whether collabo- to academics and policymakers who seek to rating with or persecuted by colonizers or understand and respond to this issue. Readers local political elites, Iraqi intellectuals were will benefit from the author’s extensive expe- deemed at best, impotent in the face of po- rience and field research in the region. litical oppression and, at worst, responsible Sassoon organizes Chapters one through for many of their country’s miseries” (p. 1). four geographically by host country, with In her conclusion, Bashkin offers some particular attention to Jordan and Syria, tentative reasons for the failures to translate which have received the vast majority of the what she describes as a relatively vibrant refugees. Chapter four deals briefly with the democratic discourse into a blueprint for other countries hosting refugees in the Middle the nation’s politics. She mentions the dif- East and the rest of the world. Chapters five ference in priorities among the advocates through seven take a more thematic approach for democracy. But the discourse may have and address the role of humanitarian organi- contained not simply differences over prior- zations, the “brain drain” from Iraq, and the ities but rather hardened and deeply rooted issue of return. contradictory impulses. Those intellectuals In the first four chapters, Sassoon ex- determined to bring an end to British influ- plains that the Iraqi refugees suffer from ence and control found inspiration in such many of the same problems that plague the non-democratic leaders as Mustafa Kemal in various host states, including lack of access Turkey or Reza Shah in Iran, leaving those to legal employment, education, and health- who sought to bring freedom to their coun- care. The majority of refugee children are try faced with the heretical notion of need- now woefully behind in their education. ing more — not less — intervention from The shortage of medical care has led to a Great Britain, the power widely deemed to be the reason for Iraq’s miseries. 1. Statistics from the United Nations High Donna Robinson Divine, Morningstar Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Iraq Op- Family Professor of Jewish Studies and eration, “Monthly Statistical Update on Return Professor of Government, Smith College — April 2009,” http://unhcr.org.iq/IndexPage- Files/FirstPageStatstic/20090430/Return%20 Update%20IRAQ%20APR%202009.pdf. How- ever, these numbers have limited reliability; UN- HCR admits that the number of Iraqi refugees in neighboring countries is “unknown.” middle east journal M 509 rapid deterioration of refugees’ physical ing of attention to the Iraqi displacement and mental health. Exclusion from the legal crisis. Scholarly articles have begun to ad- workforce has forced refugees into poorly dress the crisis, but few books have done so. compensated and illegal jobs. Economic Despite its shortcomings, Sassoon’s book desperation also has caused a rise in prosti- provides a solid and essential building block tution and child labor. In addition, since nei- for future scholarship and an important tool ther Jordan nor Syria has signed the 1951 for present-day policymakers. Convention relating to the Status of Refu- gees, the refugees live in constant fear of Sarah Kenyon Lischer is Assistant Profes- deportation. sor of Political Science at Wake Forest The thematic chapters, especially the University. ones on the “brain drain” and refugee return, provide more in-depth analysis and background information than the geographically LIBYA organized chapters. Particularly enlighten- ing is Sassoon’s linkage of Iraq’s economic Qaddafi’s Libya in World Politics, by conditions over the past 20 years with the Yehudit Ronen. Boulder, CO and London, current brain drain, which has seen the mass UK: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2008. x + exodus of skilled professionals from the 205 pages. Acron. and Abbrev. to p. 208. country. He asks the essential question about Bibl. to p. 223. Index to p. 241. About the this phenomenon, “Can Iraq’s brain drain book to p. 243. $55. be reversed, how does it compare with the experiences of other countries and what are Reviewed by Ronald Bruce St John the long-term implications for the country?” (p. 149) Frustratingly, he does not give suf- Professor Yehudit Ronen, a senior fel- ficient attention to answering that question. low at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle The difficulty inherent in such a timely Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv Uni- book is maintaining its relevance despite con- versity, sets out to chronicle Libyan foreign stant changes in the situation, such as shifting policy since Mu‘ammar al-Qadhafi came to population flows and political circumstances. power on September 1, 1969. In so doing, For example, rapid and unpredictable modi- she promises a book, “based largely on Lib- fications can occur in host states’ policies, yan and other primary Arab sources,” which such as visa permissions and access to social “offers insight into Libya’s foreign relations services. One important way to increase the throughout Qadhafi’s prolonged tenure” book’s staying power is by offering a thor- (p. 1). Instead, she provides a factually ac- ough analysis that transcends data points. curate, workmanlike discussion of selected Another strategy is to provide background events, based largely on newspaper, journal, information that is usually missing from and periodical articles, along with radio and think tank and non-governmental organiza- television reports, which offers little new in- tion (NGO) reports. Sassoon supplies that formation, interpretation, or insight. analysis and background to some extent; The structure of the book is thematic, as however, he could have further boosted the opposed to chronological, with one or more book’s long-term significance by proposing chapters dedicated to Libya’s relations with more policy recommendations based on his the United States, Soviet Union, Arab world, extensive scholarship and first-hand experi- and Africa. This approach is convenient for ence. For example, he convincingly demon- readers interested in one or more themes, strates the vital nature of the property issue say Libyan relations with the Soviet Union for refugee return, but then provides only or its approach to pan-Arabism; however, it a single paragraph of comparison with the results in unproductive, tiresome repetition Bosnian case (p. 162). when the book is read front to back. For ex- Surprisingly, the massive numbers of ample, the same or similar information on refugees and their potential for regional de- Sayf al-Islam al-Qadhafi, Islamist activism, stabilization have not prompted an outpour- pan-Arabism, weapons of mass destruction, 510 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL

Lockerbie, and chemical weapons is repeat- toward the European Union, France, Italy, ed ad nauseam in many of the eight substan- Germany, Great Britain, Russia, and Spain. tive chapters making up the book. This is a serious oversight in a book which In addition, the author’s treatment of the author describes as “germane to a vari- themes and events is oddly selective. In a ety of fields of inquiry,” including “security relatively short examination of Libyan for- and strategic studies in the Cold War period eign policy over the last four decades, she as well as in the increasingly globalized af- devotes an entire chapter to Libya’s involve- termath, oil-state politics, and the study of ment in Uganda and a second chapter to terrorism” (pp. 1-2). In many areas of con- its intervention in Chad. Both events were temporary Libyan foreign policy, European singularly important moments in Libyan policies have been at least as important as foreign policy; however, they were only part those of the United States. For example, a of the broader story of Qadhafi’s approach thorough discussion of European policies to Africa after 1969. In this period, Libyan toward Libya is essential to comprehending policy goals were grounded in the elimina- Libya’s reluctance to become too deeply in- tion of Western, especially Israeli, influence volved in the Euro-Mediterranean Partner- in Africa. They included the closure of for- ship (relaunched in 2008 as the Union for eign military bases, opposition to apartheid, the Mediterranean), Qadhafi’s opposition to support for African liberation movements, Western involvement in Africa, and the re- the propagation of Islam, and control of the gional and international significance of the natural resources of Africa. The author’s Libyan leader’s elevation to the Chairman- failure to assess in any detail Libya’s early ship of the Africa Union. role in Africa outside Chad and Uganda Where the analysis in Qaddafi’s Libya in leads to confusion as to the origins, goals, World Politics is good, it is often very good. and direction of recent Libyan initiatives. Unfortunately, the structure of the book and While the author argues that the ends of the selective choice of subject material com- Libyan policy in Africa after 1999 “have not bine to result in an incomplete portrait of varied” from earlier periods but “the means contemporary Libyan foreign policy. These have undergone far-reaching change” (p. shortcomings are readily apparent in the 197), a compelling case for the reverse argu- concluding chapter, which is less than four ment can be made. After 1999, the issues of pages long, and in this brief space, the better apartheid, colonialism, and neocolonialism part of three pages is devoted to a cursory were passé and were seldom mentioned ex- discussion of the domestic policies of the cept in a rhetorical context. The former em- Qadhafi regime with no real effort to link phasis on Islam was also much diminished. this new material to the foreign policy issues There was still an anti-Israeli element in previously discussed. In the end, this book Libyan policy, but Israel was no longer the can be recommended only to Libyan spe- central concern of its policies in the region. cialists and others with some prior knowl- Instead, Qadhafi focused on African unity, edge of Middle East foreign policy. They are championing a United States of Africa. The the readers most likely to appreciate the in- means that Libya used to pursue its goals in formed analysis in its stronger sections while Africa after 1999 were highly reminiscent of also being capable of filling in the blanks in those employed in the earlier period in that the less-developed sections of the book. they revolved around involvement in regional conflicts and peacekeeping along with copi- Ronald Bruce St John, an independent ous amounts of aid, trade, and investment. scholar, is author of Libya: From Colony to Ronen also largely ignores Libya’s rela- Independence (Oneworld, 2008), His- tionship with Europe over the past two de- torical Dictionary of Libya (Scarecrow cades, especially the periods after the United Press, 1991, 1998, 2006) and Libya and Nations suspended multilateral sanctions in 1999 and permanently lifted them in 2003. the United States: Two Centuries of Strife There is little or no mention, and certainly no (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002). detailed analysis, of recent Libyan policies middle east journal M 511

TURKEY retical questions about the definition and evolution of Islamic parties. He argues that Secularism and Muslim Democracy in “the AKP evolved in reaction to the authori- Turkey, by M. Hakan Yavuz. Cambridge, tarian, and somewhat messianic, leadership UK and New York: Cambridge University of Necmettin Erbakan: against his anti-sys- Press, 2009. xvi + 281 pages. Bibl. to p. 294. temic and confrontational National Outlook Index to p. 301. $90 cloth; $32.99 paper. philosophy” (p. 3). The old Kemalist Tur- key “is in fact senile” (p. 43), while the new Turkey does “not seek an Islamic polity but Reviewed by Michael M. Gunter rather the freeing of religion from state con-

trol and the removal of obstacles to living a In November 2002 Recep Tayyip Er- religious life” (p. 4). dogan’s Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (AKP, The second section analyzes the socio-po- or Justice and Development Party), a party litical origins of the AKP, giving great empha- with roots in Islamic politics, swept to pow- sis to the policies of Turgut Ozal, which led to er in Turkey, a state renowned as secular by “the emergence of new economic opportunity virtue of its founder, Kemal Ataturk, and his spaces and the evolution of a new set of actors” institutionalized Kemalist ideology. This (p. 45). The rise of an Anatolian bourgeoisie great AKP victory was then solidified over “has been at the center of the ‘silent revolution’, determined military and Kemalist opposi- and the democratization and liberalization of tion in an even greater electoral victory in Islamic actors have been very much achieved July 2007. How did all this happen and what by this bourgeoisie” (p. 11). As opposed to the are its implications for secularism, moder- older Istanbul-based business class largely rep- nity, democracy, and Islam in Turkey and resented by TUSIAD (The Turkish Industrial- the larger Islamic world? ists’ and Businessmen’s Association), the new Having studied this subject both broadly Anatolian bourgeoisie, as largely represented and deeply, Professor Yavuz offers us an by MUSIAD (The Independent Industrialists’ original analysis along theoretical and em- and Businessmen’s Association), “are first- pirical lines that demands close scholarly as generation college graduates and often part well as policy attention. He notes, for exam- of the Anatolian-based petty bourgeoisie who ple, that “a slow institutional and behavioral benefited from Ozal’s neo-liberal economic Islamization process has been going on in policies, which increased social mobility and Turkey since the mid-1980s” (p. 262), but allowed them to establish their own middle- that “it would be a mistake to read this Is- and small-size businesses” (p. 52). In addi- lamization as purely negative. It has played tion, “this new bourgeoisie . . . challenges old an important role in the ongoing economic Orientalist assumptions about Islam and its development of the country and, as a result, incompatibility with capitalism” (p. 54). “Not many Muslims have become more moder- unlike the Christian Protestant Calvinists of the ate” (p. 263). “The AKP is an outcome of sixteenth century, happiness is defined in terms the transformation of liberal Islam, directed of profit and the struggle to get ahead” (p. 77). by four socio-political factors: the new Ana- Yavuz also imputes major importance tolian bourgeoisie, the expansion of the pub- to the unintended results of the military’s lic sphere and the new Muslim intellectuals, silent coup of February 28, 1997 against Er- the [EU’s] Copenhagen criteria, and the bakan’s Islamic-led coalition. The February February 28 soft coup” (p. 78). Throughout 28 process fragmented Erbakan’s Islamic his study, the author incisively illustrates movement into two competing groups, how these four factors have led to the point one of which emerged as today’s moderate where what originated as a Turkish Islamic AKP. The coup “taught Erdogan to realize political movement has evolved into an a- or the parameters of democracy and the power non-Islamic, conservative democratic party of the secularist establishment, and forced based on neo-liberal economic beliefs. him to become a moderate and a democrat” Yavuz’s analysis consists of three sec- (p. 68). Another chapter focuses on the lives tions, the first of which raises various theo- and roles of Erdogan and Abdullah Gul, the 512 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL

AKP’s two main leaders. Yavuz describes for it remains to be seen. The author’s third and final section be- Hopefully, Yavuz will continue to steep him- gins by examining “the key debate over self in this and the other important questions the realignment of the boundary between analyzed in this book with his next book, religion and politics” (p. 144). Subsequent which will be eagerly awaited by scholars, chapters deal with the Kurdish issue — “the policymakers, and the well-informed public most difficult challenge the country is facing who, for now, will benefit greatly from his today” (p. 280) — as well as foreign policy, present rich analysis. the EU accession process, the Cypriot issue, and US-Turkish relations within the context Michael M. Gunter is Professor of Political of the US war in Iraq since 2003. Yavuz of- Science at Tennessee Technological Uni- fers another major insight by detailing the versity and most recently the author of The “Islamization of the Kurdish question” (p. Kurds Ascending: The Evolving Solution 173) and how this has complicated it, a to the Kurdish Problem in Iraq and Turkey situation hitherto little appreciated, at least (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). among most Western observers: “Aside from the PKK, Kurdish nationalism has worked within Islamic networks” (p. 179). ART AND CINEMA Given his Islamic mindset, however, “Erdo- gan does not grasp the origins and demands of the Kurdish problem because he has little Displaced Allegories: Post-Revolutionary sense of ethnic or civic nationalism. His Iranian Cinema, by Negar Mottahedeh, dominant identity is Muslim and he thinks Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008. that Islamic identity will magically solve xiii + 199 pages. Illust. Bibl. Index. $21.95. the Kurdish problem” (p. 190). Neverthe- less, “as a result of its skillful positioning Reviewed by Dina Iordanova in the ideological marketplace, the AKP received a sizeable vote in the ethnic Kurdish I agree with Hamid Naficy’s remark regions, having portrayed itself as the party found on the back cover of this volume: fi- of opposition to the ‘system,’ while be- nally, there is a book that analyzes Iranian ing ‘sensitive’ to the Kurdish problem” (p. cinema by applying “an innovative, sus- 186). Unfortunately, “the AKP government tained, and rigorous analysis of it using film has failed to develop any coherent policy … theory.” The perceptive and lucid introduc- suggesting that the government’s only solution to Negar Mottahedeh’s book is likely tion has been to sweep the issue under the to be included on the reading list for every rug of complacency” (p. 173). course on Iranian cinema from now on, as The final chapter and conclusion ana- it articulates important observations on non- lyze the causes and political consequences Western cinematic traditions and simultane- of the crisis in 2007 over the AKP attempt to ously displays excellent command of femi- elect one of its own to the presidency, one of nist film theory, semiotics, apparatus theory, the final Kemalist strongholds. Yavuz may and reveals a deep understanding of the dis- have prematurely interpreted the AKP’s re- course on national cinemas. The argument is sulting electoral triumph as “the end of dual developed in an admirably succinct manner: sovereignty [between the AKP and the mili- in its “attempt to cleanse its technologies tary/Kemalists]” (p. 268) by dismissing too from the corrupting effects of Westerniza- lightly the Constitutional Court’s failure by tion and its stance against voyeurism,” Iran’s a lone vote to ban the AKP shortly after the post-revolutionary film tradition in effect led election. As a result of this near-death expe- to producing a cinema that is “the apotheo- rience, a chastised AKP seemingly has sur- sis of 1970s gaze theory” (p. 2). Anchored rendered its reforming zeal in return for the in analyzing heritage and ideology (in par- military/Kemalist coalition’s willingness to ticular the specific Shi‘ite attitude towards allow it to continue to govern. Whether or the use of new technologies), the analysis not the AKP will eventually resume the role reveals the importance of the veiled female middle east journal M 513 body shown on the screen as it relates to the The most important promise of the study “acknowledged presence of the projected was Mottahedeh’s goal to “demonstrate the male viewer in front of the screen” (p. 13). paramount significance of enunciation and The three chapters of the book implement code-related analyses to the study of inter- these ideas onto concrete material, extracted national film,” an ambitious undertaking from the work of key figures of the post- provided it takes place in a field that has revolutionary period: Barham Bayza’i, Ab- traditionally treated cinema as a medium bas Kiarostami, and Mohsen Makhmalbaf. that is capable of communicating globally Familiarity with all the texts is pre-supposed, mostly because of the assumption that Hol- and indeed, many nuances of the commen- lywood’s visual language was “universal tary only make sense if the reader already and hence legible across national boundar- has seen the films that are discussed. The ies” (p. 12). Indeed, everybody who works first chapter, which takes close to half of the on non-Western film material feels the time book’s volume, deals with Bayza’i Bashu, has come to give greater attention to devel- gharibeye koochak/Bashu: The Little Strang- oping a framework that allows for a more er (1987), Shayad Vaghti Deegar/Maybe … adequate study of other film traditions. Even Some Other Time (1988), and Mosaferan/The if focused exclusively on Iranian cinema, Travellers (1992), an investigation which is Mottahedeh’s effort makes an important richly illustrated with a selection of frames, contribution to the shared project of devel- sometimes explored shot by shot, in a profes- oping the study of international film. That sionally executed sequence analysis. “cinematic visuality is culturally and politi- The second chapter focuses predomi- cally informed, and that the narrative image nantly on Kiarostami’s films Zire darakha- arises out of these determining structures” tan zeyton/Through the Olive Threes (1994), (p. 12) is shown particularly persuasively in Bad ma ra khahad bord/The Wind Will Carry her work. In the context of current efforts Us (1999), and Ten (2002). Here the inves- to apply robust theoretical understanding tigation includes matters of production and to non-Western traditions in cinema, Mot- reception of Iranian cinema at the interna- tahedeh’s study is an important contribution tional festival circuit. The idea of “displaced to the growing body of other pioneering allegory” receives its best articulation in works (such as Laura Marks’ on Arab film, showing how the “rules of modesty” applied Pavle Levi’s on Yugoslav cinema, Asuman to presenting gender relations in film also Suner’s on Turkish, and Lalitha Gopalan’s serve as an allegory “of the conditions of the and Bhaskar Sarkar’s on Indian1).15 film industry itself” (p. 103). In the third chapter, the author touches Dina Iordanova, Professor of Film Studies, on Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Gabbeh (1996) University of St Andrews and correlates the study of Iranian cinema to matters of the study of other non-Western traditions, thus bringing to the foreground important methodological considerations related to the shortcomings of the current 1. Laura Marks, The Skin of the Film: Inter- cultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses Western-centric interpretative framework. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000); This is an elegant book in which the Pavle Levi, Disintegration in Frames: Aesthetics argument is kept tightly focused and does and Ideology in the Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav not waste energy in bringing more material Cinema (Stanford, CA: Stanford University in (but would have benefited from a con- Press, 2007); Asuman Suner, New Turkish Cin- clusion that complements the introductory ema: Belonging, Identity and Memory (London, pages). Mottahedeh makes an important UK: I.B. Tauris, 2009); Lalitha Gopalan, Cinema general point in systematically showing of Interruptions: Action Genres in Contempo- that various established concepts and genres rary Indian Cinema (London: BFI, 2002); and (melodrama, realism) may not be directly Bhaskar Sarkar, Mourning the Nation: Indian applicable to the internal logic of non-West- Cinema in the Wake of Partition (Durham, NC: ern cinematic traditions. Duke University Press, 2009). 514 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY World constitute a major theme of the book. Looking back on the period, Newsom sums AND MEMOIRS up some broad lessons for US policymakers in a final chapter entitled “Reflections.” Witness to a Changing World, by David Subscribers to The Middle East Journal D. Newsom. Washington, DC: New Aca- are most likely to turn to the chapters where demia Publishing, 2008. x + 357 pages. Newsom describes his time in newly indepen- Notes to p. 366. Index to p. 372. $23.99. dent Pakistan, Iraq under the Hashemite monarchy, the State Department Office of Arabian Peninsula Affairs during the Suez Crisis and Reviewed by David L. Mack revolutions in both Lebanon and Iraq, the Of- fice of North African Affairs in the early 1960s This book is of value to three readerships when Algeria gained independence, Libya in — diplomats and their families, observers of the four years preceding the September 1969 international developments from the decline of revolution, and as Undersecretary of State global empires to the modern era, and scholars from March 1978 to February 1981. of the Middle East and Muslim world. Events during Newsom’s tenure as Un- Witness to a Changing World is the per- dersecretary included President Jimmy Cart- sonal memoir of a leading career diplomat er’s Camp David summit for peace between of the US Foreign Service. The late David Israel and Egypt, the Soviet invasion of Af- Newsom’s nearly 34 years with the State ghanistan, and the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Department was preceded by travel to Asia Developments following those momentous and Africa as a correspondent on the eve of events have marked US foreign policy in the World War II and wartime service as an in- Middle East until the present day. . telligence officer in the US Navy. After he A warning is in order. Anyone expecting retired from the Foreign Service in February dramatic revelations regarding these events 1981, Newsom spent the following 27 years or juicy tales of intrigue is likely to be dis- as an educator on the craft of foreign policy appointed. Newsom tells some great stories, and international relations of the late 20th and but they are more in the nature of wry foot- early 21st centuries. notes to history. He was often preoccupied Whether you knew Ambassador Newsom with the details of essential diplomatic work or not, it is hard to resist the charming man- that only lead to headlines when diplomacy ner in which he tells his story and that of his fails to curb the human instinct to excess. family. In assignments as varied as Karachi, It is clear that Secretary of State Cyrus Oslo, Baghdad, and London, the Newsoms Vance and his successor, Secretary Edmund experienced both hardships and joy against Muskie, relied heavily on Newsom to cover a background of momentous events. As US for them on crises around the globe while Ambassador to Libya, Indonesia, and the they were focusing on matters they judged Philippines, as Assistant Secretary for Afri- to require their direct involvement or that can Affairs, and as Undersecretary for Politi- of Deputy Secretary Warren Christopher. cal Affairs, Newsom was a principal formu- Newsom’s memoir successfully conveys this lator and implementer of policy. He was also reality as it jumps from issue to issue, which a trusted advisor to other senior officials who some readers will find confusing. Based on have constitutional responsibility for the for- my experience, it delivers a sobering dose eign policy of the United States. of reality for those who want to grasp the When Newsom first traveled abroad as complexity of conducting foreign policy on a foreign correspondent in 1940, the domi- a global stage. The President and Secretary nant political institutions of Asia and Africa of State may decide to concentrate their per- were the empires of Japan, Great Britain, The sonal attention on a few issues at a time, but Netherlands, Portugal, and France. Inevitably, they rely on people like Newsom to make the struggles of decolonization and the emer- sure that other issues do not become world gence of assertive nation states and ambitious crises due to their inattention. leaders of what used to be called the Third The Arab-Israeli conflict was evidently middle east journal M 515 not at the top of Undersecretary Newsom’s Reviewed by Robert Looney assignments. Nonetheless, at various places he mentions that Arab-Israeli issues were Prior to 1950, Middle Eastern countries having a negative impact on our bilateral re- experienced some of the lowest levels of lations throughout the broad swath of states socioeconomic development in the world. from Indonesia to Morocco. However, in the 1960s and 1970s the region On the subject of the Iranian Revolution, experienced nearly universal robust eco- Newsom describes the Shah’s state of mind nomic growth. While many anticipated that during their meeting in July 1978, but he the higher oil prices of the 1970s would sus- does not go into detail regarding the hectic tain this momentum, gross domestic prod- maneuvering of the US government as the uct (GDP) growth per worker in the Middle Iranian monarchy collapsed. Newsom pro- East decelerated in that decade. In the 1980s vides some information which is new (to me, and 1990s, GDP growth per worker was less at least) regarding the lobbying efforts of US than 1% per year. While growth picked up supporters of the Shah for his entry into the somewhat with the oil boom in the first de- United States. That led to the second seizure cade of the 21st century, the growing income of US diplomats in Tehran and their 444 days gap with Asia and other parts of the develop- of captivity. Newsom became one of sev- ing world has persisted. The region’s chronic eral senior State Department officials deal- unemployment, the highest in the world, has ing with the hostage crisis. While providing shown little tendency to abate, even during some interesting details, Newsom avoids tak- the recent period of high oil prices. ing sides on the controversies within the US The Middle East’s strategic and econom- government regarding how best to approach ic importance has helped spawn numerous the new Iranian government. volumes in recent years devoted to identifying For the most part, Newsom is silent on the factors responsible for the region’s eco- the scandals and infighting of the Carter Ad- nomic struggles. A wide range of explanations ministration, the period when he was work- for the region’s economic underperformance ing at the highest level for a career diplomat have been advanced, including structural eco- in the State Department. In short, this is not nomic imbalances, the so-called “curse” of a “kiss and tell” memoir. His observations natural resource abundance, deficient political are thoughtful rather than provocative. Those systems, war and conflict, and even culture who knew the careful, precise, and discreet and religion. Paul Rivlin’s Arab Economies in David Newsom will recognize his style. the Twenty-First Century represents an impor- We are fortunate that Newsom finished tant addition to this literature. the manuscript of Witness to a Changing Rivlin asks two central and closely related World before his death a year ago. He had questions. Why did governments act so slowly spent his last decades educating the Ameri- in response to the problem of unemployment, can public and nurturing a younger genera- given the danger that it poses for social and tion of foreign affairs specialists. This book political stability? And, perhaps more impor- is the final chapter of his legacy. tantly, why has the policy response been similar in very different economies? David L. Mack is a retired US Foreign In his attempt to answer these questions, Service Officer and an Adjunct Scholar of Rivlin provides a comprehensive survey not the Middle East Institute. only of the various explanations for the region’s poor economic performance but also those put forth to explain the persistence of ECONOMIC CONDITIONS certain ineffective polices despite the seri- ousness of the economic situation. The an- Arab Economies in the Twenty-First swer to both lies in the way in which these Century, by Paul Rivlin. Cambridge, UK countries have developed — in particular and New York: Cambridge University the patterns between demographic growth Press, 2009. 295 pages. Refs. to p. 314. and economic development. Of critical im- Index to p. 316. $85 cloth; $24.99 paper. portance is opportunities missed, especially 516 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL the Industrial Revolution that has spread through much of the world since the 19th MODERN HISTORY century. In turn, the lack of industrial jobs AND POLITICS in the face of rapidly growing populations has contributed to the region’s chronically Backlash 9/11: Middle Eastern and high unemployment. Muslim Americans Respond, by Anny Rivlin’s case studies of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Bakalian and Mehdi Bozorgmehr. Berkeley Morocco, the Palestinian Territories, Saudi and Los Angeles, CA: University of Cali- Arabia, Syria, and Tunisia all present strik- fornia Press, 2009. vii to 252 pages. Ap- ingly similar patterns — despite a slow-down pendix to p. 265. Notes to p. 307. Refs. to in demographic growth throughout the region, p. 331. Index to p. 348. $21.95. the labor force is increasing rapidly because of the change in the age structure of the popula- Reviewed by Elaine C. Hagopian tion. While in other parts of the world similar demographic patterns have often enhanced The events of 9/11 generated a set of re- economic growth, Rivlin finds rigid policies strictive legal constructs targeting Middle in the Middle East have stifled growth. Un- Eastern and Muslim communities in the derachievement combined with demographic United States. The communities already were pressure combine to pose serious threats to the suffering from the 1996 Antiterrorism and Ef- political stability of the region. fective Death Penalty Act. In turn, these laws Of course, these patterns are no secret, generated scholarly legal studies critical of and the question immediately arises as to them. Until Backlash 9/11, there had been no why country after country has allowed them systematic study of the impact of these laws on to perpetuate. Rivlin finds a useful concept, the affected communities and their responses. and one that is favored by many economists, Sociologists Anny Bakalian and Mehdi for understanding the political economy of Bozorgmehr set out to develop conceptual Arab — equilibrium. Following Hahn, he clarity of the phenomenon of backlash and uses this concept in a broad sense to de- community mobilization. They also intro- scribe a situation in which self-seeking duce religion and ethnicity — neglected by agents learn nothing new and their behavior social movements, immigration, and ethnic becomes routine. “The economy generates and racial specialists — as bases for response messages that do not cause agents to change mobilization. They have succeeded in pro- the theories that they hold or the policies viding a clearly defined model of backlash that they follow. Equilibrium implies con- and community mobilization, and they have tinuity and this is precisely the point to be done so in a style accessible to students, re- made about the Arab economies. Despite searchers, and the general public. changes in policy, ownership and control, The first chapter defines and develops a ideology and even political rule, there have model of backlash and spells out the condi- been strong elements of continuity in their tions for mobilization. The middle chapters performance” (p. 295). analyze the impact of hate crimes and gov- While this explanation comes close to be- ernment initiatives. The final chapters focus ing a tautology — the major Arab economies on mobilization. The authors define back- are caught in a policy trap because the condi- lash as individual acts of scapegoating and tions for escaping the trap are not present — hate crimes, but its repressive nature is most it does provide a fresh approach towards un- deeply experienced when the state issues derstanding the region’s long-standing gov- laws and takes actions against the affected ernance deficiencies and lagging economic group(s). In effect, the governmental back- reforms. This is a situation and an environ- lash assumes the targeted group(s) to be ment that does not bode well for the future. potential fifth columnists requiring policies to pre-empt and prevent harm and threats to Robert Looney, Naval Postgraduate School American society. Potentially, backlash can lead to group(s) mobilization by community-based organizations, as in the 9/11 case. middle east journal M 517

Traumatic as 9/11 was for the United pact of the 9/11 backlash on the besieged States, the authors argue that Middle East- communities; it provides a framework for ern (e.g., Arab, Iranian, Afghan) and Mus- analysis of backlash and mobilization in lim-origin (those primarily identified by times of crisis; it places the contemporary religion rather than ethnicity, mostly South backlash in historical perspective, from the Asians) peoples did not endure as severe a German-American experience during World backlash as did earlier groups, such as Japa- War I up to the present; it provides an Ap- nese-Americans. This was due to the signifi- pendix which chronicles the timeline of cant body of civil rights legislation enacted government initiatives after 9/11; and it fur- in 1964-1965 and the watchdog organiza- nishes an extensive list of references. Add- tions that have emerged since. Nonetheless, ing an examination of the 1972 Operation the Omnibus Patriot Act, combined with the Boulder government initiative against Arab- earlier secret evidence legislation, imposed Americans and a fuller exploration of the harsh restrictions on the targeted commu- demonization and suspicion of the Middle nities. While techniques such as “profiling” Eastern/Muslim communities would have affected citizens and non-citizens alike, the added greater historical depth as well as non-citizens suffered the most, especially conceptual breadth. Nonetheless, this book from “voluntary interviews,” detention, de- remains ground-breaking and valuable read- portation, special registration, and rendition. ing. It provides a strong sociological foun- Attempting to study the impact of 9/11 dation on which others can build. government initiatives on Middle Eastern- ers and Muslims proved challenging meth- Elaine C. Hagopian is Professor Emerita odologically. After considering alternative of Sociology, Simmons College. research designs, the authors focused on identifiable community-based organization (CBOs) leaders and supportive civil rights PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, groups. Recognizing that CBO leaders were not typical of their members, Bakalian and AND SCIENCE Borzormehr nonetheless felt that they offered knowledgeable contextual information Radical Reform: Islamic Ethics and on how events impacted their communities. Liberation, by Tariq Ramadan. New York: They conducted 75 in-depth interviews, 60 Oxford University Press, 2009. ix + 322 with top Middle Eastern/Muslim CBO lead- pages. Notes to p. 357. Gloss. to p. 364. ers and 15 with other informed sources. They Index to p. 372. $29.95. also monitored organizational web sites and Listservs to document mobilization. Reviewed by John Voll The authors’ findings on mobilization stand out. The impacted groups framed their Contemporary intellectuals are engaged response to the suspicion and demoniza- in dynamic redefinitions of faith and reli- tion of their communities within a patriotic gion. The debates go beyond the shallow ar- American mainstream message, distanced guments in best-selling books about wheth- themselves from the ideological bearings of er or not “religion” is “bad.” Much of the the 9/11 perpetrators, and purposely sought in-depth analysis of religious issues is not civil and political integration into American simply giving new answers to old questions; society. Equipped with an understanding it is asserting that the old basic questions of constitutional principles and civil rights need to be replaced by new questions before laws, they staked out their claims for equal answers effective for the contemporary age treatment and protection. In the process, can be formulated. A number of Muslim they developed skills and contacts that have thinkers are making important contributions introduced them as new players in Ameri- to these discussions, and among the most can social and political life. prominent is Tariq Ramadan, who defines This book is important in several ways: It these new questions clearly in this book. is the first comprehensive study of the im- Ramadan argues that the longstanding 518 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL

Islamic concepts of renewal (tajdid) and re- articulated jointly by experts in the text sci- form (islah) must be reconsidered, and that ences and in the “context sciences.” This ef- the old styles of “adaptation reform” need to fort strives “to remain faithful to a religious be transcended by “transformation reform” (p. tradition at the heart of the modern era while 3). This transformation involves a reconsid- opening a dialogue about values … shared eration of the methods of interpretation of the between civilizations” (p.146). sources and fundamentals developed by Mus- This book suggests “a new methodology lim scholars over the centuries. In his broad that precisely aims to enable fuqaha’ and conclusion, Ramadan argues that Muslims’ scientists [i.e., ‘text scientists’ and ‘context “relationship to the texts [revealed scriptures] scientists’] to work together” (p. 158). In the and to the Universe [the physical Cosmos as final section of the book, Ramadan introduc- divine revelation] must be revisited: we are es six fields where his new approach can be faced with two Revelations that need to be applied. The discussion of medical sciences read and understood in parallel” (p. 315). (Chapter eleven) sets the tone. The goal The analysis begins with a discussion of “is not to define the outline of an ‘Islamic the evolving conceptualizations of renewal medicine’;” rather, the goal is to establish (Chapters one and two), arguing that old re- “the objectives of Islamic ethics relative to forms that adapted to existing contexts are the health of the heart and body” (p. 161). now inadequate. The new reform requires the Other fields discussed in separate chapters expertise of both the “text specialists” and are culture and the arts, gender issues, ecol- scholars in the natural and social sciences. ogy and economy, society and power, and In the five chapters of Part two, Ramadan particular-universal relations. The conclu- presents the established approaches in the sion provides a helpful synthesis of the scholarship of the fundamentals of law (usul wide-ranging analyses in this complex and al-fiqh). This discipline developed utilizing important book. the deductive methods of al-Shafi‘i (Chapter Ramadan addresses one of the major three) and then the more inductive approach- challenges of the modern era, defining the es of scholars in the Hanafi school (Chapter relationships between “religion” and “mod- four). This broad tradition of scholarship lat- ern science.” He concentrates on transform- er produced a new approach culminating in ing the approaches of the religious special- the scholarship of al-Shatibi (d. 1388), which ists. However, for his method to work, the emphasized the higher objectives (maqasid) “context scientists” also may need persua- of law (Chapters five and six). sion. Part of the “battle” between science In Part three, Ramadan presents his al- and religion involves the critique of (and ternative “geography of the sources of law,” sometimes, opposition to) “religion” by in which he argues that the “Universe, the scholars in the natural sciences. For Rama- social and human context, has never been dan’s agenda to be implemented, the chal- considered as a self-standing source of law lenge of recruiting the context scientists and of its production,” but the conditions of may be as great as the challenge of persuad- contemporary times require “acknowledging the text scientists. ing that the world, its laws, and areas of The question is often raised about the specialized knowledge not only shed light possibility of an “Islamic reformation.” on scriptural sources but also constitute a Tariq Ramadan provides an important ex- source of law on their own” (pp. 82-83). In ample of the new modes of Islamic thought this framework, there are two corresponding that have gone beyond the modernist is- Revelations (Chapter seven). This reality re- sues of “re-formation” to speak of a needed quires a holistic approach to law and ethics “transformation” of Muslim thought. which does not simply adapt to the contexts of modernity but, in fact, has the capacity John Voll is the Associate Director of to transform the world (Chapters eight and the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center nine). In Chapter ten, Ramadan presents his for Muslim-Christian Understanding at vision of “applied Islamic ethics” in which Georgetown University. the effort is to create a holistic ethic to be middle east journal M 519

The Muslim Brotherhood: Hasan al- to understanding the ideology and practice Hudaybi and Ideology, by Barbara H.E. of the Brothers as they re-emerged onto the Zollner. London, UK and New York: Rout- public scene in Egypt from the early 1970s ledge, 2009. ix + 151 pages. Notes to p. onwards. She focuses in particular on the 184. Bibl. to p. 198. Index to p. 202. $140. book Du‘a la quda [Preachers, not Judges], which was authored by leading Brothers un- Reviewed by Bjørn Olav Utvik der Hudaybi’s supervision in the late 1960s in response to Qutb’s ideas (although the Barbara Zollner’s book on Hasan al- criticism of Qutb is never explicit). Zollner Hudaybi fills an important gap in the study points out that the discussions triggered in- of the development of the Muslim Brothers side the prison camps by Qutb’s new radi- (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun). According to a calism represented a formative period for version of history that has been promoted the “new” Brothers. Significantly, among by Gilles Kepel, among others, in his widely the central authors of Du‘a la quda we read Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, the find Umar al-Tilmisani, Mustafa Mashhur, main development of the Muslim Brothers and Hudaybi’s son Ma’mun — all three of in Egypt after Hasan al-Banna was its radi- whom later succeeded him as murshids. calization through the ideological works of Through her detailed discussion of Du‘a Sayyid Qutb. Inspired by Qutb’s writings on la quda, Zollner shows how Hudaybi is the modern jahiliyya and the legitimacy and carefully laying out a path for the Muslim necessity of rebelling against the apostate Brothers that steers away from the extrem- Kings and Presidents of the Muslim world, ism of Qutb while preserving the call for the the Islamic student groups which emerged individual Muslim to take responsibility in in the 1970s chose a line of armed jihad the fight for the cause of Islam and social against the authorities. They went on to justice. In its treatment of the basic question launch a series of terror attacks and a small “who is a Muslim?” the book sticks to the scale guerrilla war in the late 1980s and classical idea that anyone who pronounces early 1990s under the banner of an organi- the declaration of faith in earnest must be zation called al-Jama‘a al-Islamiyya (the considered a Muslim. This does not stop Islamic Group). Hudaybi from holding forth the ideal of a There are serious flaws to this story. One good Muslim as one devoting his or her life is that the definite majority of the Islamist to the struggle for the message of Islam. On student movement of the 1970s chose to this point, Zollner, at times, seems to see distance itself from the jihadis and opted to paradoxes where none exist. For Hudaybi’s join the Muslim Brothers, who were by the call for active struggle as an ideal does not early part of that decade consolidated on a imply the accusation that those who do not line for peaceful work for gradual reform. live up to the ideal are somehow unbeliev- This points to the second flaw with the story ers. As Zollner rightly points out, a major promoted by Kepel and others — its over- thrust of the book is exactly to guard against emphasis on Sayyid Qutb in tracing the evo- easy resort to takfir, the branding of others lution of the Brothers after their disastrous as unbelievers. clash with the Nasser regime in 1954. For Hudaybi’s moderation is also evident in Sayyid Qutb was never the leader of the the attitude towards the call for implement- Muslim Brothers. The position as Murshid ing the Shari‘a. Du’a la quda distances itself ‘amm (“General Guide”) was held by Hasan from extremist understandings of the “sov- al-Hudaybi from 1951 to his death in 1973. ereignty of God” and points to the necessity Barbara Zollner’s work is of major im- and legitimacy of human agency in legisla- portance in understanding this period of tion, and a fortiori in general policymak- Ikhwan history and, therefore, the nature of ing. This is linked to the view of political the movement as it exists today. By outlin- power, where Hudaybi and his co-authors ing Hudaybi’s policies and his understand- are clear that such power is not granted to ing of Islam as guidance for politics and so- any group or individual by God, but must ciety, she provides us with an important key emerge “from the bottom” through elections 520 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL and representation. zurana, and Elizabeth Stites. Lanham, MD: Row- Finally, Hudaybi defends the rights of man & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2009. xxxviii the individual members of society to exer- +292 pages. Bibl. to p. 299. Index to p. 306. $80. This work is the product of a study that focuses on cise opposition to the powers that be, ac- the status of human security in rural Afghanistan, cording to the Qur’anic injunction to “enjoin based on fieldwork conducted in several dozen ru- good and forbid evil” (al-amr bil-ma‘ruf ral towns and villages in 2003 and 2004. Since that wa’l-nahy ‘an al-munkar). Yet, in a clearly time, many of these towns have become “sealed modern interpretation, it is emphasized that off,” and some of the residents have become dis- this should be done through persuasion and placed. Through reports on social issues, women’s rights, natural resources, and traditional systems of peaceful means, and that the use of violence justice in rural Afghanistan, this work offers sug- is only an exceptional last resort. gestions for improving the ongoing efforts of the The marriage of this moderate vision of international community to enhance the livelihoods the Islamic da‘wa with the mainstream of of rural Afghans and increase their security. (EE) the large student movement that sprang up in the 1970s, through the influence exercised by Hudaybi and his lieutenants, is what pro- ALGERIA duced the Society of Muslim Brothers in its present reinvigorated incarnation. Zollner’s The Administration of Sickness: Medicine and work provides a basis for understanding the Ethics in Nineteenth-Century Algeria, by Wil- ideological input into this marriage, and liam Gallois. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, may do a lot to correct the Qutb-centrism of 2008. 214 pages. Notes to p. 233. Bibl. to p. 255. Index to p. 262. $74.95. This work examines the much current literature. role that cultures of medicine played in the creation Unfortunately, the book is not very well of Algeria in the 19th century. Since the inception of edited. The language is, at times, lacking in the colony in the 1830s, French and Algerian writ- clarity. In addition, there are a large number ers saw the French imperial project in the Maghrib of misprints, as well as awkward and in- as an attempt to medicalise Algerian society. Gal- consistent transliterations of Arabic words lois argues that this idea of medicalization lay at and phrases, as when the Upper Egyptian the center of the French attempt to make an Alge- rian nation — and its failure to do so — and in city of Sohag is rendered Sauhaj, and when the encouragement of distinct modes of resistance Egypt’s first President is referred to on page to French rule. The book concentrates on the con- 148 first as al-Najib, and then two lines be- sequences of French medicine for Algerians and on low as Naguib. local responses to the project of medicalization. The Nevertheless for those interested in a full book includes the first accounts of Algerian doctors understanding of how the Muslim Brothers working in colonial medicine, detailing the manner evolved from Hasan al-Banna’s time to its in which they developed an ethics of resistance to the empire. (EE) present status, the work is indispensable reading. Walls of Algiers: Narratives of the City through Bjørn Olav Utvik, University of Oslo Text and Image, ed. by Zeynep Celik, Julia Clancy- Smith, and Frances Terpak. Los Angeles, CA: Getty Research Institute, 2009. ix + 251 pages. Select bibl. to p. 266. Index to p. 280. Contributor Biographies RECENT to p. 283. This compilation chronicles the urban history of Algiers, spanning its transformation from PUBLICATIONS an Islamic city, to the pride of the French colonial empire, to the flagship of anti-imperial liberation, Prepared with assistance by Evan Eustice, and finally to a capital of civil conflict. Published Hobie Kropp, and Jacob Passel. as a supplement to a museum exhibition at the Getty Research Institute, Walls of Algiers visually documents Algiers’ long history with colorful drawings, AFGHANISTAN etchings, charts, and photographs. Joining the illus- trations are scholarly articles covering diverse aca- After the Taliban: Life and Security in Rural demic fields, including social history, architecture, Afghanistan, by Neamatollah Nojumi, Dyan Ma- urban studies, and film studies, to give the reader a multifaceted look at historical Algiers. (JP)

DOI: 10.3751/63.3.4 middle east journal M 521

ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT catalogues Iranian sexuality from the Biblical era up to the present day. Divided into chapters covering marriage, temporary marriage, prostitution, ho- The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A People’s War, mosexuality, and venereal disease, A Social History by Beverley Milton-Edwards. London, UK: Rout- documents every convention and discretion, using ledge, 2009. 209 pages. Bibl. to p. 222. Index to p. official documents, textual reports, religious edicts, 228. $39.95. This work analyzes the Israeli-Pales- intimate letters, and government statistics. Floor’s tinian conflict from its historical roots in th the19 work not only serves as a history, but as documenta- century to the current attempts to reach a peaceful tion for Iran’s present-day social problems and pub- settlement. Milton-Edwards explores the impact of lic health crises. (JP) the conflict on regional politics in the Middle East, framing her study around issues such as Zionism, Palestinian nationalism, the refugees, state building, and democracy. Designed for wide readership, this IRAQ textbook includes a chronology of events and an- notated further reading at the end of each chapter. The Mother of All Battles: Saddam Hussein’s (EE) Strategic Plan for the Persian Gulf War, by Kev- in M. Woods. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2008. 384 pages. $28 paper. This work is part of an EGYPT official US Joint Forces Command research project to examine contemporary warfare by utilizing archi- val sources and interviews of senior leaders of the Educational Roots of Political Crisis in Egypt, by “adversary.” Woods tells the story of the 1990 inva- Judith Cochran. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2008. sion of Kuwait and Operation Desert Storm from 240 pages. $65. This work traces the development the Iraqi perspective, with materials gathered from of Egypt’s current social and political crises through primary Iraqi sources, including government docu- the history of education in Egypt. Cochran outlines ments, videos, audiotapes, maps, and photographs educational development in Egypt from the begin- captured from the former regime’s archives by US ning of writing in 4000 BC to the modes of three forces in 2003. While not a comprehensive history, traditions of religious education, the periods of Woods’ analysis of the events between 1990 and Mamluk, Ottoman, and British occupation, and the 1991 seeks to challenge currently accepted lessons nationalization and reforms of Gamal ‘Abd al-Nasir. of the first Gulf War. (EE) With respect to education in Egypt in the past 30 years, the author argues that no attempt has been made to connect academic achievement, employment, and the country’s development needs, despite ISRAEL the generous foreign aid allocations, mainly from the World Bank and the United States. (EE) The Dark Side of Zionism: Israel’s Quest for Se- curity Through Dominance, by Baylis Thomas. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009. 288 pages. The Last Pharaoh: Mubarak and the Uncertain $39.95. In this work, Thomas, one of Israel’s “new Future of Egypt in the Volatile Mid East, by Alad- historians,” argues that the early Zionists and, later, din Elaasar. Nothampton, MA: Beacon Press, 2008. the Israelis, sought security through the military xxxii + 231 pages. $18.99. This work focuses on the domination of the indigenous Arab population of government of Egypt’s long-term leader, President Palestine. This strategy involved avoiding nego- Husni Mubarak, and its control of various aspects tiations with Palestinians and provoking weak Arab of Egyptian society. Elaasar examines the Mubarak states into entering wars they would lose. Thomas regime’s “political machine” and its beneficiaries, explores the larger context of this history in chap- the future of Egypt after Mubarak, US-Egyptian re- ters on colonization, weapons diplomacy, nation- lations, and the ruling party’s human rights record alism, terrorism, Zionism, and prospects for the with respect to the treatment of minorities. (EE) resolution of the conflict, which he argues can be achieved only if Israel ends its military rule in the Palestinian Territories. (EE) IRAN

Understanding the Middle East Peace Process: A Social History of Sexual Relations in Iran, by Israeli Academia and the Struggle for Identity, Willem Floor. Washington, DC: Mage Publishers, by Asima A. Ghazi-Bouillon. New York: Routledge, 2008. xvii + 411 pages. Bibl. to p. 450. Index to p. 2009. ix + 158 pages. List of Interviews to p. 160. 459. $50. In this exhaustive volume, Willem Floor Notes to p. 199. Bibl. to p. 212. Index to p. 218. 522 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL

The 1993 signing of the Declaration of Principles Amirah-Fernandez. London, UK and New York: between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Orga- Routledge, 2008. xxiv + 394 pages. Bibl. to p. 384. nization (PLO) was supposed to usher in a new era Index to p. 394. This collection of 17 essays examines in the Middle East. Many Israeli academics thought the main political and economic questions facing the that an end to their country’s defining conflict would five countries of the Maghrib nearly a decade into the pose a significant challenge to the Jewish/Zionist new millennium. With chapters on Mauritania, Mo- identity of Israel. An up-to-date intellectual history, rocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, and an introduc- Understanding the Middle East Peace Process is tion by William Quandt, the volume is a follow up to framed around the Oslo Accords and the beginning Zoubir’s 1999 compilation, North Africa in Transi- of the Second Intifada, with analyses of the debates tion: State, Society, and Economic Transformation about Israel’s national identity among its academics in the 1990s. The first of the book’s three sections, as well as interviews with some of the major inter- “The Limits of Transformation,” summarizes each locutors from across the political spectrum. (JP) country’s record since the turn of the century, while the latter two, “Regional Issues in the Contemporary Maghreb” and “Strategic and Security Relations of the Maghreb,” delve into socio-cultural and military LEBANON issues affecting the region. (HK)

Off the Wall: Political Posters of the Lebanese Civil War, by Zeina Maasri. London, UK: I.B. Tau- EU Integration with North Africa: Trade Nego- ris & Co Ltd, 2009. xxv + 115 pages. Notes to p. tiations and Democracy Deficits in Morocco, by 124. Bibl. to p. 131. Index to p. 137. $29.95. While Carl Dawson. London, UK: Tauris Academic Stud- political posters are generally classified against a ies, 2009. vi + 214 pages. Appends. to p. 200. In- binary of activism and propaganda, Zeina Maasri dex to p. 214. In his study of the EU/Morocco free proposes that such posters played a different role trade agreement announced at the 1995 Barcelona during the second Lebanese civil war. From 1975 Conference, the former head of the US Chamber of to 1990, the graphic art posted by the warring fac- Commerce in Morocco argues that the two signato- tions became part of the frontline in the struggle for ries’ institutional structures contributed to a flawed power in Lebanon. In Off the Wall, Maasri analyzes treaty that neglected the greater public good. Daw- the medium of political poster and, with a colorful son asserts that due to negotiating dominance by the collection of posters spanning the militant spec- EU’s three Mediterranean powers (Spain, France, trum, chronicles this bloody era of modern Middle and Italy) and unrepresentative groups close to the East history. (JP) Moroccan monarchy, the resulting document failed to benefit the North African state’s agricultural majority. He argues that the “voluntary lack of participation in a democratic political system” combined MAGHRIB with a “lack of participation imposed by an authoritarian political system” to produce an agreement The North African Military Balance: Force De- that served “narrow European sectoral interests” velopments in the Maghreb, by Anthony Cordes- rather than the conference’s animating principle of man and Aram Nerguizian. Washington, DC: Cen- trans-Mediterranean cooperation (pp. 3-4). (HK) ter for Strategic and International Studies Press, 2009. ix + 109 pages. This latest addition to the CSIS Significant Issues series surveys the security landscape in the four main Maghribi countries and PALESTINE AND PALESTINIANS finds little in the way of external threats to state sovereignty. Cordesman and Nerguizian argue that military expenditures in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Everyday Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam and Libya are overdeveloped relative to the rest of Among Palestinians in Lebanon, by Bernard the regional economy, which remains chronically Rougier. Trans. by Pascale Ghazaleh. Cambridge, underdeveloped. Nearly ten years after Algeria’s MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. xii + 279 bloody civil war, and despite the ongoing Western pages. Notes to p. 316. Acknowl. to p. 318. Index Saharan conflict between Morocco and the Polisario to p. 333. Published in an English translation as Front, the main obstacles to North African stability battles were raging in Lebanon’s Palestinian refu- remain domestic in origin and stem from each coun- gee camps between the Lebanese army and militant try’s internal political situation. (HK) Palestinian Islamists, Bernard Rougier’s Everyday Jihad provides timely background information about groups like Fatah al-Islam. Rougier takes the reader to the refugee camps of Nahr al-Barid and North Africa: Politics, Religion, and the Limits of ‘Ayn al-Hilwa, where Islamist preachers and veter- Transformation, ed. by Yahia Zoubir and Haizam ans of the jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan middle east journal M 523 were able to tap into Palestinian refugees’ alienation TURKEY from Lebanese politics and secular Palestinian nationalism. Everyday Jihad surveys a wide number of movements, their relationships with one another Winning Turkey: How America, Europe, and and with outside forces such as Hizbullah and Saudi Turkey Can Revive a Fading Partnership, by Arabia, and presents the reader with a grim forecast Philip Gordon and Omer Taspinar. Washington, DC: of the future of Palestinian rejectionism if the Israe- Brookings Institution Press, 2008. vii + 115 pages. li-Palestinian conflict remains unsolved. (JP) Notes to p. 108. Index to p. 115. This slim volume examines Turkey’s growing estrangement from its longtime Western allies, and notes with irony that since the end of the Cold War, it has been the Ke- Palestinian Collective Memory and National malist military establishment, rather than the histor- Identity, ed. by Meir Litvak. New York: Palgrave ically Eastward-looking Islamists, that has tended Macmillan, 2009. vii + 246 pages. Bibl. to p. 236. to be at loggerheads with European and American Contribs. to p. 238. Index to p. 246. This collection priorities. The authors prescribe five remedies for of seven essays examines the development of the the situation: greater integration of the Kurdish mi- Palestinian national consciousness over the past nority into Turkish life, unequivocal Western sup- century, with special attention given to conceptual port for the country’s democracy, a sincere Europe- changes in 1917, 1948, 1967, and 1993. Editor Meir an position on eventual Turkish membership in the Litvak contributed the introduction as well as a European Union, the renewal of relations between chapter of his own. With three articles that focus on Turkey and Armenia, and a push for a nonviolent the Nakba (catastrophe) that accompanied the es- resolution to the Cyprus conflict. As Soli Ozel notes tablishment of the State of Israel, Palestinian Col- in the conclusion, Winning Turkey warns that West- lective Memory and National Identity pinpoints the erners cannot take permanent Turkish amity for traumatic events of 1948 as the locus around which granted, and urges policymakers to find a renewed modern Palestinian identity has centered. (HK) basis for the alliance with this crucially strategic country. (HK)

Arafat and the Dream of Palestine: An Insider’s Account, by Bassam Abu Sharif. New York: Pal- AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND MEMOIRS grave Macmillan, 2009. xix + 254 pages. Index to p. 260. $27.95. Once a journalist affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Nights in the Pink Motel: An American Strate- Bassam Abu Sharif developed a close relationship gist’s Pursuit of Peace in Iraq, by Robert Earle. with Yasir ‘Arafat in the early 1970s. For 30 years, Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2008. 280 until the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) pages. 15 photos. $34.95. This work follows the sto- Chairman’s death in 2004, Abu Sharif served as his ries of soldiers, diplomats, contractors, and Iraqis spokesman — earning Athe author the moniker “the in a historical account of the counter-insurgency Face of Terror” during the Black September crisis, strategy devised in 2004 after the US-led invasion and later, “the Face of Peace” as the PLO began ad- of Iraq. Earle, a strategist recruited by John Negro- vancing peace proposals in the 1980s. Abu Sharif’s ponte, the first US Ambassador to Iraq, documents memoir Arafat and the Dream of Palestine recounts the nature of the insurgency and the impediments to his years as an aid to ‘Arafat and gives a behind-the- the $18 billion US reconstruction effort. After be- scenes look at Palestinian history since 1967. (JP) ing evacuated from Iraq for medical reasons, Earle returned to Baghdad to assess the Iraqi political en- vironment, completing his assignments from offices Kill Khalid: The Failed Mossad Assassination of in Saddam Husayn’s former palace in the Green Khalid Mishal and the Rise of Hamas, by Paul Mc- Zone that he nicknamed the “Pink Motel.” (EE) Geough. New York: The New Press, 2009. 512 pages. $26.95. Australian journalist Paul McGeough traces the life of Khalid Mish‘al, from his childhood in the A World I Loved: The Story of an Arab Woman, Jordanian-ruled West Bank to his ascent to the head by Wadad Makdisi Cortas. New York: Nation Books, of the political bureau of Hamas. The focal point of 2009. 224 pages. $14.95. This memoir of Cortas, a Kill Khalid is the botched attempt on his life by under- Christian Arab born in 1910, narrates her life experi- cover Mossad agents in ‘Amman in 1997. McGeough ences under the French Mandate in Lebanon, as the retells this episode in action-packed detail and outlines principal of the Ahliah National School for Girls, as all of the outcomes of that event. Based on extensive well as the transformation of Lebanon, catalyzed by interviews with the protagonists, including Mish‘al the displacement of the Palestinians and civil war. himself, Kill Khalid narrates the modern history of the Cortas originally wrote A World I Loved in Arabic Palestinians and the rise of Hamas, framing the narra- in the 1960s and later rewrote it in English before tive around the movement’s leader. (JP) 524 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL her death in 1979. This paperback edition includes how radical Christians and Jews historically have a Foreword by Mariam Said, Cortas’ daughter and sought and also currently seek to launch crusades or the wife of the late Edward Said, and an Afterword holy wars. The book’s message is that the rhetoric by Mariam’s daughter, Najla Said. (EE) of the “war on terror” and the evangelization of the American military is not How to Win a Cosmic War; rather, victory in a religious war can only come by expunging it of their religious rhetoric, righting the LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE injustices that fanatics use to recruit foot soldiers, and thus, refusing to escalate violence to a “cosmic” The Idle Years, by Orhan Kemal. Translated from level. (JP) the Turkish by Cengiz Lugal. London, UK: Peter Owen Publishers, 2008. 223 pages. $29.95. This work contains two semi-autobiographical novels — Diaspora by Design: Muslim Immigrants in My Father’s House and The Idle Years — that form Canada and Beyond, by Haideh Moghissi, Saeed part of a series. Set in the 1920s and 1930s, the story Rahnema, and Mark J. Goodman. Toronto: Uni- follows the life of an unnamed narrator who grows versity of Toronto Press, 2009. xv + 195 pages. up in an affluent family in Adana. When his father’s Notes to p. 201. Bibl. to p. 214. Index to p. 223. political activities force the family to move to Bei- $60 cloth; $24.95 paper. According to the 2001 rut, the narrator struggles to support his family. He Census, Muslims were the second largest religious returns to Adana and, penniless, sets off for Istanbul community in Canada, and the fastest growing. In with his best friend in search of wealth. Kemal’s the wake of the terrorist attacks against the United work examines the struggles of ordinary people in States on September 11, Muslims in Canada have the social and economic upheavals that took place become identified and began to self-identify more in the early Turkish Republic. (EE) through their religion than the myriad ethnic and national groups that constitute this diverse minority community. Diaspora by Design challenges the misconceptions about Canadian Muslims through MODERN HISTORY AND POLITICS an in-depth inquiry into the socioeconomics, anxi- eties, and communal tensions of Canada’s diasporas The Globalization of Martyrdom: Al-Qaeda, from the Islamic world. The authors conclude that Salafi Jihad, and the Diffusion of Suicide At- despite alienation, Muslim immigrants want to inte- tacks, by Assaf Moghadam. Baltimore, MD: The grate into their adopted country and more needs to Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. 368 pages. be done to remove barriers blocking them from the $45. Through qualitative and quantitative analyses Canadian experience. (JP) of a variety of datasets on suicide terrorism, Mogha- dam examines the global proliferation of the suicide attacks — particularly since September 11, 2001— Islamism: A Documentary and Reference Guide, as one of the most deadly and widely used tactics by John Calvert. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, of contemporary terrorists. The author contends that 2008. xxiii + 255 pages. Bibl. to p. 274. Index to p. the globalization of suicide attacks is a direct result 280. $85. For almost a century, and especially since of the rise of al-Qa‘ida and Salafi-Jihadist ideology. the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and the attacks on Moghadam outlines the history of both movements, 9/11, Islam-oriented political movements, militant presents several case studies of suicide attacks groups, and other social organizations have become throughout the world, and discusses the policy im- increasingly visible in the eyes of Western observ- plications of his findings. (EE) ers. Classifying ideologies that promote holistically Islamic societies as “Islamism,” John Calvert has compiled this textual guide as a resource for better How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, understanding the multifaceted responses of Mus- and the End of the War on Terror, by Reza Aslan. lims to modernity. With an introduction that pro- New York: Random House, 2009. xix + 174 pages. vides a historical overview, Islamism: A Documen- Acknowl. to p. 176. Gloss. to p. 180. Notes to p. tary and Reference Guide contains over 40 key texts 210. Bibl. to p. 214. Index to p. 228. $26. Follow- from diverse sources such as the Muslim Brother- ing up his bestselling No god but God, Reza Aslan hood, the Islamic Salvation Front, Hamas, Iranian writes that dualistic religious conflict between good revolutionaries, and al-Qa‘ida, sorts them topically, and evil is the great threat of our era. The terrorist and couches them with context and analysis. (JP) attacks of the last decade in New York, London, and Madrid were motivated by Islamic militants’ desire to provoke such a “cosmic war,” in Aslan’s terms, A Terrorist’s Call to Global Jihad: Deciphering between Islam and Christendom. Cosmic warmon- Abu Musab al-Suri’s Islamic Jihad Manifesto, gering is not limited to Muslims; Aslan chronicles ed. by Jim Lacey. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute middle east journal M 525

Press, 2008. xi + 196 pages. Map. Photos. Index of Islamic “fundamentalism,” especially given the to p. 204. $19 paper. Sponsored by the US Joint origins of the term in the context of Christianity. Forces Command, this work presents a condensed Understanding Muslim Identity surveys the de- translation of al-Qa‘ida veteran Mustafa bin ‘Abd bate about what term to give this phenomenon and al-Qadir Sitmaryam Nasar’s (aka, Abu Musab al- the arguments in favor of and in opposition to the Suri) 1,600-page Call to Global Islamic Resistance. terms “Islamic fundamentalism,” “political Islam,” Arrested by Pakistani counterterrorism forces in “radical Islam,” and “Islamism.” Using an anthro- Quetta in November 2005, al-Suri was wanted for pological approach, Gabriele Marranci analyzes the numerous crimes, including his involvement in the tendencies associated with these terms within the 2003 Madrid train bombings. Al-Suri’s text, widely context of Islam itself. Marranci sees what is often available in its original unabridged Arabic format called “fundamentalism” within Islam as an out- on a number of jihadi Websites, outlines the beliefs pouring of emotions in response to changing social and history of the jihadi movement, along with the environments and renames the trend in question as movement’s failures, the current state of the jihad, “emotional Islam.” (JP) and a strategy designed to overcome what he considers the strengths of the United States. (EE) Judging Mohammed: Juvenile Delinquency, Im- migration, and Exclusion at the Paris Palace of We Are All Moors: Ending Centuries of Cru- Justice, by Susan J. Terrio. Stanford, CA: Stanford sades Against Muslims and Other Minorities, University Press, 2009. xii + 291 pages. Notes to by Anouar Majid. Minneapolis, MN: University of p. 328. Refs. to p. 346. Index to p. 354. $75 cloth; Minnesota Press, 2009. 240 pages. $24.95. In this $24.95 paper. This work, the product of a five-year work, Majid argues that the debates about immigra- study of the French juvenile court system, reveals the tion and Islam in the US and Europe are the cultural relationship between concerns of national security legacy of the conflict between Christians and Moors and public order in France and increased profiling in 17th century Spain. Majid outlines an alternative of the country’s non-European immigrant youth as history of the West’s perception and treatment of delinquent and threatening to mainstream French so- minority cultures and details how “the Moor” be- ciety and values. This social category, coined in the came the archetypal “Other” against which Europe 1990s as the “delinquency of exclusion,” was tied to would define itself. Revealing the Moor as a met- disadvantaged Muslim youth — both immigrants aphor for all minority peoples in the West, Majid and French citizens — primarily from North and connects current fears about Islam and immigration West African countries. This study follows young with medieval Christianity’s crusade against the people through the legal system, offering reasons for Moor. (EE) France’s changing approaches to the identification and treatment of its delinquent youth. (EE)

The Uncultured Wars: Arabs, Muslims, and the Poverty of Liberal Thought — New Essays, by The Charitable Crescent: Politics of Aid in the Steven Salaita. New York: Zed Books, 2008. viii + Muslim World, by Jonathan Benthall and Jerome 168 pages. Uncultured Wars is a collection of es- Bellion-Jourdan. London, UK: I.B. Tauris, 2009. xv says by Professor Steven Salaita that challenges the + 156 pages. Notes to p. 174. Bibl. to p. 186. Index record of American liberalism towards Arabs and to p. 196. $99.95. In this updated edition, Benthall Muslims. According to Salaita, whereas many con- and Bellion-Jourdan provide a new perspective on servatives are overt in prejudice and fear monger- the issue of humanitarian aid and Islamic finance. ing towards Arabs and Muslims, liberals paint their They challenge the Western notion of humanitarian- discourse with subtly racist references that are often ism as a Judeo-Christian concept by exploring how brushed aside as harmless. In 12 essays challenging injunctions in the Qur’an on charitable giving have topics as diverse as Michael Moore, Jackass, Thom- been implemented, as well as outlining the social as Friedman, The Nation, progressive Jews, Colum- and political histories of waqf and zakat. Through bia University, and “the new atheists,” Salaita calls a series of case studies, the remaining chapters for readers to be more mindful of the portrayal of focus on new international Islamic charities that minorities in American culture, especially by those have emerged since the 1980s — including the Red who profess to advance their cause. (JP) Crescent, the social welfare programs of Hizbullah in Lebanon, and the Da’wa Islamiya in Sudan. The authors place Islamic charities in the wider context of civil society and politics, including political Is- Understanding Muslim Identity: Rethinking lam. (EE) Fundamentalism, by Gabriele Marranci. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. ix + 154 pages. Refs. to p. 167. Index to p. 174. Scholars have de- bated for decades the problematic characterization Islam, Secularism, and Liberal Democracy: To- 526 M MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL ward a Democratic Theory for Muslim Societies, WOMEN by Nader Hashemi. Oxford, UK and New York: Ox- ford University Press, 2009. xix + 280 pages. Notes to p. 236. Bibl. to p. 270. Index to p. 280. In this, Women, Family, and Gender in Islamic Law, by his first book, University of Denver Professor Nader Judith E. Tucker. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Uni- Hashemi attempts to de-link the supposed intrinsic versity Press, 2008. xi + 225 pages. $32.99 paper. connection between political democracy and West- In this work, Tucker analyzes Islamic law with a ern-style secularism, arguing that religion’s place focus on gender. Through a historical approach, she in a liberal polity must be socially constructed by answers questions relating to the position of women each society over time. Observing that the primary in Islamic society and to the ways in which the legal supporters of the separation of mosque and state of- system shaped the family, property rights, space, ten have been authoritarian Middle Eastern govern- and sexuality from classical and medieval times to ments, Hashemi notes that popular opposition has the present. The text draws on feminist legal theory coalesced behind Islamic movements — a situation to address questions of the discrimination and ex- that has prevented the democratic give-and-take that pectation of women, and how the language of the determined religion’s political role in other societ- law contributed to that discrimination. Tucker also ies. He contends that despite “the political ideology discusses what rights and power have been accord- they espouse,” Islamist groups could play a proto- ed to Muslim women and how they have used the liberalizing role because of “the sociological chang- legal system to enhance their social and economic es they engender,” such as “the rise of individualism position. (EE) and mass mobilization,” which could bear fruit after a democratic opening (p. 64). (HK)

PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, AND SCIENCE

Sufism Today: Heritage and Tradition in the Global Community, ed. by Catharina Raudvere and Leif Stenberg. London, UK: I.B. Tauris, 2009. xi + 288. Notes to p. 251. Index to p. 259. $85. This collection of 12 essays — published in con- junction with “Exile and Tradition: Transnational Contemporary Sufism,” a project of the University of Copenhagen and Lund University conducted in 2005-2007 — discusses aspects of contemporary Sufi practices from a transnational perspective. The subjects discussed include the politics of Sufism, Kurdish identity and Sufi heritage, cultural creativ- ity among Syrian Sufi communities, the globalization of Sufi networks, and Sufi diaspora cultures in America and Europe. (EE)

Varieties of Muslim Experience, by Lawrence Rosen. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2008. ix + 186 pages. Notes to p. 242. Refs. to p. 265. Index to p. 268. $35. This work explores aspects of Arab Muslim life that are often, at first, mis- understood or perplexing to Westerners. Through an anthropological perspective, Rosen discusses such topics as portraiture in Arab Muslim culture, why a Muslim scientist might be attracted to fundamentalism, and the relationship between depictions of the Prophet and blasphemy. Rosen argues that these features of life are linked by the importance placed on the negotiation of interpersonal relationships in Arab culture. (EE)