Anthony Cordesman, of the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS provides his report on an analysis of the recent survey conducted by The Washington Post and ABC TV that was undertaken by Gary Langer of ABC. His report, a 10-page PDF page/document, highlights the most important distinguishing feature of the survey: Americans who personally know Muslims have a better overall view of Muslims and Islam. Not much of a surprise there, I’m afraid.
ABC News/Washington Post Poll on US Views of Islam: Key Trends
Mshari Al-Zaydi has an interesting column in today’s Asharq Alawsat. He writes that by sending in people to organize in and fight from Egypt, the Lebanese Hezbollah went too far. It alienated not only the Egyptian government, but its erstwhile backers, the Muslim Brotherhood. No amount of political glossing over the facts changes the fact that Hezbollah did itself damage. Worth reading.
Neither Nasrallah nor Nabih
Mshari Al-ZaydiThe battle over public opinion in Egypt this time is being steered in favor of the Egyptian state in the way that the Hezbollah in Egypt crisis has been depicted.
The signs of this victory can be seen in the Muslim Brotherhood’s reconsideration of its position in the ongoing battle between the Egyptian state and Hezbollah. Initially, the MB’s General Guide and some of his men said that they understood Egypt’s accusations against Hezbollah but that they would support Hezbollah in consideration of the sanctity of resistance and the Israeli enemy. The Muslim Brotherhood believed that the Egyptian authorities had betrayed the Palestinian resistance or, at best, had not offered it enough help.
Yet after the Secretary General’s televised speech in which he responded to Egypt’s accusations, and after he proudly acknowledged that the cell leader was a member of Hezbollah and that he had been assigned by the party to create a support group for the Palestinian resistance that would offer it arms and military supplies, the least that Nasrallah owned up to, there was a complete turnaround.
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The Jerusalem Post reports on a debate at a New York University ‘Global Leaders’ conference that had Pr. Turki Al-Faisal squared off with Prof. Alon Ben-Meir, from NYU. In the debate and following question-and-answer period, Pr. Turki made the point that while Saudi Arabia eagerly wants peace in the region, it is not going to take major steps until Israel shows some willingness to change its current policies. He also called for the Obama Administration to take bolder steps, involving all Arab states having issues with Israel, rather than wait for Israel or the Arabs to proceed on their own.
Saudi prince: No Sadat-style visit expected from King Abdullah
ALLISON HOFFMAN, JERUSALEM POST CORRESPONDENTSaudi Arabian prince Turki al-Faisal says King Abdullah is serious about achieving peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians – but ruled out the possibility that his uncle would follow in the footsteps of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and make a trip to Jerusalem.
Turki, who spoke Tuesday night in New York at a public question-and-answer session with New York University professor Alon Ben-Meir, said he believed successive Israeli governments had been too disrespectful toward Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas to expect any other Arab leaders to engage with them directly.
“King Abdullah is not going to go to Jerusalem and face the possibility of being treated like Mr. Abbas has been treated,” Turki responded after Ben-Meir asked him whether Abdullah would consider the “revolutionary” move of appealing in person to the Knesset, and the Israeli public, for peace.
The exchange, during which Ben-Meir insisted Sadat’s 1977 visit “changed Israeli public opinion overnight,” followed an hour of debate between the two men over the fate of the Arab peace initiative, which was proposed by Abdullah in 2002.
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The Middle East Times has decided to change its business model and convert itself to a subscription-based publication. While it has often proved a useful resource for this blog, that shift puts it outside the economic reach of Crossroads Arabia. There are too many other sources—available without cost—to make it wise to subscribe. If Crossroads Arabia were a non-profit think-tank, or even if it had a great income flow, there are many subscription-based sources I’d sign up for. Sadly, Middle East Times is pretty far down that list. I’m sorry, though, that the analysis and articles that used to be available from this source will no longer be available.
FINAL ISSUE OF MIDDLE EAST TIMES TODAY
This is not a farewell, but an au revoir.
Today, April 15, will mark the last day the Middle East
Times publishes in this format as an open source on the Internet. For the next three weeks we will be slowing down operations considerably while we re-position ourselves for the next challenge in what has become a rapidly changing market. When we resurface in May the Middle East Times will be available on a subscription basis.The publication will include more analysis, intelligence and insight into what goes on behind the scenes in regards to the politics of the Middle East — in the region and in Washington.
This is not the first time in its 26 years that the Middle East Times is forced to change format to keep up with changing trends in the industry. The Middle East Times went from a printed weekly based in Cairo, to a daily Web publication based in Washington, DC. In the last two years we have tripled our readership and expanded our coverage. We have offered our readers a valuable insight into the Middle East, while at the same time worked hard to explain to Americans the Arab mindset and to the Arab world the inner workings of American politics.
To our faithful readers, we want to say thank you for coming to this Web site every day for the last years. Thank you for your comments and we hope you will subscribe to our new format.
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The ugly fact is that most Saudis are antisemitic. The fact of Israel and its history, seen by most Saudis as criminal, has so blinded the typical Saudi that he is unable to differentiate ‘Jew’ from ‘Israeli’. The antipathy felt toward Israel is simply transferred to all that is Jewish, mindlessly and uniformly. This is furthered by selective quotation from the Quran and various ahadith that seem to form a constant background noise to any discussion of international politics.
That is the case here, as cited by MEMRI. They correctly point to the idiotic ravings and calumnies of a Saudi cleric as broadcast on Al-Jazeera TV earlier this year.
Several years ago, there was a survey (methodology unknown) that asked Saudi school children what they thought of Jews. Now, none of these children had actually met a Jew. They were uniform in their reactions, though: they should be spat upon or chased away with stones or simply killed. That reaction did not spring unattended from the minds of these children: it was put there. Perhaps they overheard parents discussing Palestine and sloppily equating ‘Jew’ with ‘Israeli’. They certainly heard school teachers and clerics condemning Jews with fanciful tales about using the blood of Christian and Muslim children in making matzos and pastries for Purim… stories like that used to be commonplace in the Saudi media.
While the country officially tries to improve Saudi relations with Jews—as witnessed by the award of a King Faisal Prize to an American Jew and by King Abdullah’s calls for greater religious tolerance—Saudi society has a lot of catching up to do. The government can start by sending clerics such as the one quoted below for some education. This cleric is earning some sort of government salary. His continuing to do so should be contingent upon being educated enough to know what he’s talking about, not blindly repeating tales he probably learned as a child himself.
Saudi Cleric Khaled Al-Khlewi Teaches Children to Hate Jews
Following are excerpts from an address by Saudi cleric Khaled Al-Khlewi, which aired on Al-Jazeera TV on January 11, 2009.
To view this clip, visit http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/2061.htm.
“The Jew is Treacherous, Disloyal, Deceitful, and Belligerent By Nature; Nothing Works With Him But Force”
Khaled Al-Khlewi: “The [Jewish] Qaynuqa tribe betrayed the Prophet Muhammad. A woman went to a Jewish market to buy a piece of jewelry. The members of the Qaynuqa tribe were the most ruthless and wealthiest Jews. When the Muslim woman reached the market, what did they do to her?
“A Jew sneaked behind her, and tied her gown to her headdress, so when she tried to get up, her private parts were exposed. She cried for help, and one of the Prophet’s companions came and killed the Jew. Then the Jews ganged up on him and killed him. When the Prophet Muhammad learned about this, he fought the Qaynuqa tribe and banished them. This is the only way to deal with them.
“In the case of the Qurayza tribe – or rather, the Nazir tribe – the Prophet Muhammad went to them, and learned against a wall. Some of the Jews said: ‘The Prophet Muhammad is leaning against the wall. Someone should go to the top of the roof and throw a rock on his head.’
“Then the Angel Gabriel appeared, and informed the Prophet in advance about this treachery. So the Prophet Muhammad banished them. The Prophet carried out the greatest killing among the Qaynuqa tribe, because they had violated their covenant with him.
“So, my friends, the conclusion we may draw from this introduction is that with the Jews, nothing works but force. Memorize the following parable, just like I learned it from others: ‘Kiss the head of a Jew, and he will deceive you – deceive him, and he will kiss your head.’ The Jew is treacherous, disloyal, deceitful, and belligerent by nature. Nothing works with him but force.
[…]
Saudi Gazette runs a very dangerous article today on the opening of the World Digital Library. It’s dangerous not so much for its content—though there are religious documents as well as maps that will surely prove contentious to some—but because if you follow the URL in the piece, you will absolutely eat up your time!
The Saudi Gazette headline is a bit misleading: it’s not just early documents. Some that I saw are as recent as the mid-20th C. The website has very good navigation controls allowing one to narrow searches and selections with a variety of parameters such as maps, sound recordings, or films. One can also select language interfaces, including Arabic. While much of the content is Eurocentric, there is an enormous collection of African, East Asian, and Islamic materials.
The documents are high-resolution scans of the originals, complete with water stains, foxing, and mold damage. They can range from single-page maps to hundreds of pages for books. You can zoom in on images and click-and-drag to move to various parts of them. The images are in .PNG format but can be downloaded in high-res TIFF format if you wish. Below is an example (converted to .JPG format), taken from the Kitab suwar al-kawakib (Book of the constellations of the fixed stars), a 10th C. document, copied in the 15th and 18th C.
I’ve only managed to spend a few hours at the site, so I haven’t explored everything on offer. Some of the pages offer a video of curators discussing various issues. One of these videos I did see was of a curator at the American Library of Congress discussing the development of Arabic script. It was interesting, but it wasn’t nearly as useful as it might have been as it contained only the ‘talking head’, with no examples of the scripts he mentioned. The full text of his comments were available on the page, making one or the other rather redundant.
Constellation of Aquarius
Humanity’s earliest written works go online
PARIS – National libraries and the UN education agency have put some of humanity’s earliest written works online as part of the World Digital Library project.
US Librarian of Congress James Billington says the project is aimed at getting people to read more books.
Billington and officials from UNESCO and other national libraries launched the project in Paris on Tuesday.
Items online include images of ancient Chinese oracle bones. There is also the earliest known European map of the “New World.” The site provides page-by-page viewing of the original works, and narration by curators. It also includes early film footage and rare mid-19th century photographs from the Ottoman and Russian empires. (http://www.wdl.org).
UPDATE: This The New York Times article notes, though the Saudi paper did not, that this project was assisted by the King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST).
Writing in Asharq Alawsat, Hussein Shobokshi reminds us of the dangers of mixing religion and politics. Politics is a realm where rational thought must prevail. Religion, by its definition, is not rational in the same way: it depends on faith in things which cannot be proved through reason. Religion, necessarily, calls on emotional forces within the human spirit, but emotions are not the way to run governments.
The Muslim Brotherhood and its Cousins
Hussein ShobokshiAs the people of the world are in the process of freeing themselves from the blending of religion and politics, adopting an equal political system that grants its citizens their rights and ensures their freedoms, securing them justice in return for loyalty to the nation, we find that the Middle East is still very much a prisoner to the concept of mixing religion and politics.
… The mixing of religion and politics – regardless of how sincere and honorable one’s intentions are – is like playing with fire, the consequences of which could be very serious and destructive. The call to religion is something that must remain limited to the worship of God, and away from the exploitation of religion in order to promote political projects that use violence and sow dissension amongst the people to the extent that it establishes and institutionalizes extremism. This problem has become well known and must be confronted, for if this issue is not firmly and courageously confronted these “new” projects and ideas that are all in the same direction [with regards to the mixing of religion and politics] will continue to be turned out one after another into the large testing laboratory known as the Middle East.
On April 27, the New American Foundation—a think-tank—will be holding a conference on US-Saudi relations. The list of participants is impressive, ranging from Zbigniew Brzezinski, Brent Scowcroft, and former Senator Chuck Hagel, to Prince Turki Al-Faisal and Saudi Ambassador to the US, Adel Al-Jubair.
The website for the New America Foundation points out that video of the conference will be streamed live, from 0845-1600 EDT, at The Washington Note, the Foundation’s blog. I certainly plan on watching it.
U.S.-Saudi Relations in a World Without Equilibrium
Panel Discussions and Remarks on the Following Topics:
* Fixing the Coordinates for Healthy Geo-Political & Geo-Economic Relations Between Saudi Arabia and the United States
* A Forward Projection of What the Saudi-US Relationship Should Look Like and Needs to Achieve
* Economics as a National Security Imperative: Challenges for Saudi Arabia and the U.S.
* America’s Geo-Strategic and Geo-Economic Choices and Challenges in the Arabian Gulf and Beyond
* The Neighborhood Through Saudi Arabia’s Window – and Other Lenses
* Moving Beyond Veneer and Protocol: A No-Nonsense Agenda For US-Saudi Relations
The conservative American think-tank Hudson Institute has a blog. Today, that blog cites an article appearing in Al-Watan, the Saudi Arabic daily, about an incident in Al-Jouf, in the northern part of the Kingdom, where a cultural institute and its director have come under threats for the audacity of having a woman’s voice recite poetry to a male audience. No ‘mingling of the sexes’ here, just mingling of voices.
The translation of the Al-Watan piece seems to be computer-generated, but it’s easy enough to follow…
(Apr 18) A group of unknown extremists sent a threat message to Al-joof culture director, Ibrahim Al-Humaid informing him that they will kill him. Al-joof is a very closed city which is located northern Riyadh.
The extremists warned Al-Humaid not to have a poetry night where men and women have participated in different places. The poetry night took place last Thursday.
At that night Saudi female poet (Halima Mudhafer) read her poems from another place and men heard her voice and vise versa. That made al-Joof extremists got mad. Islamic extremists believe woman’s voice should NOT be heard by stranger men.
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In Asharq Alawsat, Editor in Chief Tariq Alhomayed posits that the Iranian President’s vile speech at the UN’s anti-racism conference are aimed at the Arab world, not the world as a whole. Ahmadinejad really didn’t care that delegates from Western countries walked out in disgust because he knew he had the ears of those who agreed with him. Whether it is a desire to see Israel simply disappear or Holocaust denial, there are plenty of Arabs who think Ahmadinejad is on the right track.
Alhomayed cautions, though, that Iran talks the talk but fails to walk the walk. Iran seems to take the position of “Let’s you and him fight” while staying safely on the sidelines.
Ahmadinejad was Addressing the Arabs
Tariq AlhomayedWhen Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave the speech in which he attacked Israel and described it as a racist state during the Durban II UN anti-racism conference, he was not addressing the international community so much as he was addressing us [the Arabs].
What Ahmadinejad said yesterday about Israel was nothing more than a mild and condensed version of statements that he has repeated in the past. Indeed in the past the Iranian President has vowed to wipe Israel off the map, as well as describing the state of Israel as being illegitimate. Ahmadinejad also said that Israel will be unable to survive, and that the Holocaust is nothing more than a myth. If we remind ourselves of all of this we will realize that Ahmadinejad was [comparatively] pleasant with regards to the language he used on Monday.
It is clear that Ahmadinejad’s speech was essentially aimed at the Arab and Islamic street, and is equivalent to adding credit to the Iranian account, in the same way that credit is added to pre-paid mobile phones. But what will these words add to the Palestinian cause, or to the rights of occupied Arab territories?
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It’s a bit of self-promotion on the part of the Saudi Research & Marketing Group—publishers of Asharq Alawsat and Arab News, among others—but Arab News reports that the opinion magazine Al-Majalla is coming out with an improved online edition. This is an important adjustment to the plummeting global sales of ‘hard-copy’ magazines and newspapers.
The Majalla magazine launches online edition
LONDON: Prince Faisal bin Salman, chairman of the Saudi Research and Marketing Group, has inaugurated the online version of The Majalla, SRMG’s political affairs magazine, which is marking a transition from print journalism to the world of e-publishing.
Prince Faisal inaugurated the website at the London headquarters of The Majalla. “Launching The Majalla in this new form is integral to making a landslide transition in the company’s publications and projects in order to keep up with major developments in the publishing industry regionally and globally,” said Prince Faisal.
“With increased emphasis on content investments in the upcoming years, the industry will be witnessing a huge transformation, which makes exacting demands on publishers. These investments seek to transmit content through electronic multimedia, such as TV, radio and mobiles,” he added.
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There are both an Arabic edition and an English version.
The current English version has several articles of interest, including:
Content of the website is a bit light at present, but should fill up now that the project is underway.
Senator George Mitchell, the US Special Envoy for Middle East Peace, has been meeting with Saudi King Abdullah. These meetings have, of course, received global media attention. Saudi Gazette reports based on information from the Saudi Press Agency:
Abdullah, Mitchell discuss M-E peace
RIYADH – US special envoy George Mitchell flew in to Saudi Arabia on Sunday to discuss Middle East peace efforts with King Abdullah, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, US officials said.
Mitchell met with Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal ahead of his meeting with the King, a US embassy spokesman said.
The special envoy arrived in Riyadh after stops in Israel, the Palestinian territories and Egypt, where he emphasized US support for a two-state solution to the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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The Jerusalem Post reports on the visit as well: Saudi king pushes 2002 peace plan in Mitchell meeting. Its report notes that the sticking point, the part of King Abdullah’s peace plan that is causing the Israelis problems, is that of refugees. It’s pretty clear that Israel will not support a ‘right of return’ for all the Palestinians who fled Israel starting in 1948—and their descendants. Some other way of providing them justice must be found. I suspect that it will involve monetary settlements as well as pushing Arab states who currently host refugee camps to offer citizenship.