Arab Awakening

Rami G Khouri writes: We will find out in coming months whether the second term of the Obama administration will herald any significant changes in United States policies in the Middle East. Four main issues should be monitored for any signs of change: the Palestine-Israel and wider Arab-Israeli conflicts; tensions with Iran; the Arab uprisings, [...]

Sheri Berman writes: Two years after the outbreak of what has come to be known as the Arab Spring, the bloom is off the rose. Fledgling democracies in North Africa are struggling to move forward or even maintain control, government crackdowns in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere have kept liberalization at bay, and Syria is [...]

Peter Beaumont writes: Recent reports from inside Syria paint a grim picture on both sides. In Aleppo, as my Guardian colleague Ghaith Abdul-Ahad described in a vivid report last week, the armed opposition to President Bashar al-Assad remains as split as ever, looting is commonplace and rivalries are multiplying. In Damascus, the situation for Assad [...]

Excerpt from Of Empires and Citizens: Pro-American Democracy or No Democracy at All? by Amaney A. Jamal: They hate what we see right here in this chamber—a democratically elected government. . . . They hate our freedoms—our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble. – President George W. Bush, [...]

HA Hellyer writes: For more than a decade I have been studying the community dynamics of Muslim Britons. Their views on the Arab uprisings are intriguing: sectarian fears, disappointments, scepticism, hope and ethnic concerns are all there. Muslim British community activists have not ignored the Arab uprisings. They could not have. The Arab world is [...]

At Aeon Magazine, Amal Ghandour writes: The face, a nod to her Egyptian mother, is pharaonic, curls freefalling all around it. The muscles packing her body betray countless hours of toil in the pool, on the bench press, on her feet — running. Her attire is as blunt in its skimpiness as Jordan, where she [...]

James Traub writes: When I was in Morocco this summer, I heard a great deal about “Moroccan exceptionalism.” Historian Abdallah Laroui has described Morocco as “an island” cut off from its neighbors by sea, sand, and mountains, making it subject to its own laws of development. For the last four centuries, Morocco has been ruled [...]

Moncef Marzouki, the president of Tunisia, writes: The violent demonstrations that have spread across the Muslim world in recent weeks have convinced many in the United States and Europe that the Arab revolutions that began in late 2010 are now over and that the democratic project has failed. Bitterness and a sense of impending catastrophe [...]

Pankaj Mishra writes: The murder of four Americans in Libya and mob assaults on the United States’ embassies across the Muslim world this month have reminded many of 1979, when radical Islamists seized the American mission in Tehran. There, too, extremists running wild after the fall of a pro-American tyrant had found a cheap way [...]

Rami G Khouri writes: It is always instructive but also irritating to be in the United States when tumultuous events occur around the Middle East or the wider Arab-Asian region with its predominantly Muslim populations. Last week was such a week, as we witnessed demonstrations and occasional violence in over a dozen countries, from Morocco [...]

Tony Karon writes: Egregious insults like the Innocence of Muslims film would not be so easily translated into rage at U.S. power were it not for the simmering long-term rage at Washington over its invasions of Muslim countries, its support for Israeli governments and Arab despots, its drone strikes and more. Deep anger at U.S. [...]