Author Archives: Arab America

Habeeb Salloum       Arabic Contributions to the Spanish Language By Habeeb Salloum From the desert they came – men filled with religious zeal and riding under banners inscribed with the motto “There is no god but God and Muhammad is His messenger”.  After establishing the Middle East and North Africa as the foundation … Continued

Ahmed al-Ghaith pulled his Dodge Durango into a gas station in central Riyadh and told the attendant to fill it up. In a country where gas sells for 45 cents a gallon, that cost him $12.

With global oil prices plummeting, you might think people in Saudi Arabia, a nation synonymous with oil, where 90 percent of government revenue comes from holes drilled in its majestically profitable sands, would be freaking out.

But at a busy downtown gas station one day recently, there was not a whiff of concern among the drivers of the stream of Audis, Cadillacs, Mercedes-Benzes, Dodges and Chevys pulling up to the pumps in a land where government-subsidized gas is as cheap as water.

“Personally, it doesn’t affect me a bit,” said Ghaith, 49, who works in a bookstore and spends about $40 a month fueling his big American-made SUV. “It might affect the government in the future — maybe they will have to cut back on their big projects. But it’s no problem for me.”

In Saudi Arabia, the general response to the drop in global oil prices by half — from more than $100 a barrel six months ago to around $50 now — is a shrug.

Source: www.washingtonpost.com

Fresh off settling a legal dispute with New York Review of Books critic Martin Filler, Zaha Hadid has unveiled plans for her latest project. And even for the Queen of Swoop, this one is big. Very Big. Record-breaking big.   Hadid’s Beijing new airport terminal building. (Courtesy Zaha Hadid Architects) Working with ADP Ingeniérie, a French … Continued

News: Director of Anti-Defamation League Abraham Foxman says that political storm that has ensued after speech has made the move counterproductive, calls on Netanyahu to cancel speech.

Source: www.ynetnews.com

After the topic of Netanyahu’s speech reached the limelight and became the bud for a joke on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, Foxman told the Forward that “it turned the whole thing into a circus.

“One needs to restart and it needs a mature adult statement that this was not what we intended,” said Foxman to the Forward.

According to Foxman, going ahead with the speech would be counter-productive now that all the attention has been given to the political controversy rather than the issue Netanyahu intends to discuss – Iran.

“It has been hijacked by politics,” said Foxman to the Forward. “Now is a time to recalibrate, restart and find a new platform and new timing to take away the distractions.”

Although Foxman is calling for Netanyahu to cancel his speech on Iran, Foxman said that he does not disagree about the seriousness of the Iranian nuclear issue and agrees with Netanyahu on the need to strengthen sanctions against Iran.

Foxman offered alternatives to the planned speech, such as for Netanyahu to come to Washington only for the AIPAC conference and postpone his address until after the elections or relay his concerns about Iran in direct conversations, according to the Forward.

Zionist Camp leader Isaac Herzog and other opposition leaders also urged Netanyahu to cancel the speech after the White House announced that Vice President Joe Biden will not attend Netanyahu’s planned speech because he is traveling outside of the country.

As the heat continues to pile up against the speech, Netanyahu and his allies have tried to control the damage by saying that Netanyahu had understood, through Israel’s Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer, that House Speaker John Boehner would make sure that the democrats were also onboard with the Israeli Prime Minister’s speech to Congress.

According to the Forward, sources who have been in touch with the Israeli officials dealing with the political fallout of the speech said that Netanyahu and Dermer did not know that Boehner would announce Netanyahu’s visit on the morning of Obama’s State of the Union Address.

Netanyahu and Dermer’s claims came out in the open on Friday, when Netyanyahu confidante Tzachi Hanegbi, Israel’s deputy foreign minister and a member of the Likud’s top group of officials, stated in a radio interview that Boehner had left Netanyahu in the dark as he moved ahead with the invitation.

“It appears that the speaker of Congress made a move, in which we trusted, but which it ultimately became clear was a one sided move and not a move by both sides,” Hanegbi said in the radio interview.

He’s a rapper, a cop, a congressman and, yes, a Muslim. Welcome to America, where such things are possible.

Source: www.thedailybeast.com

Among the spooks, the spies, the special operators—not to mention among his fellow lawmakers, former rapper and congressman Andre Carson stands out.

“He’s the face of the franchise. Tall, handsome, smart, African American from a majority-[white] district, pushing to develop his skills at a lower level and rise,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus and a mentor to Carson.

Carson, who represents Indiana’s 7th congressional district, is one of the newest members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, a panel that provides oversight over the intelligence community. He sits on the subcommittees that investigate the CIA and emerging threats to the country, and he’s the second Muslim to be elected to the House, after Rep. Keith Ellison.

When he was first appointed to the panel this year, some of the nuttier corners of the Internet objected to the notion that a Muslim would be privy to national security information, prompting swift condemnation from the panel’s other Democrats.

“People who are making these statements—some of them know better,” Carson told The Daily Beast, in the first of two sit-down interviews. “Any true patriot that’s concerned about the safety of this country, and who heralds our legacy of being a melting pot, should know better than to demonize one group of people.” 

It would not be a stretch to say that Carson is one of the most interesting members of Congress. The path that brought him to Capitol Hill is a unique one, and especially relevant with discussions about national security, police brutality, and the role of Muslims in American society dominating the political conversation.

“Parts of me present an opportunity … to speak about issues that concern me deeply: deep levels of racial discrimination, that are historical. Islamophobia. Police and prosecutorial misconduct,” he explained. Being an African American Muslim, he said, “creates a platform to speak about those issues.”

His interest in Islam was piqued in his teenage years. He was raised by his grandmother, the late congresswoman for the district he now represents in Indianapolis. Though he was raised Christian—and he himself attended Catholic school for seven years—his grandmother was “very universalist” and kept a Koran in the house, as well as different writings on Islam and other religions. 

“For me, [Islam] spoke to me in a different kind of way. There was crime in my community, and I saw that Muslims were responding to crime in my community,” Carson told the Beast. “To see the sense of pride that Muslims had, the sense of protecting one’s community. And that drive was reinforced by the tenets of the faith.”

By DYLAN BYERS | 2/7/15 4:27 PM EST
NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams will take “several days” off amid an investigation into his false claims about his reporting experiences during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, he informed his staff on Saturday.

Williams will return to the broadcast after the hiatus and remain the anchor of the Nightly News, he said. Lester Holt will fill in during Williams’ absence.

“In the midst of a career spent covering and consuming news, it has become painfully apparent to me that I am presently too much a part of the news, due to my actions,” Williams told staff.

“As Managing Editor of NBC Nightly News, I have decided to take myself off of my daily broadcast for the next several days, and Lester Holt has kindly agreed to sit in for me to allow us to adequately deal with this issue,” he wrote. “Upon my return, I will continue my career-long effort to be worthy of the trust of those who place their trust in us.”

Williams had apologized on Wednesday for falsely claiming that he was in a helicopter struck by an RPG during the invasion of Iraq. Instead, he said, he was in a helicopter directly behind it. But that version of events was likewise called into question by two of the pilots on his helicopter, who told The New York Times “that they did not recall their convoy of helicopters coming under fire.” Another pilot who had initially backed Williams has since called his own account into doubt.

Read more about: Brian Williams

Source: www.politico.com

Umm Kulthum 40 years later: “She was never gone”

Source: www.albawaba.com

Meslhy evokes the different feelings of love, hatred, sympathy and affection in the readers’ hearts and souls (Photo Handout from Mohammed Meselhy) By Rana Khaled Surrounded by cigarette packs and a coffee machine, with quiet music playing in the…

Source: www.dailynewsegypt.com

Update: Politico is reporting that Vice President Joe Biden will be out of town when Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is scheduled to come to Washington to address a joint session of Congress, March 3.

The vice president’s office on Friday confirmed the plans to skip the March 3 speech.

“We are not ready to announce details of his trip yet, and normally our office wouldn’t announce this early, but the planning process has been underway for a while,” a spokesperson for the office said.

Amazing. This will give permission to a lot of Democrats to make other plans and will embarrass the rightwing prime minister. Even as various Jewish organizations are saying they are going to be collecting the names of those who don’t show up. This is a big name alright!

Original post: Let’s keep the pot boiling over the scandal of Netanyahu’s planned speech to a joint session of Congress to push the U.S. to attack Iran, why don’t we?

The latest news is that there are now a handful of Democratic congressmen who say they won’t attend the speech, but the Democratic leadership is trying to hold the line on defections. The Democrats don’t want a wedge driven between the parties over their love for Israel. So while House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says the invitation to Netanyahu was a mistake and the speech ought to be cancelled, she also said yesterday she’s going to attend the speech. No one should be using the word “boycott” about the Democratic leadership!

“I don’t think anybody should use the word ‘boycott,’” Pelosi said in her weekly press conference.

Boycott was the word of the day yesterday, re the Democratic leadership’s anger over the speech.

Source: mondoweiss.net

Assia Djebar’s life in dates:

1936: Born Fatma-Zohra Imalayène in Cherchell, west Algeria;
1955: First Muslim-origin woman to be admitted to France’s prestigious Ecole Normale Supérieure;
1957: Publishes first book La Soif (published as The Mischief in English);
1958: Publishes Les Impatients;
1959: Studies modern history of the Maghreb at Morocco’s Rabat University;
1962: Becomes professor at Algiers university, publishes Les enfants du nouveau monde;
1965: Leaves Algiers university when staff are instructed to teach in literary Arabic;
1967: Publishes Les alouettes naïves;
1968: Marries writer Walid Carn (pseudonym of Ould-Rouis Ahmed);
1974: Returns to Algiers university to teach French literature and cinema;
1975: Divorces;
1977: Directs first film La Nouba des femmes du mont Chenoua (The Song of the Women of Mount Chenoua);
1979: Receives International Critics’ Prize at the Venice Biennale for La Nouba des femmes du mont Chenoua;
1980: Returns to Paris to live;
1981: Marries poet Malek Alloula;
1982: Wins best historical film at Venice Biennale for La Zerda ou les chants de l’oubli, (Zerda or the Forgotten Songs);
1985: Publishes L’Amour, la fantasia;
1987: Publishes Ombre sultane:
1999: Elected to Belgium’s Academy of French language and literature;
2000: Wins Germany’s peace prize;
2001: Becomes professor at New York University, having previously taught at Louisiana Sate University in Baton Rouge;
2005: Elected to the Académie Française;
2007: Publishes Nulle part dans la maison de mon père, her last book;
6 February 2015: Dies in a Paris hospital after a long illness.

Source: www.english.rfi.fr

Martyrdom in the Context of the Palestinian National Struggle

In January 1965, Ahmad Musa, a Fedayeen fighter with the Fatah faction, retreated back into Jordan after a sabotage raid on an Israeli water tunnel near the Palestinian village of Eilaboun in the occupied Galilee. Israeli forces seized Eilaboun in October 1948, expelled its residents (eventually allowed to return after the intervention of the Archbishop of Acre), and rounded up 14 of its young men and shot them three by three in a massacre still commemorated by the village. [1] Musa met his own fate at the hands of Jordanian troops as he crossed the border. The country’s monarch, King Hussein, had initiated a policy of clamping down on Palestinian guerrillas in effort to reduce tension with Israel. Thus was born the first martyr of the Palestinian resistance. [2]

In the Palestinian national and diasporic commemoration of martyrs, Musa became the first symbol of sacrifice. He was soon joined by many more.

Source: www.palestine-studies.org