Author Archives: Arab America

The French may be better known to themselves, and among West Europeans and white Americans, as top fashion designers and culinary masters whose language of amour is most fit for romance.

White Americans, like the Germans and the British, however, have a love-hate relationship with the French but clearly more love than hate as evidenced most recently by the publication in The New York Times of an op-ed piece by Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front.

As for much of the rest of the world — extending from the Antilles to Northern, Western and Central Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia — the French are seen as practiced killers and torturers, whose lovely and refined language is used not to describe a sumptuous creamy sauce or a plunging neckline on an evening dress, let alone for courting and flirtation, but rather to inflict pain and suffering on untold millions.

Yet the dominant French culture insists on seeing itself through its own eyes, and most French people are appalled that anyone in the world would even question their refined and rosy image of themselves.

Colonial barbarities

The reason for this contrast is a matter of both history and present French policies. Let us start with the historical: a report on French colonial atrocities in Indochina for the years 1930-33, following the outbreak of the Yen Bay mutiny in February 1930, lists some of the monstrous torture methods dear to French officers. According to the famed French activist Andrée Viollis, the torture methods included — in addition to the use of electricity — deprivation of food, bastinado (the whipping of the soles of the feet), pins hammered under the nails, half-hangings, deprivation of water and pincers on the temples (forcing the eyes outward) among others. A more delicate method included the use of “a razor blade, to cut the skin of the legs in long furrows, to fill the wound with cotton and then burn the cotton.”

In 1947-48, the French colonial authorities went on a rampage in Madagascar, killing and raping the population, and torching whole villages, as punishment for the Nationalist Malagasy uprising. Some of the more specifically French practices and torture specialties unleashed on the people of Madagascar included “death flights,” where people would be thrown from military planes in the middle of the sea to drown and become “disappeared.”

This murderous method was such a proud French specialty that the French colonial authorities in Algeria would continue its use several years later during the Battle of Algiers in 1956-57. In the Algerian case, French paratroopers decided to modify the method when corpses of Algerians began to surface, exposing the practice. The modification consisted of attaching concrete blocks to the feet of the victims to ensure their sinking permanently (the US-supported Argentinian generals would find this very helpful to their efforts in suppressing resistance to their dictatorship in the late 1970s).

These are not ad hoc methods of torture that the French devised on the spot, but well-studied and well-practiced cruelties. In the Algeria of the nineteenth century, General Saint-Arnaud would burn Algerian revolutionaries alive in caves and his soldiers would rape Algerian women, as would French soldiers throughout the Algerian revolution of the 1950s and early 1960s.

Estimates of those the French killed include a million Vietnamese and a million Algerians. As for Madagascar, estimates have it that upwards of 100,000 people were killed by the French. These are just a few examples of French colonial barbarities in some colonies and not an exhaustive list by any means. French colonialism, under the grandiose heading of a mission civilisatrice, has clearly failed to civilize, most of all, the French themselves. The mission, it would seem, remains unaccomplished!

Secular Catholicism

The matter of how the French are perceived is not limited only to history but is relevant to the present. While assimilating the natives into the ways of the colonizing French was the core of the French colonial program, this philosophy has come to haunt the French after they partially retreated from the colonies and found that immigrant Africans, Arabs and Indochinese, among others, are not “assimilable” into the ways of the “French.” It seems that only German, Russian, Spanish, Italian and certainly Hungarian immigrants to France can be assimilated now into French society, but not the darker and especially non-Christian immigrants.

The massacre of French Algerians committed by the French police in October 1961, which was clearly inspired by the “death flights” specialty of the French army in Algeria and Madagascar, resulted in the killing of upwards of 200 Muslim demonstrators (some estimates go as high as 400) by shooting them dead or throwing them in the River Seine.

It took the Catholic-dominated French government until 1998 to acknowledge that the police killed a mere 40 of the 200 to 400 French Muslims. Victims of the French Catholic-dominated government see such barbaric and cruel acts as a main feature of French Catholic culture, indeed as definitional of it. And not only is this not exclusive to French Muslims (French colonial authorities invented the category of “Français musulmans” in nineteenth century Algeria to legally require Algerians to denounce “Islamic law,” including polygamy, in order to have access to full French citizenship), French Jews too understand French Catholic anti-Semitism as a central feature of French Catholic culture.

After all, French Jews had been subjected by Napoleon in 1806 to a similar litmus — or is it Catholic? — test by which they had to allay his fears that Jewish polygamy and divorce laws that contradicted French state laws would not be practiced as a condition for Jewish emancipation. Of course these state laws just happened to be in line with Catholic monogamy, but not with Jewish polygamy. Yet the French continue to see and present themselves to the world and to themselves as sensitive and pensive lovers, engagé intellectuals and defenders of secularism, or “laïcité”!

It is this last point that has become part of the official and unofficial racist and sectarian campaigns by the reigning French Catholics, “laïcs” of course, against French Muslims, let alone Muslims outside France. It is there that French Muslims are thought of as somehow having geographic, religious and cultural origins outside France, something of which French citizens of Italian, German, Russian, Spanish or Hungarian immigrant origins are never accused.

If the French Catholics insisted that Algerian Muslims and Jews must become French in Algeria under French rule (French Jews of Algerian background are said to have successfully made the transition since the 1870 Crémieux decree which transformed them legally from Algerians into French citizens, a status that was later revoked under the collaborationist Vichy regime during the Second World War, revealing the tenuousness of French Catholic tolerance), the same French Catholics would insist that French people of Algerian Muslim background in France must also assimilate into some phantasmatic Frenchness that is allegedly secular or “laïc” and definitely not Christian.

It is unclear whether the Bretons, the Corsicans, or the Basques and Alsatians — the latter were thought by President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2011 to be still living in Germany — have already fully assimilated into this alleged Frenchness or are still awaiting new instructions.

Values of the republic

In the aftermath of the attack on the offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo by two French Muslim men, and the attack on a French Jewish supermarket by a third (the geographic origins of the parents of these men were immediately identified by the French media as germane if not central to their crimes), former French president of Hungarian Catholic origins Nicolas Sarkozy (his maternal grandfather is a Greek Jew who converted to Catholicism), proposed “expelling any [French Muslim] imam who holds views that do not respect the values of the republic.”

It is not clear if Sarkozy would agree with proposals that he should be expelled to Hungary or to Greece were he to espouse views “that do not respect the values of the republic.” It also remains unclear if this should also be the fate awaiting French Catholic priests and French Jewish rabbis if they are found disrespectful of such values, although if the situation of Jews under Vichy is any indication, the rabbis too will not be spared.

Contrary to the self-perception of most French Catholics, the problem with the contemporary dominant French Catholic (“laïc”) culture is, if anything, its lack of refinement. French racism is articulated often in the most vulgar of ways without any palliatives or euphemisms. In this, the French are unlike their peers in the American and British settings, where racism is often couched in more socially acceptable language that hides behind it the very same racist vulgarity. The vulgarity of French Catholic racism, however, is most similar to that of Israeli Jewish racism, which also often has no truck with circumlocutions and other linguistic cosmetics.

The ongoing policies and crimes of the French government in Mali, in Libya and in Afghanistan, to name the three most prominent sites of French military interventions, continue. When French troops opened fire on a civilian car in 2011 killing three civilians in Afghanistan, including a pregnant woman and a child, French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet expressed “deep sorrow” over the deaths but said the soldiers had acted in self-defense as the car had “refused to stop despite repeated warnings.”

The ongoing French support of Syrian jihadists, including French and NATO facilitation, if not encouragement, of French Muslims to join the battles in Syria, belie the official horror of French Catholics at the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and its decapitation practices. Perhaps French Muslim members of ISIS assimilated French Catholic culture far too well, especially as relates to intolerance and decapitation — for the French state’s “laïc” practice of executing criminals through decapitation by the guillotine continued until 1977, with the last person decapitated being coincidentally a French Muslim criminal.

Who should assimilate?

This France is the France that accuses its Muslim population of refusing to assimilate to its ways, but never questions why it thinks it should not assimilate to their ways — since French Muslims too are as much part of France and its culture as French Catholics are and since France is no longer the exclusive property of French Catholics to do with as they please. Perhaps French Catholics (should we just call them Gaulois?) could learn some tolerance from French Muslims.

After all, it is French Muslims who have endured and continue to the best of their abilities to tolerate the decades-long racism and intolerance of French Catholics. Could French Catholics in turn learn to tolerate the tolerance of French Muslims? Shocking as this last idea may be to French Catholic and sectarian racists (who are of course “laïcs”), these same people never thought it shocking when as a colonial minority they sought to force the majority of the colonized to assimilate to their ways — whatever their ways are of course.

One is never sure if French Muslims are expected to adopt the torture and murderous methods of French Catholics and their “laïc” intolerance as part of their assimilation process. If indeed this is what is required, then the only three successfully assimilated French Muslims are none other than Cherif and Saïd Kouachi, the brothers who attacked Charlie Hebdo, and Amedy Coulibaly, who attacked the Jewish supermarket.

Amazingly enough, the French government refused to acknowledge what well-assimilated Frenchmen the Kouachi brothers were and asked the Algerian government to have them buried in Algeria, a country to which they had never been, rather than in France where they had assimilated in an exemplary fashion. The Algerian government duly refused to allow the burial of the two Frenchmen on its soil. France got the same answer from the government of Mali, which refused a French government request to send them the body of the French citizen Coulibaly for burial.

Despite the horrific magnitude of the three men’s deeds, their crimes remain numerically modest and pale in comparison with the far more cruel French Catholic and “laïc” monstrosities that have reached genocidal proportions across the globe. Had the Kouachi brothers and Coulibaly lived, however, they would have still needed many more lessons in cruelty and violent intolerance before they could become fully assimilated into true Catholic and laïc Frenchness.

It is the rest of French Muslims who continue to resist assimilation into Catholic and “laïc” Frenchness and continue to refuse to follow the example of intolerant French Catholic and “laïc” racists and their few Muslim emulators. For the majority of French Muslims, their answer to these French Catholic and laïc invitations to assimilation is an explicit “thanks, but no thanks,” or in the refined language of the French: “Merci, très peu pour nous!”

Joseph Massad is Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University. His most recent book is Islam in Liberalism.

Editors note: This article has been changed. It previously stated, in accordance with the linked article in The Daily Mail, that Amedy Coulibaly had been born in Mali. According to French media, he was in fact born in Juvisy-sur-Orge, France, on 27 February 1982.

Source: electronicintifada.net

The uproar over Netanyahu’s scheduled speech to the Congress in March has landed on the front page of the Times today. The thrust of the article headlined “A Strained Alliance…” by Peter Baker and Jodi Rudoren is that things are very bad in the view of many Israel-watchers, but the two countries had better get over the problem soon. A friend says it is “conservative.” To me it reads like a dispatch from the Israel lobby.

The last paragraph is handed over to Josh Block, a right wing Israel supporter, who tells the countries’ leaders to grow up.

“It would be nice if a level of maturity kicked in and we did not allow the personality-driven issues and political issues to overwhelm what are incredibly important common global issues,” said Josh Block, president of the Israel Project, a pro-Israeli education group in Washington. “It’s important we focus on what really matters.”

The article quotes no Palestinians. None. Maybe they think this rift is a good thing? Maybe John Mearsheimer thinks it’s a good thing? Yousef Munayyer? Munayyer says on twitter today:

Imagine a pre-1994 MSM discourse on US-South Africa that entirely excluded black south africans

It quotes a number of Israel supporters and Israelis, from Block to Martin Indyk to Efraim Halevy to Eytan Gilboa (“Of course this is a crisis”) to Richard Haass.

It makes scant reference to all the substantive causes of a fallout between the countries, for instance the latest announcement of Israeli colonies in the occupied West Bank.

It is worried about what John Kerry might do because of the crisis:

[H]e may be emboldened to pursue an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan through the United Nations or outside powers without waiting for Mr. Netanyahu’s assent.

Again, maybe that’s a good thing?
Donald Johnson was also annoyed by the absence of Palestinian voices:
I guess you could argue that it is about the US-Israeli relationship and so Palestinian comment is unnecessary, but I don’t buy it, especially when people are quoted as saying how the two countries share common values and so the relationship shouldn’t be turned into one between two political parties.
I don’t think Ta-Nehisi Coates knows enough about the I/P conflict to comment, but if he ever immerses himself in the subject I suspect he might say that we do share common values, but not in a nice way.  We share a common interest in self-mythologizing and whitewashing our crimes.  The spiel about common values reminds me of the long period from the late 1870s until the 1960’s when whites in both the North and South agreed that the Civil War was a war of brother against brother, good intentions on both sides, tragic, and wasn’t it great that we were reunited and one big happy family, while Jim Crow in the south and sundown towns in the North were a constant reminder of who wasn’t part of the big happy family.
There is also not the slightest clue in this piece that Obama’s disdain for Israel may reflect real currents in US public opinion reflective of Israeli policy, for instance the slaughter of 500 children in Gaza last summer. The Times of Israel reports today: “Britons Loathe Israel More than Iran.” It shows that there has been a massive shift in attitudes in the last two years:

Britons feel more “unfavorable” to Israel than any other country worldwide except North Korea, a survey found.

The survey — taken in August and published Thursday by Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs — showed a massive surge in negative attitudes toward Israel since the previous such study, two years earlier. Thirty-five percent of Britons said they “feel especially unfavorable towards” Israel in the 2014 survey, compared to 17% in 2012.

Many Americans are also feeling this way. The core constituents of the Democratic Party are increasingly alienated by U.S. policy on Israel (Shibley Telhami reports): Hispanics, blacks, the young, and women.

In other words, Obama and other Democrats may feel that it is not just important but politically feasible to thumb their noses at a warmongering foreign leader. But you’d never know it from the Times.

Source: mondoweiss.net

Last August at the height of Israel’s assault on Gaza, nine activists occupied the roof of a Staffordshire factory that supplied engines to Israeli drones and shut down the factory for two days. Now the British government has dropped a case against the nine, evidently because the Israeli arms company was unwilling to produce evidence of its arms exports.

A report from London Palestine Action says the government and the company Elbit Systems, a manufacturer of drones, are “running scared”:

Activists have accused the UK government and Israeli arms company Elbit Systems of running scared from a court case that would have put their collusion with Israeli war crimes on trial.

This follows the announcement that all charges have been dropped against nine campaigners who occupied the roof of an Elbit Systems factory in Staffordshire during Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza. This means that the UK government will no longer be required to reveal details of the arms trade with Israel, and Elbit will avoid having to testify about the use of its drones during Israel’s massacre in Gaza last summer….

The activists pleaded not guilty to charges of “preventing lawful activity” on the basis that the operations at the Staffordshire factory were aiding and abetting war crimes and therefore illegal.

Lawyers for the defendants say it appears the case collapsed either because the prosecution had been told either that Elbit Systems were unwilling to testify in court about their activities or because the UK government was unwilling to comply with the court’s order to disclose information it holds about licenses for arms exports to Israel, or both.

Source: mondoweiss.net

Mullah Akhtar Mohammed Osmani, the Taliban’s military leader for southern Afghanistan, sat stolidly, his great bulk sup­ported in an overstuffed chair to my left. It was October 2, 2001, and events had been hurtling forward since the terrorist attacks of September 11. President George W. Bush had delivered an ultimatum to the Taliban in his State of the Union address on September 20: Hand over al-Qaeda’s leadership or share their fate. But the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan had not yet begun, and I still saw a chance, however small, for a peaceful way out. That was why, as the CIA station chief in Islamabad responsible for both Pakistan and Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, I was having this meeting with a top Taliban official.

The day President Bush had delivered his ultimatum, the Supreme Council of the Islamic Clergy, a committee of 700 Islamic scholars that Taliban chief Mullah Omar had convened to advise him on the correct course to pursue toward Osama bin Laden, had partially opened the door to an acceptable settlement. The council had recommended that the Taliban government seek bin Laden’s voluntary departure from the country. A day later, on September 21, Mullah Omar slammed the door shut, stating that he would neither turn over bin Laden nor ask him to leave.

On September 28, Lieutenant General Mahmud Ahmed, Pakistan’s top spy as the director-general of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), led a group of eight Pakistani Islamic scholars, well-known religious extremists all, to meet with Omar in one final, desperate attempt to induce the Taliban to, in Mahmud’s own words, “get the gun to swing away from their heads.” If there was nothing for the moment to be done about bin Laden, Mah­mud suggested, perhaps the Taliban leader could agree to release eight humanitarian workers who had recently been arrested for Christian proselytizing in Afghanistan; or perhaps he could hand over some of bin Laden’s lieutenants; or at least he could allow Americans to inspect the al-Qaeda camps to demonstrate that their occupants had fled. All suggestions were in vain.

As the alternatives to all-out war against the Taliban were being sys­tematically foreclosed, I could sense that attitudes in Washington were hardening in tandem. Even a few days before, the tone had been quite different, at least at the White House. I had already had one meeting with Mullah Osmani, on September 15, and he had told me that the Taliban would not sacrifice its country for the sake of Osama bin Laden. He hadn’t made specific concessions, but I saw a clear opportunity; for his part, the president, who had not yet delivered his public ultimatum of the 20th, had reacted to CIA Director George Ten­et’s report of my meeting—and the implicit possibility of a shift in the Taliban policy of sheltering bin Laden—with open interest.

“Fascinating,” he had said.

Similarly, in late September, the president and his cabinet principals still held out the possibility of a continued role for the Taliban in Afghanistan, provided its leaders agreed to break with Omar and meet U.S. demands. All, including National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney, agreed that the United States should not hit the full Taliban leadership at the outset of its military operations, lest it dis­courage an intra-Taliban split.

Over a week later, though, in the face of Mullah Omar’s recalcitrance, I could feel the political landscape shifting. One could sense that all American efforts were now vectoring inexorably toward war. It was no longer clear to me that Washington would accept any deal, even if an alternative Taliban leadership were prepared to offer one. Once the mental break is made, and war has been deemed inevitable, events take on their own momentum.

I also knew that my mission to the Taliban, no matter how carefully pursued, would carry with it the taint of negotiation, which had become anathema from what I could divine of the current climate in Washing­ton. The president himself had said that there could be no ambiguity—you were either with us or with the terrorists—and that his demands of the Taliban were not up for negotiation or discussion. As a practi­cal matter, however, even finding ways for the Taliban to meet U.S. demands would require discussion, if not negotiation, and a refusal of all dis­cussions would scuttle any chance of non-military success. In my own discussion with Mullah Osmani, I hoped at a minimum to sow serious divisions within the Taliban leadership.

I could not rule out greater success, however, and had to contemplate the possibility that the commander and the rest of the Taliban shura, the leadership council, would reject Mullah Omar, accept U.S. demands, and find a way to turn bin Laden and his 14 most senior al-Qaeda lieutenants over to us in a bid to retain power. However remote the chance of such a peaceful conclusion to the crisis, I felt, it should not be cast away lightly. I was haunted by the thought of the disasters that had befallen both the British and the Russians in Afghanistan, and I feared that a similar fate could befall us.

* * *

Source: www.theatlantic.com

Israeli forces fatally shot one Palestinian and wounded another on Saturday in the West Bank after they were spotted throwing a firebomb onto a road near Nablus that is also used by Israeli settlers, the Israeli military said. Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency, said the dead Palestinian was Ahmed Ibrahim al-Najar, 19. The military said that the soldiers had fired at the suspects’ legs and that the episode was under investigation. In October, Israeli forces fatally shot a 14-year-old Palestinian who also held American citizenship in what the military said were similar circumstances. In December, an Israeli girl, 11, was severely injured when a firebomb hit the car in which she was traveling near her home in a West Bank settlement.

Source: www.nytimes.com

Minister of Foreign Affairs  Sameh Shoukry met with the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Robert Serry, in Cairo Monday, to discuss the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks.

“The meeting tackled the Palestinian issue in light of latest updates including the new West Bank settlements,” said foreign ministry spokesperson Badr Abdelatty. He added that both parties discussed potential ideas to resume the peace talks between Palestine and Israel based on the mutually agreed upon international treaties.

Serry, who is also the UN representative for the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), further discussed with Shoukry the daily lives of Gaza Strip residents. They also discussed possible ways to implement the recommendations previously discussed at the Gaza reconstruction conference.

Monday’s meeting is part of ongoing attempts from the Egyptian government to intermediate between Israel and Palestine. Located at the restive border of Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip’s security situation is equally crucial for Egypt.

The Israeli government published bids for the building of new 450 units in West Bank settlements on Friday, a decision strongly condemned by several international governments including the Egyptian foreign ministry as well as, and the Obama administration.

Earlier this month, President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi met with the Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, to discuss escalating political tensions between the Palestinians and Israelis. They also discussed the Palestinian unity government’s efforts to reconstruct the Gaza Strip, following the major damage that befell it after the 50-day armed conflict last summer.

Source: www.dailynewsegypt.com

Jordan

“Trying to find the safest country in the Middle East is quite similar to picking a needle out of a haystack. In our modern world it would be the equivalent of trying to find an 18 year world without an iPhone or Samsung Galaxy smart phone.  You really should upgrade if you don’t already have one.

Tragically it seems as if the only things we hear about the Middle East recently contain visions of war, hate, and chaos.

Culturally, the Middle East spreads across geographic borders across Africa all the way to central Asia. Many people I find on the road have never heard of countries whose cultures coincide more with the Middle East more than their European neighbors such as Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kyrgyzstan which all contain over 90% muslims demographically.

Remember the country that Borat was from without Googling it?

Hint… it ends with “stan”

Outside of Saudi Arabia, and now Dubai, no other countries in the Middle East posts significant tourism numbers. With the fresh crises of Syria, Egypt, and now Turkey, many consider trips to the Middle East a trip better planned for never.

“Illegally climbing to the top of the monastery at the Petra complex in Jordan”
Jordan lost $1 billion in tourism revenue in 2011 because of the instability in the region.

There are some countries that have more culturally to see than others. The pyramids and pharaohs of Egypt have long been a dream for many while the bustling capital of Turkey, Istanbul, remains one of the most fascinating cities in the world.

In trying to find the safest country in the Middle East I considered all of the countries in the region but only judged those nations that most of us would likely visit.  Most tourists have between two and four weeks of vacation and don’t live a nomadic lifestyle living overseas as I do.

Most of us are never going to visit countries such as Libya, Algeria, or even Saudi Arabia.

While Saudi Arabia posts impressive tourism numbers among Middle Eastern countries remember that most is religious tourism (two of the most holiest cities for Muslims are in Saudi Arabia).

“The Temple of Hercules at the Amman Citadel in Amman, Jordan”
Dubai has set a record in 2012 by receiving over 10 million tourists.  We also have to consider that the up and coming city has become the financial and business center of the Middle East. Jordan possesses a considerably higher amount of tourist attractions and things to see than both destinations combined.

If there is one destination to choose in the region it should be Jordan.

Jordan was popularized when Petra was chosen as one of the new seven wonders of the world in 2007.

In full disclosure the Jordan Tourism Board sponsored our trip.  Many would comment that I did not have a true experience because I was hosted by the tourism board. However, I still actively went out on my own, especially at night, to experience the cities without the guides to meet the people and ensure I got a real taste of the country.

We also ran a contest that involved a one year free training program to learn how to day trade in the stock market. I day trade for a living and is the primary reason why I have been able to travel around the world for so long.

This experience alone and how it was handled by the tourism board also provided insight into the culture of the country.

The first and most important aspect of safety is that most people in the country speak English. I only encountered a small number of people in the rural regions where I had to communicate with my broken Arabic.

Very broken Arabic.

“Drinking Bedouin Whiskey with the local Bedouins while on a tour of Wadi Rum”
Even then, everyone was kind and courteous and insisted I stay for tea with hand signals if necessary.  The most significant change in the country occurred when a peace treaty was signed between Israel and Jordan in 1994. Jordan’s place in the world stage was officially set with the iconic Petra as one of the new seven wonders of the world.

Even President Obama said about Petra, “this is pretty spectacular” and “it’s amazing” according to NBC news. Who wouldn’t believe the words of the wise President Obama?

The demilitarized zone of the Dead Sea is now one of the bustling tourist districts of the country adding to the reasons why it is one of the safest countries now in the Middle East.

The infrastructure throughout the country is extremely modern. Visiting some of the major attractions on our visit all the roads were paved and we didn’t have any issues at all.

I never once felt uneasy or conscious about security. Considering that the region is so close to Israel and even Syria one would think that this would be an issue. The truth is the people of Jordan are very liberal, modern, and social.

“One of the local Jordanians we met in the capital, Amman”
I actually felt more uneasy in Israel as there was so much security throughout the country. The similarities between Jordan and Israel are many.  Since Jordan relates more to the Arab world there isn’t as much of a concern about security as most of their allies are in the region.

Even with the turmoil continuing to flare in the region I would highly recommend a trip to Jordan.  My trip opened my eyes to parts of history that many wouldn’t even consider. The city of Jerash in Northwest Jordan contained one of the best preserved Roman cities outside of Italy.

Jordan is definitely WanderingTrader approved!  Look forward to sharing more tidbits of a very unique country I began to like very much.

Is Jordan really the safest country in the Middle East? Visit first and then let me know!

Source: wanderingtrader.com

After the recent controversy between Rabat and Cairo, which ended with a letter sent from President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi to King Mohammed VI on January 16, Egypt’s Ambassador to Rabat, Ahmed Ihab Jamal al-Din, has affirmed that relations between Cairo and Rabat have restored their “positive momentum.”

The Egyptian Ambassador said in an interview with CBC that Morocco and Egypt are “looking forward to promoting cooperation in different areas,” including with respect to economics and in supporting moderate Islam to stop the growth of terrorism in the region.

The Ambassador reportedly added that Morocco’s King Mohammed VI welcomed the idea of setting up an area for Egyptian companies at the Mediterranean port of Tangier, as well as a reciprocal Moroccan zone at the Suez Canal.

The Egyptian Ambassador said that several Moroccan economic actors would take part in the upcoming Sharm el-Sheikh economic conference, with the goal of increasing bilateral trade between the two countries, which currently stands at about $700 million per year.

The Ambassador went on to affirm the strong spiritual relations between the two countries, mainly in terms of Sufism. Many Egyptians recently traveled to Morocco to attend the meeting of “Zaouia of Boutchichia.” The Ambassador urged the media to “focus on and highlight these common treasures.”

Source: www.moroccoworldnews.com

South Sudan President Salva Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar late Sunday signed a new agreement to end more than 13 months of fighting in a civil war that has left tens of thousands dead.

“Complete cessation of hostilities in South Sudan is expected as of this morning (Monday),” Seyoum Mesfin, a negotiator from the regional IGAD bloc, told reporters in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa where the ceasefire deal was signed.

The two leaders have signed – and then broken – at least six previous ceasefire agreements since fighting began in December 2013.

The eight-member East African bloc IGAD, which has in the past threatened sanctions over violations but never taken action, says this time it will take any ceasefire violations to the UN Security Council and the African Union’s Peace and Security Council and ask for “tough measures” against them, Mesfin said.

After four days of difficult negotiations in the Ethiopian capital, Kiir and Machar have however failed to reach agreement on the conflict settlement proposed by IGAD which provides for a power-sharing arrangement between the two men.

“This is a partial agreement because we have not solved some of the most critical issues,” Machar said after the signing, citing disagreements on the “transitional government structure” to set up and divide responsibilities within the administration.

Negotiations will resume on February 20 with IGAD giving the warring sides one last chance to reach a final agreement by March 5.

IGAD mediators did not try to hide their frustrations after meeting for an eighth summit to try to resolve the crisis.

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta told Kiir and Machar this was not what the people of South Sudan expected from their leaders after years of struggle.

South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011 after decades of armed conflict.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn warned that failure to reach an agreement would have serious consequences for all of them, especially the leaders of South Sudan.

A Western diplomat involved in the talks played down Sunday’s interim agreement, saying: “This is not a significant breakthrough, this is a small step at the most.”

Fighting broke out in South Sudan, the world’s youngest nation, in December 2013 when Kiir accused his sacked deputy Machar of attempting a coup.

Clashes between a faction of the army loyal to Kiir and rebels loyal to Machar have since expanded throughout the country and left tens of thousands dead in a conflict which now involves 20 armed groups.

Kiir and Machar last met in November in Addis Ababa, where they agreed an immediate halt to the war, a deal broken within hours.

The fighting in the capital Juba set off a cycle of retaliatory massacres across the country, pushing it to the brink of famine.

Source: www.emirates247.com

At the border between Detroit and Dearborn, you’d never know that in the space of one step, you’d leave a land governed by the U.S. Constitution and enter a city where sharia law holds sway.

Because, of course, you’re not.

Dearborn is a sedate Detroit suburb, more prosaic than revolutionary. It’s the kind of place where folks really care about school districts, property values, and code enforcement; for generations, bored teenagers have called it “Deadborn.”

But for the last half-decade, Dearborn has been the unwilling darling of the extreme right, a bogeyman invoked to perpetuate the ersatz notion that sharia law, a system of justice derived from the Koran, has gained a foothold on American soil.

More than 30 percent of Dearborn’s roughly 95,000 residents are Arab-American or of Arab descent (PDF). In reality, that means the city has some pretty great restaurants, a handful of mosques, and a more genuinely multicultural feel than most Midwestern towns—McDonald’s serves halal meat, business signs are bilingual, and every diner serves hummus.

For some, it’s enough to assign Dearborn a central role in a larger conspiracy theory, the claim that worldwide there are hundreds of so-called “no-go zones,” breeding grounds for jihad where sharia governs and non-Muslims aren’t welcome.

With five minutes and a search engine, it’s easy to disprove the radical right’s pet theory about Dearborn—or any of the cities and neighborhoods featured on the no-go list. Yet the creeping-sharia myth is so pervasive that it’s been repeated by folks like Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, considered a 2016 presidential hopeful, and by failed 2010 Nevada U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle, a Tea Party adherent, among numerous other Republicans. Fox News was forced to apologize after a commentator labeled parts of Europe no-go zones.

Source: www.thedailybeast.com

Activists have been lobbying the U.S. Census Bureau to grant minority status to Americans with roots in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The campaign began in 1980s, picking up steam in the last decade in response to government policies in the “war on terrorism.” The bureau has considered Americans of Middle Eastern and North African descent white since the 1920s and has repeatedly rejected appeals for minority status citing the 1997 Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guideline that defines white as “a person having origins in the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East or North Africa.” This changed in December when the U.S. Census announced plans to test a new MENA category for possible inclusion in the 2020 census. The Federal Register is now seeking 5,000 letters in support of the proposed change by Feb. 2, the deadline for the public comment period. 

The bureau’s overture has sparked hope and anxiety. Supporters say a new category would lead to a fuller and more accurate count of their numbers and increase their visibility and political influence. The nonprofit Arab American Institute (AAI) says the changes will “correct the problematic undercount of our community” and is urging people to write support letters to census officials. Its proposal calls for creating “a coherent ethnic category” for MENA, similar to the ethnicity box that exists for Hispanics. 

“We are making progress on this issue, finally, and this is the moment that we have to speak out publicly or wait another 10 years,” Randa Kayyali, who chairs a research group working on the issue, emailed supporters in late December.

Race and racial categories are fluid social and political constructs; groups can experience racial shifts over time. In the United States, nonwhite groups have in the past attained a white status. For example, the Irish, who were once categorized as nonwhite, attained white status in 1878, and Arab Muslim immigrants became officially white in 1943. Similarly, whites can become nonwhite racial minorities, as happened with Pakistani- and Indian-Americans in 1978. But racialization is not only a top-down process driven by state policy; grass-roots social movements can also lobby for new categories or the elimination of old ones. 

Over the last decade several communities in the U.S. have pushed for minority status at either the federal or state level. This includes campaigns by young Americans of Iranian, Arab, Turkish and Nubian descent who grew up under the Patriot Act and witnessed the effects of deportation, rendition, ethnic profiling and wiretapping on relatives and neighbors. At conferences, in the media and through humorous online initiatives, activists argue that their communities enjoy few of the benefits of whiteness.

Since 9/11, discrimination against Americans of MENA descent has risen precipitously as a result of hate crimes and policies associated with the “war on terrorism.” However, community leaders are not able to keep a proper count of those crimes or lobby for policy changes since the official classification lumps together people of MENA descent with whites.

The racial minority label is not contingent on ancestry or physical characteristics; even whites may be granted minority status, as is argued in reverse discrimination cases.
The current classification has a direct effect on the provision of social services and government assistance to new Americans. Muslim community leaders and social workers note that they increasingly work with refugees from countries such as Iraq, Sudan and Somalia. However, social service agencies cannot effectively demonstrate the communities’ needs for benefits such as education and health care without the requisite demographic data.

Different branches of the U.S. government have already started to grant minority status to MENA communities over the last decade. For example, in June 2013 the Department of Justice added a new race/ethnicity category for Arab Americans on the FBI’s 1-699 hate crimes form. The decision to list Arabs as a race/ethnicity came in response to the spike in hate crimes in the aftermath of the April 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, despite objection from the OMB, which wanted to maintain the U.S. Census classification.

The Census Bureau has balked at granting minority status to Americans of MENA descent, noting that the label applies only to racial and ethnic groups with a history of exclusion in the U.S. such American Indians, Asian-Americans, blacks and Hispanics. The racial minority label is not contingent on ancestry or physical characteristics; even whites may be granted minority status, as is argued in reverse discrimination cases. And this is a source of great confusion: What is thought of as race in everyday talk — i.e., how one looks — is not how the Census Bureau defines race and minority status.

“Ideally, minority status should really be just for African-Americans and Native Americans, who have known historic discrimination,” says Helen Samhan, the executive director of the AAI, who launched the minority status campaign 30 years ago. “What I resist is the fact that virtually all immigrant populations outside Europe except North Africans and Middle Easterners are considered minorities — Asians, Africans, Latin Americans are considered nonwhite.”

As Samhan points out that the Census Bureau’s country listings and geographic demarcations are often random. “A Pakistani-American can compete for a small-business loan because he’s from Asia, but an Iranian- or Iraqi-American can’t?” she asks. “Who decided Iraq is not western Asia?”

The minority status campaigners proposal seeks to expand the official definition of the MENA region, by adopting the Arab League’s designation of the Arab world, which encompasses Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti and Comoros. They are also calling for the inclusion of three non-Arab states — Turkey, Iran and Israel, as well as four subnational communities — Assyrians, Chaldeans, Kurds and Berbers.

Proponents say the expanded definition would allow for the counting of Afro-Arab populations, which the U.S. census has historically undercounted. “An ethnic category allows people to self-identify as whatever race they want in addition to MENA ethnicity,” says Kayyali. “After all, there are many shades within the Middle East and North Africa region.”

Hisham Aidi teaches at Columbia University. He is the author of “Rebel Music: Race, Empire and the New Muslim Youth Culture,” a study of black internationalism and global youth culture.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera America’s editorial policy.

Source: america.aljazeera.com

The Israeli army also arrested 60 Palestinians from East Jerusalem, 42 from Ramallah and al-Bireh, 38 from Jenin, 35 from Nablus, 19 from Qalqilya and 19…

Source: www.worldbulletin.net