Mark A LeVine
Mr. LeVine is professor of modern Middle Eastern history, culture, and Islamic studies at the University of California, Irvine, and author of the forthcoming books: Heavy Metal Islam: Rock Religion and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam (Random House/Three Rivers Press, July 8, 2008), and An Impossible Peace: Oslo and the Burdens of History (Zed Books, in press). He is also author of Why They Don't Hate Us: Lifting the Veil on the Axis of Evil (Oneworld Publications, 2005), and Overthrowing Geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv and the Struggle for Palestine, 1880-1948 (California, 2005), and co-editor of Reapproaching Borders: New Perspectives on the Study of Israel-Palestine (Rowman Littlefield, 2007), Religion, Social Practices and Contested Hegemonies: Reconstructing the Public Sphere in Muslim Majority Societies (Palgrave, 2005) and with Viggo Mortensen and Pilar Perez, of Twilight of Empire: Responses to Occupation. Click here to access his homepage.There's a good chance that most of the more than 100,000 protesters in Washington and other cities last weekend believe that the Bush Administration won the propaganda war leading up to the invasion of Iraq because of its now discredited arguments that Iraq possessed weapons and mass destruction and had strong ties to al-Qa'eda. Sadly, they're wrong. Yes, the "fixed" intelligence was necessary to win acquiescence, if not widespread support, from an American public still shell-shocked from September 11. But as important was the positive vision articulated by the Bush Administration in the lead-up to war--bringing a ruthless, mass-murdering dictator to justice, creating a bastion of democracy in a region desperately in need of one, and through both making America safer from terrorism.
In comparison, the peace movement deployed an almost uniformly negative message, which largely ignored the need to do something about Saddam (or any of the other despotic rulers in...
In comparison, the peace movement deployed an almost uniformly negative message, which largely ignored the need to do something about Saddam (or any of the other despotic rulers in...
Monday, September 26, 2005 - 12:16
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George W. Bush. Tony Blair. Sylvio Berlusconi. Jacques Chirac. Along with most every other Western leader and innumerable pundits and policy-makers, they are frantically searching for the "moderate Muslims" who can save Islam from itself and improve relations between Muslims and the West.
The problem is that there's no such thing as a moderate Muslim, at least the way most Americans define the term. Look at whom we call moderate: President Bush, joined by many leading commentators, consistently cites Jordan's King Abdullah and Morocco's King Muhammad as the epitome of modern, moderate Muslim leaders. But a glance at the Amnesty International reports on their countries, or those of Egypt, Pakistan and other so-called moderate regimes, reveals them to be anything but moderate in the way they treat their citizens. In fact, the level of repression and censorship of most "moderate" regimes is as great as at any time since 9/11.
The problem is that there's no such thing as a moderate Muslim, at least the way most Americans define the term. Look at whom we call moderate: President Bush, joined by many leading commentators, consistently cites Jordan's King Abdullah and Morocco's King Muhammad as the epitome of modern, moderate Muslim leaders. But a glance at the Amnesty International reports on their countries, or those of Egypt, Pakistan and other so-called moderate regimes, reveals them to be anything but moderate in the way they treat their citizens. In fact, the level of repression and censorship of most "moderate" regimes is as great as at any time since 9/11.
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Wednesday, September 21, 2005 - 08:58
Mr. LeVine is professor of modern Middle Eastern history, culture, and Islamic studies at the University of California, Irvine, and author of the forthcoming books: Why They Don't Hate Us: Lifting the Veil on the Axis of Evil; and Overthrowing Geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv and the Struggle for Palestine, 1880-1948. He is also a contributor, with Viggo Mortensen and Pilar Perez, to Twilight of Empire: Responses to Occupation. Click here to access his homepage.
In the months leading up to the release of the final version of the Iraqi Constitution, most commentators focused on three topics--women, Islamic law, and Federalism--as the issues that would cause negotiators the most problems. Not surprisingly, they have been at the center of the heated arguments inside the Green Zone between Shi‘i, Kurdish and (far too few) Sunni representatives.
But the problems caused by the often ambiguous wording of the Constitution...
Sunday, September 18, 2005 - 11:45
"Where were the buses?" That's what so many of my non-American colleagues want to know. Whether Iraqi or Swiss, they cannot understand how a major American city, with which presumably has mass transit and school systems that use buses, couldn't figure out a way to get buses to the poorest areas of town where it was well known that people had neither the money nor the transportation to get out on their own.
Indeed, perhaps the sorriest sight of the whole Hurricane Katrina disaster was the endless lines of automobiles, so many of them roomy SUVs, minivans, and other staples of the American middle and upper classes, escaping the coming storm with nary a thought for the tens of thousands of fellow citizens left behind to fend for themselves. This is what America has become—every man, woman, and Escalade for themselves. Our sense of social solidarity and patriotism ends with flag-waving and barbecues on national holidays.
I know that...
Saturday, September 10, 2005 - 01:27
For years friends and colleagues around the world have been telling me that we "just don't get it." The it they've been referring to is the real meaning and experience of what Americans--a few pesky tree huggers and unionists aside--celebrate as globalization.
But now, with the confluence of news of increasing poverty and inequality, an immense natural disaster that needlessly laid waste to entire cities, a president who uses war-talk and cheery bravado to distract an overworked public from how much good the money from tax cuts for the wealthy and the untold billions spent on the war in Iraq could have done at home--better levees, perhaps? Universal health insurance? More fuel efficient cars?--we can start to appreciate how the rest of the world understands globalization.
But now, with the confluence of news of increasing poverty and inequality, an immense natural disaster that needlessly laid waste to entire cities, a president who uses war-talk and cheery bravado to distract an overworked public from how much good the money from tax cuts for the wealthy and the untold billions spent on the war in Iraq could have done at home--better levees, perhaps? Universal health insurance? More fuel efficient cars?--we can start to appreciate how the rest of the world understands globalization.
That's because globalization--more accurately, the neoliberal "Washington Consensus" policies that have created a corporate-ruled world were maximizing profits...
Friday, September 2, 2005 - 11:27
