Redactie | Tuesday 15 May 2012 | Art&Cultuur

Television Channels the Arab Spring

By: Yves Gonzalez-Quijano

Everyone wants to talk about the role of social media in last year’s uprisings, but the big Arab television news channels played just as significant a part in the Arab Spring. There is a limit to the extent to which mobile phones can replace professional cameras: their short video sequences do not have the emotional impact of a feature on Al-Jazeera or Al-Arabiya, the two biggest news channels in the region. Their live reports from Tahrir Square and elsewhere were able to reach tens of millions of viewers. Surfing the net cannot provide the live thrill viewers got each Friday in February 201...

read more »

Tagged |
Hamid Dabashi | Tuesday 15 May 2012 | Art&Cultuur

The fact and fiction of revolutions

New York, NY – On May 1, as thousands of New Yorkers staged their modest but hearty May Day rally – hoping to revive the Occupy Wall Street movement in the city – faculty, students, and a few other denizens gathered in the small but delightful Martin E Segal Theatre Center at the City University of New York (CUNY) to watch and listen to theatrical performances and selected readings by playwrights and novelists from Egypt, Georgia, Iran and the United States. The event, dubbed “Revolutionary Plays Since 2000″ and organised in conjunction with the PEN World Voices F...

read more »

Tagged |
Redactie | Tuesday 15 May 2012 | Art&Cultuur

War and Popcorn

Serious war films are going extinct as Hollywood cranks out childish fantasies about heroism and violence.

By: Michael Atkinson

We’re a country at war, right? So let’s talk about war films, you and I. It’s a troubling genre, because it’s defined by the depiction of wholesale man-made catastrophe, which involves both vast human waste and intense cinematic excitement. Obviously, these two factors are in tension with each other, to say the least–a matter of the gravest ethical trauma crashing into pure entertainment spectacle. Begin with D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915). Whether you were a Union stalwart or a slavery-mourning rebel in the early 20th century, the Civil War had been a holocaust for y...

read more »

Tagged , , |
Hassouna Mansouri | Monday 14 May 2012 | Midden-Oosten, Politiek, Westen

When Art Turns into a Sales Pitch

Umberto Eco once took a trip to the United States of America (USA) in the 70s, with an amazing plan to visit national museums and attraction parks. A book about this journey was published under the all inspiring title “Travels in Hyperreality”. The main idea was how copies of real things particularly stimulate the fascination of the public. The fact that a real object is presented in an artificial space produces an amplification of feelings: horror, beauty, terror, inspiration, etc. Among the copies and reconstructions he analyzed, we find President Lyndon Johnson’s Oval Office, a me...

read more »

Redactie | Monday 14 May 2012 | Midden-Oosten, Politiek

French elections: what does normal stand for?

By: Nilüfer Göle

The vote for Hollande is not so much a radical desire for change as a possibly illusory desire to go back to the pre-crisis period. The socialists have meanwhile opened up a new approach to the economy.But ‘racism from above’ has led the way in this historic fight over what is normal François Hollande won the presidential elections with almost 52 percent of the votes. Since the François Mitterand years, he will be the first socialist president of the Republic. In his campaign he promised “change” to French voters. However I argue that rather than change, it is the tacit desir...

read more »

Redactie | Monday 7 May 2012 | Politiek, Westen

The Racism of Intellectuals, by Alain Badiou, philosopher, dramatist and writer

The extent of the vote for Marianne Le Pen is surprising and overwhelming; we look for explanations–The political class comes out with a handy sociology: the France of the lower classes, the misled provincials, the workers, the under-educated, frightened by globalization, the decline in purchasing power, the disintegration of their districts, and foreign strangers present at their doors, wants to retreat into nationalism and xenophobia. Besides, these are already those French “stragglers” who were accused of having voted “No” in the referendum on the draft European Constitution– On...

read more »

Redactie | Wednesday 2 May 2012 | Midden-Oosten, Politiek

The Arab Spring: The End of Postcolonialism – an interview with the author

In his new book , Hamid Dabashi argues that the revolutionary uprisings across the Middle East have finally put an end to postcolonialism, and that we must now re-imagine the geopolitics of the region. He spoke to JP O’Malley about why the west is no longer a powerful construct; the role women will play in the Arab Spring; and why Islam is not the driving force behind this present revolution JPO’M: What is the central thesis of your new book? HD: That in the aftermath of European colonialism, a series of regimes came to power in which knowledge production was conducive to postcoloniality. ...

read more »

Redactie | Thursday 19 April 2012 | Politiek, Wereld, Westen

The far right takes root in Europe

Anders Behring Breivik’s attacks are part of a worrying trend in Europe of the far right’s rise within mainstream politics. From the Netherlands and Germany to Britain and France, immigrant communities are on the defensive.

The bloodthirsty attacks perpetrated by Anders Behring Breivik in Norway on July 22 last year (leaving 77 dead) provided a brutal awakening for all those in Europe who had been passively observing the rise of the Islamophobic far right. As the trial opens, around thirty political parties that openly call for a “pure European identity” are effectively in the process of consolidating their parliamentary positions (occasionally even signing agreements with mainstream right wing parties, as is the case in the Netherlands), and are claiming an ever greater media presence. These parties,...

read more »

Hassouna Mansouri | Friday 13 April 2012 | Islam, Midden-Oosten, Politiek

Political Islam, a matter of hegemony

To this day the “Arab Spring” seems to be an historic event with a deep irony. The reason why Ben Ali and Mubarak were tolerated by the international community was the guarantee of a profitable social and political stability which meant the repression of the Islamic movements. This argument was used in fact, to oppress the entire society, but this always remained a side story which everybody pretended to ignore. What is happening right now, one year after the uprising of the Tunisian and the Egyptian people, is that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and its avatar Al-Nahdha in Tunisia are ru...

read more »

Hassouna Mansouri | Wednesday 14 March 2012 | Midden-Oosten, Wereld

When disagreement is treason

History puts all totalitarian regimes face to face with the voice of one, and one single person, who stands and dares to say “ENOUGH”. It can be a group but because it panics, the system reacts by focusing on one individual. It is as if every tyranny needs a mirror to see how far it can take its absurdity and irrationality. The arrogance of a machine of oppression is confronted with a peaceful and weak individual. The stronger a dictatorship is, the more fragile it is. At the same time the weaker a rebel is, the more dangerous he/she is. We have known this since Gandhi stood up to the colo...

read more »

Hassouna Mansouri | Thursday 9 February 2012 | Midden-Oosten, Westen

Between art and politics; the Johan van der Keuken Prediction

Is it a coincidence that the Arab spring started precisely where Johan van der Keuken decided to shoot The Master and the Giant (De Meester en de Reus, 1980) in 1979, a film about the unfair global economic system which runs the world and determines our lives and our futures? It was surely not a coincidence, because Van der Keuken used to feel deeply concerned about human destiny as an indivisible whole, as his distributor, Pierre-Olivier Bardet witnesses: “In his work, the documentary, however infused with social and political preoccupations and a radical questioning of North-South relation...

read more »

Hassouna Mansouri | Friday 6 January 2012 | Midden-Oosten, Politiek

Lawrence of Arabia: a rejuvenated legend

By: Hassouna Mansouri

What an idea to broadcast a film like Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, UK, 1962) the first days of 2012. The fifty-year-old film has indeed more than a similarity between the biography of the British officer who got involved in the hostilities opposing the Arabs and the Turks during a key episode of World War I on the eastern front and the current events going on in the region for one year already. Broadcasting the film right now seems to be a bad joke or an unhappy thought trying to make a link between the intervention of NATO in Libya a few months ago and the role played by a young British Li...

read more »

Redactie | Thursday 29 December 2011 | Wereld, Westen

Actual Politics

By: Slavoj Zizek

Don’t fall in love with yourselves, with the nice time we are having here. Carnivals come cheap – the true test of their worth is what remains the day after, how our normal daily life will be changed. Fall in love with hard and patient work – we are the beginning, not the end. ”So do not blame people and their attitudes: the problem is not corruption or greed, the problem is the system that pushes you to be corrupt” Our basic message is: the taboo is broken, we do not leave in the best possible world, we are allowed and obliged even to think about alternatives. Th...

read more »

Redactie | Wednesday 7 December 2011 | Politiek, Westen

Waiting for Robin Hood

By: Hassouna Mansouri

At the end of a screening at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) a lady took the microphone and invited people to buy plastic bottles which were for sale right at the exit of the theatre. It was an initiative of an NGO working in the field of improving access to drinking water in Africa. The goal was to raise money to supply a village in South Sudan with clean water. I try to imagine the reaction of the audience. Some must have thought: yet another charity for our poor friends in Africa. Isn’t it enough that the government pays millions every year from our taxes help...

read more »

Redactie | Wednesday 23 November 2011 | Wereld, Westen

Where did the left go? by Serge Halimi

As capitalism faces the worst economic crisis since the1930s, the parties of the left are silent or embarrassed. At best, they promise to put the system right. More often, they advocate brutal austerity to prove their seriousness

The Occupy Wall Street protests in the US are also directed against the Street’s representatives in the Democratic Party and the White House. The protesters probably don’t know that Socialists in France still consider Barack Obama exemplary, since, unlike President Sarkozy, he had the foresight to take action against banks. Is there a misunderstanding? Those who are unwilling or unable to attack the pillars of the neoliberal order (financialisation, globalisation of movements of capital and goods) are tempted to personalise the disaster, to attribute the crisis in capitalism to poor planni...

read more »

Redactie | Monday 14 November 2011 | Midden-Oosten, Wereld

Slavoj Zizek and Harum Scarum

By saying "Asian values" have corrupted capitalism, Zizek aligns himself with generations of Orientalist thinkers.

By: Hamid Dabashi

In Gene Nelson’s “Harum Scarum” (1965), featuring Elvis Presley as the Hollywood heartthrob Johnny Tyronne, we meet the action movie star travelling through the Orient while promoting his new film, “Sands of the Desert”. Upon arrival, however, Elvis Presley/Johnny Tyronne is kidnapped by a gang of assassins led by a temptress “Oriental” named Aishah, who wish to hire him to carry out an assassination. Emboldened by proper “Western virtues”, Elvis will do no such thing and manages to sing and dance his way out of the way of the conniving ...

read more »

Tagged |
Ramin Jahanbegloo | Wednesday 9 November 2011 | Midden-Oosten, Politiek

Libya’s Lessons for Syria and Iran

Toronto—When future generations look back, they will remember 2011 as the year of end of dictators in the Middle East and the Maghreb. Libya’s Muammar Khaddafi has now joined the Middle East parade of fallen despots. Practically nine months after Tunisia’s President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali was ousted after 23 years of authoritarian rule and the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was thrown out of power by a few weeks of protests in Tahrir Square, Khaddafi is at the end of his reign after 42 years of dictatorship. ´´The year 2011 could indeed be considered the starting point of a paradigm...

read more »

Redactie | Wednesday 19 October 2011 | Midden-Oosten, Politiek

Shifting Identities and the Stakes of Turkish Democracy, Interview with Nilüfer Göle

Turkey faces tough decisions at home and abroad, from how to handle heterogeneous identities as they become visible in the public sphere to the role it will play as a model for emerging Middle Eastern democracies. Juliana DeVries interviews the prominent Turkish sociologist Nilüfer Göle How has the AKP transformed Turkish self-presentation since it came to power in 2003? Nilüfer Göle: I think that the coming to power of the AKP and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan represents a paradigmatic shift in terms of Turkish self-presentation. We can situate the changes brought by the AKP at three levels, wh...

read more »

Redactie | Wednesday 19 October 2011 | Wereld, Westen

A hundred years of bombing: what has it done to us? by Paul Gilroy

November 2011 marks the centenary of a world-historic event. An Italian pilot, Guilio Cavotti dropped the first bombs from an aeroplane on to the oasis of Tagiura outside Tripoli. The development of aerial bombardment was more than just a military revolution. It changed both war and peace. openDemocracy is the media partner for Shock and Awe: a hundred years of bombing from above and this is an invitation to a debate. ´Today, the fantasy of clean warfare has lost none of its power. Indeed, the militarization of social and cultural life in the overdeveloped countries is accelerating´   O...

read more »

Redactie | Tuesday 2 August 2011 | Politiek, Westen

The roots of Breivik’s ideology: where does the romantic male warrior ideal come from today? by Mattias Gardell

By: Mattias Gardell

Breivik should be understood as an ideologue driven by reasons and not just as a psychological case. A careful reading of his 2083 manifesto reveals four distinct influences we need to understand: contemporary Islamophobic ideologies, cultural conservative/neo-Confederate traditions, elements of modern White Power thinking, and anti-feminist thought. The terrorist attacks in Oslo were not an outburst of irrational madness, but a calculated act of political violence. The carnage was a manifestation of a certain logic that can and should be explained, if we want to avoid a repetition. “Our sh...

read more »

Redactie | Tuesday 5 April 2011 | Midden-Oosten, Westen

An open letter from Alain Badiou to Jean-Luc Nancy

Alain Badiou responds to Jean-Luc Nancy's Libération article “What the Arab peoples signify to us”:

Yes, dear Jean-Luc, the position you adopt in favour of ‘Western’ intervention in Libya was indeed a sorry surprise for me. Didn’t you notice right from the start the palpable difference between what is happening in Libya and what is happening elsewhere? How in both Tunisia and Egypt we really did see massive popular gatherings, whereas in Libya there is nothing of the kind? An Arabist friend of mind has concentrated in the last few weeks on translating the placards, banners, posters and flags that were such a feature of the Tunisian and Egyptian demonstrations: he couldn’t find...

read more »

Redactie | Wednesday 16 March 2011 | Midden-Oosten, Wereld

Delayed Defiance: The New Geography of Liberation

By: Hamid Dabashi

Muammar Gaddafi’s defiant speech on Feb. 22, refusing to relinquish power even after his army massacred Libyans in their hundreds to suppress their uprising, will go down in history as the rambling soliloquy of a mad colonel who has so deeply fallen into the very depth of his own delusions that only a Gabriel García Márquez can conjure him up in a revised version of The Autumn of the Patriarch. It would have been exceedingly sad were it not so murderous; the wretched tyrant stood there Lear incarnate, mumbling in fear and fury upon the heath of his own tormented mind, entirely oblivious to...

read more »

Tagged |
Redactie | Tuesday 8 March 2011 | Midden-Oosten, Wereld

Pop Music and Social Protest in the Arab World

The Echo of Revolt

The popular uprisings in the Arab world have spawned a whole new line-up of musicians who clearly denounce the political and social inequities in their countries. Yet, this protest culture is not a completely new phenomena, as Arian Fariborz reports Over the past days and weeks of the “Arab Spring”, many political observers in the West have been rubbing their eyes in astonishment at the fury and intensity of the popular uprisings in the Arab world. This has served to spotlight how little acknowledgement in the West has been given to the deep-seated dissatisfaction felt by Arab civi...

read more »

Ramin Jahanbegloo | Thursday 17 February 2011 | Islam, Midden-Oosten

The new middle east: a civic revolution

The democratic wave sweeping the Arab world, and shared by Iran, opens a new agenda for the civic activists who helped make it possible, says Ramin Jahanbegloo.

The collapse of the Hosni Mubarak regime is a great victory for democracy in Egypt in particular and for the middle east and the Muslim world in general. This Egyptian experience of democratisation shows once again that the deepest life of democracy is in the passion of its citizens, and that this is a fluid arena which has to deal with unforeseen challenges from both within and outside the society. The relationship between Islam and democracy is best understood in a perspective that views both the global context of democratisation and the distinctive concepts and experiences of Muslims. The T...

read more »

Redactie | Wednesday 2 February 2011 | Midden-Oosten, Wereld

Why fear the Arab revolutionary spirit? by: Slavoj Žižek

The western liberal reaction to the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia frequently shows hypocrisy and cynicism

What cannot but strike the eye in the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt is the conspicuous absence of Muslim fundamentalism. In the best secular democratic tradition, people simply revolted against an oppressive regime, its corruption and poverty, and demanded freedom and economic hope. The cynical wisdom of western liberals, according to which, in Arab countries, genuine democratic sense is limited to narrow liberal elites while the vast majority can only be mobilised through religious fundamentalism or nationalism, has been proven wrong. The big question is what will happen next? Who will emerge...

read more »

Pooyan Tamimi Arab | Monday 24 January 2011 | Midden-Oosten, Wereld

Proud to be a Tunisian

A conversation with Yunus Khazri -by Pooyan Tamimi Arab

Yunus Khazri has lived half his life outside Tunisia. When he was a young man, he left his native country for Paris hoping to liberate himself from what he experienced as a suffocating and conservative context. His father was an Imam and he was among the few in his family who had a passion for texts, so he was trained in Islamic theology and law by his father and studied Islamology in France. Shortly after his arrival in France, Ben Ali came to power in Tunisia. At that time, Yunus was worried and could not know that he would not return to his country for many years. Today, he feels proud to b...

read more »

Redactie | Monday 24 January 2011 | Midden-Oosten, Wereld

Naguib Mahfouz’s influence on Arabic Literature

In the Shadow of the Master; by Samir Grees

The Egyptian author and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature Naguib Mahfouz wrote many great novels, among them Midaq Alley and Children of Gebelawi. But despite his greatness, did the “Pharaoh of Literature” perhaps hinder the development of the Arabic novel? Samir Grees has been finding out Naguib Mahfouz, who went on to immortalize his hometown in numerous great works of literature and to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, was born in Cairo on 11 December 1911. This year, the Egyptian capital is commemorating the centenary of Mahfouz’s birth with a celebration o...

read more »

Redactie | Monday 24 January 2011 | Midden-Oosten, Wereld

Progressive Rock Music in Iran

A Darkening of the Emotional State

Unlike their US role models, the Iranian progressive rock band Dash has to play either in basements or abroad. But despite the country’s strict censorship laws, the band is reaching its fans via Internet. Alessandro Topa spoke to some of the band’s members in Tehran The socio-political reality of life in Iran appears to have become so complex that the creative minds spearheading underground rock in the country resort to scepticism. Instead of surrendering to the risk of making a political error, Dash sing about an ego that is unfathomable to itself. This ego is male and is housed ...

read more »

Redactie | Thursday 6 January 2011 | Midden-Oosten, Wereld

Left is wrong on Iran

Who are and who promoted these leftist intellectuals who question the social uprising of the people in Iran, asks Hamid Dabashi

When a political groundswell like the Iranian presidential election of June 2009 and its aftermath happen, the excitement and drama of the moment expose not just our highest hopes but also our deepest fault lines, most troubling moral flaws, and the dangerous political precipice we face. Over the decades I have learned not to expect much from what passes for “the left” in North America and/or Western Europe when it comes to the politics of what their colonial ancestry has called “the Middle East”. But I do expect much more when it comes to our own progressive intellect...

read more »

Pooyan Tamimi Arab | Tuesday 30 November 2010 | Diversiteit, Politiek

Being Dutch, more or less

Interview with Lammert de Jong / by: Pooyan Tamimi Arab

Lammert de Jong, currently residing in New York City and Amsterdam, has written a new book about Dutch identity politics, published by Rozenberg Publishers. One of his fierce criticisms, albeit in a humorous kind of way, aims at how the Dutch view themselves on the world stage, and how this affects local identity debates. Being an educated cosmopolitan, de Jong occasionally also mocks his own Frisian background, reminding me for instance, that the Frisians defeated the Hollanders in 1345, a very momentous point in world history indeed. His new book, Being Dutch, more or less, provides readers ...

read more »

Redactie | Thursday 25 November 2010 | Politiek, Wereld

A permanent state of emergency

New economic territory

The explosion of anger seen on the streets of Paris, Madrid, Athens and Bucharest is a sign of people’s exasperation and desire for change, with the hope that would bring. But we are in new economic territory: we do not know what we have to do, but we have to act now During this year’s protests against the Eurozone’s austerity measures – in Greece and, on a smaller scale, Ireland, Italy and Spain – two stories have imposed themselves. The establishment story proposes a de-politicised naturalisation of the crisis: the regulatory measures are presented not as decis...

read more »

Redactie | Monday 22 November 2010 | Islam, Midden-Oosten

Bloggers in the Arab World

Playing with Fire

By: Amira al-Ahl

In the Arab world, as elsewhere, the Internet opens up new freedoms and opportunities for democracy. However, as in China and Iran, it also gives rise to opposition from the authorities. Anyone active on the Internet lives dangerously; blogging involves playing with fire. “Power is founded on Justice” proclaim large golden letters in the foyer of the court building at Hadayeq al-Qobba in the north of Cairo. For the group of young people assembled here this morning, this sounds like pure mockery. Some laugh bitterly when they catch sight of the inscription. However, on this early T...

read more »

Tagged , , , |
Redactie | Tuesday 9 November 2010 | Islam, Westen

Interview with Ahmed Rashid

In a Taliban Stranglehold

Born in 1948 in the Pakistan town of Rawalpindi, Ahmed Rashid is among the most sought-after experts on the Taliban, Afghanistan and his crisis-ravaged homeland. Ramon Schack asked him about the current problems in the region Mr. Rashid, if President Hamid Karzai were to ask for your advice on the present situation in Afghanistan, what would you tell him? Ahmed Rashid: The greatest weakness of Karzai and his administration is surely a glaring lack of ability to govern, as manifested for example in the influence exercised by the warlords or in rampant corruption. His desire to accelerate the n...

read more »

Redactie | Tuesday 9 November 2010 | Islam, Midden-Oosten

Turkey: A Democratic Superpower in the Middle East

by: Reza Aslan (author of No god but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam)

Istanbul—A political party espousing a commitment to what it calls “Islamic moral values” has brought Turkey closer to a full-fledged democracy than it has ever been. Last week, 30 years after a military coup overturned the democratically elected government of Suleyman Demirel, Turks voted overwhelmingly for constitutional changes pushed through by the moderate Islamists of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (known by its Turkish initials AKP). The reforms strengthen the rights of women, children and the handicapped, provide greater freedoms for Turkey...

read more »

Redactie | Wednesday 27 October 2010 | Islam, Wereld

The 99: the Islamic superheroes fighting side by side with Batman

DC Comics' Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are joining forces with Islamic-inspired superheroes The 99 this week. Carole Cadwalladr meets their creator, Dr Naif al-Mutawa

Dr Naif al-Mutawa: ‘After the fatwa against Pokémon, I thought, “My God, what has happened to Islam?”‘ Even if you deliberately set out to try to dream up the least probable superhero ever, it’s unlikely that you’d manage to come up with a character as far-fetched as Batina the Hidden. Forget Wonder Worm, or a man born with the powers of a newt, Batina is a superhero of a kind the world hasn’t until now seen. It’s not just that she’s a Muslim woman, from a country best known for harbouring al-Qaida operatives – Yemen – but that she we...

read more »