The Majalla the leading political affairs magazine in the Arab world

Written by : Alex Edwards

on : Thursday, 17 May, 2012

Assad: No News is Good News

Interviewed on Russian state television earlier this week, President Assad told his interviewer "They [the West] outplayed us... at the very beginning of the crisis—[with] invented stories." He added, however, that this was ultimately irrelevant, because “the reality is what matters.” As for his first claim that the media is a battlefield, President Assad said nothing about Syria’s own attempts to control it. If by “invented stories,” he was referring to the Western media’s ...

Filed under: News - Tagged with: Assad, Colvin, Media, news, shadid, Syria, Syria crisis

Written by : Amy Myers Jaffe and Keily Miller

on : Thursday, 17 May, 2012

The Spoils of Oil

It has long been speculated that oil can be a driver for civil conflict, and one needs to look no further for evidence than the sectarian power politics now playing out in Iraq. The oil-fuels-conflict hypothesis is well-documented in academic studies on war and conflict: In one such recent analysis, Michael Ross offers a comprehensive assessment of the causal links between civil conflict and oil in cases involving Middle East countries. Oil’s divisive role, if not properly managed, can fue...

Filed under: Economics - Tagged with: amy myers jaffe, Baghdad, basra, gas, hussein, Iraq, jaffe, kurdistan, maliki, natural gas#, oil

Written by : Vedica Kant

on : Wednesday, 16 May, 2012

Jumping off the Pages

The catalogue for Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk’s newly opened Museum of Innocence begins with a Turkish translation of these lines by another Nobel laureate, the Ita...

Filed under: Culture - Tagged with: Istanbul, Museum, Orhan Pamuk, postmodern literature, Turkey, Turkishness

Written by : Nicholas Birch

on : Tuesday, 15 May, 2012

Turkey’s Biggest Export

"Either appear as you are," the thirteenth century Sufi mystic Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi once famously said, "or be as you appear." One wonders what Rumi would have made of modern...

Filed under: Features - Tagged with: gulen, Islam, Islamic, movement, secular, Turkey, zaman

Written by : Paula Mejia

on : Monday, 14 May, 2012

Algeria at the Polls

Last Thursday, Algerians went to the polls to vote in the parliamentary elections. The governing party, the National Liberal Front, won the majority of the votes with 220 out o...

Filed under: Blogs, Hearts and Minds - Tagged with: algeria, Islamist Alliance, National liberal Front, parliamentary elections

Written by : Andrew Bowen

on : Monday, 14 May, 2012

The Romney Doctrine?

Few presidential candidates in recent American politics have articulated as few of words on foreign policy as the current Republican nominee-in-waiting, Mitt Romney. It’s lar...

Filed under: Blogs, Ibn Dawood - Tagged with: foreign policy, Iran, mitt, Obama, Romney, usa

Written by : Said El Djazairi

on : Friday, 11 May, 2012

Algeria Shrugs

An unexpected delay to the final announcement of the results in Algeria’s recent election occurred today amidst accusations by an alliance of Islamist parties of widespread f...

Filed under: The Out of Towner - Tagged with: algeria, Islamist Green Coalition, National Liberation Front, National People's Assembly, National Rally for Democracy, Rally for Culture and Democracy

Written by : The Majalla: The Leading Arab Magazine

on : Friday, 11 May, 2012

The Revolution will be Televised

Egyptians gained a small taste of a venerable American institution this week, with the broadcast of the first televised debate between presidential candidates. Two candidate...

Filed under: News - Tagged with: Abdel Fotouh, Amr Moussa, Egypt, Egyptian law, Islam, presidential election, sharia law, state law

Written by : Noam Schimmel

on : Friday, 11 May, 2012

In It Together

In It Together Muslim/Christian Relations: Co-Operation Not Conflict was a talk organized by Friends of BibleLands, an organization which supports the charitable work of Biblel...

Filed under: Cultural Connection - Tagged with: Biblelands, Constitution of Medina, In It Together Muslim/Christian Relations: Co-Operation Not Conflict, interfaith, Jordan, London School of Economics, Princess Badiya Bint El Hassan

Written by : Paula Mejia

on : Thursday, 10 May, 2012

The Blind Leading the Blind

A year after the revolution in Tunisia took place, one thing has become clear, though many of the grievances that led Tunisians to protest had economic origins, the living stan...

Filed under: Economics - Tagged with: deficit, economic policies, Ennahda, inflation, public sector jobs, subsidies, Tunisia, unemployment