Islam

Valuable first-hand account of contemporary Saudi Arabia by their special man in the West, Thomas L. Friedman.

In case it’s of interest/relevance, a translation of Hamas’s charter.

By looking the other way and unconditionally supporting and arming Maliki, President Obama has only lengthened and expanded the conflict that President Bush unwisely initiated, argues — nay, explains — a US official who saw it all. A must-read.

Michael J. Totten and Samuel Tadros discuss Egypt’s failed revolution. Tadros concludes that the US should withdraw aid in order to shock the
Egyptians into getting real.

In tandem with Robert Kagan’s recent piece on post-WW2 Pax Americana, Lee Smith suggests Obama is (mistakenly) pursuing a balance of power rather than hegemonic arrangement in the Middle East.

Sorry, but more David P. Goldman, this time at Tablet with “Dumb and Dumber” (not his title) on recent US Middle East policy. He begins: “Errors by the party in power can get America into trouble; real catastrophes require consensus.” Like liberals, neocons got mugged by reality.

How neighboring Lebanon is being tugged into Syria’s civil war.

Gershon Baskin, the man who negotiated Gilad Shalit’s release, writes in the New York Times that he believes it was a mistake for Israel to kill Ahmed Al-Jabari, as a long-term ceasefire was in the works.

Andrew C. McCarthy in National Review: The challenge is Sharia.

Andrew C. McCarthy clarifies the Turkey situation vis-a-vis Islam and accession to the EU.

Revenge of the Sunnis: What the Arab Spring is really about. By Edward Luttwak. In Foreign Policy.

Rashid Khalidi speaks at length to Haaretz. Agree or not, it’s required reading.

Dead. Qua-daffy. The NYT’s potted (and potty) history. “By the time he was done, Libya had no parliament, no unified military command, no political parties, no unions, no civil society and no nongovernmental organizations.”

Arab Spring = Kurdish Summer, argues David Eshel in his new blog covering Middle East affairs.

Pew Research Center polls Muslims and Westerners on the same questions. Only 9% of Turks believe Arabs carried out 9/11.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s begins his victory speech chillingly: “Believe me, Sarajevo won today as much as Istanbul, Beirut won as much as Izmir, Damascus won as much as Ankara, Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, the West Bank, Jerusalem won as much as Diyarbakir.” What I believe is that many Turks are dissatisfied with being merely a nationstate. What a neighborhood.

A primer by an Egyptian liberal on how to achieve at least something in the upcoming elections.

Hitchens upbraids Obama on Libya.

Michael Totten reposts his masterly visit to Tripoli in light of Libya’s pending liberation.

Lebanese government collapses in run-up to Hariri assassination report.

Istanbul, very open city.

Tony Blair says to Charlie Rose the unsayable, that the fundamental problem is not terror, not al-Qaida, but a belief among Muslims that the West is hostile.

Michael J Totten and Jonathan Spyer talk Middle East.

The Persians’ problem: Iran or Islam?

Bret and the gay rights defence of Israel.

Spengler: We lost Turkey due to nation-building in Iraq.

Tom Friedman Turkey talk at his best: insightful and pithy. He quotes an academic there: “Turkey is not a bridge. It’s a center.” This exactly is the Turkey problem: they think they are the center of something larger than themselves.

It’s ominous. Spengler reflects on Turkey.

Been a long time since linking to a Caroline Glick piece — she got shrill — but this one, on King Abdullah’s recent speech, is good.

Fisking Petraeus.

JCPA: The Iranian regime will indeed collapse? within the decade.

David Brooks’ Sidney Awards for great online essays.

Sixty Hours of Terror — the Mumbai attacks,
start to finish, reported by Jason Motlagh

Elliott Abrams encapsulates a year of the Obama Administration on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It ain’t pretty, but it does have the merit of being so feckless as to be irrelevant, thereby not interfering with the real progress on the ground.

What’s going on in Pakistan? Fred Kagan provides an overview.

Some quickly digestible nuggets of imperial wisdom from Byzantium, as channelled by Edward Luttwak in Foreign Policy.

Boogie Ayalon articulates the bottom-up approach to the Israel/Palestinian conflict.

Spengler provides the first interesting look at the Iranian presidential election, arguing that the ayatollahs must appear militant to fend off their main true threat: not Israel, not the US, not the Saudis, but the Sunni Taliban in Pakistan.

The Atlantic finally realizes that maybe the Palestinians don’t really want a state. But see the weasel-words at the end designed to keep this radical position within the pale of polite society/nonsense.

“One must make a stand. One simply must.”
Christopher Hitchens, embroiled in Lebanon.

Check out the global intifadah: close footage of bad Arab vandalizing Swedish police vans outside the tennis stadium where an Israeli player was competing.