Middle East Books

Dvora Waysman weaves a beautiful story of the struggles which faced the Jews of Yemen when they came to Palestine. Those struggles continued with the building of the modern State of Israel. This is a must read for anyone who is interested in a background of the region.

The amount of research done before publishing this book is noticeable. Could not put it down, finished it in a day ! (and I don't usually read much)

My job and lifestyle require many hours in the car traveling between radio stations. As a result, and due to the fact that I'm not a music afficienado, I have taken to listening to history lectures and novels on CD. I picked this audio book up because I was intrigued with the subject matter. I'm glad I did.

This is a fascinating history of America's involvement in the Middle East, from the early republic's conflict with Barbary pirates, to the establishment of the Jewish state and through the recent Palestinian conflicts. With our present day involvement in the region, it is incumbent on all good citizens to become familiar with the region, its history and the history of our country's entanglements therein. I must admit, after many hours of listening pleasure, I can only say that I'm not optimistic.

A very interesting and well written book. I worked and lived in the Middle East for 13 years and the author captured the attitude and tone of the people. He made what could be a boring subject into a engaing experience. Any mistakes noticed were very minor ones. The book should also be of interest to any Jewish readers because it is very informative of their plite during this time period.
Robert

After the shock of 9/11, few questioned the string of victories in the War on Terror that stemmed from seizing the financial assets of terrorists and their worldwide supporters. But in this rigorously-researched work, Ibrahim Warde reveals the Financial War on Terror to be ineffectual at best. At worst, it is an insidious lie that will make us all less safe.

As Warde reminds us, the Bush Administration once asserted that the Iraq War would "pay for itself," and that many headline-grabbing strikes against Arab-owned corporations later collapsed in embarrassment and exoneration. We learn that most terrorist attacks cost very little, yet the Financial War on Terror oddly focused on large, multi-national holdings. Furthermore, Warde reminds us of how failed attempts to thwart Al Qaeda were quickly jettisoned by convenient claims of "victory" on the financial front. Unfortunately, many of these claims have gone unquestioned, until now.

Warde explains why observers rarely challenge attempts to seize terrorists' finances. And he carefully combs through a rationale for the financial war that borrowed heavily, and inappropriately, from the template of the U.S. war on drugs. Most critically, Warde rejects the accepted causality which asserts that drying up supplies of money will stop terror. As Warde sees it, terror exists not because there is money, but because there is support for terror.

But Warde's comprehensive narrative offers more than just criticism. Noting that money does spur terrorism in some cases, he offers guidelines for pursuing terrorists' financial networks more constructively, and in ways that will not mistake the Financial War on Terror for a war against Islam.

Wry and lucid, Warde makes this complex topic accessible for all readers. Not simply the terrain of financial experts, this excellent and informative book is required reading for anyone concerned about government mismanagement and the threat of global terrorism.

Much has been written about the current war on terror that tends to be polemical rather than analytical. Entrenched opposition to one political view or another usually mars most academic or popular writing on the matter. It is thus refreshing to read a book which takes a very strong position but only after careful and dispassionate scrutiny of the facts. Ibrahim Warde is eminently suited to write this monograph on the financial aspects of the war on terror and its ramifications, given his experience in working on business transactions and Islamic finance across the Middle East. Warde is fluent in Arabic, English and French and has worked on this theme for over a decade as a consultant and a researcher at MIT and Tufts. The book shows how well the author can craft a narrative for an academic audience as well as for a business clientele or for the general public. Each chapter is preceded with insightful quotations and the text is peppered with substantiated anecdotes and examples.

The Price of Fear makes a clear case for how policy-makers can very easily be led astray by fear in their scrutiny of financial assets. Money becomes the focus of attention because there is an implicit assumption that war is expensive and numbers give the false allure of accuracy. What the analysts fail to appreciate is that only organized military warfare is expensive and much of the informal militancy that characterizes Al Qaeda is cheap and hence financing is hardly consequential. For example, the London bombings of 2005 that killed 52 civilians cost less than $1,000; the Madrid train bombings that killed almost 200 people cost less than $10,000; and even a devastating attack like September 11, cost less than half a million dollars in total planning and implementation expenditure.

Why then was so much of the attention after this national tragedy focused on Islamic financial networks? Starting with the usually quoted figure for the total assets of Osama bin Laden, the frequently cited estimate of $300 million Warde deconstructs the process by which this estimate was achieved and proves how it is wildly exaggerated. He then lays out a detailed ethnography of how a sense of panic spurred by individual politicians and influential analysts led to so many dead-end trails on the hunt for Al-Qaeda's finances. Warde also holds journalists culpable for this march to no avail. For example, he documents how Washington Post journalist Douglas Farah hypothesized with scant evidence that gold and diamonds were a supposed mechanism for money laundering by Al-Qaeda and the 9/11 commission had to eventually admit that this was a highly unlikely source of revenues for the organization.

Such actions could be exonerated as precautionary strategies if they did not adversely impact community relations or have a major adverse financial impact. But unfortunately the analysis suggests that the financial war on terror met with "catastrophic success" in terms of paralyzing genuine charities, souring relations between the West and the Muslim world and reducing the efficiency of our law enforcement. It is important to note however, that Warde recognizes that the finances of countries such as Iran or Iraq do merit scrutiny because they have the potential to finance much larger scale military expenditures. However, his analysis focuses on the micro-level financial war that was waged after 9/11. As the author concludes: "the formidable array of forces, combined with a near total absence of scrutiny, explains why financial warriors have generally chosen to err on the side of recklessness."

I read the book before going to Burma and really enjoyed it. It gives you a good idea of the way people live, and the problems they have. A very nice story.

A comment to the ones that already read the book :

When I entered the Shan State and saw the Orange plantation a few teardrops went through my face.!

Have seen on Austrian Television a documantary film on the life of Mrs/HHPrincess Inge Sargeant called 'Die himmlische Prinzessin'.. am so deeply touched and impressed with a life led there under the hardest of circumstances and trying now to help refugees from Burma as such. Am an Austrian myself and have lived uproad (Africa), so feel a bit the more for her formidable life led there and a special graciousness and truly wish I'd be able to meet her real in life some day..

The late Byron Farwell has to be the ultimate historian of Victorian military history, and this is one of his best works, along with "Queen Victoria's Little Wars" and "The Great War in Africa". The story of the Mahdi and his fundamentalist revolt in the Sudan in the late 1880s is the stuff that movies are made of (ie., "Khartoum", "The Four Feathers"), but what makes this book work is its detailed description of the trials and tribulations of 3 Western prisoners of the Mahdi who survived harrowing ordeals in the Sudan but lived to tell the story. Their stories are woven around such climactic battles as the siege of Khartoum and the Battle of Omdurman, giving these two pivotal events a more human feel, given the masterly work of the author. The events in the Sudan in the late 19th Century continue to effect us in the 21st Century, and the Mahdi was the first modern promoter of the type of militant fundamentalist Islam that is so occupied by the headlines of today. Although he was rebelling against a corrupt Egyptian (and British influenced) occupational administration, the excesses and barbarities of his reign were eggregious to the extreme, and Farwell puts everything into a fascinating perspective where you simulateously admire and despise the man. He remains a cultural hero and icon to many people in the Muslim world of today. A fascinating and highly recommended read.

The author gives a vivid picture of all the major figures involved in the Mahdist revolt, from Mohammed Ahmed and the Khalifa Abdullahi to the three main European prisoners. With detailed accounts of military engagements, the stories of those trapped in the Sudan, and escape attempts, this is very engrossing reading.

Um. Yeah. I felt totally tripped with this book, like you know that feeling? Like...feeling in TUNE With those dead peots prophets puppets and kings. But, I wish the topic of exorcism were covered more deeply, because I felt like my pagan heritage was insulted by this conglomeration of falsities in the christian religion! Satan is NOT EVIL!! SATAN IS NOT EVIL!!! but...... McDonalds is. Thank you and may the pentogram be in your dreams.
with h8,
-George Bulls

This book Rocks, it tells the story of my man Jesus and his wonderful travels it is A+ man I read it in school and it is really good book, a must read for all you religious buffs out there. Wonderfully written.

Starret concise work stands out amongst a sea of books written
about religion (esp. Islam) in the Middle. While the unsecular
character of Mid. East Societies, in this case Egypt, and their
affinity by so-called violent religiosity has been attributed to a
primitive mentality of the people, cynical demagoguery by politi-
cians, angst-ridden youth, disillussionment of the middle-aged,
poverty, anti-Western hysteria, and rage arising from political im-
potence and failure, Starret gives an alternative account that is
actually convincing. He does this by drawing the roadmap between
the sensationalist events such as revolutions and assassinations
by examining how the religious citizen is constructed through
national discourse, with a specific focus on the development of
Egypt's educational system from Muhammad Ali's transformation
of the kuttab to later permuations under the British, Nasser,
Sadat, and onward. The result is a highly believeable account of
the salience of religion and religious conflicts [of all sorts,
not just the less-interesting, violent ones] in the country inte-
grated with the national changes in thinking with regard to such
subject as mass media, religious authority and the market. Thus,
the works offers numerous keen insights into the reproduction of
Islamic religiosity and its transformations in Egypt today through
the various interplays between power and public culture. His
anthropological-historical approach is a fresh and welcome one.

An editorial criticism of the book as whole: the Arabic throughout
is atrociously transliterated. I ended up making notes in the
margins of my copy to make phrases written in Latin script intelli-
gible. Particularly, iDaafa constructions are not written, hard-
letters are not distinguished from soft letters, long and short
vowels are not differentiated, and sometimes letters are just out-
right confused (e.g., dhaal and Zaa'). With relatively standard-

ized options of Arabic transliteration out there,this book is just
sloppy and amateurish in its final edit. Perhaps this won't
bother those who are ignorant of Arabic; however, for those who
are familar with the language, it's a continually frustrating
blemish.

By focusing on education, Starrett shows that political ands socio-economic issues alone are insufficient in explaining the rise of islamic revivalism. The combination of increased literacy and Islamic awareness made possible by the spread of public education, in which religion has played a principal role, and its functionalization to serve the purposes of social engineering has made Islam a matter of increasing socio-political concern. The proliferation of Islamic affordable literature and media from official and private sector sources. The scope of religious discourse among non-specialists has widened and the Islamic establishment no longer holds a monopoly on this debate which is presently characterized by a variety of viewpoints. Starrett speaks of a new Islam now taking shape in Egypt as a result of the mass proliferation of Islamic publications and spread of literacy and communications media. Education's particular role in this process has been to create the demand for more religious information and from more sources as the religious discourse widens.

I thoroughly enjoyed this installment of the Osprey Military Campaign Series. As usual, the information is concise, to the point, interesting, and a fascinating read. Also, the maps and other illustrations and photos, are fantastic. If you like ancient history, this is an excellent introduction to a particular epic battle of antiquity.

Another excellent book from the Osprey Campaign Series. This earliest recorded Battle in the human history is recounted and critiqued by the author in an exciting manner. As opposed to a mundane account of the battle and the events leading to it, the author constantly provides objective strategic insights to the battle based on the analysis of the battlefield as well as the compositions of the armies. This introductory book is well illustrated and provides photographs of key areas of the battlefields. Highly recommend.

If the Bush Administration is seeking a real road map to peace, this should be its basis. The Palestinian/Israeli conflict is and has always been about land. Dr. Fischbach has done the world a favor by providing us the detail we need about what land was taken, and how sane and factual negotiations about its particulars provide us with a pathway out of the death and destruction of the past 50 years. Please read this book and hope our leaders do as well.

This book studies the expropriation of the property of the Palestine refugees and the compensation issues and diplomatic activity that followed. Especially interesting (to me) is the discussion of the estimates of the dollar value of these losses. It is based primarily on the records of the UN Conciliation Commission on Palestine. It should be of the highest interest to anyone with an interest in the Israel Palestine problem and how it might be resolved. I must confess that I have only started reading this book and I am not a scholar- I am a lawyer- but I highly reccomend this book.

As far as I'm concerned there are far too many biased books on this important subject of US foreign policy and the impact that the mass media corportation have on public and especially US opinion. The author shows with concise logical arguments and insightful examples how "news reporting" is done in the USA, especially with regard to anything that's considered Arabic or Islamic. Its interesting to find out for example that ever since the clash of the US government with the Barbari pirates back in the 1820s that the images constructed of that region and its people were extremely biased. Later when the US became a world and Superpower after the 2nd World War, the mass media outlets virtually began a tacit conspiracy to construct a image of Arabs and Moslems as weired, backward and irrational people, that blindly followed their "aggressive, and expansionist" religion: Islam. The cultural biased disposition can be seen anywhere in the US or for that matter in the West, whether on TV, in newspapers or on the radio. Only the Internet provided a somewhat more balanced account, due to its decentralized natured.
Pintak does an excellent job (especially as an American) who tells us vividly that the atmosphere and response to 9.11. was preprogrammed, since the US public has been conditioned, ever since the end of the Cold War to see everything islamic as alien, dangerous and subversive, if not downright terror bound. He calls this propensity and almost habitualized way of acting by Americans as referring to the Others. It was also thus, no coincidence that after the sudden demise of the Soviet Union, many government officials and especially the military industrial complex in the US was desperately looking for a new enemy to replace asap the former well serving enemy image of the S.U. and communism. It is also well known that the US economy ever since the 2nd World War has not only been dependent on the military industial complex (m.i.c.) but that it can actually no longer survive without it. Without the lucrative and massive orders that it places consistently every year, the economy would almost immediately spiral into a recession at the very least if not depression all together.
This book does an excellent job of explaining how the false and deliberate misreporting has implanted a new type of enemy in the minds of the US public. Similar to what occured during the Cold War, when Americans saw Russians as the enemy, they are now seeing anything associated with Islam or Moslems as the enemy. 9.11. and the War on Terror has only made things far worse, and created an atmosphere of fear and suspiciousness in the US and the West. Where the Bush administration has severely curtailed civil liberties and turned the country into a big brother surveillance society. It has been said that if people give up their freedom for the promise of protection, they'll lose both. This is precisely what is happening in the US, where a worse big brother state has been errected than what had existed under the McCarthy years back in the early 1950s when the Russians were turned into enemies, that had been the World War II allies of the US. Interestingly enough the same pattern or relationship existed between the radical Moslems and their Jihad movement against the Soviet's during the Afghanistan war that lasted from 1979-1989 because the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan in late 1979. Here also the soon to become new enemy was the ally of the US that even helped significantly to bring down the Soviet Union, that to many was the last empire in the world.
This book is very useful in showing how among other things a deliberate government and media policy has conditioned people in their views with regard to anything islamic. The successive US governments and the mass media have worked hand in hand to construct a false biased enemy image of the Others. This makes it on the one hand easier to surpress any dissent in the USA to the precarious US foreign policy that Washington has been following ever since the Cold War began with regard to the islamic countries. On the other hand it fuels the so called "War on Terror" that simply polarizes the world once again, as it had been during the Cold War, which benefits a few huge corporations of the big business establishment and the military industrial complex. If this "War on Terror" is not to become an "endless" war the US government as well as the mass media must change their dispositions toward the islamic countries considerably, or else in a worst case scenario we might really one day have something akin to the Crusades in the atomic age, that could lead to a disaster for humanity.

The actions and reactions of the U.S. before and after 9/11 has done little to improve its standing in the world, especially in Muslim-populated nations around the world, and Reflections In A Bloodshot Lens: America, Islam And The War Of Ideas probes the basic differences between perceptions of Americans and Muslims around the world. It comes from a veteran CBS news correspondent with strong connections to these world communities, reflects his journalistic experience, and proves a strong survey of not only American and Islam ideas, but how misreporting has emphasized differences.