Al-Qaeda in Yemen

Understanding Al-Qaeda in Yemen is alot more difficult than say, understanding Al-Qaeda in Egypt or Lebanon.  The simple reason is that its alot easier to get around in these relatively open countries.  And due to strong scholarly interest over the years, far more has been written about these countries, thus its fairly easy to get a [...]

The Qaradawi Case: Mr Egypt Looks at Why?

I highly recommend readers check out Mr Egypt’s post  on Qaradawi.  I write an introduction here because we have major copy and paste issues with Mr Egypt’s computer and I didn’t want to risk making  it worse. 
One of the things I wanted more of when reading about the Qaradawi case was the Islamic background and motives, meaning serious [...]

Al-Qaradawi and the Shiite invasion

Al-Qaradawi’s statements, concerning the “Shiite invasion” to the Sunni societies, still arouses a huge controversy. Understanding his statements necessitates putting them in a bigger picture, where we can situate the importance of this issue with regard to the Arab and Muslim world.
 
First, let’s take a brief look on the Sunni-Shiite split. This split is 1,400 [...]

New Blogs on North Africa and Egypt

Adrian’s posts on North Africa opened me up to a good_blog on Western Sahara and North African politics called Western Sahara Info.  I especially liked his most recent post Preaching_Pointless_Ultraviolence_to_the_Choir,  which looks at militant complaints about the presence of an Israeli embassy in Mauritania:
Especially potent here, of course, is the charge about the Mauritanian government having [...]

More Interviews with Sheikh Qaradawi

 AL-Masri Al-Youm today has a new interview with Sheikh Qaradawi,  plus extensive interviews with experts such as Dia Rashwan and Amr Showbaky.  For some reason the new stuff doesn’t seem to be available on the website.  Here is the original interview and here are the parts related to what he had to say about Shia:
 أما الشيعة [...]

Salafis in Lebanon

Nick Blanford has a good  great  article  on the Lebanese Salafi movement in the CSM.  See a recent MediaShack post on this topic.     Are these groups peaceful like they say or are they merely in a formative period, waiting to build up their strength?  That’s the million dollar question. 
Although the feuding factions in Tripoli formally reconciled two [...]

Turkey Joining the Sunni anti-Iran axis?

This is what  Fahmy Huwedi, a major Egyptian commentator,  says in a   September20th op-ed  in Al-Dostor newspaper.   He points to specific economic and security coordination agreements  that Turkey has recently  signed with the GCC (I had not heard about this in the English press).   And says that Turkey “has now became a player in Gulf security, a development [...]

Guess Who’s Back? Adrian on Algeria

Adrian has another post today as part of the MediaShack 9/11 series.   Its a follow up to last week’s superb superb look at CT in the South Sahara.  Given his numerous guest posts, frequent commenting and passing along of articles, I think its time to give him full membership at AMS, so I sent him an official neo-green Arabic [...]

Qaradawi and Zawahiri United Against the Shia

Jordanian journalist Mohamed Abu Rumman has a very interesting op-ed analyzing the latest Al-Qaeda tape in the September 21st edition of Al-Ghad newspaper.  Abu Ramen always has good analysis so I have translated the key points.
Key Analysis Points (The Bolded words are added by me)
  NEW EMPHASIS ON IRAN AND ITS ALLIES: The tape’s heavy focus [...]

Angry Arab on Bob Woodward

The Angry_Arab has a good review of Bob Woodward’s new book on the Iraq war.  Two points that need to be clarified:
And you really have to read Secretary Rice analyzing Arab public opinion. I mean, who can you blame such people: her chief adviser on Arab affairs is Elliott Abrams, for potato’s sake. She insists that [...]

New Blog

For anyone who is interested in Egypt,  a couple of my good friends just started up a new blog with the Foreign Policy Association.  Check it out here or on the Blogroll.

Understanding Have vs Have-Not Terrorism

One of the points I argue in the MediaShack Al-Qaeda series is that  a distinction should be made between Have vs Have-Not violence in the name of Jihad and purely theologically inspired Jihad.  When this distinction is made (which it never is in the US), it becomes clearer that the Al-Qaeda movement is weaker than [...]

Adrian’s Take on the War on Terror in The Sahara

Making another guest appearance today at MediaShack is Adrian.  Read his previous post on Al-Qaeda_ and Deterance and check out his blog Politics_and_Soccer. 

As promised by Rob, here is my  assessment of the ‘war on terror’ in the southern Sahara.  While I dislike the term ‘war on terror’, nothing better exists so I’ll use it in this essay.  First [...]

Another Assasination in Syria?

This according to the Syrian Reform Party website:

“September 15, 2008 //RPS Staff// – Some 4 days ago, Hisham al-Labadani, the secretary of Khalid Mashaal of Hamas who takes Damascus as his home, was dragged from his car and shot dead in daylight in the city of Homs.
Operatives close to the event told RPS that [...]

Abdel Bari Atwan’s 9/11 Report

……. Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of London based Al-Quds Al-Qarabi,  wrote a long analytical piece analyzing the success or failure of the US war on terror.  Atwan’s views are very worth listening to for several reasons. 
1) As editor of Al-Quds he has major connections to people who are very close to the events, both from the sides that are favorable [...]

Control Your Citizens Please

There are several factors  behind the sudden arrest of Egyptian real-estate magnate  and MP Talat Mustafa, but make no mistake about it, international diplomacy was one of them.   The Egyptian newspaper Al Masry Al Youm reported that it had obtained recordings of five phone calls between Moustafa and Sokari in the months before the murder:
In [...]

Jilted Lover Goes to Jail

Too big of a story not to mention here at MediaShack.   About a month ago, Susan Tamim, a Lebanese pop singer, was brutally murdered in Dubia.  From Asharq Al-Awsat:
The indictment says former police officer Muhsen el-Sukkari killed singer Suzanne Tamim on July 28 after tricking her into opening the door of her apartment by posing as [...]

Al-Itijah Al-Muakis 8/26: Performance is Everything

 This is a bit late, but the 8/26 episode the Al-Jazeera talk show Al-Itijah Al-Muakis on “The Relationships between Military Institutions and the Governing Regimes” was another good one.   The basic debate question was whether Arab military institutions have a positive role to play in Arab governance/ society?    Anyone who can should read or listen to the transcript [...]

The Banned-Not Banned Article

Last week Michele Dunne wrote a piece for the National Interest on the  political future of Egypt after President Mubarak entitled “A Post-Pharonic Egypt.”  Apparently, according to Egypt’s opposition Al-Dostor newspaper, the latest issue has been banned/blocked in Egypt because of the article.   So what does Al-Dostor do?  They go ahead and translate the article into Arabic [...]

The Iraq Corner – September 2, 2008

Iraq’s Ministry of Interior is feeling pretty confident.  The general manager of operations told A-sharq al-Awsat that intelligence information gathered during recent arrests of suicide bombers (most famously the Iraqi teenager Rania) will enable MOI to permanently disrupt the network of suicide bombers in Diyala province.  He notes that AQ has turned to exploiting women [...]