I just finished reading Charles Kurzman’s The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran. It is much like Stephen Kinzer’s All the Shah’s Men in that the entire book focuses on the unfolding of a major historical event. Kurzman’s book is devoted to the play-by-play unfolding of the Iranian Revolution, which as far as I know, is the [...]

The good thing about going to school in the New England area is that in addition to our home school’s schedule of classes, we’re also allowed to take classes at Tufts University and MIT, both of which are very close to Harvard. This semester I had the good fortune of taking a class at Tufts [...]

In his eulogy to Dr. Ali Shariati, Imam Musa as-Sadr said: Men living through difficult times which fail to meet their aspirations split off into four categories. There are those who submit, become ‘pillars of society,’ become like the large unjust society around them. A second group rejects the standing order, but despairs of its [...]

So rejectionists like Benyamin Netanyahu and his right wing cheerleading bloggers have decided that the new conference is just another forum where Israel will offer one-sided concessions only to have them rejected by the warmongering Palestinians; that Israel offered the Palestinians 97% in Oslo and they rejected it, so why bother negotiating with them now? [...]

A personal account from Sara Roy’s Failing Peace: Gaza and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: “One story that my aunt Frania has always insisted on telling me took place when she and my mother were in the Auschowitz concentration camp: ‘Where I was the stronger in the ghetto and took care of Tobka [my aunt's name for [...]

I’ve been reading relevant chapters of Sara Roy’s Failing Peace: Gaza and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict and I’m convinced it’s one of the best books out there on the conflict. Dr. Roy is a Jew herself whose parents are Holocaust survivors and she supports the existence of the Israeli state, while offering burning criticism of its [...]

I recently finished reading a solid book by NYU’s Zachary Lockman titled Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism and I wanted to share a couple excerpts with you: “… the ancient Greeks did of course not see themselves as Europeans or Westerners, much less as the originators of anything [...]

I just got done reading Juan Cole’s Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East, and I thought it was very interesting that Napoleon invaded Egypt under the premise that he was going to liberate Egypt from the tyranny of the Ottoman Beys and export Republicanism, all the while massacring thousands and burning entire villages who opposed [...]