Word: arabism
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Swedish Academy gave the Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988 there were still plenty of people in the U.S. who had no idea that there was such a thing as an Egyptian novelist. Mahfouz, who died Wednesday at 94, was the avatar of an Arab culture a lot of Americans had no concept of: a sophisticated, cosmopolitan, humane, humorous literary culture very different from the Islamic fundamentalism that was more visible on the evening news...
...Mahfouz did not always play the placid cultural observer. He was an early and vocal supporter of normalizing relations with Israel (some Arab countries banned his books in response.) His Children of Gabalawi, although set in modern times (it was published in 1959), features characters that loosely parallel figures in the Bible and the Koran. The novel's boldness attracted the attention of Islamic extremists, and in 1994 a young fanatic attacked him, stabbing him in the neck. Mahfouz survived, but lost much of the use of his right-and writing-hand. (His attacker fared worse: he was hung...
...convert to Islam or fight. I prefer that we - and all freedom-loving people - stand up to terrorism no matter who is sponsoring it. Robert Reichert Punta Gorda, Florida, U.S. Beyer's statement that Hizballah's main goal is "to defend Lebanon from Israel" is appalling. Anyone who understands Arabic or has listened to Hizballah's occasional statements in English knows that the group aims to destroy Israel. To doubt that is to accept the doublespeak of Hizballah propagandists and apologists. Aryeh Green Beit Shemesh, Israel Radical Islam vs. the U.S. Columnist Charles Krauthammer argued that the Middle East...
That kind of talk is unnerving the region's Sunni Arab states, which have watched helplessly as Iran's Shi'ite rulers have accelerated their nuclear program and carved out areas of influence in Lebanon and Iraq. Not surprisingly, the Arabs are eager to be in the Lebanon game: between them, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have pledged an $800 million aid package to the Lebanese government for rebuilding projects while handing an additional $1.5 billion in soft loans to the Bank of Lebanon to shore up the nation's currency. Saudi officials believe that the kingdom's support will...
...addition to strengthening Hizballah, the race to rebuild Lebanon has exacerbated conflicts that are tearing the region apart--between the U.S. and the Arab street, between fundamentalists and the West, between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims. Hizballah's principal sponsor, Iran, has moved quickly to take advantage of the respect the organization is now receiving. According to Lebanese officials, the Tehran regime sent some $150 million in cash for Hizballah's initial postwar handouts, and is expected to give hundreds of millions more to finance reconstruction projects. The consolidation of Hizballah's support in southern Lebanon may make it more...