Word: arabism
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...Like other medieval scholars, Arabs believed that astrology was just as much a science as astronomy, and were convinced that the movement of stars and planets influenced an individual's life from birth. One of the small wonders of the show is a richly detailed horoscope, dating from 14th century Baghdad, designed for someone born under the signs of Venus and Taurus. In the middle of the paper fragment, Venus is depicted playing a lute and sitting on a bull, Taurus; along the bottom border Mars is shown as a warrior, Saturn as an old man, Jupiter as a judge...
...invented and the names have been changed. Clooney's character is called Bob Barnes, although his expertise and undercurrent of melancholy are pure Baer. (Barnes' prodigiously sarcastic son Robby is modeled on Charlotte Baer.) But the fruits of Gaghan's research are obvious. Syriana's characters--from would-be Arab princes to American oil traders, CIA agents to terrorists--behave in exquisitely detailed and complicated ways. They cross paths and challenge one another's assumptions, just as Gaghan's were challenged. Of course, Syriana is entertainment first and foremost. It just happens to feel true...
...With current trends," Professor Bernard Lewis has said, "Europe will have Muslim majorities in the population by the end of the 21st century." The future? "Europe will be part of the Arab west, of the Maghreb [Muslim northwest Africa]." Today's rioting youth are just a bit ahead of their time in claiming their upcoming patrimony...
France always thought it had one last resort, one ready strategy for fending off the rage of its Arab street: beyond avoidance lay appeasement. No country in the West has done more to cultivate world Arab opinion, to appease Arab terrorists, to ostentatiously oppose American Middle East policy (Iraq above all), to champion the signal Arab cause of Palestine. It was no accident that Yasser Arafat chose Paris as his place to die--Paris, after Jerusalem, his second holiest city...
Perhaps because of the tricky moral ground--and the potential for bolstering stereotypes--those terrorism scripts include sympathetic Muslims as audience surrogates. In Syriana there is a reformist Arab prince; in War Within, Hassan's childhood friend Sayeed (Firdous Bamji), an assimilated suburban dad, doesn't understand why Hassan can't leave his anger and piety back in the Old World. In its sweeping, 24-like thriller plot, Sleeper Cell depicts a wide range of extremists but also Darwyn (Michael Ealy), a devout Muslim FBI agent who infiltrates the cell and sees its members as foes of Islam...