women in morocco and iraq: a few links

Just wanted to post two links to (very different) pieces I’ve written that you can read elsewhere on the web:

My response to a recent NYTimes article about what women are wearing in Iraq

A Wikipedia article I wrote as part of an initiative of the Wikimedia foundation to improve their public policy content; this one is about the relatively recently reforms to Morocco’s Family Laws (also known as the Moudawana or Personal Status Code). In many Arab states, these types of laws are the only part of the legal code that draw primarily from Islamic law, so the fact that reforms to it were passed in Morocco has of course been the subject of much discussion…

what do ramadan in morocco and wine in morocco have in common?

…really not much at all, to tell the truth. Alcohol is of course forbidden in Islam, so Moroccan liquor stores (which technically are there to serve non-Muslims) close down completely during the month of fasting. However, I recently wrote a little something on both topics here (though not at the same time)!

A little shameless self-promotion: part of what’s kept me busy lately is that I’ve been writing things elsewhere. See, I’m still around! In any case, HeyMorocco.com has lots of great travel information for anyone interested in visiting Morocco (that should be everyone! Really! Go!). You can find my own contributions here, in an essay about the joy of experiencing Muslim holidays as a non-Muslim American – especially relevant right now, since Ramadan is drawing to a close this week! – and here, where I wax poetic about the Moroccan wines I came to know and love so well.

around the muslim world, 5th ed.

Paul Staniland on what the empirical evidence says about counterinsurgency, on The Monkey Cage

“Counterinsurgency is still fundamentally war, and coercion, extraction, and ethnic dominance are often integral to the exercise. It’s possible, and indeed very common, for counterinsurgents to be both “population-centric” and ruthlessly coercive (population displacement and control, torture, abductions, blackmail, assassinations, etc). This unpleasant truth should seriously temper enthusiasm for COIN: the game is frequently not worth the candle.”

Great post on disentangling the subtleties of culture, religion, and women’s rights when it comes to Saudi women and Muslim women in general

Our oil spill: not the only oil spill around, it turns out

around the muslim world, 4th ed.

Muslims and America: Internalizing the Clash of Civilizations – what do Muslims around the world think of America?

Could biomass systems be an answer to some of Afghanistan’s economic, environmental, health, even gender-related problems?

How Western journalists reported the ban on burqa: a Muslim woman’s view on powers-that-be forcing women to wear or not-wear forms of Islamic dress – and how we talk about it.

Nazi Sheikhs: who speaks for modernist Islam and what do they say?

around the muslim world, 3rd ed.

A few links of interest:

1. An Egyptian praising Israel’s Mossad (their intelligence agency)? Yep, it happened, and it’s of no little significance that it was over Iran. It’s easy to lump all Muslim anti-Israel sentiments into the same category, but that’s not exactly the case. It’s true that Iran is linked to mostly-Arab groups like Hamas and Hizbollah, but a great many Arab governments (both secular ones like Egypt and Iraq and religious ones like Saudi Arabia) are as worried as Israel is about the prospect of a nuclear Iran. Read about it here.

2. What constitutes discrimination? According to one French mayor, a restaurant chain selling only halal meat (that is, meat slaughtered in accordance with Islamic dietary laws – the Muslim version of kosher) fits the bill. It seems to me more like a matter of market forces at work but watch this report and decide for yourself.

3. What is halal anyway? Technically it means “lawful” or permitted (the opposite of “haram,” or “forbidden.”), so it applies to actions and behaviors, not just food. In terms of meat, though, it means, among other things, no pork and no carrion and no blood. Halal meat should be slaughtered by a Muslim (though some Muslims accept meat slaughtered by Christians or Jews, like kosher meat) by cutting the animal’s throat swiftly while keeping the spinal cord intact. This ensures as much blood as possible exit the body before death.

There have been debates over whether this is a more humane way to kill animals, as Muslims have long claimed, which brings me to this study, conducted when the German government was trying to establish standards for animal slaughter. It compares brain activity in sheep and calves during halal-style, ritual slaughter and the more common “captive bolt stunning,” a common practice in today’s industrial style meat production.

around the muslim world…2nd ed.

A few links of interest…

1. In honor of New York’s Fashion Week, a very different fashion show: what Muslim designers showed in Malaysia last fall.

2. “Where do architectural wonders, coat hanger abortions, virtual slave labor, and a modern underground railroad meet?”

- or, there’s more to Dubai than meets the eye. Dubai has been hailed for economic growth, the newest wonders of the world, and even environmental innovation, but at what social cost? Austin Considine writes in Guernica about the often-hidden world of cheap labor that makes it all possible…in two parts, here and here.

3. More oil = less freedom…or does it? New research suggests that the “oil curse” commonly associated with petrol-rich, authoritarian nations (many of them Arab) might belong more in the category of convenient myth than actual fact.

See also: the 1st edition of this post

what you should know about the muslim world, 1st ed.

For those of you who don’t know (and for most of you, well, why would you), Peace Corps has three goals: the first has to do with providing technical assistance to countries that request it. The second and third goals are more cross-cultural: helping people in other countries understand American culture, and helping Americans better understand the people and culture of other countries. The idea is that service extends far beyond my village; even after my 27 months abroad, I can continue sharing what I’ve learned. I’m always looking for new ways to fulfill that goal (including, of course, this blog).

One thought, for now at least, is to highlight interesting, clearly written articles, podcasts or essays about the Islamic world for the average American nonspecialist reader – and publish a list once a week or so. So much of the information out there about Islam and the Middle East is one-sided or full of jargon or overly complicated, and while I am definitely not capable of explaining it all or even understanding the subtleties of every bias, we have to start somewhere.

The point is for this to be interesting, informative, short, varied. If there is something you want to know more about, tell me and I’ll do my best to hunt it down! And please, if I post something that has a backstory or bias that I don’t know about, let me know so I can either provide better context or present an opposing view alongside it for balance.

add this to your file of little-known facts: behold the University of Al-Karaouine, the oldest university in the world, founded by a woman, located in the Arab city of Fes

The first three links, after the jump…

couscous of magic and wonder

I think there are three types of Americans. You can tell which category a person falls into depending on what jumps to their mind first when they hear the word “Morocco.” It’s either:

1) Wait, isn’t that the place with all the casinos? What does a Peace Corps volunteer do there? (true story…that would be because they’re thinking of Monaco)
2) The Marrakesh Express, recorded by Crosby, Stills and Nash, pre-Young, in 1969 (by the way, as a family friend remarked the other day, pretty much everything happened in 1969, didn’t it?)
3) COUSCOUS

Exhibit A. Also, just in case you were wondering, in "Berber" dialects like Tashlheet and Tamazight, couscous is called "sksu" (just reverse the "s" and "k" sounds in "couscous" and you've got it...it's far more fun to pronounce).

What follows is a scrupulously transcribed version of the best couscous made in the best region (Taroudant) by the very best Moroccan cook, period (that would be Zahara Ait Ben Hmad, who is one of the most remarkable women I know. Her son Soufiane is pretty talented too, and you should check out his work). I could never make couscous as well as Zahara, but I do my best.

A few things about couscous: it’s often described as the “Moroccan national dish,” whatever that means. Far more interesting, I think, is the fact that while most Moroccan men can cook a decent tagine, I never met one who ever attempted to make couscous. It takes far more time than a tagine, and it has a ritual place in the Moroccan week – it’s usually enjoyed just after Friday prayers at the mosque (though not all families eat it exactly then). Couscous takes a notoriously long time to cook in Morocco, and is therefore considered more difficult – it simply requires a lot of patience and commitment.

What I love about couscous is that it’s traditionally prepared on the holiest day of the week in Islam – Friday – but it demonstrates that there are some really powerful aspects of Islam that take place outside the mosque. For one, couscous is often prepared in vast quantities to feed the poor on Fridays. In America, we often give donated or leftover food to the poor, but this gesture is especially powerful to me because it’s the act of giving one of Morocco’s most elaborate and special foods to the needy – in essence, saying that everyone deserves a well-prepared family meal. Along those same lines, as a foreigner, I had a standing invitation to couscous on Fridays; even though it was a religious day for observant Muslims, this was a part of that day meant to be freely and joyously shared with everyone.

That’s nice, you say, but why, exactly does it take so long to cook?