Thomas Carothers has released an important new report, “Revitalizing Democracy Assistance: The Challenge of USAID” that explores needed reforms in foreign democracy assistance. The report recommends three key reforms: decreasing bureaucratization, bolstering local ownership of projects, and strengthening the institutional emphasis of democracy promotion within USAID. The report concludes “a successful revitalization of USAID’s democracy and governance work would be a telling signal that the Obama administration is forging significant institutional changes that will help the United States meet the serious challenges that democracy’s uncertain global fortunes now pose.”

Also last week, the USAID Office of the Inspector General released a fascinating new report, “Audit of USAID/Egypt’s Democracy and Governance Activities.”  The report is quite critical of the effectiveness of USAID’s democracy and governance programs in Egypt, and concludes that, “A major contributing factor to the limited achievements for some of these programs resulted from a lack of support from the Government of Egypt. According to a mission official, the Government of Egypt has resisted USAID/Egypt’s democracy and governance program and has suspended the activities of many U.S. NGOs because Egyptian officials thought these organizations were too aggressive.”

Carothers is perhaps the greatest American expert on democracy promotion, and I read the USAID Inspector General’s report, which is scathing. So much money has been wasted on democracy promotion in Egypt, partly because of the Egyptian government’s obstructionism, but also because so many programs were ill-conceived.

Now we just have to wait for a head of USAID to actually be appointed — and for US democracy-promotion policy not to run so much at odd with its foreign policy, especially in the Middle East.

So it came as a great pleasure when I heard, a few months ago, that some former staff were reviving the magazine. It has now published its first new issue, with many of the same old contributors. MEI’s editor, Gerald Butt, writes:

The ethos of the former MEI remain the same and a number of the key correspondents from the past are also regular contributors to the relaunched magazine (Haim Baram, George Hawatmeh, Michael Jansen, Jim Muir, Peretz Kidron, Nicole Pope, Graham Usher, Ian Williams, to name just a few).

The new Editor of MEI is Gerald Butt, a former BBC Middle East Correspondent and editor of Middle East Economic Survey. His Deputy is Najm Jarrah who was closely involved in the production of the previous MEI. They are advised by a group of distinguished Consultant Editors: Rashid Khalidi, Jim Muir, Zaki Nusseibeh and Patrick Seale.

I will be contributing to MEI about Egypt and elsewhere, and have no less than three pieces in the new issue: news analysis articles on Gamal Mubarak and the Brothers’ crisis, and a review of Brian Whitaker sure-to-be-controversial new book, What’s Really Wrong With The Middle East. You can read them all in the free PDF issue they are giving away for the relaunch.

The review of Whitaker’s book was tough to write, and not only because his publisher (who had promised to send me the book) only gave me a PDF version. I read it on my ebook reader, which I find surprisingly usable to read but less friendly for taking notes. But I was also apprehensive that Brian, an acquaintance and a journalist whose work I respect, had bitten off more than he could chew. The provocative thesis of his book is that there is too much focus on how bad the Arab regimes are not enough of Arab societies’ problems: patriarchy, intolerance, mysoginy etc.

I very much like the argument and think it needs to be made. I feared that Whitaker would immediately be attacked because he is not Arab, or that he could revert to culturally essentialist arguments like those in Bernard Lewis’ work. He has already been attacked for this by the admittedly easily irritated Angry Arab (Whitaker responded here). I do not think that Whitaker fell into that trap (although I wish he did not approvingly quote such a flawed work as Mark Allen’s Arabs) and his book deals with some tremendously difficult and sensitive issues. It’s great that someone with a reputation for fair and sympathetic coverage of the region has broken these taboos. Whitaker’s book also includes some great interviews with activists in the region who offer some really innovative ways to get out of the current predicament, which I agree is about more than the regimes, even if their role should not be underestimated. I did not agree with everything in it (who ever does when reading a book?), and think some parts could have been better. I also think Whitaker underestimates the amount of self-criticism in the region (I have in mind, for instance, Fouad Zakariya’s critique of Islamist and other conservatisms in the 1980s). But this is a thought-provoking book, warts and all, on a subject that deserves wider attention.

Former Brother Hossam Tammam is one of my favorite analysts of the Muslim Brothers. I think he really captures the tensions in the group elegantly here, without resorting to the misleading moderate vs. conservative dichotomy. It’s more about an inward-looking vs. outward looking group, he writes:

At the root of the MB’s current crisis is its dwindling ability to maintain cohesion between its various sub-trends. An influential faction of its leadership is increasingly monopolising decisions on matters pertaining to the group’s image, ideological orientation and future.

The organisation of the MB is difficult to grasp for those unfamiliar with such totalitarian entities. Structurally it is bigger than a political party, but unlike a political party its membership and scope of operations transcend the state. Ideologically, it has more in common with a political front or organisational umbrella for different, in this case, Islamist trends, than it does with a party espousing a specific platform or programme. The umbrella embraces ultraconservative fundamentalists to religious liberals and everything between, all of whom have managed to coexist within a single organisational framework, generally subscribing to the principle of gradual peaceful change.

Against such diversity we can nevertheless speak of two divergent trends. One favours open political involvement in student or syndicate circles and other areas of public life. Known as the reformist trend, it has drawn the contours of the MB’s image in the sphere of public life. Abdel-Moneim Abul- Fotouh is the most prominent exponent of this trend among the group’s senior leaders. The other trend runs the organisational operations of the group, in which capacity they oversee recruitment activities, hierarchical appointments and relations, and the design and implementation of material and programmes for indoctrination. The most important exponent of this conservative trend in the MB leadership is Mahmoud Ezzat.

The MB leadership has always managed to keep these two trends together despite their mutual differences. This has been no small task, massaging the strains between people who prefer to work in the public domain and, hence, are naturally inclined towards constructive, open and continual engagement with society, and those whose focus is inward, whose energies are forever directed at building their own world and raising the “vanguard of the faithful” upon whom the hopes and duties of reshaping society and the nation are pinned. The expansion in the activities of the group, combining proselytising, charity and political activities, favoured coexistence to the extent that the public reformist and conservative organisational trends were regarded as complementary. Their combined efforts, it was believed, lent impetus to the group, expanded its grassroots base and improved its image among the government elite. The organisation also seemed pleased to be the Mecca for all, to those inclined towards political involvement, to those dedicated to proselytising, and to those keen on philanthropic and charity work. The leadership was not particularly concerned with unifying these diverse interests towards the pursuit of a single clearly defined vision; it was merely content that they should not clash.

Read it all. And for more MB fun, I just came across this Scribd user that has a collection of articles on the Brothers: ikhwanscope.

If the status quo is this tolerable for the parties, then I say, let them enjoy it. I just don’t want to subsidize it or anesthetize it anymore. We need to fix America. If and when they get serious, they’ll find us. And when they do, we should put a detailed U.S. plan for a two-state solution, with borders, on the table. Let’s fight about something big.

I don’t see how this can be interpreted as a call to cut off aid to Israel. It’s at best a call to cut off aid that supports the Middle East Peace Process, which is largely aid to the Palestinian Authority. But I wouldn’t even read that much into it. I am pretty sure Friedman will never, ever threaten the Israel-US relationship.

It’s a bad habit to pay attention to bad writers when they write something we like. In this column many may sympathize with MEPP fatigue; but his analysis is flawed. Friedman is sick of intransigeant Israelis but also of Palestinians (i.e. the PA) for not wanting negotiations before a settlement freeze. This is a ridiculous assessment, much like the recent about-face about Israel’s “unprecedented concessions” by Hillary Clinton is ridiculous.

Obama offered set the standard to restart MEPP talks by talking about a settlement freeze — a complete settlement freeze, not a partial one. The PA said, OK, that works for us. It is now the US that is changing that bar, not the PA. But the Obama administration now appears to be blaming the PA and the Arabs for not accepting its own about-face, i.e. for sticking to the rules of the game Obama had set at the beginning of this round of pre-negotiations.

A much better analysis of US policy is provided by Daniel Levy, a dovish former Israeli official and advisor to Ehud Barak (to be frank, the kind of person I am generally skeptical of.) In this condemnation of Obama’s amateurism, he explains the missed opportunity for dealing with Israeli intransigence and gets a nice dig in at Hosni Mubarak:

The Obama team’s call for a comprehensive settlement freeze was consistent with past U.S. policy (notably Bush’s Roadmap of 2003), although it was perhaps treated with more seriousness coming from the new ‘hope and change’ President. The Israel Prime Minister’s answer came in June, and it was a rejectionist one: no full freeze, and no limitations whatsoever on settlements in East Jerusalem. That is when the malaise set in.

The administration had three possible options in responding:

1) Stick to its guns and calibrate a set of escalating consequences in response to possible ongoing Israeli recalcitrance.

2) Make a smart pivot by declaring, for instance, that if Israel could not for its own reasons freeze settlements, then this would make all the more urgent the need to quickly define and agree a border for an Israel-Palestine two-state solution. And the U.S. could reasonably have adopted a formula regarding that border (such as based on the 1967 lines, minor mutual modifications to accommodate settlements close to the Green Line in a one-to-one land swap). The U.S. could have explained to its Israeli friends that absent a defined border, the settlement freeze would have to be comprehensive, but in the discussion on borders, there could be more flexibility given the one-to-one land swaps.

3) Dig themselves into a hole. Insisting on a freeze, heightening expectations, without a plan for achieving that end, and by then acceding to talks with the Israeli government over koshering aspects of settlements expansion.

It is certainly legitimate for the administration to have not chosen option one, and to have decided that this was the wrong issue and/or wrong timing to escalate with the Netanyahu government. My own preference would have been for option two, and indeed, the administration could reasonably be perceived to have laid the ground deftly for such a pivot. Unfortunately, they went for option three, and it all came crashing down around their feet this week.

The Secretary’s last minute stop in Cairo to round off the trip said it all. The Mubarak regime tried to help salvage some American pride, lining up behind the Secretary’s efforts. Except that it is precisely the Mubarak government whose credibility is so severely questioned in the region, it is the largest Arab recipient of American financial assistance, and is obsessed with leadership succession–in short, getting a smile out of the Egyptian leader doesn’t even register on the congratulatory charts.

Is consistency really too much to ask? If the settlement freeze really is an impasse, I would favor for some form of negative consequence for Israel. But perhaps that is politically impossible for domestic US reasons. So the second option, shifting the emphasis to what Israel considers its permanent borders — something it has always avoided defining — would be a better start.

✪ Fatah al-Islam Connected to Israeli Elements- Lebanese Security Source Asharq Alawsat Newspaper (English) | Really: Fatah al-Islam, connected to the Palestinians, the Syrians, the Americans, the Saudis and now the Israelis. I am beginning to wonder whether it even exists.

✪ The Dark Side of the Bright Side — In These Times | I love Barbara Ehrenreich's books.

✪ The Associated Press: Islamic critics blast Beyonce on eve of Egypt show | Muslim Brothers attack "nudity concert".

✪ 23 CIA Officers Convicted in Italy, in Abstentia | For extraordinary rendition of Egyptian man.

✪ Middle East Bloggers: The Street Leads Online – Reports – Committee to Protect Journalists | CPJ report on bloggers in MENA, especially the rising use of emprisonment against them: "Individual bloggers face enormous threats; the medium as a whole faces significant challenges. Increasingly, governments are creating new laws to regulate the Internet and amending old ones to encompass online expression. Already authorities are exploiting the isolated nature of bloggers and the lack of institutional protections for online journalists. As the Iranian regime exhibited this year, governments are willing to take severe measures when they perceive a threat to their power."

✪ Holiday sales could launch e-book readers as mass-market must-haves | If you're interested in ebooks, this is a pretty good piece on the state of the industry. Has anyone tried Kindle downloading in Egypt? Is it restricted?

✪ Japanese contractors owed billions by Dubai firms – The National Newspaper | Dubai is a bad debtor.

✪ Waq al-Waq: The Big Question for Saudi Arabia | Who runs Saudi Arabia's Yemen policy?

✪ Obama’s Failure in the Middle East | Stephen M. Walt | KA-POW: "I never thought I'd write the following words, but is it possible that Obama's handling of the I-P peace process might actually end up being worse than George Bush's?"

✪ Berman’s Response to Goldstone on House Gaza War-Crimes Resolution « The Washington Independent | The assholes who run Congress reply to Goldstone.

✪ Report: Mossad hacked Syrian computer to uncover nuke site – Haaretz – Israel News | Basic snooping software found super-classified info? Either this is not true or the Syrians are mega-stupid. But since the allegation is that Syria had a secret nuclear research facility, I'll lean towards the former – this was all bullshit from the beginning.

✪ ATTACKERMAN » Somewhere, Khaled Meshal Is Laughing | Obama messed up doubly with Goldstone as well as backing down on settlements. What's a Palestinian leader (any of them outside Hamas) to do?

✪ Lebanese opposition agrees to govt line-up: Hezbollah

(AFP) | Cabinet crisis over?

✪ Clinton has ‘productive meeting’ with Egypt on Mideast peace process – washingtonpost.com | Hosni Mubarak loves nothing more than being made to feel important. Clinton's entire trip to Cairo is about this: "Clinton attributed the apparent softening in Egypt's position as a response to her personal diplomacy, conducted over visits to four capitals in the region over the past five days. "I thought it was a very productive meeting," she told reporters traveling with her after the news conference, adding that it "shows the value of consultation and listening and sharing ideas and hearing the other side and putting forward your views and explaining.""

The London Middle East Institute (LMEI), the SOAS Food Studies Centre, and Fertile Ground invite you to an evening celebrating the foods of the Middle East.

Students and family members of all ages are invited to prepare a dish of special significance to them, and to share their food, as well as stories about it, with others.

Special guests Claudia Roden (author of numerous food books, including A New Book of Middle Eastern Food, The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey from Samarkand and Vilna to the Present Day, and Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey and Lebanon) and Sami Zubaida (Professor Emeritus at Birkbeck University and co-author of A Taste of Thyme: Culinary Cultures of the Middle East) will offer remarks about the culinary traditions of the region.

The event will be held in the Brunei Gallery Café Suite on Monday 7 December 2009, beginning at 6:00pm.

Space on the event is limited, and registration is required. Those interested in participating should email Laura Jacobs (laura@fertile-ground.co.uk) by Friday 13 November at the latest.

If anyone in London is going, I’d like to hear about it — and if they answer the perennial question of the mystery of Egyptian cuisine.

Via

Max Strasser.

Another good al-Jazeera English feature, here on the “long war” between al-Qaeda and, well, just about everyone else. Panel of commentators includes Lawrence Wright, Robert Pape, Gen. Richard Myers, and Mark Sageman.

Part II after the fold.

Here’s the second part:

Zeev Sternhell writes in Haaretz:

It is not the Goldstone report that has opened another painful phase in the erosion of Israel’s credibility, but rather the cavalier attitude here toward the heavy Palestinian losses. In broad circles of Western European and American intelligentsia – in the universities and among cultural and media figures – Israel arouses ever-deepening hostility.

The London Review of Books’ Adam Shatz writes about the “mobile phone wars” behind Mahmoud Abbas’ early decision to postpone consideration of the Goldstone report:

In the Western press, Abbas’s blunder was widely described as an act of realpolitik that backfired in the court of public opinion, but the real story may have more to do with a mobile-phone company called Wataniya, a joint venture set up by a group of investors from Kuwait and Qatar (57 per cent share) and the Palestine Investment Fund (43 per cent), whose head is Abbas’s chief economic adviser, Mohammad Mustafa. In July 2008, Tony Blair brokered a deal between the PA and Israel that would have allowed Wataniya to become Palestine’s second mobile-phone operator, with a bandwidth of 4.8 MHz; the launch date was meant to be 15 October this year.

In divided Palestine, economic development is factional politics: Wataniya had to succeed, if only to provide proof that Palestinians are better off under the PA in the West Bank than in Hamas-controlled Gaza. It’s an argument Netanyahu has also been keen to make, in the hopes that middle-class West Bankers can be bought off, the Gazans forgotten, and statehood consigned to oblivion.

But on 15 September, Richard Goldstone released his findings. According to Jonathan Cook in the National, Israel warned Abbas that unless the Palestinian Authority withdrew its draft resolution on the report, it would deny Wataniya all of its radio frequencies; the PA promptly fell into line, requesting a six-month delay on the resolution. It isn’t hard to imagine what Abbas and his associates were thinking: if the deal collapsed, the PA would have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties, and would also suffer a major loss in investment and jobs (more than 2000). Why should war crimes in Gaza get in the way of the West Bank telecommunications industry? Couldn’t this wait another six months?

The PA made its second U-turn, in response to Palestinian public opinion, on 6 October: the resolution on the Goldstone Report wouldn’t be postponed after all. On 15 October, the day Wataniya was set to launch, Israel ‘re-awarded’ it 3.8 MHz of airwave frequency spectrum. This was still 1 MHz shy of the 4.8 MHz it needs to be fully operational – Israel’s three major mobile-phone firms each have between 20 and 46 MHz. Why the shortfall? Israeli officials say it’s because the PA has failed to honour certain unnamed ‘commitments’; one of those commitments may have been deferring to its wishes on Goldstone.

Harpers’ Ken Silverstein interviews Desmond Travers, one of the four members of the UN fact-finding mission led by Goldstone:

4. Critics have also said that Hamas deliberately inserted its fighters among civilians and that doing so increased the civilian toll. Did you find that to be the case?

We found no evidence that Hamas used civilians as hostages. I had expected to find such evidence but did not. We also found no evidence that mosques were used to store munitions. Those charges reflect Western perceptions in some quarters that Islam is a violent religion. Gaza is densely populated and has a labyrinth of makeshift shanties and a system of tunnels and bunkers. If I were a Hamas operative the last place I’d store munitions would be in a mosque. It’s not secure, is very visible, and would probably be pre-targeted by Israeli surveillance. There are a many better places to store munitions. We investigated two destroyed mosques—one where worshippers were killed—and we found no evidence that either was used as anything but a place of worship.

There is a sinister and foolish notion among certain proponents of insurgency warfare that to fight an insurgency means that civilians will inevitably be killed. But if you give the state authority to be indiscriminate with the lives of civilians in pursuing insurgents, it plays into the hands of the insurgents. Dead bodies are grist to the insurgents’ mill: if the dead are on your side they represent insurgent victories and if the dead are on their side then they have martyrs.

5. What is your view of the claim by Israeli officials that the IDF is the most “moral” army in the world?

Given the tactics, the weapons used, and the indiscriminate targeting, I think this is a dubious claim.

6. What other issues do you think need to be addressed?

We were disturbed by the lethality and toxicity of weapons used in Gaza, some of which have been in Western arsenals since the Cold War, such as white phosphorous, which incinerated 14 people, including several children in one attack; flechettes, small darts that are designed to tumble upon entering human flesh in order to cause maximum damage, strictly in breach of the Geneva Convention; and highly carcinogenic tungsten shrapnel and dime munitions, which contain tungsten in powder form. There is also a whole cocktail of other problematic munitions suspected to have been used.

There are a number of other post-conflict issues in Gaza that need to be addressed. The land is dying. There are toxic deposits from all the munitions that have been dropped. There are serious issues with water—its depletion and its contamination. There is a high instance of nitrates in the soil that is especially dangerous to children. If these issues are not addressed, Gaza may not even be habitable by World Health Organization norms.

I have to say that while I appreciate Judge Goldstone’s professionalism (as shown in various interviews), I find it rather inappropriate for him to keep on repeating that he is a Zionist and loves Israel (as he has done on occasion.) Not just because, for me, Zionist is a dirty word that implies racism and the denial of the existence of a Palestinian people. But rather because Goldstone and his peers are meant to be professional assessors of the recent conflict in Gaza; they should keep their political views to themselves.

The Arab Knowledge Report 2009 is out. From the press release:

Dubai – Arab societies need nurturing institutions and supportive policies to experience a significant boost in knowledge production and creation, according to The Arab Knowledge Report 2009. The report, launched today, maintains that political, institutional, cultural and intellectual reforms, as well as reform of the media and information technologies are vital if Arab societies are to bridge the knowledge gap.

The Arab Knowledge Report 2009: Towards productive intercommunication for knowledge, emphasises two central and mutually dependent premises. The first is the connection between knowledge, development and freedom. The second is the close relationship between the demands of development and the building of the knowledge society.

“With solid commitment and long-term vision, the route to the knowledge society will not be impossible,” asserted Adel El Shared, Vice Chairman and Managing Director of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation. “This is what we have sought to achieve over the past two years, emphasizing our commitment to the purpose and objectives for which the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation was established – strengthening the knowledge economy in the Arab world, which can only be achieved through close cooperation with serious partners who share our vision and objectives. Today we are happy to launch the fruit of such a collaborative effort with UNDP: the Arab Knowledge Report 2009: Towards productive intercommunication for knowledge,” he elaborated.

The Report addresses the factors that impede the establishment of a knowledge society in the Arab world and assesses the state of education, information and communication technologies, research and innovation in the region. It concludes with a roadmap for action so that the Arab world can integrate itself in a rapidly globalising knowledge society.

via Brian Whitaker.

Here’s the link to the full 300+ page report in PDF.

Glancing quickly through the report, and as the PR blurb above shows, much of the report is about creating a “knowledge society” and developing ICT. It contains a lot of turgid language about moving towards that. I would have liked to see (but may very well have missed in the report) a section looking at syllabus content, teaching techniques, and why so many countries that have expressed a need for primary and secondary educational reform have thus far done so little (and also the politics of teachers and reforming teachers’ training, a big issue in Morocco and Egypt and I’m sure elsewhere.)

And here’s the second part:

Due to the sheer insanity of the pro-Israel community in America, this pro-peace, pro-nonviolence interview has generated tons of protests. The guest alongside Dr. Barghouti, Anna Baltzer, writes:

Anna Baltzer: Daily Show needs letters of support for having Barghouti & me on

Dear friends,

Last night Dr. Barghouti and I were on “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart talking about Palestine.

The show was overwhelmed with angry emails and phone calls prior to the appearance, and up until the last minute it seemed like they might cancel. During the taping the show had it’s only heckler in 11 years. The entire staff was very nervous and may come to regret the monumental decision (and not make it again) as they will surely be inundated now that the show has aired. That is why it is CRUCIAL that the show receive letters of support from anyone who appreciated the interview.

Once again, kudos for Jon Stewart for having these people on.

Update: Angry Arab writes that Anna Baltzer had large chunks of the interview edited out:

The show was overwhelmed with angry emails and phone calls prior to the appearance, and up until the last minute it seemed like they might cancel. During the taping the show had it’s only heckler in 11 years.The entire staff were very nervous and may come to regret the monumental decision (and not make it again) as they will surely be inundated now that the show has aired..Many of you who watched the show on TV noticed that everything of real substance that I said was edited out. The major issues cut out were (1) the US role in aiding Israel, (2) the lack of adequate coverage in mainstream US media, and (3) the Palestinian-led movement for Boycott / Divestment / Sanctions (BDS) to nonviolently pressure Israel to comply with international law.”

Stewart has done a lot in the past to get a sane view of the conflict on the air, in his modest way (after all he is on Comedy Central and never claims to be a serious news journalist.) It’s a shame if one of the most daring shows on mainstream US television is really this terrified of talking about the US-Israel relationship and BDS.

The issue focuses on the work of young Egyptian writers like Ahmad Al Aidi (the author of Being Abbas Al Abd), Magdy Shafee (the author of Metro) and other authors whose titles I’ve noticed but who I’m not familiar with. Edwards tentatively classifies this generation of authors as “Cairo 2010″ and sees something distinct in “the way they encounter and depict the Cairo of today, the globally inflected and locally congested space of the megalopolis.”

I tend to question the inclusion of Mohammed Al Fakharani, whose novel فاصل للدهشة I studied closely in my Masters thesis research, and which, while fascinating if you’re interested in the contemporary tropes about عشوائيات (Cairo’s informal neighborhoods, or slums), is sloppy and melodramatic both in its social analysis and its writing. On the other hand, I am now eager to find out more about many of the other authors mentioned by Edwards. Unfortunately it’s all only available with subscription.

Last year, AUC Press put out the first translation of Mustagab’s work into English, by the (seemingly omnipresent and omnipotent) Humphrey Davies. “Tales from Dayrut” includes stories from the collection “Dayrut el-Sherif” (Dayrut was Mustagab’s hometown) and “The Secret History of Nu’man Abd al-Hafiz”–it’s hard to know if the works have included in their entirety or have been excerpted (I suspect so) because there is no introduction.

The late Mustagab, one of Egypt’s great satirists, was born in Asyut in 1938 (he died in 2006). Mustagab was largely self-educated (he only had a high school degree). He moved to Cairo, found employment at the Academy of the Arabic Language, and published his first short story in 1969.

Mustagab’s work is indeed original to the point of being queer; dark to the point of being terrifying; and often wickedly funny. Some of the stories have mythical, magical elements, perhaps inspired by the way events are explained or recounted in the place of Mustagab’s childhood. In other stories, the author takes life in his small, rural, upper-Egyptian home-town and exposes a fantasmagorically dark underside. In “Bughayli Bridge,” a village policeman decides he wants to actually solve a murder, and has the river dredged–which leads to dozens of bodies, all the murder victims of recent memory, being fished out in front of the assembled and increasingly hysterical village.

That story opens with this citation (from the back cover of the book), one of my favourites:

“From the beginning–and even long before the beginning–we have had to put our faith in the fact that fish dwell in water, bats in ruins, teachers in schools, peace of mind in death, foxes in fields, monks in monasteries, falsehood in books, seeds in cracks, poison in menstrual blood, and wisdom in the aftermath of events; and the best of you, good gentlemen, is the one who is spared either the wisdom or the events.”

But in making the opening to Anglicanism, Benedict also may have a deeper conflict in mind — not the parochial Western struggle between conservative and liberal believers, but Christianity’s global encounter with a resurgent Islam.

Here Catholicism and Anglicanism share two fronts. In Europe, both are weakened players, caught between a secular majority and an expanding Muslim population. In Africa, increasingly the real heart of the Anglican Communion, both are facing an entrenched Islamic presence across a fault line running from Nigeria to Sudan.

Where the European encounter is concerned, Pope Benedict has opted for public confrontation. In a controversial 2006 address in Regensburg, Germany, he explicitly challenged Islam’s compatibility with the Western way of reason — and sparked, as if in vindication of his point, a wave of Muslim riots around the world.

By contrast, the Church of England’s leadership has opted for conciliation (some would say appeasement), with the Archbishop of Canterbury going so far as to speculate about the inevitability of some kind of sharia law in Britain.

There are an awful lot of Anglicans, in England and Africa alike, who would prefer a leader who takes Benedict’s approach to the Islamic challenge. Now they can have one, if they want him.

This could be the real significance of last week’s invitation. What’s being interpreted, for now, as an intra-Christian skirmish may eventually be remembered as the first step toward a united Anglican-Catholic front — not against liberalism or atheism, but against Christianity’s most enduring and impressive foe.

My question is: would the NYT tolerate an op-ed describing any other religion like this? Would it not condemn, say, a Christian who describes Judaism’s as Christianity’s foe because of the old “Jews-killed-Jesus” trope some anti-Semites and Christian ultra-conservatives like to dish out?