The Dream Palace Of The Arabs

Download or read book The Dream Palace of the Arabs written by Fouad Ajami and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-09-23 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Fouad Ajami, an acclaimed author and chronicler of Arab politics, comes a compelling account of how a generation of Arab intellectuals tried to introduce cultural renewals in their homelands through the forces of modernity and secularism. Ultimately, they came to face disappointment, exile, and, on occasion, death. Brilliantly weaving together the strands of a tumultuous century in Arab political thought, history, and poetry, Ajami takes us from the ruins of Beirut's once glittering metropolis to the land of Egypt, where struggle rages between a modernist impulse and an Islamist insurgency, from Nasser's pan-Arab nationalist ambitions to the emergence of an uneasy Pax Americana in Arab lands, from the triumphalism of the Gulf War to the continuing anguished debate over the Israeli-Palestinian peace accords. For anyone who seeks to understand the Middle East, here is an insider's unflinching analysis of the collision between intellectual life and political realities in the Arab world today.

Download or read book The Dream Palace of the Arabs ... written by Ajami and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book America’s Dream Palace written by Osamah F. Khalil and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-17 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In T. E. Lawrence’s classic memoir Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence of Arabia claimed that he inspired a “dream palace” of Arab nationalism. What he really inspired, however, was an American idea of the area now called the Middle East that has shaped U.S. interventions over the course of a century, with sometimes tragic consequences. America’s Dream Palace brings into sharp focus the ways U.S. foreign policy has shaped the emergence of expertise concerning this crucial, often turbulent, and misunderstood part of the world. America’s growing stature as a global power created a need for expert knowledge about different regions. When it came to the Middle East, the U.S. government was initially content to rely on Christian missionaries and Orientalist scholars. After World War II, however, as Washington’s national security establishment required professional expertise in Middle Eastern affairs, it began to cultivate a mutually beneficial relationship with academic institutions. Newly created programs at Harvard, Princeton, and other universities became integral to Washington’s policymaking in the region. The National Defense Education Act of 1958, which aligned America’s educational goals with Cold War security concerns, proved a boon for Middle Eastern studies. But charges of anti-Americanism within the academy soon strained this cozy relationship. Federal funding for area studies declined, while independent think tanks with ties to the government flourished. By the time the Bush administration declared its Global War on Terror, Osamah Khalil writes, think tanks that actively pursued agendas aligned with neoconservative goals were the drivers of America’s foreign policy.

Download or read book Among the Righteous written by Robert Satloff and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2006-10-30 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thousands of people have been honored for saving Jews during the Holocaust -- but not a single Arab. Looking for a hopeful response to the plague of Holocaust denial sweeping across the Arab and Muslim worlds, Robert Satloff sets off on a quest to find the Arab hero whose story will change the way Arabs view Jews, themselves, and their own history. The story of the Holocaust's long reach into the Arab world is difficult to uncover, covered up by desert sands and desert politics. We follow Satloff over four years, through eleven countries, from the barren wasteland of the Sahara, where thousands of Jews were imprisoned in labor camps; through the archways of the Mosque in Paris, which may once have hidden 1700 Jews; to the living rooms of octogenarians in London, Paris and Tunis. The story is very cinematic; the characters are rich and handsome, brave and cowardly; there are heroes and villains. The most surprising story of all is why, more than sixty years after the end of the war, so few people -- Arab and Jew -- want this story told.

Download or read book Arab Spring Dreams written by Sohrab Ahmari and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2012-05-08 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a gay man secretly mourning his lover's suicide in Morocco to a young woman denied schooling because of religious discrimination in Iran, Arab Spring Dreams spotlights some of the Middle East's most outspoken young dissidents. The essayists cover a wide range of experiences, including premarital sex, the lack of educational opportunities, teenage marriage, and the fight for political freedom. They also highlight how repressive laws and cultural mores snuff out liberty and stifle growth and consider how previous movements - particularly the American civil rights struggle - might be channeled to effect change in their own countries. Beautifully written and profoundly moving, these stories present a decisive call for change at a crucial point in the evolution of the Middle East.

Download or read book The Arab Predicament written by Fouad Ajami and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1992-05-29 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ajami's acclaimed study, updated in 1992 in light of recent turbulent events, remains an indispensable guide to the politics of the Arab world.

Download or read book Self-Criticism After the Defeat written by Sadik al-Azm and published by Saqi. This book was released on 2012-01-16 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A devastating critique of the Arab world's political stagnation by one of its most revered thinkers. The 1967 War - which led to the defeat of Syria, Jordan and Egypt by Israel - felt like an unprecedented and unimaginable disaster for the Arab world at the time. For many, the easiest solution was to shift the blame and to ignore some of the glaring defects of Arab society. Syrian philosopher Sadik al-Azm was one of the few to challenge such a view in his seminal Self-Criticism after the Defeat. Exposing the political and cultural faults that led to the defeat, he argued that the Arabs could only progress by embracing secularism, gender equality, democracy, and science. Available in English for the first time, Self-Criticism after the Defeat is a milestone in modern Arab intellectual history. It marked a turning point in Arab discourse about society and politi on publication in 1968, and spawned other intellectual ventures into Arab self-criticism.