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July 25, 2023
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Ramona Wadi
An unexpected visit from former British diplomat and family acquaintance Duncan Claybourne to Iraqi-British psychiatrist Mona Haddad in 2003 sets the scene for Elizabeth Loudon's novel, A Stranger in...
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July 24, 2023
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Omar Ahmed
It is often stated that within the world of Shia Muslim seminaries, the cities of Najaf in Iraq and Qom in Iran represent two contrasting camps in Shia scholarly...
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July 17, 2023
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Usman Butt
Historical memory is at the forefront of Russia's wars in Ukraine, Syria and elsewhere. However, this historical memory is not about things in the past that actually happened, or...
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July 11, 2023
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Usman Butt
The 20th century had no more prolific writer on the dangers of authoritarianism than Eric Arthur Blair, better known by his pen name, George Orwell. Orwell's writings continue to...
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July 7, 2023
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Omar Ahmed
Charlemagne, the 8th century Frankish King, holds a near-mythical status in European history. He is widely regarded as a stalwart defender of Christendom against an expanding Islamic realm. Additionally,...
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July 3, 2023
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Omar Ahmed
The term "Arab-Jew" is often considered contradictory, as it seemingly represents conflicting identities within the geopolitics of the Middle East. However, Avi Shlaim, an Iraqi-born British-Israeli historian, challenges this...
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June 30, 2023
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Usman Butt
Did secularism in the Arab world only really begin in the 20th century after European colonisation? Historians in both the Arab World and the West have long argued that...
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June 23, 2023
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Omar Ahmed
Islam and science fiction may not immediately seem like a natural pairing, but the Muslim world has indeed fostered a fascinating history within this genre. In his book titled Islam,...
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June 9, 2023
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Omar Ahmed
The Caliph and the Imam: The Making of Sunnism and Shiism by Toby Matthiesen is an extraordinary and comprehensive study that traverses centuries and continents, delving into the intricate...
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May 26, 2023
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Ramona Wadi
"Oral histories always beg the question of what lives and cultural forms are isolated, erased and made insignificant by bringing this narrative to the fore," Livia Wick writes in...
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May 23, 2023
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Usman Butt
Could the end of liberalism be the end of diverse multi-ethnic states, from Indonesia to the United States? Azeem Ibrahim seems to think so and aims to make the...
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May 19, 2023
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Usman Butt
"Arabic is eloquence, Persian is wittiness, Turkish is abomination, and the rest is filth," Evliya Celebi, the 17th century Ottoman travel writer, is reported to have remarked. The high...
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March 31, 2023
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Ramona Wadi
Brendan Ciaran Browne's contribution to the literature on Palestine is not only welcomed, but sharply focused. Veering away from the mainstream discourse that protects the two-state compromise at the...
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March 28, 2023
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Usman Butt
Few can claim to have produced a wealth of scholarship and achieved mastery over Middle Eastern history, but Roy Mottahedeh's insatiable curiosity for the past has left us with...
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March 23, 2023
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Usman Butt
A group of men and women have gathered with an instructor to partake in a religious ceremony which, aside from worship, represents something broader in their lives: how to...
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March 7, 2023
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Ramona Wadi
Azad Essa's book, Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel (Pluto Press, 2023), offers detailed insights into the politics of Zionism and Hindutva. With an introduction by...
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February 27, 2023
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Usman Butt
In 2020, with the full extent of the coronavirus outbreak still unknown, Chris Buckley of the New York Times received a phone call from a woman at the Wuhan...
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February 23, 2023
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Sophia Akram
Matthew Teller had to unlearn much of what he had learnt about Jerusalem before he could write his book Nine Quarters of Jerusalem – A New Biography of the...
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February 16, 2023
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Usman Butt
Locals and foreigners alike often ask why people in the Middle East are "so lazy". While such a view held by people from outside the region has its roots...
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February 10, 2023
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Dr Suja Sawafta
For the Algerian-born Parisian poet, Hocine Tandjaoui, the memory of the Algerian War of Independence, and the personal biography that shapes it, is best relayed through poetry. His genre-bending...
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January 31, 2023
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Ramona Wadi
Nora Lester Murad's young adult novel, Ida in the Middle (Crocodile Books, 2022), explores Palestinian identity and makes it relatable to a non-Palestinian audience. Ida, a young teenager, is...
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January 23, 2023
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Ramona Wadi
The Palestinian return is never as envisaged. For Palestinian poet and author Hussein Barghouti, his struggle with cancer prompted a return to Palestine from his "voluntary exile" after 30...
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December 29, 2022
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Omar Ahmed
The JNF/KKL: A Charity Complicit with Ethnic Cleansing by academic and civil rights activist Dr Uri Davis is the latest offering by MEMO Publishers and brings to light the...
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December 24, 2022
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Ramona Wadi
Tony Greenstein's well researched book, Zionism During the Holocaust: The Weaponisation of Memory in the Service of the State and Nation will not sit well with proponents of the...
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December 16, 2022
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Marcus Estrada
NO WAY TO GAZA is a book recently published in London by MEMO, narrated by three Brazilian professors travelling from Cairo through Sinai, in the summer of 2019, to...
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Reviews
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November 24, 2022
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Usman Butt
Muriam Haleh Davis's new book Markets of Civilization: Islam and Racial Capitalism in Algeria explores the colonial roots of Algeria's transition into a modern capitalist economy. But it is...
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October 30, 2022
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Nasim Ahmed
One of the most startling aspects of Israel's ongoing takeover of historic Palestine is how, despite the catalogue of human rights abuse, violations of international law and the practice...
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October 27, 2022
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Omar Ahmed
The devastating war in Yemen has been raging for eight years, and with the recent expiry of a UN-brokered truce, conflict between the warring parties remains unlikely to end...
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October 23, 2022
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Ramona Wadi
This complex subject is presented with meticulous research by Lara Sheehi and Stephen Sheehi in Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practising Resistance in Palestine (Routledge, 2022). The book goes beyond the...
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October 18, 2022
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Usman Butt
This new book edited by Jeffrey G. Karam and Rima Majed seeks to make sense of the October 2019 uprising that shook Lebanon. The Lebanon Uprising of 2019: Voices...
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October 16, 2022
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Omar Ahmed
Sharing a very personal account of his own incarceration at the hands of the Israeli occupation authorities, MEMO's Palestinian political cartoonist, Mohammad Sabaaneh, offers us a glimpse into this...
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October 11, 2022
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Usman Butt
Regions such Dagestan, Chechnya and the Caucasus tend to make us think of territories that are firmly under Moscow's control as part of the Russian Federation. However, Russian control...