Updates from Lebanon
For continuous updates from Lebanon, Keep an eye on Comrade Farah Kobaissy’s Twitter account and Sursock’s blog…
MER: Youth issue
The new issue of Middle East Report is out, with a focus on youth. It features an excellent piece by Marc Lynch on young Muslim Brothers, which is available online, as is a reflection on how Arab youths are perceived as a sociological / political unit (one for instance sometimes presumed to always be a force for reform) by Ted Swedenburg. There’s a lot more there if you get the magazine, so subscribe!
What the hell is it with the shoes?
Divisions in Muslim Brotherhood:
THE lowly shoe is considered a degrading weapon in Egypt. To be beaten with a shoe adds insult to injury.
So when Mohamed Mahdi Akef, the Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, the banned Islamist group whose members have frequent encounters with the police, threatened critics with his shoes last year, it was seen as a classic example of an intemperate leader’s inability to control his language.
I have an idea: from now on I shall refer to any journalist obsessed with Arab shoes as Abu Gazma. (And by the way the bizarrely stunted story is crap.)
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