Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

From the first half of the 20th century in Egypt Collecting Cairo's Discarded Images

Like in most analyses, missing is the historical fact of an overlap of sect and class in some Arab countries. Example: one has to look at the position of the majority of the Syrian bourgeoisie towards the uprising and the regime since the outbreak of the uprising and then the war. Postel:  In recent years, a narrative has taken hold in Western policy and media circles that attributes the turmoil and violence engulfing the Middle East to supposedly ancient sectarian hatreds. "Sectarianism" has become a catch-all explanation for virtually all of the regionʹs problems. This narrative can be found across the political spectrum – from right-wing voices with openly anti-Muslim agendas, to softer liberal-centrist articulations and even certain commentators on the left. In its various forms, this sectarian essentialism has become a new conventional wisdom in the West. It is an intellectually lazy, ideologically convenient and deeply Orientalist narrative. The West's ...

Many of those condemning the regime today include a cross-section of US government, think tank, and media personalities that are themselves guilty at best of ignoring, and at worse covering up, the authoritarian nature of the Saudi regime and the various forms of systematic violence it deploys (let alone the US role in propping up the regime, providing the means of that violence, and many times participating in the actual acts of violence).  Kashoggi himself was for a long time part of the Saudi regime of power, and only recently fell out with its current top echelons (i.e., Mohammed bin Salman) and thus defected. Saudi Arabia's Long History of Dictatorship and Opposition

Turkey Release jailed construction workers

The outcome of regional strategic calculus and "lesser evil" mentality, especially when "the lesser evil" is "secular". Sections of the left are still in denial. How chemical weapons helped bring Assad close to victory

Tolerance! Hate crimes in England and Wales

Lucky him! He could afford it. "I'm leaving the UK because of the disaster of Brexit"

London   Today on a famous high street in London, another racist attack on me. A young man in his early twenties, bumped into me deliberately and hurled a racist slur at me.

Class and race The Blindspot Revisited