Best Books on the Middle East, 2011

Posted By Marc Lynch Monday, December 26, 2011 - 5:02 PM

It's time for the official, Aardvark-certified list of the Best Books on the Middle East for 2011! (See last year's winners here.) Next year's list will undoubtedly be dominated by books addressing this year's uprisings which have transformed the Arab world, but not many significant books on the topic were published in 2011. That'll hopefully change on March 27, when my own book The Arab Uprising comes out -- don't worry, it won't be eligible for the 2012 awards of course! -- and, all joking aside, when a number of great journalists and scholars weigh in with books in the pipeline. In the meantime, you can always go back to Revolution in the Arab World, the eBook based on Foreign Policy articles, which I think remains an outstanding guide to the first few months.

First, the ground rules. The awards are limited to English-language books that were published in calendar year 2011 and which dealt primarily with the contemporary broader Middle East. I read more than 65 books published this year which fit that description, from academic and trade presses alike. The award is entirely subjective, based on what I found impressive or interesting. There's no committee, no publishers sent me free copies or offered up lucrative swag, and I couldn't read everything -- especially if books were published too late in the year or if publishers insisted on releasing them only as $90 hardcovers. If your book didn't make the list, however, then you know what do do (hint: you really can't go wrong by blaming Blake Hounshell).

And with that...the 2011 Aardvark Awards for the Best Books on the Middle East:

Read on

COMMENTS (6)

EXPLORE:MIDDLE EAST, ARAB WORLD, MIDDLE EAST, NORTH AFRICA, EGYPT, ELECTIONS, HISTORY, HUMAN RIGHTS, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, ISLAM, ISRAEL/PALESTINE, POLITICS, RELIGION, SAUDI ARABIA, U.S. FOREIGN POLICY

In defense of Obama's Muslim outreach

Posted By Marc Lynch Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - 10:55 AM

President Barack Obama's well-crafted speech in Jakarta yesterday serves as a useful reminder of some of the early promise of his outreach to the Muslim communities of the world. Praise for his efforts has been rare ever since the crashing disappointment which followed the sky-high expectations raised by his Cairo speech. The litany of complaints is now familiar: failure to deliver on the Israeli-Palestinian peace or on Gaza, little visible follow-through in the months after the speech, the inability to close Guantanamo, escalating drone strikes, the impact of rampaging anti-Islam trends in U.S. domestic politics, and so on. I've made all those criticisms myself, and more. With public opinion surveys showing collapsing approval ratings for the United States in the Arab world and rampant media criticism of Obama's strategy, it's hard to find anyone willing to defend the administration's post-Cairo outreach.

But today it's worth stepping back and offering some praise. The administration has stuck with the president's clear commitment to restoring positive relations with the Muslims of the world despite all the setbacks, when it would have been really easy to give up or change course. And he has quietly made some real progress in many lower profile areas upon which the media doesn't focus. The president made clear yesterday that he understands -- perhaps better than his critics -- that "no single speech can eradicate years of mistrust." But, he went on: "I believed then, and I believe today, that we have a choice. We can choose to be defined by our differences, and give in to a future of suspicion and mistrust. Or we can choose to do the hard work of forging common ground." That quiet, long-term commitment may not be as exciting to the media as the peaks and valleys of high-stakes political battles, and isn't as revolutionary as the Cairo speech seemed to promise, but may ultimately be more important than today's headlines. If it works in terms of building robust and durable networks of interest with this rising generation of Muslims around the world, then we may wake up a decade from now extremely grateful for efforts which didn't seem noteworthy today.

Read on

AFP/Getty images

COMMENTS (4)

EXPLORE:ISLAM, OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, U.S. FOREIGN POLICY

The Stealth Muslim Victory

Posted By Marc Lynch Wednesday, November 3, 2010 - 8:10 PM

The last few months of U.S. political life have been defaced by rampaging anti-Muslim rhetoric, from the manufactured controversy over the Park51 mosque in New York to the Florida Quran-burning threats to hysterical warnings about 'creeping sharia' and stealth jihad in the halls of Congress. The victory of the truly absurd ban on applying sharia in Oklahoma may be only the first of the legislative fruits of this ugly trend. The volume and aggressiveness of this anti-Islamic trend has had some real costs both at home and abroad, most likely drowning out the earnest efforts of the Obama administration to rebuild relations with the Muslims of the world. Hopefully that noise will fade now that Election Day has come and gone.

But in the meantime, there's some quiet good news. The "Ground Zero Mosque" didn't get Carl Paladino anywhere near the New York Governor's Mansion. As political junkies will recall, the leader of a major Tea Party group explicitly called for Keith Ellison (D-MN) to be defeated because he "is the only Muslim member of congress. He supports the Counsel for American Islamic Relations, HAMAS and has helped congress send millions of tax dollars to terrorists in Gaza [insert 'sic' as you like]." All the better then to realize that both Muslim members of Congress -- Ellison and Andre Carson (D-IN) -- cruised to re-election yesterday and that nobody seems to have even much noticed.

The very fact that their wins have thus far been a non-issue is one of the more encouraging things I've come across today. I can only hope that Muslims around the world notice their victories, and place more weight on their effective participation in U.S. democracy than they do on the Oklahoma referendum or on the loud, angry voices of the anti-Islamic fringe. The administration's public diplomacy team might want to get on that.

COMMENTS (8)

EXPLORE:DEMOCRACY, ELECTIONS, ISLAM, POLITICS