Book Review: A world without Islam

Meeting with a book has sometimes to do with luck. Sometimes it is because you are at the airport with some foreign currency which you couldn’t spend even after you visited the restaurant, the café and the duty-free shops. And then you spot a book with a catchy title and the right price to empty your wallet. So you buy it and read it during the 12 hours-long flight. Then you decide to write a review because you have nothing more interesting to write about.
This is what happened to me and this book.

Well, not exactly. I decided to write this post because the book’s topic is essential in our present days where so many wars are said to be launched against Islam-ist groups and threat.

In “A world without Islam“, Graham Fueller tries to picture a world where Islam wouldn’t have existed and considers the current trends to find out whether they would have been different or not. Would there still be a war on terror, a clash of civilisations, hatred towards the US, etc.

Book Review: I Saw Ramallah

Five days ago, Palestinians and those among us who are concerned about the Palestinian cause remembered Deir Yassin’s massacres. It was a good reminder to those, centred on what’s happening in Syria or Mali, who didn’t notice the recent escalation in Gaza. But what to do, it is not easy to keep the press’ interest in a 64 yo conflict which became the normality.

So, because I am not eager to write about Algeria’s upcoming elections, I take this opportunity to write about a book by Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti.

The author was studying in Cairo during the 1967 war and since that day Israel didn’t let him go back home. He had also to leave Egypt and his wife and little boy (poet Tamim Barghouti), expelled by Sadat in 1977 after the president’s visit to Israel which announced Camp David. Many Palestinians could go back live or visit Ramallah and Gaza after Oslo (probably the only positive outcome of these accords), and Barghouti relates his own “return” in 1997, 30 years after he had left his mother land.

New West Order

I am perhaps supposed/expected to write something about Egypt and congratulate its people for toppling their dictator, but I don’t feel this is time for celebrations/congratulations: Seeing the military clearly taking over the power doesn’t please me. I will therefore wait till a new constitution is voted and new legislative and presidential elections are held, and then perhaps I may congratulate the Egyptians for the great courage and determination they have shown.

The recent events in Tunisia and Egypt have shown us that the people’s determination and organisation is key when they want to free themselves. The events have also shown us once again the hypocrisy of the Western democracies.

Poll: Disappointing WikiLeaks on Algeria

The title says it all; despite the many daily articles we read on the Algerian newspapers and those some specialist (or not) bloggers dedicated to the topic, I think the Algeria-related cables we got to know so far didn’t bring any additional information to what everyone already knew. I didn’t really follow the international news recently and I am therefore not aware of all the cables’ contents but even those related to the Middle-East and the probable war on Iran had little interest if at all.

I would like first to say that I didn’t feel comfortable with the idea of WikiLeaks sharing these cables first with some mainstream newspapers which “analyse” (and filter) them for us.

The most influential Arab country is…

Some Algerian and Moroccan forumers spend waste their time online arguing over which country is stronger, better and more important. There are reasons which could explain the “animosity” we can see between these people, but this is not the object of this post.

I remember on the same forums I linked to above, somebody seemed to link the importance/weight of a country to the strength of its relationships with Europe (mainly France and Spain when we consider Algeria and Morocco) and the United States. This meaning that you are important only if Europe and the USA think you are. While I disagree with this statement, I thought why not suppose it’s true and take it a little further. So I would add that a country’s (or anything for the matter) importance to the US could be measured by the number of occurrences of this country (or thing) in the American president’s speeches.

Algeria vs. Slovenia, the key game

Nelson Mandela couldn’t attend the Opening Ceremony of the 2010 World Cup after the tragic death of his great-granddaughter, and he also missed the opening game (1-1) which opposed his country to Mexico. The South-African team had the honour to score the first goal of the competition, and it seems it wouldn’t need the referees’ help to qualify for the next round (the host country’s team has never been eliminated in the groups’ round).

So far and after five games, the French team proved once again that it is unable to score (0-0 against Uruguay); the Koreans burst the Greek bubble (a well deserved 2-0 preventing the Greek population from forgetting their financial crisis); and the talented but young Nigerians did well against Maradona‘s team (0-1) even if the latter didn’t give it their all.