Adel Imam is serious comedian who is a household name in Egypt. He has just been sentenced in absentia to three months of jail time, with hard labor, for offending Islam in a couple of recent films.

Adel Imam's films.

Witch hunts in Bahrain continue

I will have more to say about this later. 

Also see this article summarizing retributive attacks by the Bahraini government. http://pubrecord.org/world/9274/bahrain-do-no-harm/

Curtailed academic freedom in Abu Dhabi

April 17, 2011

Lecturer's Arrest in the Emirates Stirs Debate Over Academic Freedom in the Middle East

By David L. Wheeler

The recent detention of a Sorbonne lecturer in the United Arab Emirates has rekindled the debate over the nature of academic freedom at Western institutions in the Persian Gulf region and the political impact those institutions, especially the high-profile new campus of New York University in Abu Dhabi, will have.

Mearsheimer on Chas Freedom and related topics

Glenn Greenwald has offered valuable commentary in Salon on the Chas Freeman affair, including this item

The distorting effect of anonymity - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

AIPAC hid behind the skirts of anonymity while fueling the attacks on Chas Freeman. After reading the Greenwald piece, the dishonesty of the WaPo editorial is hard to deny.

More on the campaign against Chas Freeman and it consequences

Paul Pillar is a highly respected but now intelligence analyst.  He was the National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005.  

"The main impact of this affair on intelligence work is not likely to involve the Arab-Israeli dispute, even though it is what concerns those who shot down Freeman. The most important facts and patterns about that tragic conflict are an open book; we don't need the National Intelligence Council to tell us the implications of continued expansion of Israeli settlements, the consequences of rockets fired at Israelis, or the effects of unending occupation on the emotions of those under occupation. The main effects will instead come, perhaps subtly and invisibly, with other issues on which a dominant policy imperative emerges -- such as the Iraq war, though not necessarily with as intense an environment as what the Bush administration created to sell that initiative. The effects will consist of intelligence officers being at least marginally less willing than they otherwise would be to challenge the ethos surrounding the policy and to point out ways in which the policy might be misguided. Some such policies will be misguided, will come a cropper, and will lead to the usual recriminations about how intelligence failed."

"When that happens, those in Congress and elsewhere who acquiesced in the character assassination of Chas Freeman -- or even worse, participated in it -- should ponder two things about intelligence. First, they should ask how they could expect intelligence officers to show superlative courage in bucking political orthodoxy when they showed so little themselves. Second, they should reflect on how their own pusillanimity in the face of the lobby that gunned down Freeman has made it even less likely that intelligence officers will be able to muster such courage in the future."

Also: Freeman on NPR.

Is a serious discussion of U.S. policy in the Arab-Israeli zone possible in Washington? Chas Freeman's exit

As you may now be learning, yesterday Chas Freeman withdrew his name as chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Ambassador Freeman has been pelted for weeks by a number of predictable accusations and fabrications, most of them hurled by right-wing pro-Israel journalists, politicians and other self-appointed guardians of America's special relationship with Israel. That many of these figures have also expressed their skepticism about the appointment of former Senator George J. Mitchell as a Presidential Envoy is instructive.

Of course, what these vigilantes most feared was that the irascible and brilliant Freeman would shed the rose-tinted spectacles that obscure the not infrequent divergence of U.S. and Israeli interests. In my experience, Chas Freeman is one of those rare Washington figures who combines a first-rate mind with a willingness to call it like it is, even when it is impolitic to do so. His fiery departure statement is required reading. Freeman raises important questions about the limits of debate in Washington as well as the survival of the smear and slander campaigns that became so familiar during the unfortunate presidency of George H. Bush.

The distressing Freeman episode does not augur well for President Obama's announced quest for a settlement in the Arab-Israeli conflict. This episode reveals that a serious discussion of U.S. policy in the Arab-Israeli zone may no longer be possible in Washington. (See Salon for some of the cast of players in the smear campaign.)

Dennis C. Blair, the Director of National Intelligence, showed a strong backbone in naming Freeman to the NIC and sticking with him to the end. He may mitigate the damage that has been done by naming a new chair of the NIC who also approaches Arab-Israeli issues with realism and with a commitment to protecting U.S. interests, first and foremost.

See the thoughful early comment James Fallows: The end for Freeman - James Fallows

Prison for stating the obvious in Turkey

Kamil Pasha » Prison Sentence for Pro-Kurdish MP

Mark your calendar for the 2009 Campagna-Kerven lecture on modern Turkey.  The speaker is Mustafa Akyol whose White Path is noteworthy.

Inanity of political correctness

[I have been up to my ears in various priority tasks, hence my disappearance for the past week or so.]

Lebanon's Marcel Khalife is a gifted artist and an avowed voice for freedom. Apparently, he will not be permitted to perform in a major San Diego venue because he would not be accompanied by an Israeli musician. Astounding, truly. Imagine the ramifications of this precedent should a symphony plan to perform Wagner, or a civic center decides to invite an Israeli dance troupe that celebrates Zionism.

Meantime, the debate over Columbia's hosting of the Iranian president is still roiling, and attention has turned to President Lee Bollinger's extraordinary introduction of Ahmadinejad. Bolliger pleased some by telling it like it is, but he has also been hit with criticism for his rude and uncivil tone. My view is that he could have underlined his disagreement with the university's guest withouth telling him that he was an uneducated lout and a petty dictator. To quote Abe Foxman:

“If you invite someone, you have to be polite,” he said. “Ahmadinejad scored points, especially in their culture. If you permit an enemy to come into your home, you still treat him with dignity and respect. Therefore, we lost. The points that President Bollinger made were fine. But to close with insulting words almost undid everything he said before. It was not a good teaching experience.”

I agree with the criticism of Bollinger. The Iranian president is already a popular figure in the Middle East, even if many Iranians believe he is a lout and a dictator, and the visit to Morningside Heights did nothing to diminish his reputation. Had Bollinger resisted the urge to vent his spleen (and, I suppose, quell criticism of him and his university), the event might well have shined a light on the virtue of academic freedom. Instead, it became a parody.

NYC=free speech? Fagetaboutit! with 3 updates

Head of City’s Arabic School Steps Down Under Pressure - New York Times

"Ms. Almontaser’s remarks, made last weekend, were in response to questions from The Post over the phrase “Intifada NYC,” which was printed on T-shirts sold by Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media, a Brooklyn-based organization. The shirts have no relation to her school.

“The word basically means ‘shaking off,’ ” Ms. Almontaser told the paper. “That is the root word if you look it up in Arabic.”

Fear of Arabic as discussed in Democracy Now.

Former Mayor Ed Koch:

“I believe there is nothing wrong with having a school related in Islamic culture,” said former Mayor Edward I. Koch. “ I don’t think there is anything wrong with the idea at all.” He added, referring to Ms. Almontaser: “They were too quick to fire her though. I thought she apologized and gave what she thought was an adequate response and is believable.”

The former principal of NYC's new Arabic-focused school has been replaced by a veteran teacher who speaks no Arabic at all. Koch hits it on the head:

“To put a principal totally unimmersed in the culture seems like spitting in their eye,” he said.

"The next step is to get the academy itself canceled," Pipes wrote in the Aug. 15 New York Sun.

Balanced NYT article about the controversy.

"“There’s zero correspondence between the caricature and the actual person,” said Rabbi Andy Bachman of Beth Elohim, a Reform Jewish congregation in Park Slope, who was on the Gibran school’s advisory board. “The words that were used to describe her, the fears that were evoked, are absolutely unrelated to her and her life’s work. Not in any way, shape or form.”

"Another rabbi who has worked with Ms. Almontaser on interfaith efforts, Michael Feinberg of the Greater New York Labor-Religion Coalition, said: “It’s all about insinuation and innuendo and this formula of Arab equals Muslim equals terrorist. The viciousness and the vileness of this case surpass anything I’ve seen before.”

"That vileness also did no favors to the responsible critics of the Gibran school, whether they were parents worried about school overcrowding or scholars like Diane Ravitch and Richard Kahlenberg, who believe that public schools should reinforce a common American culture rather than promote ethnic identity. Their worthy voices got lost in all the bile.

"For now at least, Ms. Almontaser remains employed by the Department of Education. What she requires, though, is something harder to obtain than another job. As another victim of a different smear campaign put it once: “Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?”"