Hip Hop and the Arab Uprisings | openDemocracy

A fascinating roundup of hip hop artists from around the “Arab Spring” countries. This is a great way to learn more about the story of the year through its interaction with pop culture—as well as a great way to learn about how pop culture (and, in some way, globalization) is reshaping modern Arab societies.

The story has embedded videos by MC Swat (Libya), Lowkey (Palestine), and Kazeboon (Egypt). There also links to many others, including more famous (in the West) figures like El Général (Tunisia).

But it’s also a reminder of a time when hip hop in America was also about “issues”—not just about money, hype, and sex. Here’s hoping for an NWA comeback tour.

The Political Notebook: Can we all stop acting like political Islam means that "Arabs can't do democracy"?

From thepoliticalnotebook:

I mean, really? Talking about the possible dangers of the political rise of the Muslim Brotherhood or the Salafists or the Ennahda Party (particularly when it comes to social freedoms) don’t have to involve saying things like “Are the sceptics who said that Arabs could not handle democracy—and would inevitably elect nasty people who would never surrender power—being proved horribly right?”

Just to point out - we rarely look at the Evangelical role in US politics as an argument for a Western inability to successfully implement and maintain a democracy, but Evangelical Christianity’s political and activist role is frequently aimed at detriment to social freedoms like the right to choose or the freedom to plan a family and to have safe sex, or to have the same rights even if you’re gay.* We absolutely need to be talking about what the outcome of Ennahda’s big win in Tunisia and the growing power of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt might mean for those populations, but we also need not to get carried away into the land of paternalistic Orientalism and start making broad decisions and evaluations of any culture’s innate ability to form a certain kind of government to our own liking, or make snap decisions for those countries about whether or not their new systems are successfully created.

Important things to remember here when talking about this: not all residents of the Middle East or North Africa are Arab or Muslim; a significant chunk of Egyptians and Tunisians did not vote for political Islam and are exerting pressures on those parties to dilute their politics, make promises about their social policies, and form coalitions with more moderate or secular parties; talking about the failure of a political transition just as it’s officially beginning is hasty and silly; not Western does not equal not successful. 

*If you’re reading this and you’re Evangelical, this is not equivalent to me saying your religion is bad or that you automatically believe these things or act in these ways. I’m talking about the politicized elements seen in and wielded by numerous conservative/Republican candidates and their political influencers.

The Economics of the Hajj

….As many as three million Muslims will be making the trip this year, and to manage that massive influx of people is a significant responsibility. So it is encouraging as an outside observer of Saudi Arabia to note that perhaps nowhere else in the Kingdom is the government’s reinvestment of its wealth into infrastructure more apparent than in Mecca, as millions experience the Hajj pilgrimage with new modern developments.

It would be interesting to compare this w/, say, pilgrimages to the Vatican or other sacred sites. In fact, I just read a series of kitschy commercialized articles (on one of those in-flight magazines) about Western tourism to sacred yoga sites in India. Similar, or different?