Afghanistan had left the scene long ago, the Soviet invasion and resistance relegated to oblivion by an inextricable tribal/civil war fought by warlords and other “extremists”. Everyone was in a hurry to forget the country altogether. Suddenly the Tâlebân came out of nowhere—or so it seemed. Since then the Tâlebân have dominated publications about Afghanistan. The swift capture of Kabul, after years of siege and rocket attacks that wreaked havoc in the capital, thrust Afghanistan once again into the headlines and onto the television screens.

I Begin this talk by telling you a story, that of a Spaniard who was living in the Moroccan city of Tangiers. One day he came to see the president of the local Council of Ulemas and said to him: “I feel attracted to your religion. I would have embraced it already but for one thing which disturbs me.”

“What is it?” asked the ‘Alim.

“I am a musician by profession,” answered the Spaniard, “and Islam forbids music.”

“Who told you that?” retorted the ‘Alim angrily. The would-be convert didn’t reply, which he would have done nowadays, as I hear it in the news; he simply pulled out of his pocket a sheet of paper and gave it to the man of religion who read it and understood everything. It was an ad for a book recently published by a local professor. The ‘Alim began to explain patiently that the book was five centuries old and that it was about a theological controversy known as the Sama’ Dispute over the way the Koran should be read in public. What was forbidden, at least in the eyes of some clerics, was to sing the words of the Holy message because the listener would be more interested in the music than in the meaning. But it was soon clear for the ‘Alim that he was speaking for nothing. His visitor had read in the article exactly what he was hoping to find, an Islam more rigorous, stern, severe than his own religion. Otherwise his conversion would be pointless. The kind of Islam the ‘Alim was offering him, simple, moderate, conciliatory, Jesuitical in a word, wasn’t the real thing.

Although Americans of Middle Eastern origin—be they of Arab, Turkish, Armenian, Sephardic Jewish, Assyrian, Greek, or Central Asian heritage—comprise one of the fastest growing groups in the United States, their music may seem invisible to the American musical connoisseur. Many of the recordings of Middle Eastern American musicians are produced and distributed within community networks. Walk into an Armenian grocer in Watertown, Massachusetts or into a Lebanese audio-video store in Dearborn, Michigan, and you will find hundreds of hours of music by Middle Eastern Americans for your listening pleasure. Walk into your public library and you may not find a thing. Middle Eastern music made in America is simply not widely available on the major or alternative recording labels to which we habitually turn for our fare of world music.

Despite the physical proximity of the birthplace of Subaltern Studies, South Asia, to the Middle East and despite the convergent, colliding histories of these two regions, scholars of the Middle East attend very little to the Subaltern Studies project or to the work of Subaltern Studies groups. Although certain stances of Fanon and Said, with their focus on cultural strategies of domination and resistance, have a currency in Middle Eastern studies, no literary theorist, folklorist, anthropologist, political scientist or historian in the field of Middle Eastern Studies, so far as I am aware, explicitly draws upon Subaltern Studies with any consistency as an organizing principle for his or her studies. It is the Latin Americanists (and to a lesser degree Africanists) who have been most eager to build on South Asian Subaltern Studies to respond to Latin American (or subsanaran African) circumstances. Perhaps it is time to take a closer look at what Subaltern Studies might contribute to Middle Eastern studies if we were to make a sustained effort to apply and critique that body of literature.

In His Review essay on “Civil Society, Liberalism and the Corporatist Alternative in the Middle East,” Louis J. Cantori continues his indefatigable promotion of corporatism as a lens for understanding Middle East politics. Lou and I have been friends for many years, and I know that I probably will not be able to shake his deep attachment to corporatism. Nonetheless, since the inspiration for his latest peroration was the two volume collection on civil society in the Middle East that I edited, I thought readers of the Bulletin might be interested in my response to his assertions.

Human Rights activists and scholars are finding information technology advantageous in their work. Through electronic communication activists can disseminate information widely, rapidly and inexpensively with far less labor than before. Censorship can often be circumvented. Information can be easily compiled, analyzed and managed. Action alerts can be disseminated almost instantaneously. Distances are reduced to nearly nothing. Not surprisingly, human rights resources on the Internet are increasing by leaps and bounds. There are, however, limitations for the human rights community.

International Labor migration has powerful consequences for Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. Economically, migration affects Maghribi foreign currency earnings, balance of payments, employment rates, entrepreneurship and national economic development generally. Politically, it affects both Maghribi internal politics and relations with Europe. The sociocultural effects of migration are perhaps the most profound, touching aspects of North African life such as dress, music, architecture and nutrition, as well as deeper levels of beliefs and values, such as family structures, child-rearing practices and gender roles—aspects of culture that have generally been thought to be resistant to change.

Democracy has returned to the center stage of American political science. Before World War I, political science assumed the universality of democracy in America. Its educational mission was to inform American citizens of this, its research mission to identify the imperfections of this democracy in order to reform it and to provide academic expertise to strengthen the American state administratively in its democratic mission.’ Post-behavioral political scientists in the 1990s also assume the universality of democracy, now on an international and cross-cultural basis. They also wish to inform the American public of this, and when they uncover it they also wish to reform it through their writings and through the support of indigenous intellectuals and scholars. The incentives, coercion and pressure of the US government assist them in their efforts. They are also engaged in the strengthening of the capabilities of the American state in spreading the democratic message abroad. This collaboration of government and scholar from the 1986 announcement of the Reagan Doctrine and the founding of the National Endowment for Democracy until today has been termed “Operation Democracy.”

A double CD album characterized as “a charity compilation of love and peace songs by Israel’s top artists in memory of Yitzhak Rabin,” has been issued by NMC Music Ltd., 1995. The title on the cover is taken from the eulogy of President Bill Clinton: Shalom Chaver [Goodbye, My Friend]. It appears with two doves in green and blue symbolizing peace. On the back cover there is a picture of Yitzhak Rabin next to the flag of Israel and a list of the songs. Next to their titles in Hebrew, the names of the singers appear in Hebrew and English. There are 17 numbers on each CD.