Arab Issues Research Articles

Introduction to a general reading of the Arab scene

This paper provides a reading of the current Arab scene with a view to understanding the reasons for its present frustrating and depressing decline. The establishment of the Arab League in 1945 embodied the birth of the modern Arab regional system. The rise of a period of pan-Arab nationalism saw numerous successes for the Arab system and possibilities for achieving Arab unity. However, this was followed by the defeat of the 1967 war, inter-Arab conflicts, the other setbacks for pan-Arabism and increasing foreign penetration, particularly by the United States, Israel, Turkey and Iran. This foreign interference, increasing terrorism and the rise of sectarian and ethnic divisions now threaten the integrity of the Arab system as well as the Arab identity. The Arab system and the Arab League are failing to tackle these threats effectively and the League has made decisions that have had serious repercussions for many critical Arab issues. The Arab Spring represented a hope for a renaissance of the Arab system, but in some cases it has worsened foreign penetration and caused further instability. This paper proposes that it is necessary to examine the features of the Arab scene in order to understand its predicament and reflect on the prospects for this decline to be exacerbated or contained. The conclusion looks at several possible future scenarios for the Arab scene.

CASONTO

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present an efficient and scalable Arabic semantic search engine based on a domain-specific ontological graph for Colleges of Applied Science, Sultanate of Oman (CASOnto). It also supports the factorial question answering and uses two types of searching: the keyword-based search and the semantics-based search in both languages Arabic and English. This engine is built on variety of technologies such as resource description framework data and ontological graph. Furthermore, two experimental results are conducted; the first is a comparison among entity-search and the classical-search in the system itself. The second compares the CASOnto with well-known semantic search engines such as Kngine, Wolfram Alpha and Google to measure their performance and efficiency. Design/methodology/approach The design and implementation of the system comprises the following phases, namely, designing inference, storing, indexing, searching, query processing and the user’s friendly interface, where it is designed based on a specific domain of the IBRI CAS (College of Applied Science) to highlight the academic and nonacademic departments. Furthermore, it is ontological inferred data stored in the tuple data base (TDB) and MySQL to handle the keyword-based search as well as entity-based search. The indexing and searching processes are built based on the Lucene for the keyword search, while TDB is used for the entity search. Query processing is a very important component in the search engines that helps to improve the user’s search results and make the system efficient and scalable. CASOnto handles the Arabic issues such as spelling correction, query completion, stop words’ removal and diacritics removal. It also supports the analysis of the factorial question answering. Findings In this paper, an efficient and scalable Arabic semantic search engine is proposed. The results show that the semantic search that built on the SPARQL is better than the classical search in both simple and complex queries. Clearly, the accuracy of semantic search equals to 100 per cent in both types of queries. On the other hand, the comparison of CASOnto with the Wolfram Alpha, Kngine and Google refers to better results by CASOnto. Consequently, it seems that our proposed engine retrieved better and efficient results than other engines. Thus, it is built according to the ontological domain-specific, highly scalable performance and handles the complex queries well by understanding the context behind the query. Research limitations/implications The proposed engine is built on a specific domain (CAS Ibri – Oman), and in the future vision, it will highlight the nonfactorial question answering and expand the domain of CASOnto to involve more integrated different domains. Originality/value The main contribution of this paper is to build an efficient and scalable Arabic semantic search engine. Because of the widespread use of search engines, a new dimension of challenge is created to keep up with the evolution of the semantic Web. Whereas, catering to the needs of users has become a matter of paramount importance in the light of artificial intelligence and technological development to access the accurate and the efficient information in less possible time. However, the research challenges still in its infancy due to lack of research engine that supports the Arabic language. It could be traced back to the complexity of the Arabic language morphological and grammar rules.

Las emisiones arábigas hasta la reforma monetaria de Abd al-Malik

The purpose of this article is to analize arabic issues, up to and including the Abd al-Malik´s Monetary Reform of the 77 AH / 696 AD, starting with a review of all the works published up to date on every as-pect of them.

From Philadelphia to Kamina: Bumuntu Interreligious Dialogue in the Heart of Africa

In the summer of 2010, Professor Leonard Swidler and Harry Halloran met with me in Philadelphia to discuss the root causes of violence in the Congo. The result was the creation of the Bumuntu Peace Institute, (1) the first African extension of the Dialogue Institute. This essay intends to articulate the challenges of interreligious dialogue in Central Africa, drawing from the field trips and the work of the Bumuntu Peace Institute over the last four years. I. Introductory Narrative It is January 14, 2015, and I am sitting in an hotel. This is not Los Angeles or Bombay, but Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The television screen that runs non-stop news from CNN, BBC, and French agencies shows the picture of Amedy Coulibaly, a black African involved in the Paris shootings connected to the Charlie Hebdo attack. I hear the reaction of many Congolese around me: These Muslims are crazy. As Africans we already have many problems: wars, poverty, tribalism, racism, dictatorship. Why get involved in Arab issues and fight wars that are not ours? Outside, in the streets of Kinshasa, Muslim robes are everywhere. When I left the Congo some twenty years ago for studies in Europe and then the United States, Muslims were believed to be about two percent of the population. Now statistics point to ten percent or even more. Moreover, it is a population of affluent businesspeople, soon to be heavily involved in competition for political power in this country where power was traditionally held by Catholics, Protestants, and Kimbanguists. (2) But, in this traditionally Christian country, Muslims are not alone in shaping the religious landscape. Street-radio (radio-trottoir) has it that many politicians belong to esoteric cults that require them to commit incest or perform human sacrifices to secure their jobs, positions, and power. Here, Indian are feared as malefic magic. As for traditional religions, they are viewed by most Congolese as mere witchcraft that should be eradicated as quickly as possible. The same opinion is prevalent in Lubumbashi and Kamina, where I have been teaching and doing research since 2011. Over the past four years I have regularly traveled to the DRC to teach and promote interreligious dialogue. After some attempts in Kinshasa and Lubumbashi, in this vast land, we focused on Kamina. Thanks to the support of the Dialogue Institute of Temple University (Philadelphia) and grants from the Halloran Philanthropies, we have progressively established the Bumuntu Peace Institute in Kamina to prepare young generations for peace. In January, 2015, I was joined by Rene Sephton, a Greek-Australian woman who does research on the Bumuntu peace-making tradition. Together we have conducted several interviews among local people in various villages, while working with students from the Universite de Kamina, Institut Superieur Pedagogique, and the Methodist University of Kamina. It is the labor of these field trips and research that I would like to articulate here and to reflect on the state of interreligious dialogue in Central Africa, using Kamina as a paradigmatic case study. II. Context: Africa Matters In order to understand the scope of interreligious dialogue in Africa, let us observe the situation on the ground, that is, the religious landscape of Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, the DRC, and finally the city of Kamina where our Bumuntu Peace Institute is based. A. The Religious Landscape of Sub-Saharan Africa (3) Africa is now home to four major religious groups: Christianity, Islam, African Traditional Religions, and religions of Asian origin (largely practiced by the political elite, mainly Mahikari, Hinduism, and Buddhism). The fifty-four countries of the African continent have nearly a billion people (15% of the world population, versus 5% for the U.S.A.). According to a Pew Forum study, more than 1,300. …

ملامح وتوجهات السیاسة الروسیة وانعکاساتها تجاه الازمة السوریة 2011-2014

سعت الدراسة الى بحث ملامح وتوجيهات السياسة الخارجية الروسية تجاه القضايا العربية عامة والأزمة السورية خاصة ، وان توجهات الموقف الروسى من الأزمة السورية قد لعبت روسيا دورا مهما اتجاه هذه الأزمة فى الضغط على الحکومة السورية لتقديم مجموعة من الاصلاحات السياسية لصالح الحکومة لتسوية الازمة اتجاه الشعب الروسي وستستمر اهمية الدور الروسي فى تسويه الازمة الروسية خاصة فى ظل سعى موسکو الى تنشيط سياستها فى منطقة الشرق الأوسط . The study sought to examine the features and directions of foreign policy line toward the general Arab issues and the Syrian crisis, especially since the orientations of the Russian position on the Syrian crisis, Russia has played an important direction of this crisis role in the pressure on the Syrian government to provide a range of political reforms to hoot the government to resolve the crisis the direction of the Syrian people and will continue significance Russia's role in settling the Syrian crisis, especially in light of Moscow sought to activate the logic of its policy in the Middle East

European Arabs: identity, education and citizenship

The Arab diaspora, comprising Arab immigrants and their descendants, currently represents the highest percentage of Arabs living in Europe. They are Arabs and Europeans, but they are unlike the Arabs who were born in the Arab world and unlike the Europeans who inherited their European origins and culture from father to son. The difference between these European Arabs and other Europeans often makes them experience a state of cultural detachment, as well as crises of their education, identity and citizenship. This article is a modest attempt to examine this phenomenon whilst highlighting the obstacles facing European Arabs and to propose some solutions. Furthermore, it is a call to draw attention to the European Arabs who have played a successful role in their communities and to utilize them in raising awareness of Arab issues and rectifying the image of Arabs in Europe with the aim of supporting Euro-Arab dialogue and cooperation.

موقف الحزبین الفرنسیین الاشتراکی والشیوعی من عدد من القضایا العربیة فی الصحافة الفرنسیة (١٩٥٦-١٩٧٣)

The paper deals with these two French parties from a number of Arab Issues through the French press. The First Section in the paper deals with the Nationalization of Suez Canal, the triple attack on Egypt. The Second section deals with the attitudes of these two parties from the issues of Algeria through the French newspaper. The third section is talking about June war. The last section handles the attitude of both parties from October war 1973.

Al-Adl Al-Najafiya Magazine... Its Intellectual Contributions and Political Positions 1965-1971

Al-Adl Al-Najafiya Magazine, by its owner, Mr. Ibrahim Al-Fadhili, is an expressive example of the Najaf press, which flourished in the sixties and early seventies of the twentieth century. It can be described as a historical document of high value that chronicled an important stage and the rapid developments witnessed in the contemporary history of Iraq at all levels, especially the political ones. Considering nationalism and nationalism, it tried to express its deep belief in the unity of Arab issues and to clarify the nature of the colonial policy pursued by some Western countries and their allies towards Iraq and the rest of the other Arab countries.

The French Communist Party and Its Attitude From The Contemporary Arab Issue

The French Communist Party and Its Attitude From The Contemporary Arab Issue

The Mission of Arab Journalism: Creating Change in a Time of Turmoil

In the years after 9/11, the Bush administration repeatedly charged that the Arab media are biased against the United States. A cross-border survey of 601 Arab journalists found that much of the conventional wisdom that has shaped U.S. public diplomacy policy toward the region lacks substance.Arab journalists see their mission as that of driving political and social reform in the Middle East and North Africa. Iraq and Palestine fall well below such internal Arab issues as political reform, human rights, poverty, and education as priority concerns.They draw a clear distinction between U.S. policy and the American people; criticize the U.S. for failing to live up to its ideals, which they largely share; and exhibit skepticism about the role of the clergy. Politically, half call themselves “democrats,” and they most closely identify with the pan-Arab region and the broader Muslim world, not with an individual nation-state.

The Israeli war on Lebanon: the Iranian connection

This article reviews the war's repercussions on Iran's role in the region and its position on several Arab and non-Arab issues. It examines the West's perceptions of Iran's role in the region and the possibility of adapting to it. The article first examines the role Iran played in the planning for the capture of Israeli soldiers that triggered the war, how Iran's position evolved regarding the open conflict and, finally, what repercussions the war is likely to have on the Islamic Republic's nuclear policy and its relations with the Arabs.

The Influence of Internet in the Political Culture (A Field Study)

There should be a kind of cooperation between universities on the local and Arab level with mass media to demonstrate all Arab issues on the Internet until we become able to compete or at least conserve our Islamic and Arab political and intellectual heritage. Students should be encouraged to have their role in political participation and expressing their viewpoints by the INTERNET through specifying lectures performed by a staff member at the computer lab. culture is considered as an indicator for political and democratic life progress and a reflection for political maturity, political participation, taking part in the political process and the nation's political awareness. The political culture is associated with the outputs the political process itself, through the channels of plural political growth and at the existence of communication and information revolution, the researcher found out that it's necessary to study one of the modern political growth channels which is available for all-it is the Internet means. There are no political limits or national borders reduce the fluid of information. The Internet represents one of the technological means in the knowledge revolution. It bears political culture essence with many meanings. This research is associated with the knowledge of the Internet influence on the political culture particularly for the students of the international relations. It is the modern means which is not connected with any country or political trend and has an effect with particular meanings. This study aims at knowing the prominent influences in the field of political culture since it contains several implications representing political movements and different attitudes which help understand plural political issues. The Internet is a medium variable (delivering variable)containing political opinions. Such implications change political attitudes (dependent variable) and finally, the follower variable is the students' political culture. During the last decade of the 20 th

?A Question That Outweighs All Others?: Yitzhak Epstein and Zionist Recognition of the Arab Issue

?A Question That Outweighs All Others?: Yitzhak Epstein and Zionist Recognition of the Arab Issue

"A Question That Outweighs All Others": Yitzhak Epstein and Zionist Recognition of the Arab Issue

"A Question That Outweighs All Others": Yitzhak Epstein and Zionist Recognition of the Arab Issue

Much Ado about Little: Ahad Ha'am's ?Truth from Eretz Yisrael? Zionism and the Arabs

T 1891 ARTICLE EMETM'ERETZ YISRAEL [Truth from Eretz Israel] by Ahad Ha'am (Asher Ginzberg, 1856-1927) is one of early Zionism's mostcited references. It is regarded as milestone in Zionist thought and in Ahad Ha'am's own role in movement, and even, more notably, as first serious analysis of the Arab issue, which was eventually to dominate history of Zionism and of state of Israel. Remarkably, it appears that no full English translation has previously been published. What follows is complete and original translation of from Eretz Israel as published in Ahad Ha'am's collected writings.' Truth originally appeared as series of articles in Hebrew daily newspaper Hamelitz (St. Petersburg), 13-24 Sivan, 5651 (19-30 June 1891), following Ahad Ha'am's first visit to Eretz Israel,2 26 February-17 May 1891. was very early in Ahad Ha'am's career as one of Zionism's most influential thinkers. His first important publication, article This Is Not Way, had appeared only two years earlier in same newspaper, and established him as severe critic of prevailing mode of settlement during first decade of Zionist (or proto-Zionist) activity.3 In his view, Return to Zion that began in 1882 was premature, disorganized, and inadequately conceived. His report of his 1891 trip belongs, first and foremost, to general thrust of critique first laid out two years earlier. Above all, in his view, movement needed unity, better organization, better leadership, better preparation (both morally and materially), and application of intelligence in both senses of word; what he found in ancestral land was movement that, having developed from numerous centers at grass roots level, consequently lacked any central direction: a convulsion of withered limbs.

RIFA⊂A RAFI⊂ AL-TAHTAWI AND HIS CONTRIBUTION TO THE LEXICAL DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN LITERARY ARABIC

In the 19th century, Europe had a tangible impact on the Arab East. During this period, Arabic-speaking regions were brought into intimate contact with the West, both through military intrusion (e.g., the French in 1798–1801 and the British in Egypt in 1882), and institutional penetration (e.g., the founding of Western-style schools and higher-education institutions in the Levant in the 1800s by Christian missionaries such as the Syrian Protestant College in 1866, now the American University of Beirut, and [the Jesuit] St. Joseph University, also in Beirut, in 1874). This overpowering European encroachment on the Arab East in the 19th century resulted in cultural and linguistic identity crises. Muhammad ⊂Ali, who ruled Egypt from 1805 until 1848, dispatched groups of students to Western countries such as Italy, Austria, and France to study at their universities and technical institutions. At home, he established schools with Western-language instruction, and sponsored translations of scientific works initially into Turkish, and later into Arabic, from Italian and French, thus making available new disciplines such as various branches of engineering, military science, and agriculture. In 1822, he established a printing press in the Bulaq section of Cairo.1 From then on, Arabicized versions of European terms such as “theater” (tiy―atru), “journal” (jurn―al), “the post” (al-busta), and “politics” (al-bulit―iq―a) signaled the arrival of Western institutions and technology in Arabic-speaking regions, and such terms were adopted by writers in their writings. The cultural, political, military, and technological challenges that resulted from the European contact with the Arab East, and the institutional changes that accompanied them, proved to be a crucial turning point in the development of the Arabic language, particularly its lexicon. However, interest in language matters was central to the Arab renaissance (Nahda) of the 19th century. Arab writers; intellectuals; and translators such Rifa⊂a Rafi⊂ al-Tahtawi (1801/2–73), (Ahmad) Faris al-Shidyaq (1801/04?–87), Nasif al-Yaziji (1800–71), and Butrus al-Bustani (1819–83), among others, debated Arabic linguistic issues in terms of their own literary and linguistic heritage. These and other authors discussed the “internal” needs of Arabic, not only issues of translating the culture of the Western societies. They wrote grammars and compiled other literary textbooks to facilitate the teaching of Arabic and to overcome difficulties of learning the language associated with older, traditional ways of language teaching and to raise awareness of the literary tradition of Arabs. These intellectuals also engaged in the preparation of glossaries and dictionaries appropriate to the needs of their societies.2

The Arab World: Language and Cultural Issues

This introductory article of the special Arab issue of Language, Culture and Curriculum is intended to provide background information on Arab society and the Arab world. It also offers some relevant information on Arabic and language teaching in this particular milieu, particularly on teaching English as a second or foreign language. An idea is also provided about why this special issue has been devoted to the Arab world, and there is an introduction to the individual articles.

Zionism and the Arabs: An American Dilemma, 1898-1948 (review)

162 SHOFAR Winter 1999 Vol. 17, No.2 briefly in several chapters and then not at all. Ultimately, is there any connection or relationship possible between the two different groups ofIsraeli women who inhabit the same nation? Second, the tone ofthe book is often highly critical ofIsraeli women, for their willingness to accept maternalist "public ideas" and their vacillation between nationalism and feminism. Is this a case of blaming the victim for difficulties created by the state? This questions leads into the fmal, and potentially most significant one, for the future of Israeli women in politics. What is the evidence for a new synthesis, in which efforts at both mobilization (working outside the system) and integration (working inside the system) may come together, in an era described by the author as one ofunprecedented change? What can students of other developing, democratic nations learn from the problems and successes of Israeli women in politics? Joyce Gelb Department of Political Science City University ofNew York Zionism and the Arabs: An American Dilemma, 1898-1948, by Raphael Medoff. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997. 188 pp. $55.00. The presence of an Arab majority in Palestine confronted the Zionist movement with a serious political problem from its inception until the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Organized political Zionism first appeared in the United States in 1898. It reached the peak ofits strength in the 1940s, when in cooperation with the Palestinian Zionists, it played a decisive role in the struggle to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. Like their Palestinian Zionist counterparts, American Zionists faced a serious problem: the existence of an Arab majority in Palestine. Medoff's study, an outgrowth of his dissertation, examines the American Zionist attitude toward the Palestinian Arabs. He argues that through the prism ofthe Arab issue one learns "how American Zionists defmed themselves as Americans and as Jews: how they wrestled with conflicts between their dual identities; how they adjusted to American society while attempting to maintain ethnic loyalties" (p. 161). American Jews, according to Medoff, embraced Zionism only when they became persuaded that their Zionism would not conflict with their Americanism. Louis Brandeis' Americanized Zionism with its stress on philanthropy and help for refugees brought respectability to Zionism. But the issue ofPalestinian Arabs created a serious dilemma for American Zionists. How could they reconcile their American faith in democracy with their support for a Zionist enterprise in Palestine in the face of opposition by the majority ofthe Arab inhabitants ofthe land? Between 1898 and 1948, American Zionism devised a number of ingenious ways to cope with the problem. Before World War I, with no overt Book Reviews 163 organized Arab opposItIon, the question of reconciling the American belief in democracy and support for Zionism was unnecessary. In fact, Zionists harbored romantic notions about the Arabs and minimized Arab opposition to Jewish settlement in Palestine. So uninformed about the country and its people were many American Zionists that some described it as "a land without people for a people without a land." Zionist optimism was bolstered by the Balfour Declaration in 1917 with its promise to establish in Palestine "a national home for Jewish people" and reference to the Arab majority ofthe population in the country merely as "existing non-Jewish communities." This was a clear victory for Zionism. Throughout the 1920s, believing that economic progress and philanthropy would assure tranquility in Palestine, American Zionists minimized signs ofArab opposition by blaming outbreaks of violence on corrupt landlords, outside agitators, Christian Arabs, missionaries, and Communists. At the same time, realizing that Jews were a distinct minority and fearing that Arab opposition could threaten the Zionist enterprise in Palestine, American Zionists opposed the creation ofa legislative council in Palestine and thereby rejected democracy. In fact, until 1948 they rejected democracy and supported building up a Jewish majority in Palestine. Only then would democracy be called for. Indeed, until 1929 Arab opposition to Zionism was not taken seriously. In 1929 new and serious violence erupted in Palestine. Again, outsiders were blamed for the hostilities. After the riots, believing it would irreparably damage Zionism, American Zionists once more rejected a'revived call for establishing democracy in Palestine and even talked...

Status and rights of the Arab minority in the Nascent Jewish state

The attitude of Zionism toward the issue of the Arabs in Palestine from the beginning of Zionism until the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 has been the subject of considerable scholarly interest. Among the more prominent studies are those by Alsberg, Ro'i, Hattis, Sela, Mandel, Kollat, Rubinstein, Goldstein, Haim, Caplan, Be'eri, Gorny, and Shafir.1 These works deal not just with the attitude toward the Arab issue of prestate official Zionist bodies (all constituents of the World Zionist Organization, primarily the Zionist Congress, the Zionist General Council, the Zionist Executive, and the Jewish Agency Executive), but also with the prevailing attitudes of the right and left wings of the Zionist movement.2 This research draws a broad picture of the role of the Arab issue in the Zionist movement and responds to fundamental questions such as the roots of the Zionist-Arab conflict in Palestine; the perception of Arabs among various camps of the Zionist movement - official Zionism, the Revisionists, Berit Shalom, and HaShomer HaZa'ir; Zionist efforts to reach agreement with the Arabs; the reasons for the failure to reach agreement, and so forth. However, although the foregoing studies are in general agreement that it was the mission of Zionism from its earliest stages to establish a state in Palestine, they do not examine in depth the approach of the Zionist movement to the status and rights of the Arab minority in the future Jewish state.3 This issue was relevant for official and Revisionist Zionism in particular, as neither accepted the concept of a binational state, which had been proposed by other Zionist camps such as Berit Shalom and HaShomer HaZa'ir. Indeed, the Zionist movement did not ignore the issue of an Arab minority in the Jewish state, but issued statements about it in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s.4 In other words, the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 as a Jewish state having an Arab minority was not the first time that the Zionist establishment was called upon to deliberate the issue of minority rights of non-Jews. The issue seems to have been first addressed by official Zionist bodies in a comprehensive, thorough, and detailed manner, looking at all the dilemmas, in the context of the recommendation of the British Royal Commission in 1937. This Commission proposed that the JewishArab conflict be resolved by partitioning the land and founding two states in Palestine, one for the Jews and the other for the Arabs. In that era, in

Arabic linguistic issues and controversies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Arabic linguistic issues and controversies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries