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On Pharaohs, Pundits and Scholars
Egyptian Flag during the protests in Tahrir Square, Cairo. Photo courtesy Jonathan Rashad and Wikicommons The removal of Mohammed Morsi as president of Egypt has generated a frenzy of talking head...
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Poison Gas, Cruise Missiles and Drones
As I write this post the media is awash with speculation that the United States will unilaterally punish the regime of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad for his apparent use of poison gas in a Damascus suburb....
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Chilling Prospects for the Arab Spring
As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt prophesied, December 7th, 1941 is a day that lives in infamy, even some seven decades after the event that triggered United States entry into the Second World...
View ArticleCyberSurfing Yemen’s Arab Spring
The Prophet Muhammad is reputed to have said “Seek knowledge, even unto China” in a tradition that has inspired the acquiring of knowledge by Muslims for centuries. In the 7th century, the...
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The Trouble with ISIS
A decade ago the Canadian Pakistani Muslim, Irshad Manji, published her controversial book, The Trouble with Islam. She identified many troubling aspects that people in the West often associate with...
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Dancing through Istanbul
Turkey is all over the news these days. Former Prime Minister and now President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is seen by liberals as attempting to be a new “Islamist” Neo-Ottoman Sultan and by Bible Belters as...
View ArticleGoing to Pottery Barn
When the U.S. decided to liberate Iraq only a decade ago, Secretary of State Colin Powell issued a warning behind the closed doors and to the closed minds of the war planners. It was the Pottery Barn...
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Holes in the Gender Gap
Woman of Thula, Yemen; photograph courtesy Daniel Martin Varisco The Global Gender Gap Report 2014 is out. A total of 142 countries are listed according to what the World Economic Forum defines as...
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Why I don’t dig “Dig”
If you watched the Super Bowl, you may have noticed one for an upcoming dramatic series on the USA channel. It is called “Dig,” with about as much positive publicity for archaeology as the Indiana...
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Religion is not Archaeology
Unless you are hibernating without a cellphone or internet in Siberia, you have heard a lot about ISIS, a.k.a. the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and its “IS”-related acronyms, in the news for the...
View ArticleIt’s Not About Sects
As I write this, a coalition of 10 Middle Eastern countries, led by Saudi Arabia, is bombing and blockading Yemen, the poorest country on the Arabian Peninsula and one of the least developed in the...
View ArticleWhen Heritage Turns to Rubble
In late March a coalition of wealthy states, led by Saudi Arabia, began constantly bombing Yemen. The stated rationale for this air war and naval blockade has been to reinstate former interim...
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The War Nobody Wants to Know
City of Sa’da in Yemen’s north from 1978, now almost completely destroyed by the Saudi campaign. Photo courtesy Dan Varisco First there was the first Gulf War, then the attack on the Taliban in...
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Heritage be Damned
Entrance To The Peristyle Hall Awam Temple at the Sabean archaeological site of Marib. Photo Courtesy Daniel Varisco Now approaching 11 months, the ongoing war in Yemen is first and foremost a war...
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The Road to Kawkaban
The fortified Yemeni town of Kawkaban in 1978. Photo courtesy Daniel Martin Varisco In the spring of 1978 my wife, Najwa Adra, and myself traveled to various locations in Yemen (the Yemen Arab Republic...
View ArticleTheology and Anthropology
Years ago the anthropologist Akbar Ahmad argued for a specific “Islamic anthropology,” one that merged the principles of anthropology with those of his religious faith. An orthodox believer who accepts...
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Bint al-Wadi’i
al-Ahjur, Yemen. Photo courtesy Daniel Martin Varisco Bint al-Wadi’i, Al-Ahjur, Yemen (circa 1944-2016), الله يرحمها ويعوض اهلها Written in memory of a friend whose support was crucial to my...
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Clothed-Minded Views on Burqinis
In late August, a Muslim woman on a beach in Nice, France was forced to remove her top and was allegedly fined for wearing a burqini, a modest full-body swimsuit that has been banned in Nice and...
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A Toll of Two Cities
Unless you are a specialist on the Middle East, the chances are you have never heard of Aleppo and Sanaa, two of the oldest cities in the region with continual habitation. Aleppo has existed for at...
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