December-January Edition of The Middle East in London Hits Newsstands
7 December 2011
The December-January edition of The Middle East in London, the bi-monthly magazine of the London Middle East Institute, is now available.
The magazine is a leading resource on Middle Eastern communities in London. It includes event, film and book reviews, as well as original articles on cultural, political, economic and other issues that affect these communities.
During a recent trip to the US, Iraq made headlines for several days after a long period of virtual news
blackout. Very few voices in the media, however, addressed the actual situation in Iraq which,
as Professor Charles Tripp so eloquently discusses in this issue’s Insight piece, does not look promising in terms of democracy and human rights. His reflections are illuminating but make also for a depressing read. We seem to have come full circle.
The human costs of the war and the occupation in Iraq are written out of many current accounts. Kate Robertson from the Council of Assisting Refugee Academics (CARA) has been working relentlessly for several years with Iraqi academics – a particularly vulnerable group in terms of the lawlessness, lack of security and violence. Her contribution introduces CARA’s Iraq programme, which has been trying to address the crisis of Iraqi higher education both in terms of other great exoduses of academics but also within Iraq. SOAS has supported CARA’s important work during the past four years and is part of its nationwide network of partner universities. The article written by the team of Iraqi academics – Irada Al-Jabbouri, Inass Al-Enezy, Huda al-Dujaili and myself – zooms in to the specific problems and challenges faced by female academics in contemporary Iraq.
Yet, as we are showing in this issue, Iraq’s long history of cultural and artistic productions and creations continues despite the extremely difficult political, economic and social conditions. Ionis Thompson interviews Lamia al-Gailani, one of Iraq’s foremost archaeologists who has been instrumental in trying to reconstitute the stolen collection of the National Museum in Baghdad. Professor Sami Zubaida provides us with a very interesting account of the hybridity of Iraqi culture, not only in terms of a multi-ethnic and multi-religious mosaic, but he demonstrates that language, music and food – the cornerstones of any culture – have been mixed and hybrid due to cultural encounters and entanglements. The newly established Humanitarian Dialogue Foundation off Edgware Road, introduced by Ali Saffar and Dr Ahmed Naji attempts to revive this very history and tradition of cosmopolitan and mixed spaces for Iraqis within London. Hassan Abdulrazzak – who has become known to many people through his wonderful play Baghdad Wedding – discusses new talents linked to emerging Iraqi cinema, but also criticizes the fact that much of what we have seen on screens about Iraq has been produced in the west through a western gaze.
An issue about Iraq would not be complete without reference to food. We have a special gem with Lamees Ibrahim’s article on Sumerian cuisine. The restaurant review was another family production and triggered a nostalgic journey into the past…Enjoy it!
For further information, contact:
www.lmei.soas.ac.uk
