Middle East 101, Week V

The Cosmopolitan Globalists discuss fascism and the Muslim Brotherhood.

The video of our discussion of Qutb and the Muslim Brotherhood is below. We’ll be taking a break for the holidays; when I asked whether the class was keen to spend Christmas with my reading list on Arab Nationalism, the response was as you’d expect. We’ll reconvene at the usual time not this coming Sunday, but the next, on New Year’s Eve. But we’ll be reviewing what we’ve studied so far and discussing current events—there won’t be any fresh reading for that session. We’ll start the new reading list in the New Year. So if anyone wants to catch up on the reading and join the class, here’s your opportunity. (All of the reading, so far, can be found under the ME 101 tab.)

I see that I have new subscribers. Welcome, new subscribers! I’m delighted you’re here. If you’re wondering what this is all about, here’s the genesis of ME 101:

I used to teach an introductory class in the politics of the Middle East at Santa Clara University. I think my students emerged from that class reasonably well-prepared to make sense of the news from the Middle East right now. But I don’t see how anyone who didn’t take my class, or something like it, would be able to make sense of it. Unless you know a fair bit of history—most of which isn’t taught at the high-school or the college level—the news emerging from Israel and Gaza could only be confusing. …

It occurred to me that I might be able to do something useful for my subscribers here. When you read the news from the Middle East, do you have an uneasy sense that there are lots of things you should know, but don’t? Would you be interested in taking a short class in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict with me?

The whole class is available to anyone who subscribes, but the weekly discussions are only for people who’ve completed the reading. We’ve recorded all of our discussions, and I’ve posted them under the ME101 tab, too. If you’re new and you’d like to join, it would be challenging but not impossible to catch up on all the reading in the coming three weeks. So if you’ve got time over the holidays and want to better understand the headlines you’re seeing these days, give it a try and see how it goes.