JCSMENA

I just returned from a four day trip up north to Atar. It is approximately five hours north east of Nouakchott. The temperature oscillated between 95 and 110 degrees. On the way up north we stopped by a hut a couple hundred feet off of the side of the road and picked [...]

Last time I tried blogging in Mauritania I made two vital mistakes: 1) I went to a place without internet (Matamoulana), and 2) I didn’t bring a computer. Well I am back in Mauritania. This time I am based out of the capital Nouakchott and am armed with a netbook. Although I’ll be traveling around [...]

They were the same roads that Bedouins used for centuries to trade salt, gold, and slaves among other wares from the Mediterranean to Timbuktu. The same desert remains unchanged, as do the same means of transportation. It is a sight everyone should see.
I woke up excited to make the 10-hour trip to [...]

Still from Rakhshan Bani Etemad’s film Lady of May
Courtesy of merip.org
During the turmoil of the Iranian Islamic Revolution from 1979-1981, the future of film seemed ill-fated. 125 movie theaters were burned and attending the cinema was considered sinful. Ayatollah Khomeini, demanded that film be used to combat Western influences and herald [...]

The Islamic Revolution of 1979 introduced a new, religious framework for the Iranian nation-state. While it has maintained a majority Shiite Muslim population since the 16th century, Iran had never institutionalized religion to such a large extent. This post-1979 development begs the question of how religious minorities, particularly the Baha’is, have related to this [...]

The international community pays little attention to the Islamic Republic of Mauritania.  It shares borders with Senegal and Western Sahara and is slightly larger than three times the size of New Mexico. [1] Its population is a little over three million and the country is predominantly desert.  In April 2007 in what was speculated to [...]

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini has been immortalized as the symbol of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Many observers assume that his speeches and decisions represented the ideological monolith responsible for the overthrow of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s western-backed government. Such an assumption is inaccurate, as no such monolith existed. The Revolution’s supporters and leaders were only guaranteed [...]

I. Introduction
In the last two centuries, Sudan has found itself ruled by two distinct colonial powers. Both powers, the Ottoman-Egyptian Turkiyya and the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium, implemented near-sighted, self-serving policies. Many of these policies either created or exacerbated the existing geographic, tribal and socioeconomic divisions. These directives served to upend the status quo by upsetting the [...]