EVENTS & ISSUES
– In Senegal, Iran and Saudi Arabia vie for religious influence
By Tim Cocks & Bozorgmehr Sharafedin
May 12, 2017
DAKAR (Reuters) – In an upmarket suburb of Senegal’s seaside capital, a branch of Iran’s Al-Mustafa University teaches Senegalese students Shi‘ite Muslim theology, among other subjects. The branch director is Iranian and a portrait of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hangs on his office wall.
The teaching includes Iranian culture and history, Islamic science and Iran’s mother tongue, Farsi; students receive free food and financial help. The university is a Shi‘ite outpost in a country where Sufism, a more relaxed, mystical and apolitical form of Sunni Islam, is the norm.
Read more on the story in this link:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-senegal-saudi-iran-insight/in-senegal-iran-and-saudi-arabia-vie-for-religious-influence-idUSKBN1880JY
In Senegal, Iran and Saudi Arabia vie for religious influence
www.reuters.com
In an upmarket suburb of Senegal’s seaside capital, a branch of Iran’s Al-Mustafa University teaches Senegalese students Shi’ite Muslim theology, among other subjects. The branch director is Iranian and a portrait of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hangs on his office wall.
– A Hotel in Mali: Egypt’s Flirtation with Architecture as Foreign Policy
By Mohamed Elshahed
After gaining independence in 1960, Mali, like many postcolonial African nations, was seeking speedy development. Egypt, having lived through a military coup-turned-revolution less than a decade earlier, was led by a self-proclaiming revolutionary regime that by 1960 was set to establish regional ties with Egypt well positioned to be an Arab as well as an African leader. The Amitie/Friendship Hotel was one of Egypt’s technopolitical projects in Africa. The building was designed by architect M. Ramzy Omar who was assigned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to undertake the project. Necessary building materials were transported from Egypt to Mali. Architecture and development were deployed by the ambitious Nasser regime as forms of foreign policy. Egyptian engineers and contractors were flown to Mali to construct tens of kilometers of road infrastructure and establish Egyptian technical expertise as a fundamental element of the future of the young African nation.
Read more on the story in this link:
http://cairobserver.com/post/104880644219/a-hotel-in-mali-egypts-flirtation-with#.WbSV-JOGOCS
Cairobserver — A hotel in Mali: Egypt’s flirtation with…
cairobserver.com
A hotel in Mali: Egypt’s flirtation with architecture as foreign policy [From one of numerous reports published in the Egyptian press in the 1960s: Images of …
– Capitalism Central A History of Lagos and Migration
Nnamdi Ehirim
June/July 2017
Few issues have raised more global concern in recent time than the issue of migration—the movement of people and goods within and across borders. Migration trends have shaped politics—as seen in the 2016 United States elections; determined economic directions—in financial trends following the UK’s Brexit referendum; and exacerbated geopolitical tensions—Nigeria-South Africa relations in the aftermath of xenophobic attacks in South Africa being an instance. Yet, often under-discussed is how migration trends can be traced to a capitalist root cause.
Capitalism is an economic and political system characterized by the private ownership of factors of production and, more importantly, an overarching profit motive. The word itself, ‘Capitalism’ is a derivative of the Latin word ‘Caput’, which literally translates to ‘head’ and was once a figurative expression for ‘leader’ or ‘being vital’: as a Roman legal expression, the term caput was used to indicate the significance of an individual’s status.
Read more on the story in this link:
Capitalism Central
www.republic.com.ng
A History of Lagos and Migration
– Portrait of 18th-Century Muslim American Proves the US Has Always Been Home to Many Faiths
Hrag Vartanian
July 3, 2017
The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery is showing an 1822 painting of Yarrow Mamout, a Muslim native of Guinea who was forced into slavery in America.
A portrait on loan to the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery (NPG) will probably challenge many people’s understanding of early American history, particularly in regards to the presence of Muslims during that formative period. The small 1822 canvas, painted by James Alexander Simpson, is one of two known portraits of Yarrow Mamout, and his story is pretty amazing.
Read more on the story in this link:
Portrait of 18th-Century Muslim American Proves the US Has Always Been Home to Many Faiths
Portrait of 18th-Century Muslim American Proves the US Has …
hyperallergic.com
Articles Portrait of 18th-Century Muslim American Proves the US Has Always Been Home to Many Faiths
NEW BOOKS كتب جديدة
– Dust of the Zulu: Ngoma Aesthetics After Apartheid
[ هباء الزولو: جماليات رقص نغوما بعد عهد الفصل العنصري ]
Author: Louise Meintjes
With photographs by: TJ Lemon
In Dust of the Zulu Louise Meintjes traces the political and aesthetic significance of ngoma, a competitive form of dance and music that emerged out of the legacies of colonialism and apartheid in South Africa. Contextualizing ngoma within South Africa’s history of violence, migrant labor, the HIV epidemic, and the world music market, Meintjes follows a community ngoma team and its professional subgroup during the twenty years after apartheid’s end. She intricately ties aesthetics to politics, embodiment to the voice, and masculine anger to eloquence and virtuosity, relating the visceral experience of ngoma performances as they embody the expanse of South African history. Meintjes also shows how ngoma helps build community, cultivate responsible manhood, and provide its participants with a means to reconcile South Africa’s past with its postapartheid future. Dust of the Zulu includes over one hundred photographs of ngoma performances, the majority taken by award-winning photojournalist TJ Lemon..
Publisher: Duke University Press, 2017
– Making Refuge: Somali Bantu Refugees and Lewiston, Maine
[عن صناعة اللجوء: صوماليو بانتو اللاجئون في مدينة ويستون، ولاية مين]
Author: Catherine Besteman
How do people whose entire way of life has been destroyed and who witnessed horrible abuses against loved ones construct a new future? How do people who have survived the ravages of war and displacement rebuild their lives in a new country when their world has totally changed? In Making Refuge Catherine Besteman follows the trajectory of Somali Bantus from their homes in Somalia before the onset in 1991 of Somalia’s civil war, to their displacement to Kenyan refugee camps, to their relocation in cities across the United States, to their settlement in the struggling former mill town of Lewiston, Maine. Tracking their experiences as “secondary migrants” who grapple with the struggles of xenophobia, neoliberalism, and grief, Besteman asks what humanitarianism feels like to those who are its objects and what happens when refugees move in next door. As Lewiston’s refugees and locals negotiate co-residence and find that assimilation goes both ways, their story demonstrates the efforts of diverse people to find ways to live together and create community. Besteman’s account illuminates the contemporary debates about economic and moral responsibility, security, and community that immigration provokes.
Publisher: Duke University Press, 2016
– Malawi’s Lost Years (1964-1994)
[سنوات مالاوي الضائعة ]
Author: Kapote Mwakasungura and Douglas Miller
Known abroad, if at all, as apartheid South Africa’s sole black African ally and for his eccentric public policies (beards were illegal, as were trousers on women, and Simon and Garfunkel), the person of Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda effectively was the Malawian state from independence in 1964 until the arrival of multiparty politics removed him peacefully from office 30 years later. The dictator has, however, in recent years enjoyed something of a domestic rehabilitation. Several recent presidents (in particular Bingu wa Mutharika, 2004-12) have praised his achievements, sought explicitly to rekindle the “discipline” he exercised over public administration, and claimed his mantle for themselves. The authors of Malawi’s Lost Years (1964-1994), a long-term labour of love, are thereby on a mission. Veteran opponents of Banda’s, they seek to tell what they see as ‘the truth’ about his regime by documenting the testimony of those who suffered under it in myriad ways; and in so doing denounce any rehabilitation as an insult to these ‘forsaken heroes,’ and a dangerous precedent for the future.
Publisher: Mzuni Press, Malawi, 2017
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