Limerick Anthology of Arab Affairs edited by Nabil Adawy and Barrie Wharton University of Limerick Press 171pp, £10
This pocket-size anthology will help to secure Limerick University's growing reputation as the centre of contemporary Middle East studies in Ireland. Until recently, Arab affairs were under-represented here, with Trinity specialising in classical Arabic and only a few isolated experts scattered elsewhere. Ireland's enthusiasm for European integration seemed to doom other topics to obscurity.
Limerick offers Ireland's only MA in the subject within its International Studies programme, largely due to the presence of the Egyptian-born Dr Adawy and his former student, now a colleague and co-editor of the anthology, Dr Barrie Wharton.
It is a measure of Limerick's growing prominence in Arab questions that half of the fourteen contributors are past or present students of or professors at the university. Unlike many such publications by Western universities, this book also gives a voice to Arabs writing from their home countries, including Egyptians and Moroccans. A piece by Professor Mohamed Mansour of the University of Asyut in upper Egypt denounces the "false and dangerous" view in Egyptian society that extremisim is "a matter for the security forces as the extremists are an isolated phenomenon whose eradication can easily be achieved through increased security measures".
Professor Mansour forcefully demonstrates that Islamist culture in Egypt, far from being a minority culture, "controls and commands authority in the countryside and in the ashwaiyat or slum areas of urban Egypt". It is visible in marriage ceremonies, funerals, in ways of dress and speech, he adds, concluding that "there is no real difference between the culture of the extremists and the culture of contemporary Egyptian youth."
At the beginning of his comparison of Islamist movements in Tunisia and Algeria, Dr Wharton notes that "the Islamist movement and its perceived menace has graduated to fill the vacuum which was left behind by the sudden and unexpected disintegration of the Soviet bloc". The very term "Islamist movement" is a misnomer, he says, because it refers to "a loose, heterogeneous entity" whose ideology, methods and objectives "differ radically not only from country to country but indeed within individual countries themselves."
Dr Wharton concludes that although some governments, like that of Tunisia, appear to have defeated Islamic activism, this is an illusion. Ultimately, he says, Arab governments will be forced to engage in real dialogue with the fundamentalists. But a contribution by Professor Mustapha al-Sayyid of the American University of Cairo on "The New Face of Authoritarianism in the Arab World" shows how loathe Arab rulers are to cede power, and leaves the reader with little hope for democratisation in the Arab world.
In an astute chapter on the UN sanctions against Iraq, Professor Timothy Niblock of the University of Durham draws our attention to the role-reversal of Western conservatives and liberals. From the Sixties through the Eighties, left-wingers advocated sanctions to force Israel to comply with UN resolutions and end apartheid in South Africa. At the time, Western governments claimed sanctions would be counterproductive, hurt the populations without affecting leaders' policies and impinge on national sovereignty. Ironically, Washington is now the main force behind the crippling sanctions against Iraq. Writing from first-hand experience of the impoverishment of that country, Dr Niblock argues convincingly that the sanctions actually strengthen Saddam Hussein's cruel dictatorship.
Lara Marlowe is the Irish Times France and Maghreb correspondent