Today, I found this recipe... It was truly delicious in Sana'a ! Let's see who can make it !

                                   Yemeni Salta

ALRIGHT, Latin Americans have Salsa nights but Yemenis have SALTA nights. The ONLY thing they have in common is that they are both HOT! This dish is made in a dish made of STONE called MADRA or HARADHA–yes stone and it is stove-top and oven safe and it stays hot for a long time during COLD Sanaa nights. It literally keeps whatever is in it hot–if not boiling– for quite some time as well. According to my knowledge you can ONLY buy them in the Old City of Sanaa in Yemen. But if you can’t find one–or don’t have a yemeni friend to get you one  you can use a stove-top safe stone dish as well, if you can find one.

First make the Hulba (fenugreek) –here is how:

You will need ground fenugreek for this recipe. Be careful one tblsp of ground fenugreek goes a long way. For this you will need 1/2 tsp of ground fenugreek, which you will soak for about 2 hours or so.

Then throw away the water and take the fenugreek paste (yes it has turned into a paste like mixture) and place in a liquidizer. Add 1/2 of a small tomato (preferably still a little hard–not ripe and mushy), a clove of garlic,1 tblsp of cilantro chopped, 1/4 green chilly (or less if you like), juice of 1/2 lemon, salt to taste.

Keep this aside.

Now for the Salta.Usually these dish is made with leftover TABEEKH (lamb or beef stew), rice, meat etc. SO if you have leftovers then this is the way to make it (I will have the method from scratch as well insha Allah as well). This is really a throw together dish, you are merely putting it all together and letting the contents mingle and boil. Nothing to it. As i said, traditionally it is made with leftovers.

Take the stone and place under high heat, then add a little oil (tsp of oil) and crack an egg and cook. Once cooked, then add some of the stew (as desired–depending on how many will be eating–so eyeball it) let it cook with the egg. Add the meat–can be ANY meat, either ground or small stew pieces. Add about 1 tblsp of the leftover rice and let boil as well. Then add the Hulba (fenugreek) let cook until it starts to bubble. Serve hot with bread. Usually the bread that this is served with is called Malooj and it looks like Iraqi Tanoor bread. But you can eat it with pita as well.

Now for the Salta from scratch you will need the Hulba (fenugreek) see above, and the following:

1) 1/4 pound of veal or lamb–as you desire. I find the veal tastier

2) a quarter of a green bell pepper, cut into cubes.

3) an egg OPTIONAL

4) 1 tbls of cooked rice–i just boil it in salted water, run it through a sieve and keep it aside.

5) a small onion

6) a quarter of green chilly pepper (cut into small pieces) OPTIONAL

7) clove of garlic minced

 spices–i have a mixture of cumin, coriander, black pepper, cardamon, and cinnamon all mixed together. I use that for this dish. You can use any mixed spices you like

9) a small tomato diced

10) a tblsp of oil

11) tsp of tomato paste

12) tbslp of cilantro finely chopped.

14) OPTIONAL red chilly sauce (i make my own from dried chilly peppers, that i soak, blend and store in an airtight container in the refrigerator)

First let the Veal or whatever meat you are using BOIL–until cooked through. If you perfer to use ground beef, then cook it with a little oil, onions and spices. Should be dry and NOT SAUCY.

So to start place the MADRA (stone dish) on high heat, when it is hot add the oil and the onions until golden brown. Add the green chilly peppers, bell peppers and garlic. Let them sautee for about a minute. Then add the red chilly sauce [or you can use red chilly powder], and the tomatoes and sautee some more. Then add the meat, spices and cilantro. Let the flavors get to know each other–in other words let them SAUTEE.

Then add the egg and let that cook in as well. Add the cooked rice and add about 1/2 cup of water to the mixture and let boil for about 2 minutes. Then add the tomato paste and let it thicken. Once it has thickened, as desired, then add the hulba (fenugreek) and watch it boil. That part is sooooooooooooo fascinating to me.

Serve BOILING hot with bread.

ENJOY ! 

(https://yemeniyah.com/2010/07/25/yemeni-salta/)

To be an Arabist or an Islamist?

During my studies, I was taught that being an "arabist" does not necessarily mean to be an "islamist".

Later on, I learnt to carefully avoid the second definition, because it carries a political colour in the Arab world. In short, an islamist is one supporting political Islam: Shari'a, hijab, segregation....the Law of God as it was expressed and made eternal by Quran.
But,for me, the word "islamist", meant just a western scholar of Islamic studies, one whom S.Eisenstadt describes as "a lover whose love can be very perilious and can lead him to very far and weird places in order to follow the beloved". This just what I did in my university years: Yemen,niqabs, stories of burning passion and redemption, and in the end Egypt, revolutions, and the dream of a life THERE. All of this, of course, always fighting against the prejudices of the world and the fears of your own soul.

"Arabist" was totally another matter. Even most people still ignore what an arabist is or does (but many imagine him as a time waster, jobless traveller), this word can refer to both a lover of the Arab culture and to a person studying or mastering the Arabic language and culture. Of course, doing this implies travelling and passion as well, but I could never really be an JUST an arabist.According to me, Arabic is an essential tool to approach the Islamic culture and to understand it but, at the same time, I find it extremily unsatisfactory to speak good Arabic without a knowledge of Islam, as you will be missing the inner heart of what you are articulating and will never fully possess it. Besides, the arabist tends to be quite neutral about the hottest issues concerning the world he deals with: Palestine, political unrest, neo-colonialism... .

So, am I an Islamist or an Arabist? The question is far from being extensively answered, but I bet I am closer to the later, even I don't really trust etiquettes.

Being an islamist today means, in my vision, not only to study Islam (and political Islam, in my case) but to EDUCATE people about Islam: a real mission! This education should be both for Muslims and Westerns, as the former often forgot their own roots and dwell with fundamentalism, thinking it IS Islam. The later seldom have a real information about the islamic world and can't tell the difference between Jihad and terrorism, or even between an Iranian and an Arab.
Other than that, the scholar of Islam should act as a bridge between two worls that resemble each other more than they can think, even if they cannot appreciate the mutual differences.All of this can't obviously happen if I just know the language and I have a scarce knowlege of the universe it arose in.

Because of all these reasons, I will not be ashamed from now on to call myself an "islamist"(even I am actually both), even I am going to have a hard time in an Arab context to make people understanbd I am not a convert!

Looking for a non-revolutionary President...

The conventional political forces in Egypt are scrambling to find a candidate to back in the forthcoming presidential elections. By conventional forces is meant the military establishment, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafist movement, the government bureaucracy, and, of course, the remnants of the former Mubarak regime, who are waiting for the chance to make a comeback and put the whole of the past year behind us, as if it were a figment of the country's collective imagination. Naturally, the chief condition for these forces' prospective candidate is that he should not be from "Tahrir Square", in other words, that he should not be a revolutionary.

Not that they would say this outright. Rather, they are calling it a quest for a "consensual candidate". What they mean by this is an individual that has been agreed upon by "all forces", which, divided as they are by conflicting interests and outlooks, are nevertheless agreed on a single temporary aim: to ensure that the country's next president is some kind of political freak -- a political non-entity with no real powers and devoid of any ideological weight.

Over the past week, the Egyptian press has been carrying news of public and private efforts aimed at persuading current Arab League Secretary-General Nabil El-Arabi to put himself forward for the office. El-Arabi has responded with an unqualified no. He will not run for president "under any circumstances whatsoever".

Regardless of the accuracy of these reports, the fact that they have appeared is informative in itself. The reports tell us that the forces that have been pushing for a "consensual president" are now panicking in their attempts to come up with a cardboard president and that their methods of doing so have been conspiratorial in nature and therefore contradict the spirit and practice of democracy and the aims of the Egyptian revolution. The latter was waged to empower the Egyptian people by promoting their rights and their ability to exercise these effectively.

The flurry of behind-the-scenes activity further indicates that the forces in question have not been able to reach an agreement on any of the current presidential hopefuls -- Abdel-Moneim Abul-Fotouh, Amr Moussa, Hazem Salah Abu Ismail, Hamdeen Sabahi, Mohamed Selim El-Awwa, Ahmed Shafik and Omar Suleiman -- and that they have therefore had no choice but to start searching for another candidate who is not on the existing list in order to avert conflicts between them.

Any prospective "consensual" candidate will have to meet a number of conditions. For the generals, he will have to be someone who "sees no evil, hears no evil and speaks no evil" with regard to the military establishment's political, economic and social powers and privileges. He cannot be politically or ideologically opposed to the military leaders, and he cannot be a popular or charismatic figure who could eventually assert himself and steer the country away from the control of the military. This would rule out Abul-Fotouh, Abu Ismail and Sabahi.

For the Muslim Brotherhood, any suitable prospective candidate should not be Islamist, but should not be averse to the Islamists either, and should be able to win the support of the other forces. These conditions would rule out Abul-Fotouh, Abu Ismail and El-Awwa. The Salafis, consisting of various Salafist parties, organisations and movements, also have three conditions for any prospective candidate: he should be an Islamist or connected with the Islamist movement, should promote the application of Sharia law, and should not be a remnant of the former regime. These conditions favour Hazem Abu Ismail and rule out Suleiman and Moussa, both of whom are associated with the former regime.

The government bureaucracy and the entrepreneurial classes and influential families that intersect with it would clearly not favour either an Islamist or a revolutionary candidate for fear of jeopardising their remaining privileges. These conditions would once again rule out Abul-Fotouh, Abu Ismail and Sabahi.

Yet, in spite of their differences all these forces are keen to find a candidate that they think they can control and steer in a direction that would serve their interests, or at least not work against them. The reports that have been appearing in the Egyptian press confirm that the forces have recognised this common denominator, as well as the need for them to engage in haggling until they are able to produce a candidate who is more or less conducive to their needs.

The very notion of a "consensual president" is undemocratic, since the present backroom bargaining and negotiation is in reality a bid to deprive millions of Egyptians of the right to choose the person who will serve as the first president of the country after the revolution through fair and equitable democratic processes that are untainted by political and ideological dictates from above. Indeed, this backroom bargaining is an attempt to reproduce the selection machinery of the former regime, which was notorious for having the People's Assembly choose a president, who would then be presented to the public in a referendum and who would inevitably win a minimum of 90 per cent of the votes.

In post-revolutionary Egypt, the notion of a "consensual president" picked by the leaders of various political forces is not only conspiratorial but also an obvious affront to the revolution and the revolutionaries. Millions of Egyptians did not gather in Tahrir Square or other landmark squares up and down the country in order to topple a dictator only to find a "consensus president" forced down their throats with no regard for electoral competition or the will of the electorate. The advocates of this notion have let slip their disdain for the people and their ability to choose their own president, as well as their contempt for the other political forces and movements that have been excluded from this "consensus".

For the moment at least El-Arabi's rejection of the offer to become the "consensual president" has put the conspirators in a quandary. What will they do if they can't come up with a candidate who fits the bill by the time the nomination process begins? There are three possible scenarios.

The first is that the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and the Muslim Brotherhood could agree on a candidate. Such a candidate would need to be able to contain the revolution and eliminate pockets of revolutionary activity such as the student movement, the remainder of the revolutionary bloc and organisations operating in the field of human rights and civil rights advocacy. He could not have a broad popular base that would enable him later to turn against the SCAF and the Muslim Brotherhood, but he should be able to present a good façade abroad and be skilful in his handling of foreign relations, especially with Tel Aviv and Washington. Such a candidate also could not aspire to a second term in office.

Amr Moussa possesses all these qualifications, and he may be the ideal choice for the conspirators if they fail to agree on any other individual over the next few weeks. Although Moussa is associated with the former regime, he is not as tainted as are the two other presidential hopefuls from that regime, Shafik and Suleiman. Moussa's connection with the old regime could also be used as a whip to keep him in line should he attempt to stray from the agreement with the SCAF and the Muslim Brotherhood that put him into office. The Salafis and Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya would also approve of the choice of Moussa in exchange for a number of concessions, such as ministerial positions in the next government or control over certain government agencies.

The second scenario would come into play in the event that the Salafis reject the SCAF-Muslim Brotherhood candidate and rally instead behind their candidate, Hazem Abu Ismail. In taking this route, the Salafis would be gambling that Abu Ismail's popularity and the growth of the Salafist tide in Egyptian society would be sufficient to sweep their candidate into power. However, they would also be risking a clash with the Muslim Brotherhood, which does not want an Islamist president, or, if the president must be Islamist, wants a candidate skilful enough to handle both domestic and foreign policy. On these criteria, Abu Ismail does not quite meet the mark.

In the third scenario, the SCAF would manage to persuade the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis to support El-Awwa. The latter is not a member of an Islamist organisation, though he was associated with one of the Muslim Brotherhood's Islamist rivals, the Wasat Party. At the same time, he is a pragmatist par excellence, and he would probably agree to whatever conditions the SCAF, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis set in order to gain the presidency. He is also able to address the large conservative bloc in Egyptian society.

What may throw a spanner into the works and put paid to any idea of a "consensual president" is if the revolutionary forces back Abul-Fotouh for president. It is not just that the revolutionaries have no other alternative after Mohamed El-Baradei withdrew from the race, for under the present circumstances Abul-Fotouh is an ideal candidate for them in many ways. He has an irreproachable record of anti-regime activism under both the Sadat and Mubarak regimes, and although a member of the Muslim Brotherhood for a while, he managed to preserve his independence and was a forthright advocate of revolutionary and reformist convictions. These were the reasons he left the Muslim Brotherhood.

Abul-Fotouh also possesses the charisma that El-Baradei lacks, and he has the ability to address all sectors of Egyptian society. He also has the ability to address the international community and the West, in particular, by means of an enlightened, reformist discourse similar to that of Turkey's Justice and Development Party. Finally, he communicates well with the revolutionary forces, and he has considerable appeal to many adherents of the moderate Islamist movement.

Nevertheless, if Abul-Fotouh is to succeed in his bid for the presidency, he and his supporters will have an uphill battle before them, and they will need to work very hard to bring the silent majority to the polls to support them. They will also have to be on their guard against the ruses of the conventional forces that do not want a revolutionary president who could challenge their hold over the state and society.(Source: Al Ahram Weekly)

A sip of Orient in Naples :my faculty!

Here is a documentary about my faculty on Al-Jazeera: other than making me proud, I think it is really useful to be watched to understand the importance of such studies to co-existence and mutual understanding between cultures today, even if the market logics often leave us foundless and neglected. Have a nice time watching it!

Link to the documentary on Al Jazeera

Res Persica : Iranian cartoons commenting Bin Laden's death

The murder if Bin Laden will bring popularity to a defiant Obama...

Uncle Sam showing the world he killed Osama (who is here a puppet made in USA)

Egyptian doubts

So much has been said and written about the Arab recent uprising and we all wonder what will come next. The most interesting cases in point seem to be Egypt and Tunisia; the two countries, however, show important differences due to their social and historical backgrounds. The former seem to be heading towaere the two rds a radical populist revolution, whilst the latter seems to be heading towards democracy in more peaceful way. In Egypt right now three components seem to be emerging, two of them already known as during the previous regime they were the two main opposing components: the military to whom Mubarak himself belonged and the Islamists, may they be moderate like the MB or radical like the jihadi groups. Western orientalists, including my own professors, showed great interests for these opposition groups and mostly claimed that, once Mubarak had stepped down, they would climb to power nurishing Western fears about having a new Iran next door. During my long lasting experience with Egyptian youth - personal and accademic- I came to think even before the 25 of January that things would be different : most of them did not support the MB or other Islamic groups nor vowed to live in a Western style democracy. It became clear that , in case of a real revolution, they would need to elaborate a third way that untill now remains vague. The real product of the 25th of January is the rise of a radical mass movement that until now is hitting the stage much more than the weak interim governament ( that they forced to step down already once). Just yesterday, masses of protesters stormed the State Security head quarters all over Alexandria and Cairo (see http://www.arabawy.org/) trying to protect the documents that will prove the security guilty of crimes against humanity. Now, it is doubtless that the SS should be dismissed or at least totally revised but this event - historical for some- shows that right now the popular movement is the leading force. Even if in the first day of the revolution the popular participation was enthusastic and we all welcomed and celebrated the braveness of the revolutionary youth now many wonder where Egypt will go. It really seems that the People do not trust the Governament and can't wait for their demands to be met peacefully and gradually The most appealing option would seem to be the integration of the People in the parliamentary system together with the Military and the Islamists - who have an important grip among young and middle class intellectuals and businessmen-but till now this seems still hard to predict.