Category Archives: Blog

Since my students and I have been diving into Sufism this week in our medieval philosophy class in Beirut, I thought I’d share some soulful Sufi songs from Syria. Whenever I listen to these beautiful recordings from Aleppo, they bring back fond memories of my Sufi travels in Syria just a few weeks before the the war began…

Recently, when I was conducting a disability workshop in Lebanon, I was invited to tour several workshops producing artificial limbs for amputees. The first question I asked, while examining the artificial leg above was: “Have you made any artificial limbs for Syrian refugees?” “Of course,” my kind host replied, “over ninety-eight so far, with many more to come.” Though I was happy to learn that a number of injured Syrian refugees had been fitted for artificial limbs in Lebanon, it was disturbing to contemplate how many lives and limbs have been lost in the brutal war next door…

The CMES Director’s Series at Harvard
is pleased to present
Planning Beirut: For the War Yet to Come
Hiba Bou Akar, Assistant Professor of Urban Planning and Middle Eastern Studies, Hampshire College
March 31, 2015: 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm
CMES, Room 102, Kirkland St, Cambridge, MA 01238

Professor Bou Akar is a fellow at the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University. Bou Akar received her PhD in City and Regional Planning with a designated emphasis in Golbal Metropolitan Studies from the University of California at Berkeley. She holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the American University of Beirut (AUB) and Master in Urban Studies and Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She has published on the geographies of planning and way, the question of urban security and violence, and on the role of religious political organizations in the making of the city. She is the co-editor of “Narrating Beirut from its Borderlines” (2011) and the special issue, “Security in/of the City” in the journal City & Society (2012). At present, she is working on a book manuscript entitled “Planning Beirut: For the War Yet to Come,” focusing on the spatial politics of Beirut’s post-war frontiers. Bou Akar is the co-editor of an electronic journal on urban issues in the Middle East, Jadaliyya Cities. She has worked as an architect and planner, and as a research consultant with NGOs and UN organizations in the Middle East.

It’s only Tuesday and already there have been a number of kidnappings in Lebanon this week. Today, two Arsal residents were abducted when a passenger van they were riding in was ambushed by militants in northeast Lebanon. According to the Daily Star, today’s abduction was a retaliatory kidnapping carried out one day after a Halbata resident from the Saifeddine family was kidnapped in Arsal.

Yesterday, Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces announced that they had busted a kidnapping ring in north Lebanon that stands accused of abducting defected members of the Syrian army. Over the past few months, there has been an increase in the kidnapping of soldiers and officers who have deserted the Syrian army to join the rebels. Kidnapping in Lebanon these days is not limited to adults (i.e. kid-napping). Earlier this week, a 16 year-old Syrian refugee named Aya–pictured to the left–was kidnapped in Baalbek.

After discussing Aramaic and contemplating its future in Syria, my students and I plunged into studying Syriac–a dialect of Aramaic. To take our study of Syriac out of the Levant, I invited my colleague, Dr. Mario Kozah, to enlighten us about the Syriac writers of Qatar. When I was an undergraduate at Brown University, I was introduced to Syriac and the history of the Syriac Orthodox Church by Professor Susan Ashbrook Harvey–who, in addition to being a phenomenal lecturer and scholar, is also a tonsured reader in the Antiochian Orthodox Church. In her riveting (and award-winning) class on Christianity in Late Antiquity, she introduced us to early female saints like St. Thecla and hermit ascetics like St. Simeon from Syria. It’s been a true joy to see my students in Beirut as excited about learning Syriac as I remember being when learning about Syriac for the first time…

Whenever I’m making art with young Syrian refugees on the streets of Beirut, I feel helpless when they mention how much they want to return to school. Though our creative learning time together gives them a brief break from shining shoes, it’s no substitute for an education. A new Save the Children report finds that almost 3 million Syrian children are not receiving an education. Here in Lebanon, one out of every four residents is a Syrian refugee, and four out of every five Syrian refugee children are not enrolled in school. In what is clearly the largest humanitarian tragedy of our time, the suffering of these Syrian children will undoubtedly continue for many more years to come…

Last night in Lebanon, three people were wounded when an unknown assailant tossed a hand grenade in the northern city of Tripoli. In the next two weeks, as the weather begins to warm, many of us in Lebanon are anticipating heightened levels of violence–as Hezbollah begins its major spring offensive against ISIS on the northern border with Syria. With temperatures rising, the upcoming battle of Qalamoun will likely take place soon…

When I brought my mom to Fez for her birthday to cook cous cous at Cafe Clock, we stayed in a lovely little riad nestled in a quiet corner of the medina–far away from the bustle of the bazaar. If you’re interested in traveling to Morocco, and not sure where to stay, a new list by The Guardian of the top ten riads in Fez and the Middle Atlas might serve as a helpful guide. In fact, on the list is the restful riad where we stayed–and I hope to share more details about it soon. Though Fez is located in the interior of Morocco and known for its mosques, madressas, and shrines, there’s a chance that this legendary medieval city might be getting its own beach soon. Hamid Chabat, the mayor of Fez, is currently lobbying to carry out his dream of constructing an artificial beach in Fez–for over ten million dollars.

Over the years, I’ve encouraged my family and friends to make online donations to support the cancer treatment of children in Lebanon–since one of the greatest joys I’ve experienced in Beirut has been volunteering at the Children’s Cancer Center of Lebanon. Now there’s an app for that. On Friday, The Children’s Cancer Center of Lebanon launched a new campaign to enable donations to be made directly from smartphones. The new app “Light a Candle” will allow users to donate $1, $5, $10 or $20. Whether you use the new app or go to this link to make an online donation, your generous contribution will help provide much-needed free cancer care to children in Beirut.

This paper begins with the body to expand the theoretical discussion of the Islamic polity (umma) in North Africa. The body and the body politic are mutually constitutive, yet modern liberal political citizenship in the Middle East and North Africa, as in the West, has been conceived as divorced from corporeality.  In this paper, Amster excavates the ideal of a Sufi body politic that existed in Morocco before colonialism, a way of knowing that survives primarily as fragments of contemporary healing narratives.   Sufi saints were “public healers,” restoring God’s law to individuals and to society through a body understood as responsive to God and active in worldly politics. Treating the contemporary body as an archive and the repository of a lost form of political authority, Amster combines medical fieldwork with the topography of the city of Fez, Islamic theology, and the hagiographical compendium of nineteenth-century Moroccan Sufi scholar Muhammad ibn Ja’far al-Kattani, Kitab salwat al-anfas wa muhadathat al-akyas bi man uqbira min al-‘ulama’ wa al-sulaha’ bi Fas, in order to recover alternate ways of imagining the polity. By way of conclusion, we consider what this history of health and healing in Morocco provides for reading the corporeal politics of the Arab Spring.

The Private Audience Hall in the heart of the Sufi-inspired city of Fatehpur Sikri is famous for its central pillar–an octagonal shaft decorated with intricate floral patterns and geometric designs. It was in this 16th century building that representatives from different religions met with Emperor Akbar to discuss and share their respective faiths…

The lips of the righteous teach many,
But fools die for want of wisdom.
The rich man’s wealth is in his city;
The righteous’ wealth is in his Holy Place.

Earlier this week, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan reached a preliminary deal to help soothe rising tensions over Ethiopia’s $5 billion Grand Renaissance Dam project. It’s no coincidence that this new compromise was struck in the same week that Egypt and Sudan were helping Saudi Arabia launch military strikes in Yemen. Now more than ever, these three countries on the Nile are acknowledging their overlapping counterterrorism strategies and security concerns…