by Daniel Pipes*

As the Muslim world settled into ever-deeper decline over the past decade, mired in political extremism, religious sickness, economic irrelevance, WMD, anarchy, dictatorship, and civil wars, Dubai stood out as a happy anomaly.

Under the leadership of HH Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai (one of seven polities within the United Arab Emirates) invited peoples from around the world to come make money and they did; about 83 percent of its population of 1.4 million is foreign. The emirate intelligently exploited the energy boom surrounding it and had the ambition not just to globalize but to become a leader at globalization. Dubai became renowned for the world’s only tropical desert ski slope, the world’s only 7-star hotel, and the world’s very highest building, all done with a new-agey twist. (Publicity for the skyscraper, for example, presents it as “an unprecedented example of international cooperation” and “a beacon of progress for the entire world.”)

(more…)

by Tamir Sorek
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 239 pp. $91.

Reviewed by Sol Schindler*
U.S. Foreign Service officer (ret.)

Sorek, an Israeli social scientist (as his prose can attest), finds in soccer a rich opportunity to study Arabs living and coping in the Jewish state. He calls the world of Israeli soccer an “integrative enclave” because it is free of the interethnic animosity he finds in so much of the rest of the country.

(more…)

By Barry Rubin

Forget all the wimpy claptrap about Israel disappearing. Anyone who believes such nonsense has obviously never been to an Israeli soccer game.

One thing for sure: with Israelis so tough and determined over team loyalties, anyone who threatens our freedom and existence has pretty dim prospects.

(more…)

By Andrew L. Jaffee

The [Iraqi] team includes Sunni and Shia Muslims, as well as Kurds.

- BBC, 7/29/07

Another small glimmer of hope for Iraq (see also here)? One would hope that if Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis could play soccer together, and pull off upset victories over the South Korean and Saudi teams, then they could learn to live together in peace. Who can tell? In the very stochastic realm of human emotions, sometimes even a single event can galvanize a previously fractured society. But the historic — and to me, minor — divisions separating Iraq’s Sunnis and Shiites run deep. Time will only tell. I hope that Iraqis can accentuate and perpetuate their football fever. From the BBC:

(more…)