Canadians for Peace and Justice in the Middle East maintains useful information to consumers seeking to avoid purchasing goods that violate Palestinian rights.  I encourage everyone to contact Canadian Tire and explain to them that you will take your business elsewhere until it ceases selling goods manufactured in illegal Israeli settlements.

Canadian Tire sells products from the Israeli company Keter Plastic, which manufactures some of its products in illegal Israeli colonies. Use the resources below, and use your own economic power to bring a stop to Canadian Tire’s unethical behaviour. Factsheet – Why boycott Canadian Tire Learn about Canadian Tire, its ties to Israel, and why boycotting Canadian Tire is the appropriate and ethical thing to do. Email Action Alert to Canadian Tire Make your voice heard today. Click on this link to send an email to Canadian Tire executives to let them know you disagree with their investments in Israel. List of Canadian Tire stores to boycott Use this list to identify the Canadian Tire store closest to you. Then use the resources below to make your voice heard. Tell your local Canadian Tire manager that you’re boycotting If Canadian Tire doesn’t know that you’re boycotting, it does no good. Click on this document (MS Word format) to open a letter that you can print and take down to your local Canadian Tire store today. See the letter that CJPME sent to Canadian Tire executives Click on this document to see the letter that CJPME sent to Canadian Tire executives. Print and send a letter to Canadian Tire executives Click on this document (MS Word) to open the letter to Canadian Tire executives. Customize it with your own information, print and send it today.

Quantifying the obvious: a couple of economists have authored a report showing that homeland security spending is a massive waste of expenditures, with no reasonable relationship to the actual risk of terrorism.  But don’t expect it to be reduced any time soon: too many interest groups are making too much money for these programs ever to be scaled back.  And, BTW, a recent SEC regulation designed to protect ordinary investors was struck down by the DC Circuit because, among other reasons, the SEC failed to demonstrate its cost effectiveness.  Conservatives, it seems, are indifferent to rent seeking when it comes to “security,” and especially if part of those funds goes to their own pockets, whether through increased campaign contributions or obtaining lucrative security contracts directly.

As part of Yale’s Open Courses, you can listen to Stephen Smith’s “Introduction to Political Philosophy” lectures.  After listening to the first lecture, where he makes the point that because political philosophers’ loyalties are to the best regime, and the best regime never exists, political philosophers can never be perfectly loyal citizens, I’ve decided that I want to promote passage of a law criminalizing the practice of political philosophy on the grounds that it constitutes sedition, just like the shari’a.  As a loyal American, what else can I do in the face of a such an open challenge to the legitimacy of the US constitution?

Earlier this summer, I appeared along with Muhammad Ali Khalidi, a professor of philosophy at York University, along with Maya Shatzmiller, a historian specializing in economic history of the Islamic Middle East, Janice Stein, a political scientist at the University of Toronto, and Clifford Orwin, a professor of political philosophy, to discuss the future of the Arab world in light of the region’s various revolutions.  Here is a link to the broadcast, which was aired on August 5, 2011.  Unlike other discussions of the Arab Spring, this focused more on long-term issues, such as questions of economic development and issues of political thought (Islam and democracy and the Arab world).

My review of the excellent volume published by the Harvard Islamic Legal Studies Center, “The Islamic Marriage Contract: Case Studies in Islamic Family Law,” is now out in the Journal of Islamic Studies.

Malika Zeghal, a Tunisian-French political scientist at Harvard University, just posted an insightful piece on the growing secularist-Islamist rift in Tunisia.

In my latest piece on Foreign Policy’s Middle East Channel, I argue that Egyptian progressives’ focus on the “constitution first” is misguided.  Instead, I argue that progressives ought to work for the establishment of an effective and accountable government that can institute the structural changes to the economy that Egypt needs if it truly wants to be a prosperous and independent state.  Comments, of course, are welcome.

I originally posted this on March 29, 2007 on eteraz.org, and it was subsequently re-posted on progressiveislam.org.  Both sites are no longer operational, so I thought I would repost on shanfaraa.com for those who might find it of interest.

The Friday New York Times reported that a German judge denied a Moroccan woman’s request for an expedited divorce from her Moroccan husband – despite the apparently undisputed evidence that the husband had repeatedly abused her – on the grounds that such conduct is “common” in Morocco and that the “Koran . . . sanctions such physical abuse.”

It is hardly a secret that the Egyptian economy faces severe structural challenges in the near-term, and that a failure to address these problems could very well doom the prospects for a successful transition to democracy.  The economic legacy of the Mubarak regime is little short of catastrophic, particularly in the collapse of public goods such as education and health.  At the same time, there is a silver lining in the Mubarak regime’s economic incompetence: even a modicum of decent management of the economy has the potential to provide immediate and tangible efficiency gains for the Egyptian economy.  So, the good news is that many of Egypt’s most pressing economic problems do not require complex solutions; rather, they simply need political will to implement the need policy changes.  I call these reforms “low-hanging fruit,” and the extent to which post-revolutionary Egypt shows a willingness to solve these problems will be a definitive signal the likelihood of the revolution’s success.

Islamic Law & Society has just published a recent article of mine with the title “Is Historicism a Viable Strategy for Islamic Law Reform? The Case of “Never Shall a People Prosper Who Have Appointed a Woman to Rule Them.” This article is both methodological and substantive, insofar as it proposes both a methodology for reformist arguments within Islamic law, and a substantive critique of other progressive arguments on the specific issue of how to interpret the infamous hadith in which the Prophet Muhammad is reported as having said, “Never shall a people prosper who have appointed a woman to rule them.”