Al-Noor: Now Available Online
Friday August 21, 2009

Al-Noor, The new Boston College Undergraduate Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies Journal, is now available online and in hardcopy at locations around Boston College. The Journal has recently been featured in The Heights, the student newspaper on campus.

The Journal seeks to provide undergraduate students a medium for publishing about the Middle East and Islam and promote a discourse about the diverse opinions, myriad cultures, histories, and perspectives that comprise the Middle East.

To view the issue in its entirety, click on the image to the left. Our current issue page also has each story listed separately. The Al-Noor blog, while still a work in progress, will be covering issues as they happen in the Middle East and be a venue for further discussion of the issues raised in Al-Noor.

Al-Noor is always accepting submissions from undergraduate students worldwide interested in the Middle East and Islam. For more information, visit our submissions page.

Letter from the Editors
Friday August 21, 2009

Mainstream discourse about the Middle East is inundated with grotesque images of war. For many, the conflicts in Palestine and Iraq dominate and define this region. The predominance of these stories has overshadowed and excluded countless narratives, groups, and identities, each vying for attention in an increasingly complex region.

The second issue of Al-Noor brings these stories out of the shadows as people within other Middle Eastern societies seek political, social and/or economic inclusion. New faces throughout the region are seeking to establish their identity in relation to today’s modernizing world. Our cover article, A Mirage of Moderation?, looks at how Islamic political parties are moderating and incorporating themselves into new political and democratic realities in the Middle East.

The rise of Islamists vying for political inclusion throughout the region is a growing reality that cannot be ignored. From the Ummah to the Watan examines the Shi’a population’s pursuit of political inclusion in Kuwait and Lebanon, a struggle that has borne fruit in the latter but not the former. Highlighting the geographical diversity of the region, The End of the Line reveals a small town’s fight for recognition within the larger political battle between Morocco and Algeria. Moving north to France, Mediating an Islamic France addresses the pressing question of Muslim integration and representation in Europe. Returning to the Gulf, Kuwait’s reaction and subsequent backlash against its majority expatriate population is chronicled in A Fortress Under Siege.

Building off Al-Noor’s successful inauguration issue—an issue that found its way universities from Kuwait to Egypt to California—we are excited to introduce two new features. Two student photo essays highlights the skill of student photographers at Boston College and the striking diversity of the Middle East. These photos provide a vivid chronicle of daily life in the Middle East, whether it be children playing soccer. We have also introduced a Viewpoints section that highlights the experiences and opinions of recent graduates living and working in the region. This year, Luke Tarbi (’06), who is currently deployed in Afghanistan, describes the development of the Afghan police force and his related personal experience.

We trust that these articles and images engage, inform and encourage further discussion about the Middle East and its myriad of cultures, peoples and religions. We hope you will join us in our effort to extend this dialogue beyond these pages as we continue our outreach to universities in the Middle East and around the world.

Cordially,

Christopher Maroshegyi ’09
Michael Weston-Murphy ’10
co-Editors-in-Chief