Temporary blog outage

 Sorry for not posting for a few days — it’s that time of year for us academics, I’ve had to attend a few events and give some talks, and now I’m about to hit the road for the Middle East Studies Association annual meeting over the weekend.  If I hadn’t been drowning, I had been ...

 Sorry for not posting for a few days --- it's that time of year for us academics, I've had to attend a few events and give some talks, and now I'm about to hit the road for the Middle East Studies Association annual meeting over the weekend.

 Sorry for not posting for a few days — it’s that time of year for us academics, I’ve had to attend a few events and give some talks, and now I’m about to hit the road for the Middle East Studies Association annual meeting over the weekend.

 If I hadn’t been drowning, I had been meaning to post about Lebanon’s new government (a power-sharing deal which looks pretty much like what should have happened right after the election only it took almost half a year to get there);  KSM in New York (fears that a trial will help al-Qaeda propaganda are so old school — there have been fundamental changes in AQ’s ability to mobilize Arab support, and KSM isn’t going to reverse that; Steve Simon does a fantastic job with this here);  the Iraqi election law veto (Hashemi’s concerns about the representation of refugees and minorities are probably right on the merits, but my goodness that’s some bad timing); and the Israeli-Palestinian abyss (’nuff said).  

 I’ll try to post something on some of those topics before I leave, but no promises… and after that, blogging as usual will be subject to the whims of the gods of wireless.  Should be back online middle of next week.

 In the meantime, you can enjoy this list of the 500 most influential Muslims compiled by Georgetown’s Prince Waleed bin Talaal Center.   I don’t know what methodology they used, but I’d say that a list of the most influential Muslims in the world which includes King Abdullah of Jordan, King Mohammed VI of Morocco, and Sultan Qaboos of Oman in the top 10 probably has some flaws. 

Marc Lynch is associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, where he is the director of the Institute for Middle East Studies and of the Project on Middle East Political Science. He is also a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. He is the author of The Arab Uprising (March 2012, PublicAffairs).

He publishes frequently on the politics of the Middle East, with a particular focus on the Arab media and information technology, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, and Islamist movements. Twitter: @abuaardvark

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