Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

This issue sponsored by The MIT Press

This week on nybooks.com: Africa’s dirty wars, a debate about women’s rights in Islamic states, Anthony Shadid’s Iraq, bringing Mecca to the British Museum, and writing as a career. Plus a preview from our March 22 issue: why the global warming skeptics are wrong.
Conflict Africa’s Dirty Wars Jeffrey Gettleman In Africa we are seeing the decline of the classic wars by freedom fighters and the proliferation of something else—something wilder, messier, more predatory, and harder to define. There are no front lines, no battlefields, no clear conflict zones, and no distinctions between combatants and civilians.
Professions The Writer’s Job Tim Parks Since when did being a writer become a career choice, with appropriate degree courses and pecking orders? Does this state of affairs make any difference to what gets written?
Culture Bringing Mecca to the British Museum Malise Ruthven The museum’s current exhibition puts it at the heart of the public debate about Islam and the place of Muslims in British society.
Iraq A Tenacious Refusal to Surrender Anthony Shadid Baghdad—a city that always chooses memory over the curse of its reality—passed before me once more. The elegant statues of Mohammed Ghani, artifacts of an ageless city, still graced their pedestals. Ghani’s Hying carpet fluttered into the boundless sky.
		Oscar Winners Daddy’s Girl Julian Barnes Deep Streep? Martin Filler Two views on Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady. Tattered Lives in Divided Iran Anonymous On Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation.
Human Rights Women and Islam: A Debate Seventeen women's rights organizations and Human Rights Watch To Kenneth Roth: You say, “It is important to nurture the rights-respecting elements of political Islam while standing firm against repression in its name,” but you fail to call for the most basic guarantee of rights—the separation of religion from the state. Human Rights Watch replies: We have a long history of standing up to governments founded on political Islam that discriminate against women, gays and lesbians, and religious minorities. But we would not reject the possibility that a government guided by political Islam might be convinced to avoid such discrimination.
Climate Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong William D. Nordhaus At a time when we need to clarify public confusions about the science and economics of climate change, skeptics have muddied the waters. I will describe their mistakes and explain the findings of current climate science and economics.