Middle Eastern Studies Quotes

One does not have to be without sin to castigate someone else for being a rapist or murderer" (386). ~ Kenneth Pollack

This feminine billboard of Middle-Eastern fashion stopped me on the street last month. She ran her hand over the seam of my jilbab, admiring the color and fabric. She only said a few words. 'We are living in a gender-quake, a modern sexodus. We have a duty to project dis female revolution in da way we dress. Come visit me at the Monkey Bar and tell me who tailors your outfits.' She's been my fashion role model ever since. ~ Michael Ben Zehabe

I worked on the line, I've been an executive chef, I've worked for the Mets, I've worked for various steakhouses, vegetarian restaurants, a lot of Middle Eastern stuff. I've worked my fair share of a lot of different things. I've worked at festivals and street fairs, you know? I've been through it all. ~ Action Bronson

I watched life and death unfold like a dance on the side of that road. My son was born with a bloodstained face and he died with blood from the accident covering that same face. ~ Zeina Kassem

Well, we lost a lot of our independence already. We are dependent on China for credit. We are dependent on Middle Eastern countries for energy supplies. And many Americans are dependent on the government for their income, health care, education of their children, food stamps. ~ Jim DeMint

When your parents are Middle Eastern immigrants, you have three choices. You can become a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer. ~ Michael Mina

When I was 17, I came to the U.S. to study Middle Eastern history and politics at Columbia University. ~ Julia Bacha

Marley, let's get one thing straight. I've seen you in a short skirt. I've seen your bare legs and have imagined them wrapped around me. I've felt the curves of your body with my hands and the way it responds to me. I've tasted the sweetness of your mouth. There is nothing you can do to erase those images from my mind. So understand this, you could wear a Middle-eastern Burka and it wouldn't help me right now. ~ M.K. Schiller

When it comes to cyber conflicts between, say, America and China or even a Middle Eastern nation, an African nation, a Latin American nation, a European nation, we have more to lose. ~ Edward Snowden

It's as though you had lost an arm or leg but still instinctively reach out to feel your missing limb or try to walk again, placing your entire weight on something that no longer is there. ~ Zeina Kassem

I was sort of born into a Subud cult that has ties to Islam and Indonesia and Middle Eastern spiritualism. My parents were kind of trial-and-error when it came to religion. ~ Sufjan Stevens

I never worried about teams who spend what they want to spend. It never bothered me. At the moment we have a lot of Middle Eastern owners, we have American owners of course, Russian owners. It never bothered me one bit. All I was concerned about was that we at United maintained our level of expectation, be competitive, be at the top part of the Premier League. ~ Alex Ferguson

I don't think I ever fully understood before now the old saying that goes: "A mother's heart loves her young one until he grows; her ill one until he heals; and her traveler until he returns."

I have experienced all kinds of waiting; I've waited for my young to grow and the sick to heal, but I am still waiting on my little traveler and I do not know how long it will be until I see him again. ~ Zeina Kassem

The fact that the Princess of Wales, a major international figure, and the BBC, a leading public broadcasting company, had to go to such extraordinary lengths to record an interview makes a mockery of the notion that we live in an open society. Indeed, if the programme had been the smuggled testimony of a Middle Eastern princess there would have been outraged protests about a repressive regime. ~ Andrew Morton

I am interested in the literature and religion of ancient Israel. I focus on biblical law in its ancient Near Eastern context and on the way that biblical law was later reinterpreted in the Dead Sea Scrolls and other Second Temple literature. I have also explored the relation of the Bible to later western intellectual history. In my latest book, A More Perfect Torah: At the Intersection of Philology and Hermeneutics in Deuteronomy and the Temple Scroll, I explore the relationship between biblical composition history and its reception history at Qumran and in rabbinic literature.

At the University of Minnesota, I have department affiliations with the Center for Jewish Studies and the Program in Religious Studies and am also an affiliated faculty member of the Law School. ~ Bernard M. Levinson

That's when it hit me; my sunglasses were buried in the grave where my Talal lay.

Yes, my sunglasses were buried with him. But oh, how I wish my eyes had gone with him instead. ~ Zeina Kassem

What may be learned from the rebuttals made by the defendants in New Jersey and from the protests that were sparked by the decision of the court? Much of the resistance, it appears, derives from a conservative anxiety that equity equates to "leveling." The fear that comes across in many of the letters and the editorials in the New Jersey press is that democratizing opportunity will undermine diversity and even elegance in our society and that the best schools will be dragged down to a sullen norm, a mediocre middle ground of uniformity. References to Eastern European socialism keep appearing in these letters. ~ Jonathan Kozol

I wish I had lost an arm or a leg. It would have been much easier than losing a part of my heart, which lives on, but now beats to a different rhythm. ~ Zeina Kassem

America's relations with complex Middle Eastern states such as Egypt are often difficult. ~ Elliott Abrams

The Christian narrative states that a maximally powerful, maximally good, all-knowing aseitic being consciously created everything, including man who short-circuited shortly after. This failure resulted in the immediate separation of all earthly things, including man, from the Creator: the Middle Eastern deity named, Yhwh. The objective of life, according to the Christian narrative, is to return to communion with Yhwh. Failure to do so in a finite space of time (a single lifetime of indeterminate duration and unequal resources) will result in Yhwh tossing the individual into an abyss he created for his finest and most beautiful creation, an angel named Lucifer (Ezekiel 28:12,13), who also short-circuited sometime earlier. This is considered by Christians to be the ultimate punishment: an eternal separation from the god, Yhwh.

This narrative is wholesale nonsense.

As a theology (and scaffolding for a tremendously flawed accompanying theodicy), it is an extravagant work of self-annihilating absurdity. As a maximally good, aseitic being, everything was once part of perfection. That's what aseity means. There was no-thing that was not already perfect. To argue otherwise is to concede Yhwh was not, in fact, perfect. Creation, therefore, destroyed this eternal harmony, this purity, and by this fact alone, the act of Creation can only be called maximally evil. Creation separated things from the perfect goodness. Creation expelled goodness and cast it into a sta ~ John Zande

As is the case with many Middle Eastern nations, women are nowhere near equal to men when it comes to basic freedoms and rights that we take for granted every day. ~ Ginny Brown-Waite

America needs a sensible, sustainable Iran policy that can meet U.S. security and economic interests, command international support and withstand the shifting Middle Eastern sands. ~ Samantha Power

You Can See Russia From America!

There are two small Islands in the middle of the Bering Straits that are 2.4 miles apart, and have the "International Date Line" running between them. The larger Island to the west is Russian and is named Ratmanov Island. It is considered the last island in the far eastern reach of Asia.

Little Diomede Island or Ignaluk Island, belongs to Alaska and is the easternmost of the two islands. It is as far west as you can go before reaching the "International Date Line." Although the two islands are within easy sight of each other they are 24 hours apart, with one being in tomorrow and the other being in today. There are approximately 170, mostly Native Americans, living on the smaller American island.

During winter, an ice bridge usually spans the distance between these two islands, therefore there are times when it is possible to walk between the United States and Russia. This little stroll can be dangerous and is not advised; however at this location you can definitely see Russia from America. ~ Hank Bracker

I am from Lebanon, from Beirut and Saida

I am from the ground underneath my home

I am from the trees, the cedar tree

I come from Tabouleh and brown eyes, from Karim...

Kassar and Kassem

I come from happiness and culture

From "Habibi" and "Hayete"

I am from all religions

I am from the room beneath the stars. ~ Zeina Kassem, Talal Kassem

The American government has been harvesting the Middle Eastern grapes of wrath for a generation and not making a secret of it, either. As lousy as the mass media may be, there was enough news about what was transpiring, year after year, to get the gist of what was happening ... No American can truthfully say that they could not find out what was going on ... ~ Nicholas Von Hoffman

Ancient astrology was rather different from the modern
horoscope. Its more learned practitioners enjoyed intellectual respectability, and there was a substantial overlap between astrology and philosophy. People would consult astrologers on anything, from the time and manner in which they were going to die to who was likely to win in the chariot-races that afternoon.
The chronology of the origins and development of astrology are impossible to establish, and were debated even in the ancient world. Suffice it to say here that the Western tradition was one of many traditions: Indian, Chinese, Middle Eastern. It was Ptolemy, the Hellenistic geographer and astrologer, who first laid the technical foundations of Western astrology in his Tetrabiblos
('Four Books'). But the rise in the prominence of astrology was closely tied to the Roman imperial regime. It greatly benefited emperors to have their sovereignty 'written in the stars'. ~ Helen Morales

There were a lot of botched kills throughout the eastern part of Kentucky when the work fell outside his control. Six or seven years ago, a man from Perry County was shot point blank in the head and left for dead in the middle of downtown. Problem was, the bullet had traveled between the man's scalp and his skull halfway across his head and exited the same way it had entered on the other side. The whole thing had left him with only fingernail-sized contusions on both sides of his head. He identified the guy who shot him and saw him arrested and convicted of attempted murder.
Now, it's true that a situation like that was a rare one, but part of doing a job right was minimizing the chance for something to go wrong. ~ Sheldon Lee Compton

Different groups in the [Middle East] drew two lessons from [return of the shah in Iran] - one, that Americans were willing to use both force and intrigue to install or restore their puppet rulers in Middle Eastern countries; the other, that they were not reliable patrons when these puppets were seriously attacked by their own people, and would simply abandon them. The one evoked hatred, the other contempt - a dangerous combination.
Clearly, something deeper is involved than these specific grievances, numerous and important as they may be, something deeper which turns every disagreement into a problem and makes every problem insoluble. What we confront now is not just a complaint about one or another American policy but rather a rejection and condemnation, at once angry and contemptuous, of all that America is seen to represent in the modern world. (76) ~ Bernard Lewis

Middle Eastern cuisine has the same depth of ingredients and processes as other cuisines. They just haven't had as much exposure. ~ Yotam Ottolenghi

I didn't grow up on any sort of border; more in the middle of nowhere, in rural eastern North Carolina. ~ Tim Pratt

The difference between Middle Eastern and Western economic approaches can be seen even in their distinctive forms of corruption, from which neither society is exempt. In the West, one makes money in the market, and uses it to buy or influence power. In the East, one seizes power, and uses it to make money. ~ Bernard Lewis

Human beings are not simple. We are, in fact, quite complicated. In recent American history, we have engaged in such contradictions as owning slaves, while declaring all people to have equal rights, while heading to church to pray for peace and tranquility, while dropping bombs on Middle Eastern nations to secure the oil we need to fuel our vehicles in order to drive to church. We're a mess, and we have to count ourselves as part of the whole, because we're all complicit. ~ Nick Offerman

I'm actually half Brit and half American. I have a British father and an American mother, but as far as I'm aware, no Middle Eastern blood. ~ Adam Rayner