Some may ask why I have chosen this ominous-sounding title. For most of us, the MESA conference is a time for socializing, browsing among the latest books and hearing papers on recent research, generally in that order. It is certainly not a time for serious, introspective, potentially boring questions like this one. In the beautiful environment of this resort, it is even harder to focus on such unpleasant matters. In one of my last acts as President of MESA, however, I have decided to spoil the party, if only for a few minutes.

Three years have passed since the beginning of the war in Bosnia. Amidst the reports of human suffering and atrocities, another tragic loss has gone largely unnoted—the destruction of the written record of Bosnia’s past.

On 25 August 1992, Bosnia’s National and University Library, a handsome Moorish-revival building built in the 1890s on the Sarajevo riverfront, was shelled and burned. Before the fire, the library held 1.5 million volumes, including over 155,000 rare books and manuscripts; the country’s national archives; deposit copies of newspapers, periodicals and books published in Bosnia; and the collections of the University of Sarajevo. Bombarded with incendiary grenades from Serbian nationalist positions across the river, the library burned for three days; it was reduced to ashes with most of its contents. Braving a hail of sniper fire, librarians and citizen volunteers formed a human chain to pass books out of the burning building. Interviewed by ABC News, one of them said: “We managed to save just a few very precious books. Everything else burned down. And a lot of our heritage, national heritage, lay down there in ashes.” Aida Buturovic, a librarian in the National Library’s exchanges section, was shot to death by a sniper while attempting to rescue books from the flames.

A complete bibliography of just German-language literature dealing with the Turkish minority in Germany could easily double as a coffee table. The best one can do for a short introduction to German-, English- and Turkish-language sources is to separate out major categories into which one can organize the thrust and style of these writings and to select several examples of particularly representative or insightful recent publications. Of necessity that leaves a large barrel untapped. For those interested in acquiring a more complete bibliography, to furnish their home or not, I have appended several sources.

Algeria holds a singular place for Arab culture as a region in which the musical traditions of Islamic Spain, the Ottoman Empire, the eastern Arab countries (the Mashriq), Saharan and West Africa, Berbers, Bedouin and Europe have all interacted to various degrees. Morocco to the west was never as directly exposed to Ottoman and eastern Arab musical traditions; Tunisia and Libya to the east have had far less contact with sub-Saharan and West African musics and far more direct contact with the musics of their eastern neighbors. To simplify this complex musical landscape to some degree, the many distinct musical traditions of Algeria can be roughly divided into five groups: 1) Andalusian traditions, 2) Urban popular traditions, 3) Arabic-language folk traditions, 4) Berber and Saharan traditions, 5) the modern rai, or “pop-rai,” phenomenon. Recordings listed below have been selected for their representativeness and availability in the United States and Canada.

It is difficult to appreciate and understand Sufism fully without an informed exposure to the expressive cultural forms that help define and enhance it. It is this dimension of Islamic mysticism that transports the seeker on the path of spiritual attainment into higher states of consciousness that promise spiritual intoxication (Wajd) and a unique and intimate union, even annihilation (fanā), in the supreme being. This emotional expression of faith is intensified and externalized in elaborate forms of meditation and esoteric techniques that are part of ritual ceremonies.

Through ritual, many Sufi orders and Sufi-related sects throughout the world of Islam have been able to articulate doctrines and beliefs through artistic traditions such as sung poetry, instrumental music and dance-like movements (samā’ or spiritual concerts) and have utilized meditation patterns that combine corporeal techniques and controlled breathing (dhikr, Turkish, zikr) to induce or conduct trance and ecstatic states.

Materials of Middle East studies and not just for Middle East studies are increasingly appearing on-line. The ‘Net (Internet) that brought file archives, newsgroups and mailing lists devoted to regional issues and material has become a publishing medium in the Web (World Wide Web) with more and more of the output of Middle East studies themselves. The Bulletin now has a site, or “homepage,” on the World Wide Web at http://www.cua.edu/www/mesabul with select articles from recent issues and connections to material on the MESA Bulletin Gopher.

The World Wide Web has been the breakthrough technology for making the Internet user-friendly and mainstream. WWW hides the “computery” aspects of the Internet behind snappy graphics and an easy-to-use interface that together have fostered much recent press and commercial enthusiasm over “the Net,” such as:

This summer, the number of commercial Internet sites passed those of educational institutions. The Internet, in a sense, has graduated.