Re-introducing Jasur Magazine

Dear Readers and Friends, 

We write to you today to reintroduce Juhood as Jasūr Magazine. 

Juhood was founded in 2009, when Western popular discourse surrounding the Middle East was still dominated by the War on Terror and its accompanying racist and Islamaphobic rhetoric. The magazine’s founders selected juhood, meaning efforts or endeavors in Arabic, because the word shares the same root (juhd جهد), as jihad (جهاد). They felt as though the root, which means to struggle, strive, endeavor, etc. had become detached from its history. The name Juhood was thus intended to resituate the root within one of its original meanings, as well as to emphasize how the magazine strove to intervene in the hegemonic, Orientalist narratives about the MENA region that dominated and continue to dominate popular discourse in the U.S.

In the Fall of 2021, we were alerted to the fact that juhood is a cross-linguistic homonym — a word with the same spelling and pronunciation, but different meanings, in both Persian and Arabic — and could easily be understood in Persian as an anti-Semetic slur. We want to express heartfelt thanks to Professor Jason Sion Mokhtarian of Cornell University and Professor Janet Afary of the University of California at Santa Barbara for bringing this to our attention, and offer our sincere apologies, especially to the Persian Jewish community. 

After a long process, we have selected Jasūr (جسور), which means “brave,” “bold,” and/or “courageous” in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish (çesur). The current executive board chose this name in keeping with our founding mission of providing students with a platform for critical engagement with issues in the MENA region. To us, true critical engagement can only come through relationships, both across physical space––between students at different universities, in the U.S., the Arab World, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, etc.–– as well as across cultures. This kind of bridge-building requires courage: the courage to withhold judgements, to admit ignorance, to abandon presuppositions, and to be honest with one another. 

Though much will remain the same, we are excited to share some of the new things we are working on. This semester’s issue of the Jasūr will be the first to feature Arabic-language essays, and we are looking forward to a number of collaborations, which include publishing work from students in the Gender Scholars program at the American University in Beirut and co-sponsoring an exchange group with students at the University of Mosul. We hope to continue to foster genuine intellectual exchange between students, and as always, are grateful for your support and for your readership. 

All our best,

The Jasūr Executive Board