In defiance of all appearances, Egypt‘s President Mohammed Morsi has declared “the dawn of a new Egypt” following the implementation of the new constitution. For him, Egypt will now be fairer, more closely in touch with its Islamic roots and open for development without the stifling cronyism of the Mubarak era. The reality of what […]
In the summer of 1993, I was granted a rare scoop as a Palestinian journalist: an exclusive interview with the prime minister of Israel at the time, Yitzhak Rabin, the first ever given to a reporter working for a leading Palestinian newspaper. Midway way through the one-hour meeting, I asked Rabin for his vision as […]
The Gulf Cooperation Council said it will form a unified military command structure at a time when Iran poses a “very serious” security threat to the Middle East. The six-member group will coordinate air, land, and marine forces under one structure, Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Khalid Bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa said today in a press conference after […]
As one of the most strategically important regions of the world, the Middle East is often in flux. The year 2012, however, has been an especially dramatic year. Looking back, in my last column of the year, it is clear that there are flashes – of news, of violence, of surprise – that catch our attention. […]
IT LOOKS pretty certain that the constitution which Muhammad Morsi, Egypt’s president, has presented to the people will win their endorsement in a referendum that is being held in two stages. On December 15th a majority of voters in the ten provinces polled said yes, though 57% of Cairo’s 6m voters said no. On December […]
If there is one fundamental relationship that is central to stable statehood and the wellbeing of entire populations in modern states, it is the relationship between the citizen and the state. These highest and the lowest, and biggest and smallest, levels of statehood need to be reasonably in sync with one another for relatively normal […]
When the Corruption Perception Index 2012 was published last week, the Saudi Twittersphere wasn’t very thrilled. Transparency International‘s annual study of perceptions about corruption among public-sector officials showed that Saudi Arabia had fallen nine places, and ranked number 66 out of 174. This provoked a storm of discussion on Twitter. Read Here – The National
The signs are unmistakable. Once again, the West is preparing to escalate military intervention in the Arab and Muslim world. This time the target is Syria. Since the US presidential election, the warnings have multiplied. First, in a breathtaking reprise of the falsehood that paved the way for the invasion of Iraq, US and British […]
Mysteries have surrounded the Muslim Brotherhood since its founding, in 1928. Nobody knows how many members there are, or how much money the organization receives, or where it all comes from. The chain of command is murky; the goals and the guiding philosophy are not clearly stated. The Egyptian revolution, which has rolled and lurched […]
A casual observer of the Arab world will most likely have concluded that the experiment in adapting political Islam to democracy has already failed. Almost two years ago, as the Arab revolutions began in Tunisia, it seemed a foregone conclusion that political pluralism on a western model would take the place of the ageing autocrats […]
looking beyond borders 