I never had the good fortune to meet Atwar Bahjat. If I had, I would have told her that she was my hero. Her brutal murder last week has robbed me of the privilege of meeting her and so I shall share my admiration with you instead. As one of the very few female Arab […]
The war on the people of Denmark must stop. It is one thing to be offended by the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him) published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten last September and it is quite another to hold all Danes responsible for them. For years, Muslims have complained t
If it is true that the captain of the doomed Egyptian ferry did indeed abandon his ship, leaving the passengers to fend for themselves, then his behaviour was an apt metaphor for the Muslim world: it is lost at sea without a captain. In fact, the entire ferry tragedy is a microcosm of what most [&he
The terrorists who kidnapped American journalist Jill Carroll thought they would win Arab sympathy if they demanded the release of Iraqi women detained by U.S. forces. After all, what could be a surer bet than claiming to be acting in the name of the “honour” of our women, particularly when that “ho
The Arab world hates Ariel Sharon so much not because he is responsible for the death of so many Arabs but because he is essentially the mirror image of the Arab leaders that have ruled us for decades. He is the better and improved mirror image. If hatred for Sharon was based solely on the […
It is either a huge miscalculation or an overdose of confidence that inspires a government to send 20,000 riot police to brutally disperse 3,500 refugees from a public square as the world’s media watches and records. Twenty five Sudanese died, including many children who were crushed to death. Stand
It is difficult to watch hope die. That is what I saw in the faces of the men and women who were openly weeping outside the court that sentenced Ayman Nour on Saturday to five years in prison. Many of them had spent the night outside that court in the chilly Cairo night, awaiting the […]
On December 23, Steven Spielberg will discover just how dangerous it is to destroy myths when his latest film "Munich" opens in some cinemas in the United States. It is inspired by events surrounding the murder of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists during the 1972 Olympics
When riot police point rifles loaded with rubber bullets at Egyptians trying to vote we have to ask: Is the Egyptian government at war with its people? When women huddle in a corner out of fear of these same security forces, we have to ask are we in Egypt or in Iraq, from where Arab […]
Last week Asharq al-Awsat devoted an entire page to answering the question: What if the Muslim Brotherhood ruled? The round up of opinions made for interesting reading but there was an important question that that they did not tackle: What will life be like for women if the Muslim Brotherhood ruled?
It was appropriate to begin November 9 at a polling station inside a school in the Cairo neighbourhood of Bab al-Sheiriyya. After all, that was the day that Egypt was to take an exam in democracy as Egyptians voted in the first round of parliamentary elections. This year’s parliamentary elections we
When the planes flew into the World Trade Centre in New York on September 11, 2001, I lived in Seattle, on the other side of America. My brother and his wife were visiting me. We did not leave the house for two days because we were worried that Americans angry at Muslims would attack my […]
One hundred years ago, Alexandria was a cosmopolitan city that was home to Muslims, Christians and Jews. Over the past week, Alexandria has been home to an ugly hatred that spurred Muslim rioters to rampage through Christian neighbourhoods, attacking churches and shops. This in turn caused a Christi
CAIRO – Are we seeing the start of an Arab Autumn? On Oct. 18 former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein takes the stand on charges of premeditated murder, torture and forced expulsion and disappearances when he goes on trial for a 1982 massacre of Shiites. A week later, the U.N. investigator’s report in
"People are asking why are other Muslims getting killed, how come no one does anything about that?" You might think this question was in reference to the devastating earthquake that struck parts of Pakistan, India and Afghanistan on Saturday. You might think it was a young Muslim man