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The municipal elections in Saudi Arabia scheduled for December will be the first in which women have been allowed to take part. Now that registration of voters and candidates has closed it is possible to get a clearer picture of the actual levels of female participation.
Across the kingdom, there… Read more
Anne-Marie Lizin: EU resolution was "neither constructive nor fair"
Rights activist defends Azerbaijan
GNRD 'high commissioner' accuses European Parliamen
A senior figure in the Global Network for Rights and Development (GNRD) has come to the defence of Azerbaijan following… Read more
Jeremy Corbyn, the new leader of the Labour party, is likely to stir up some much-needed debate about British foreign policy, especially in relation to the Middle East.
Corbyn's emphasis on promoting human rights and avoiding military adventures in the region is… Read more
A lot of misinformation is being circulated about the crane accident on Friday which killed more than 100 people at the Grand Mosque in Mecca during a storm. Several spurious claims have gained credence simply because no one bothered to check them against the abundant photographic evidence.
One… Read more
More than 100 people died on Friday when a crane toppled over during a storm and crashed on to the Grand Mosque in Mecca.
An engineer on the construction site around the mosque described this as an act of God. "It was not a technical issue at all," he told Agence France Presse. "I… Read more
Two anonymously-registered websites – one in English, the other in Arabic – are circulating wild claims about the police investigation into GNRD, the Emirati-funded human rights organisation based in Norway.
The Stavanger headquarters of GNRD (the Global Network for Rights and Development… Read more
Bribery claim in GNRD 'money-laundering' case
Mystery websites smear Norwegian prosecutor
Two anonymously-registered websites – one in English, the other in Arabic – are circulating wild claims about the police investigation into GNRD, the Emirati-funded human rights… Read more
For the first time in Saudi Arabia's history, women will be allowed to take part in municipal elections scheduled for December. The big question, though, is how many will actually do so.
With only 11 days left in the voter registration process, it seems that women have not exactly been queueing up… Read more
Bahrain has become the latest Gulf state to propose a formal ban on critical discussion of religion.
In a report of last Sunday's cabinet meeting, the government news agency says:
"A draft law on criminalising contempt of religions, such as insulting divinity, defaming divine books, prophets,… Read more
"Arabs Without God", my book about atheism and freedom of belief in the Middle East – which was published in English last year – is now available in Arabic.
To make it easily accessible for Arabic-speaking readers it is published as a Word file and a PDF document (… Read more
ARAB ART ONLINE: Susan Hefuna: Al Sabr Gamil (Patience is Beautiful) 2007. Ink stained on wood 140 x 170 cm. More information | Click to enlarge
