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Gaddafi is dead, Mubarak is in jail, Ben Ali is in exile but Yemen's former dictator, Ali Abdullah Saleh, is living comfortably at home – thanks to a vote in parliament which gave him immunity from prosecution – and he has been talking about his new life as "a normal Yemeni citizen".
In an… Read more
What would happen if a Saudi newspaper published an article advocating democracy, freedom of speech, the rule of law and the resignation of incompetent officials? You might expect that the writer would be arrested, as has happened to several online activists in the kingdom recently. But… Read more
A Saudi court has dismissed an apostasy case against Raif Badawi, an online activist whose views have upset the kingdom's religious conservatives.
The court's decision appears to have removed the threat of execution – since apostasy is a capital offence in Saudi Arabia – but Badawi, who… Read more
Two British MPs have raised concerns in parliament about taxpayer subsidies for charities that support settlement activity in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Charities registered in Britain are entitled to various tax benefits regardless of where they operate, provided their activities are entirely… Read more
Mouna is a lesbian from a Lebanese family and she has a problem:
"I love my mum, but I can never tell her I'm gay. She'd kill me. Or she would make herself sick and die – and then I'd have killed her. I don't want to break her heart but I'm 35. The only way out of the house is in a… Read more
Yesterday, one week ahead of Jordan's controversial parliamentary election, King Abdullah issued the second of his "discussion papers" intended "to share his vision on the kingdom's comprehensive reform process" (full text here).
In his first paper, at the end of December, the king lectured… Read more
The Shoura Council chamber: women members will be segregated by a partition. Picture: Riyadh Bureau
Having spent the last few days writing about the London conference on Yemen (there's now a single-page compilation of my blog posts here), I missed some of the… Read more
There is no doubt that southern Yemenis had a raw deal under President Ali Abdullah Saleh – though they were by no means alone in that. There is also no doubt that southern grievances and aspirations will have to be addressed in the forthcoming National Dialogue if Yemen's political transition is… Read more
Since 2004 the Yemeni government has waged a series of wars against the so-called Houthi rebels in the far north of the country, close to the Saudi border. This conflict is currently in abeyance but a long-term solution will be needed if Yemen is to undergo a successful political… Read more
Yemen has become the focus for "two quite different and fundamentally contradictory phenomena", Sheila Carapico, an American political scientist, told the London conference on Yemen last week. One of them is an uprising for social justice and and the other is "a not-so-covert military… 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
