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The Gulf Cooperation Council – of which Bahrain is a member – has called on Britain to expel two Bahraini Shia opposition figures.
The pair – Hassan Mushaima of the Haq movement and Saeed al-Shehabi of the Bahrain Freedom Islamic Movement – are among 23 activists who were … Read more
Tension in Bahrain ahead of the elections scheduled for next month.
Twenty-three people, reportedly Shia activists, have been accusedof "forming an illegal organisation" aiming to "overthrow the government and dissolve the constitution", inciting people to "overthrow and change the… Read more
Following the king's edict last month, Saudi Arabia is continuing its campaign against fatwas from unauthorised clerics. Asharq Alawsat reports that the kingdom's telecom regulator has shut down three websites for violating the royal decree:
Saad al-Shihri, an official at the… Read more
"Approximately 50% of Arabic-speaking schoolchildren in Israel are suspected to have learning disabilities," according to the Edmond J Safra Brain Research Center for the Study of Learning Disabilities at the University of Haifa. "These children face lifelong stigmatisation, immense academic… Read more
It's good to see the endemic ill-treatment of domestic workers in the Middle East finally getting some attention from the mainstream international media. Under the headline "Little better than slavery", this week's Economist says:
Huge numbers of migrant domestic workers, mostly from Asia and… Read more
A couple of useful articles about Yemen in the September issue of The Majalla. In the first, Professor Fawaz Gerges of the London School of Economics discusses Yemen's summer of discontent. He writes:
What is alarming about the growing brazenness and activism of [al-Qaeda in the… Read more
Salam Kawakibi, of the Arab Reform Initiative and the University of Amsterdam, has produced two interesting papers about Syria: one on the media, the other on the internet.
The Private Media in Syria gives a brief history of the official media under the Baathist regime then looks in… Read more
With mediation from Qatar, the Houthi rebels and the Yemeni government have signed an agreement aimed at consolidating the ceasefire announced last February. Reuters reports:
"Among the main points of the agreement, rebels were required to return stolen Yemeni military weapons to… Read more
This ad promoting Coca-Cola in bottles with a twist-off cap is one of a series produced for the Egyptian market by theFortunePromoseven agency and it's causing a stir on the internet, if not in Egypt itself. One (western) blog sees it as "groundbreaking" in… Read more
The Saudi king has reprimanded a conservative religious scholar for apparently defying a royal decree issued earlier this month imposing restrictions on public fatwas.
The scholar, Yousef al-Ahmad, used a TV programme to call for a boycott of the Panda supermarket chain unless… 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
