Blog archive all
Morocco's first gay magazine was launched this month, in print and on the internet. Mithly (Arabic for "gay") says it aims to give a voice to "lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transsexuals, to express themselves despite the fact that the authorities pretend that they… Read more
Allegations of vote-buying are casting a cloud over the results of the great Arabic TV poetry contest which ended earlier this month.
Nasser al-Ajami, a Kuwaiti, walked away with the the top prize of $1.36m. But it has now emerged that victory came at a price: his tribe spent millions of… Read more
Here's a further contribution from Benjamin Geer on the subject of coining new words in Arabic. I'm quoting his email in full:
You write:
Take the word "toxic". In English, we can add bits to make "toxicology" and "toxicologist". Arabic, with its three-letter root system, can't do this. For "… Read more
Further to yesterday's discussion about the future of the Arabic language, Benjamin Geer writes:
"Arabs often switch to English when discussing technical subjects simply because they've studied those subjects only in English, or because Arabic equivalents for many technical terms either haven't… Read more
"Arabic will die out if it is locked up in classrooms." That was the provocative headline of an article by Achraf El Bahi in The National a few days ago. Lamenting that "proficiency in Arabic, proper grammar, conjugation and a broad use of vocabulary are seen as the sole purview of language geeks… Read more
Demonstrators took to the streets of numerous cities throughout Yemen yesterday in what appears to have been the biggest nationwide protest for some years.
Organised by the Joint Meeting Parties (the main opposition grouping), the demonstrations highlighted a host of grievances, including poverty,… Read more
Few countries are immune to the possibility of communal violence, but they differ in how they deal with it and what steps they take in the aftermath to prevent a recurrence.
A new report by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights looks at the growing problem of sectarian violence in Egypt and… Read more
Yemen's leading arms dealer, Fares Mana'a, has had his assets frozen by the UN Security Council and the US Treasury.
Mana'a served for some time as head of the committee mediating between the Yemeni government and the Houthi rebels, while allegedly simultaneously supplying the rebels… Read more
Al-Riyadh newspaper reports (in Arabic) on the case of a 65-year-old man in Saudi Arabia who went for a health screening test in preparation for his marriage to an 11-year-old girl. The man was found to be infected with hepatitis B.
The Saudi Jeans blog comments:
"The staff at the… Read more
An unnamed domestic worker died when she fell from the third floor of a residential building in Mecca. Her body was found in the street below on Sunday, Arab News reports.
The woman, whose nationality has not been disclosed, had arrived in Saudi Arabia two months earlier.
A police… 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
