Reform In The Muslim World

The September 26, 2017 decree by the Saudi King granting women permission to drive is to take effect on June 24, 2018, and the various Saudi authorities have been taking measures in preparation for implementing it, such as issuing a Saudi driver's license to women who already hav...

The death of over 100 Palestinians in the Hamas-organized Return March protests, in which thousands of Gazans marched on the Israeli border with the aim of crossing it,[1] evoked many expressions of support for the Palestinians and condemnation of Israel – but at the same time al...

In an article in the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat that was published two days after the Arab League summit in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, Saudi writer Mash'al Al-Sudairi argued that these conferences are pointless because over the years they have produced almost nothing....

Among the Saudi intellectuals, journalists and writers who have recently been expressing open support for Israel,[1] the voice of intellectual 'Abd Al-Hamid Al-Hakim was especially prominent. Al-Hakim, until recently the director of the Middle East Center for Strategic and L...

Introduction: The mounting tension between Israel and Iran, which came to a head with Iran's firing of missiles at Israel from Syrian territory and Israel's counterattack on Iranian sites in that country, sparked a debate in Saudi Arabia regarding which side Saudis should supp...

The April 22, 2018 selection of Egyptian soccer star Mohamed Salah, who plays for Liverpool, as recipient of the English Professional Footballers' Association Player of the Year award for 2017-18 caused elation in Egypt. Thousands in his home province celebrated in the streets, a...

Jordanian journalist, writer, and educator Zuleikha Abu Risha, who is known for her fierce opposition to religious extremism in Jordan and who has received death threats because of her views,[1] again drew fire recently for her condemnation of the naming of a prayer hall at the S...

In his May 5, 2018 column in the daily Al-Hayat, senior Lebanese journalist, critic and political analyst Hazem Saghiya responded to Palestinian President Mahmoud 'Abbas's antisemitic speech at the Palestinian National Council on April 30, 2018.[1] Saghiya wrote that the speech h...

On May 15, 2018, the day after the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, Saudi journalist Amal 'Abd Al-'Aziz Al-Hazzani called on Arabs and Palestinians to come to terms with reality and to take advantage of the event to renew negotiations with Israel. In an article in the Lo...

In view of the ongoing victories of Assad's army in Syria and the apparent defeat of the Syrian opposition forces, on the eve of the elections in Iraq and Lebanon, Lebanese journalist Hazem Al-Amin, head of investigations and features at the Dubai-based Al-Hayat daily, published ...

On December 9, 2017 Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-'Abadi declared victory over the Islamic State (ISIS), saying: "[Iraq's] armed forces have secured the entire length of the Iraq-Syria border, and we therefore declare the end of the war on ISIS... Our war was against an enemy th...

In recent months, several Arab writers have published articles in the Arab press discussing why Israel is superior to the weaker Arab states. The reasons, they said, lie in Israel's strong and effective judicial system that tackles corruption in the country, even investigating an...

On March 2, 2018, Salman Masalha, an Israeli-Arab intellectual of Druze origin,[1]published an article in the Dubai-based Al-Hayat daily that harshly criticized the Arab leaders' response to the civil war raging in Syria, which is currently in its eighth year. Masalha claims that...

In his February 25, 2018 column in the Jordanian daily Al-Ghad, 'Alaa Al-Din Abu Zeina wrote about Egyptian star footballer Muhammad (Mo) Salah, who has been playing for Liverpool since June 2017. Abu Zeina noted that  Salah has managed to cause even racist British soccer fa...

Saudi-Palestinian relations have been extremely strained recently, due, inter alia, to reports of active Saudi involvement in formulating and promoting U.S. President Donald Trump's "Deal of the Century," and apparently also due to increasing media reports that Saudi-Israeli rela...

French women's rights activist Henda Ayari, a Salafi-turned-liberal Muslim, accused Swiss Muslim thinker Tariq Ramadan of raping her at a Paris hotel in 2012. In an interview on the Egyptian Dream TV channel on April 7, Ayari, who has founded an NGO to help, among others, women s...

In his March 18, 2018 column in the London-based Saudi Al-Sharq Al-Awsat daily, journalist Hussein Shubakshi wrote about the situation of the Jews who had lived in the Arab countries. He noted that they suffered discrimination and prejudice, despite the fact that they were "pilla...

Following the chemical attack in the Syrian town of Douma, Egyptian TV host Amr Adeeb gave an address in which he said that as Arabs, "we need to take a hard look at ourselves." "We have brought shame upon the world, shame upon humanity, by what we are doing by ourselves and to o...

Following a debate on the Egyptian Alhadath Alyoum TV channel in which the moderator had kicked one of his guests, an atheist, out of the studio, the channel held a follow-up discussion. TV host Mahmoud Abd Al-Halim asked why the Western media was so interested in the atheists an...

In late February, 2018, in a ceremony sponsored by Lebanon's Youth and Sports Minister, Hizbullah launched a 3D computer game for children and teens called "Holy Defense – Protecting the Homeland and the Holy Places," which simulates the organization's fighting in Syria. Accordin...

In a recent column in the English-language Saudi daily Arab News, Christian Palestinian-American columnist Ray Hanania laments that Christian Arabs receive more support from Israel than from their fellow Arabs. As an example he presents Palestinian-Christian filmmaker Shady Srour...

In a March 31, 2018 article in the Kuwaiti government daily Al-Watan, columnist 'Abdallah Al-Hadlaq harshly criticized the Hamas-led "Great Return March" initiative, stating that protests of this sort lead to chaos and are not accepted in Islam. Calling Hamas "terrorist" and "all...