The writer reflects on the role of language, foreign and Arabic, colloquial and classical, in Morocco; and on the appropriation, polarisation, and xenophobia of the Egyptian counter-revolution.
The author considers the wave of gory Isis propaganda and the violent wielding of an old tool with new vectors, a social media Tamburlaine; and remembers the Moroccans who served in the World Wars.
Like much of the rest of the Arab Spring, the urge of the millennial generation across North Africa and the Middle East for a more multicultural world seems far from realization, but they have put it on a future Arab agenda. Its moment will return.
I was interested by the electricity in the air, the aggression and the disarray of those in power.
Arab Awakening's columnists offer their weekly perspective on what is happening on the ground in the Middle East. Leading the week, Welcome to the 'Factory of Men'.
Three characteristics are often viewed as important in Arab societies: concern over politics, the place of religion, and the importance of family. Investigation of these 'Arabness' features in Morocco produces some intriguing results.
The more the Gulf states pay a reputational cost in the west for maintaining this system of exploitation, the harder it will be for them to resist demands for serious reform.
The author asks how small children will survive sukuns - Morocco's spoken tongue; ponders the word "museum"; and closes with a favourite Moroccan parable.
On February 6th, fifteen migrants died while trying to enter the Spanish exclave of Ceuta in North Africa. The Spanish border guards, with their notorious and lethal "push-back" tactics, are largely to blame. Read more from our You Tell Us bloggers.
The author ponders literacy, the literate 'red blood corpuscles of society', and the way Arabic is taught in the Middle East and North Africa. He explores the shaky relationship between language and expression and closes with a story of an American seduced into 'deprovincialisation' by Arabic.
Laying bare the social and economic structures of oppression to reconstruct a national psyche from the ruins – how an idea caught on.
