Arab Awakening's columnists offer their weekly perspective on what is happening on the ground in the Middle East. Leading the week: Rita from Syria tells a harrowing tale of narrowly escaping death and the lesson she learned in the process.
In fact, Arab Muslim identity has never been key to Tunisian politics or foregrounded by any government.
University dean faces up to three years in prison for allegedly assaulting a veiled student.
The aspirations of the Jordanian people do not differ much from those of the Tunisians and Libyans and all those individuals who decided at some point to break down the wall of fear.
Some people think they’re entitled to more money just because Ben Ali is gone, when ironically, the country has only got poorer since then, and therefore it just can’t happen.
With Egypt’s first elected leader, Mohamed Morsi, SCAF is no longer going to be grooming a fourth military dynasty and will enter various degrees of power struggles only to discover that raw power can only take you so far.
Their excuse – that they are busy drafting the constitution – just isn’t convincing.
Tunisia has been credited with having the most effective democratic transition in the region. This now risks being derailed by the reintroduction of repressive laws.
The result so far of what seems to be a never-ending controversy over blasphemy in Tunisia sometimes seems to be leading the country pell-mell to a civil war.
The downfall of Ben Ali has brought to the fore an ever-growing fan club of the newly-elected Islamist government to replace them.
The rise of moderate Islamists in Tunisia have foregrounded LGBT rights, especially after the publication of the country’s first gay magazine.
How shall we deal with these fanatics? I say that it is up to the youth, including me, to answer these questions and to take action. But how?
