Arab Awakening's columnists offer their weekly perspective on what is happening on the ground in the Middle East. Leading the week, Libyans say no to militias.
Using cutting-edge human rights perception polls, the authors explore links between social class and domestic human rights movements in Mexico, Colombia, Morocco, and India. Social elites, they find, are better connected to human rights representatives than the masses. A contribution to the openGl
While many praise the remarkable determination of Sahrawi activists to maintain the peaceful character of their struggle, others signal this as a key factor behind their failure to secure a just resolution.
A career in journalism took Francis Ghilès to the heart of power in the post-independence states of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. He saw at first hand how the oil and natural-gas industries in Algeria fuelled state ambitions, political rivalries and dreams of open frontiers. In a rich personal ref
Self-awareness and cultural pride are very important. But are they to be centrifugal or centripetal? The ideologization of this issue is probably inevitable. Our columnist tackles the Berber question, and the continuing decline in Moroccan newspaper circulation.
In which the author increases his understanding of the intellectual and educational condition of modern Morocco with the help of leading historian, Maati Monjib; and, returns to his favourite subject of language, this time with a Gordian Knot just waiting to be cut.
The Shari’a is largely irrelevant to most important issues of policy and administration in the economy and in government. Its historical and symbolic locus is on family and sexuality: patriarchal rights, segregation of the sexes, enforced female modesty.
Europe has so far failed to build a comprehensive relationship with countries across the Mediterranean. This is a missed opportunity that adversely affects the state of security and democracy for all parties.
Bookshops are places where the rhizome of culture breaks ground, connected beneath the earth but apparently separate on the surface. But in Morocco at least, something dreadful is happening to girls between the age of ten and 20, and leaching away their early literacy.
Dispassionate analysis of social and political problems is what is needed to build a better society. Thirty Moroccan youth activists seize the chance, in the process moving the author, who meanwhile finds himself drawn into the country’s language wars.
The effects of learning Arabic from two different angles – as a cause of illiteracy in Morocco, and a spurned langue d’immigration in France – prompting reflections on what constitutes a ‘modern foreign language’ in the European mind.
For years, human rights and women's organizations have been demanding reform of Article 475 of the Moroccan Penal Code which allows rapists to escape punishment if they marry their victim. It is time to break the wall of silence about these archaic customs.
