Dispatches from Cairo #5: Bloody Sunday

The fifth installment of my Dispatches from Cairo series is now posted on The Daily Organ.

Sprinting away from a military charge on Sunday night I had a sinking “here we go again” feeling. The sense of déjà vu only intensified as I spent the evening following the tags #tahrir and #maspero on twitter, and learned of the 24 confirmed deaths, the 200 wounded, and that the curfew had been reinstated, if only temporarily.

Dispatches from Cairo #4: Islamist Protests and Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman

This is the fourth installment of my Dispatches From Cairo series in The Daily Organ. 

The protests that continue to flare up around the capital are not solely the handiwork of left-leaning secularists. Protesting has become the weapon of choice for any group with something to say, and after 30 years of not being able to say anything, people have a lot of bottled up anger to express.

‘More Democracy, More Openness’: Norway’s Lesson

This article was published recently on both the MidEastPosts and MasterPeace blogs.

The “madman or terrorist” debate raging over the appropriate reaction to Anders Behring Breivik is dangerously obtuse. Simon Jenkin’s assertion in the Guardian’s Comment is free ‘that [because] he does something terrible does not make him a terrorist’ is nonsensical. The very definition of a terrorist is someone who uses violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims. By any interpretation of his actions Breivik fits this description. While his mental health is something for medical experts to speculate on, he did not act in vacuum free from outside influences, and he had clearly stated political aims. His targets were both directly connected with Prime Minister Jens Stolenberg’s Labour Party, and his avowed purpose was to protest against the government’s stance on the perceived threat of Islam and it’s “loose” stance on immigration. 

France Banning the Burka: an affront to Liberté, Égalité and Fraternité

This is an article I posted on the MasterPeace blog back in April, when France became the first in a succession of supposedly "liberal" European democracies to ban the wearing of the face-covering Islamic veil. The ban has now spread to Belgium and Italy, and the arguments contained in this article can be applied to those countries as well as to France.

A few days ago, France’s ban on the face-covering Islamic veil came into effect, and all I could think was ‘what the hell were they thinking?’