Egyptian Democracy?: Maikel Nabil and SCAF's assault on freedom of speech

This article is also posted on MidEastPosts under the title Egyptian Blogger Jailed: What Sort of Democracy is This?.

While in excess of 12,000 individuals currently languish in military jails, one case in particular has caught the attention of activists and the media alike, causing many to cast a darkly ironic glance at the “free and fair” electoral process currently underway in Egypt.

Maikel Nabil, a Coptic blogger, was sentenced on Wednesday to two years in prison and fined L.E.200 (around £22) for “insulting the military” in a blog post he published in March entitled “The army and the people were never one hand”.

Sexual Harassment IS a Big Deal

This article is also posted on MidEastPosts.

If Egypt is to become a more pleasant place to live it needs to do more than stamp out corruption and implement democracy. The political “clean-up” of Egypt needs to go hand in hand with a societal “clean-up” of community values, and an examination of what can be done to make the city nicer for everybody.

Promise of Arab Spring Failing to Deliver for Middle-Eastern Women

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

The Arab Spring has, not for the first time in the history of Middle-Eastern protest movements, proven beyond doubt that the women of the region are willing to, and capable of, taking their equal place alongside men in society, in both their public and private lives.

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?’