The Hijab as a Billboard for Islamist Propaganda

Saturday, October 29, 2022

Ibrahim Quraishi As the counter-revolutionary movement intensified for over five weeks in Iran, egregious State murders indeed transformed three young brave women by the names of Nika Shakarami,…

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Arab Spring: The End of Political Islam as We Know It

Monday, February 15, 2021

Abdullah Al-Arian Last month, Tunisia’s parliamentary speaker and head of the Ennahda Party, Rached Ghannouchi, came under fire for comments he made following a meeting with the French ambassador.  Following a recent string…

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Arab Spring: The end of political Islam as we know it

Saturday, December 26, 2020

Abdullah Al-Arian Last month, Tunisia’s parliamentary speaker and head of the Ennahda Party, Rached Ghannouchi, came under fire for comments he made following a meeting with the French ambassador.  Warning…

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Turkey’s Continued Care For ISIS Will End Badly

Thursday, November 7, 2019

Eight and a half years ago when the war on Syria began, Turkey played the most important role. Weapons were smuggled from Libya through Turkey to be delivered…

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Lights out: Tehran’s clampdown on Western habits

Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Kourosh Ziabari. Iran is a country in which many aspects of public life: governance, education, foreign relations and even people’s lifestyles are peculiarly determined by ideology. The authorities…

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Uprising in Sudan: Interview with Sudanese Comrades

Friday, June 7, 2019

As the Sudanese uprising enters its most critical conjuncture, with negotiations between the military council and the Forces for the Declaration of Freedom and Change collapsing, and the…

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Aziz Al-Azmeh in conversation: Part III Women, democracy and political Islamisms

Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Concluding part of dialogue: Political Islamism, women and democracy Ardeshir Mehrdad: As you have probably observed, amongst the authors dealing with feminist-Islamism some place their emphasis on the…

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Aziz Al-Azmeh in conversation Part 2: Political Islamisms the labour movement and women

Friday, December 7, 2018

This is the second part of a three-part conversation carried out with the Syrian academic Aziz Al-Azmeh. Here Professor Al-Azmeh addresses the various forms that political islams take…

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Aziz Al-Azmeh in conversation Part 1: political Islams, modernities and conservative-populist ideologies

Wednesday, December 5, 2018

This is the first part of a three-part conversation carried out with the Syrian academic Aziz Al-Azmeh. Here Aziz Al-Azmeh addresses the relation of contemporary political islams and…

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Israel: Netanyahu’s flirtation with the far right

Thursday, October 25, 2018

Domunique Vidal. As the extreme right continues its rise across Europe, Israel’s prime minister has decided to get closer. This decision, in the name of the fight against…

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Nadia Murad: I tell my story because it is the best weapon I have

Sunday, October 7, 2018

Nadia Murad. The slave market opened at night. We could hear the commotion downstairs where militants were registering and organising, and when the first man entered the room,…

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Is Israel Preparing A War On Hezbollah In Lebanon? Would Russia Expand Its Presence To South Lebanon?

Monday, August 13, 2018

Elijah J Magnier. Posted on American Herald Tribune August 13, 2018. Tension is silently mounting between Israel and Hezbollah on the Lebanese border, where frenetic preparations are taking…

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Women are at the forefront of challenging extremism in Idlib

Friday, July 6, 2018

Leila Al Shami. Posted on Leila’s Blog July 5, 2108. This was originally published at Chatham House. Here is a longer, un-edited version. In May, SMART News Agency,…

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The China–Pakistan Economic Corridor: Beyond the Rule of Capital?

Friday, June 8, 2018

Aasim Sajjad Akhtar. Posted on Monthly Review, June 1, 2018. In August 2017, seven months into the most reactionary U.S. presidency of modern times, Donald Trump ventured into…

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Turkey: Erdoğan’s Cesspit

Thursday, May 3, 2018

Daniel Finn. Editorial in New Left Review number 107. For the gatekeepers of established wisdom in the West, the rise of Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) was…

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Doubts, law and grand strategy: preparation for regime change in Iran

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Yassamine Mather Posted on Weekly Worker issue 1199, April 19, 2o18.  Behind the cruise missile strikes in Syria lies the plan to bring about regime change in Iran…

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Gravequake and Death by Stoning – two poems by Ziba Karbassi

Monday, April 9, 2018

Gravequake The song of the nightingale Is not up for sale. Tell your black crows tell Your black crows Caw Caw The song of the nightingale Is not…

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The Fall of Afrîn

Thursday, March 29, 2018

Güney Işıkara and Alp Kayserilioğlu. Posted on Jacobin 22nd March 2018. On January 20, the Turkish military launched its invasion of the Syrian-Kurdish canton of Afrîn in northwest…

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Iran: Prison sentence for Maryam Shariatmadari for taking off her hejab

Wednesday, March 28, 2018

Maryam Shariatmadari, one of the women of Enghelab Street, who took off her compulsory hejab as protest on 23rd February 2018, following the weeks of protest across in…

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Syria’s war of ethnic cleansing: Kurds threatened with beheading by Turkey’s allies if they don’t convert to extremism

Saturday, March 17, 2018

Patrick Cockburn. Posted on the Independent and on ZCommunications 17 March 2018. Syrian Arab militiamen leading the Turkish attack on Afrin in northern Syria are threatening to massacre…

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The War in Yemen and the Making of a Chaos State

Monday, March 5, 2018

Ben Watson Posted on the Atlantic February 3, 2018. A strange and worrisome silence settled over Yemen’s capital city of Sanaa after Houthi rebels seized power in broad…

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America Loves Islamic Terrorists (Abroad): ISIS as Proxy US Mercenaries

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Geoff Dutton. Posted in CounterPunch on February 16, 2018. By all accounts, wherever the Islamic State has gained and held territory, its residents suffer terrible oppression and deprivation….

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The Story Behind the Rise of Turkey’s Ulema

Friday, February 16, 2018

Ceren Lord. Posted by MERIP on February 4, 2018. At the heart of the controversy over Islamization in Turkey has been the accelerated rise and visibility of the…

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Hejab, Islamic totalitarianism and the opposition in Iran

Sunday, February 11, 2018

Jaleh Ahmadi. This article was first published in Iran Bulletin-Middle East Forum number 1,  2004. We are posting it in Middleast4Change because of its relevance in the current…

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Syria: Underground in Raqqa

Thursday, October 12, 2017

Patrick Cockburn. Published on London Review of Books October 2017, volume 39 number 20 pp15-17. Shortly before the siege of Raqqa began in June, Islamic State officials arrested…

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Arab Spring after six years: “I see the potential for something good.” – interview with Asef Bayat

Sunday, July 9, 2017

Sonja Zekri. Sociologist Asef Bayat talks to journalist Sonja Zekri about his views on the Arab spring and his concept of post-Islamism. First published on Koepfe und Ideen…

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After years of battling low-level Sunni insurgency, Iran hit by first IS attack

Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Mona Alami. Posted on Middle East Eye on June 9, 2017. The first attack in Iran claimed by IS follows years of low-level intensity Sunni militant activity. Already…

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The Baghdad Road: eyewitness in Mosul

Friday, June 9, 2017

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad. This article frist appeared on London Review of Books volume 39, number9, May 5, 2017. On the morning of 5 March a group of soldiers belonging…

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Lessons Learned (and Ignored): Iran’s 2017 Election in Context

Saturday, May 27, 2017

Arang Keshavarzian and Naghmeh Sohrabi First published May 26, 2017 on MERIP Report On May 23, 1997, Mohammad Khatami, who had spent most of the 1990s as head of…

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Don’t Go to the Doctor: The absurdities of the Prevent anti-terrorism program

Friday, May 26, 2017

Karma Nabulsi, London Review of Books. This essay appeared on LRB volume 39, May 18 2017. A colleague of mine at Oxford was asked to see an undergraduate…

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