What Use Were All The Wars?
My birth at the end of July 1967 makes me a child of the naksa, or setback, as the Arab defeat during the June 1967 war is euphemistically known in Arabic. There was no Summer of Love for us in 1967. We Children of the Naksa were born not only on the cusp of loss but also of the kind of disillusionment that whets the appetite of religious zealots.

Despite early hope: like father, like son
The first time I met Anwar al-Bunni, in June 2005, one of Syria's numerous state-owned newspapers had just called him a traitor. Over tea that he made himself and countless cigarettes that he smoked as furiously as he defended human...

Wife beaters set the tone as backward Imams threaten to overwhelm 21st Century Muslims
Enter stage right: German judge Christa Datz-Winter, whose claim to infamy was her refusal to grant a fast-track divorce to a German Muslim woman who had complained that her husband beat her. The judge said both partners came from a “Moroccan cultural environment in which it is not uncommon for a man to exert a right of corporal punishment over his wife,” and she cited passages in the Qu’ran that she said sanction physical abuse. How cruelly ironic for the unfortunate wife who tried to make the most of western laws that are always waved in the face of Muslims as the pinnacle of civilized behaviour if only we would learn from them. Here was a Muslim woman who really did need to be saved from an abusive husband – not the ‘Evil Muslim Man’ imagined as lurking in all our closets, but the real thing – a brutal man who beat his wife. Right at the moment when she pushed to take advantage of those laws, the Muslim woman who really did need to be saved was kicked back – by a woman no less – into the arms of the very misogyny that the West is always trying to save us from. So we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. Judge Datz-Winter might be the most maligned multiculturalist du jour, but in time we will celebrate her for so bluntly – if unintentionally – setting on fire the house of cards that so many of my fellow Muslims struggle to keep up around women’s rights. One need only type ‘Islam + wife + beating’ as a search item on YouTube to learn that Judge Datz-Winter’s idiocy finds plenty of ugly echo in the chorus of fools otherwise known as our zealous imams and scholars trying to decide exactly how much harm to a woman their God allows. These unfortunately all-too real and evil men point to the very same passages in the Qu’ran that the judge used to turn down the fast-track divorce. But here’s the difference – Judge Datz-Winter was removed from the case and could face disciplinary action. By contrast, who is disciplining our imams and scholars? Unless we – Muslims – push and clamour for the removal of the men who advocate wife beating in the name of the Qu’ran then to remain a Muslim woman today would require nothing short of mental gymnastics.

Qaradawi damages Palestine’s cause by turning global issue into Islamist weapon
By Mona Eltahawy The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a Muslim issue. It is a dispute over land, it is about an occupation that must end and it is about a people who deserve a state. But it is not a...

Threats Unlikely to Silence Bloggers as Egypt Jails Youth for “Insults”
"We (the Egyptian people) are enduring oppression, poverty and torture, so the least we can do is insult the president.” Mubarak does not own Egypt and he does not own Islam. The bloggers will continue to remind him. And they cannot be silenced. Not just because they know how to hopscotch over blocked IP addresses but because it is impossible to silence youth. They will always find a way to have the last word.

The Power of Blogs in the Arab World
moment a recent triple whammy--or hat trick, to use soccer parlance--scored by Egyptian blogs: One: the exposure by blogs of sexual assaults on women in downtown Cairo by gangs of men during a religious holiday in Cairo in October 2006. Bloggers forced the issue onto the national agenda, turning it into headlines from satellite television channels to the Associated Press.

What Does a Muslim Look Like?
Angry Bearded Muslim Man is easily recognizable. He is usually yelling “Allahu Akbar” and burning something – an effigy of U.S. President George W. Bush, an American flag or an Israeli flag, preferably all three.

Has the U.S. Abandoned Egypt’s “Impatient Patriots?”
President Hosni Mubarak might seem to be a reassuring return to business as usual but it is surely nothing but a temporary stop-gap. American professions of support for democracy in the Middle East are usually paid little heed but some of the region’s “impatient patriots” who dared to take to the streets throughout Cairo, Beirut, and other cities thought things were a little different in 2005. Some took the Americans at their word, such as the Egyptian who told me quietly that he had sent U.S. President George W. Bush a letter of congratulations for winning a second term in office. He was happy the Americans had overthrown Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and thought that meant a warning to the region’s dictators.

Virgil Goode, the “bad” American
Muslim Americans – precisely those very same people that Rep. Goode wants to keep out – are uniquely positioned to tell these stories of America. The local and the personal stories that give a human face to Muslims and to America. And Keith Ellison, precisely the very same Muslim and American that Goode refuses to acknowledge – is uniquely positioned to help erase the “bad” American from Muslim imagination.

Copenhagen Sharia Conference Celebrates “Heresy”
By Mona Eltahawy COPENHAGEN – This summer at the end of a day-long conference in Copenhagen on freedom of expression in the Arab world a young man with slightly faltering Arabic asked to speak to me. “Would you give me...

In appreciation of the radical imams of the West
Let us appreciate the radical imams of the West. As a liberal Muslim woman I am generally loathe to express gratitude to conservative men, but the more these imams perfect the ability to say something stupid - often in Arabic, thinking that no one will find out - the more attainable they make my goal: to show that these men do not represent all Muslims.

What it means to be Muslim
They went to the same school in Saudi Arabia – so how did they turn out so differently? By Mona Eltahawy Yasir Kazi was the last person I wanted to sit next to on the plane taking us from the...

Writing for an Arab Newspaper is Like Playing Hopscotch in a Minefield
Over the past two months, the Egyptian regime has brutally cracked down against democracy activists and journalists, beating and imprisoning many of the men and women I wrote about. Several of the detainees have accused security forces of torturing them in jail.

Once Again, for Muslims, It's 'Us Versus Us'
If anyone is on a crusade against Muslims it is Al Qaeda itself, whose sympathizers most likely carried out the attack in Dahab, the third in Sinai in 18 months.