A group of Saudi activists has begun another campaign for the lifting of a ban on women driving, urging women to get behind the wheel on Oct. 26 in defiance, according to its website. The “October 26 Driving” campaign says it has gathered 8,700 signatures for a petition it published on Sept. 21. “If the…
Saudi Arabia’s ban on women driving is not mandated by any text in Sharia, the Islamic legal code which forms the basis for most Saudi law, the head of its morality police told Reuters on Thursday. Sheikh Abdulatif Al al-Sheikh stressed that he has no authority to change Saudi policy on women driving, but his…
Israel’s Walla News site offers a fascinating and, I think, crucial insight (in Hebrew) into the turmoil in Egypt and Syria. It’s by Dror Ze’evi, a professor of Turkish and Middle East history at Ben-Gurion University in the Negev. He writes that the two conflicts, however similar or related they might appear on the surface,…
An international rights group condemned the sentencing of a Saudi Arabian website founder to be whipped 600 times and jailed for seven years for violating Islamic values, saying it undermined the kingdom’s stated support for religious debate. A court in Jeddah handed down the sentence on Raif Badawi, who started the ‘Free Social Liberals’ website…
The editor of a Saudi Arabian social website has been sentenced to seven years in prison and 600 lashes for founding an Internet forum that violates Islamic values and propagates liberal thought, Saudi media reported on Tuesday. Raif Badawi, who started the “Free Saudi Liberals” website to discuss the role of religion in Saudi Arabia,…
The director general of Saudi Arabian Airlines told an Arabic newspaper that the airline does not discriminate against Israelis, but cannot accept passengers not permitted entry to the country. In an interview Friday with the Al-Watan Arabic daily, Khaled Al-Molhem pointed out that there is no diplomatic relationship between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and…
Well, surprise, surprise. After months of hearing from all the wise pundits from left to right that Secretary of State Kerry was beyond his depth in Israeli-Palestinian peace-making, that he was “naïve and ham-handed” (מגושם in the original), “dumb” and “clueless,” it turns out they all got it wrong. Of course, they’re still a long…
Now that the White House has officially acknowledged the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons, the question is no longer whether we get involved in the Syrian civil war, but how. This represents a victory for the smallish, outspoken group of liberal interventionists who have been arguing for an American military role, while trying to…
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