The Old Man or Problems of Patriarchy

Tariq peered out of the window of the living room of his third-floor flat, watching a glow-worm of traffic inch its way in puma-wrapped technicolour across the wide thoroughfares of Al Barsha 1, Dubai. Of course, he’d quite gotten used to the way the traffic signals changed colour by the eon rather than by the minute, though he himself rarely drove in Dubai.

Women Doing Politics in Lebanon

At the Women in Front Conference on Lebanese Female candidates in the 2018 Parliamentary Elections – Challenges and Barriers. اكيد الأبوية المتغلغلة بالمجتمع اللبناني والقوانين والذهنية هي من أهم العوائق للمساواة الجنسانية ولتمكين المرأة في الحياة السياسية. طالما العقلية السائدة هي أن “دور المرأة(فقط) إدارة المنزل”، والجندر “مسألة نسائية” وليس مسألة وطنية، “وعلى المرأة(فقط) انو […]

Women's Rights in the Middle East Today: Law, Religion and Culture – International Conference in Cyprus

I had the honor of participating in this wonderful gathering of scholars, activists and artists working on gender and women’s rights issues in Southwestern Asia and North Africa. Once again, Dar al Kalima University College of Arts and Culture and CAFCAW have succeeded in challenging the intellect and establishing a dialogue between diverse identities and currents. The conference was […]

The Only Woman Composer

Above the traffic of the street below, pocking the low periwinkle sky with polka-dots of errant lighting, colour, Maryam was twiddling her thumbs.  Outside the wall-wide window, the vehicles in this, one of Beirut’s most uppity zones, made honking sounds like tweezers or like thick blobs of sound on the air, with the odd swift […]

زواج ميغان ماركل انتصار على الطبقية

انتظرت بعد أن هدأت موجة الحديث عن زفاف الأمير هاري والعروس ميغان ماركل؛ لأتحدث بكل صراحة عن أهم النقاط؛ التي تغافل عنها البعض، وبداْ أكثر اهتماماً بمن كان من بين الحضور. يعد هذا الزفاف بمثابة نقلة في البلاط الملكي بل ورسالة تعايش نحن في أشد الحاجة لها الآن. غالباً ما تكون الروايات من نسج الخيال؛ […]

Reclaiming My (Our) Regional Identity (ies)

Few days ago, I asked my students to search for the origins and use of the ‘Middle East’ expression and identify the most common stereotypes of the ‘Middle East’ and ‘Middle Easterners’. Following the plenary session where they presented their findings, we discussed the importance of deconstructing 100+ year old taxonomy and theories. By deconstruction, […]

How I Do Feminism

I will not focus here on answering the question of ‘why’ doing feminism in a closed circle with tiny windows, but I will definitely talk about the ‘how’ – in fact, the ‘how’ is related to the ‘why’ -: while seeing and defining ‘change’ from different yet complementary perspectives – as a professor and academic […]

ترتفع صيحتي

ترتفع صيحتي كلما أسمع شخصاً يقول لي: المرأة ملك الرجل! المرأة زينة الرجل! المرأة جزمة تغيرها كلما تشاء! خلق الله المرأة لتخدم الرجل. ترتفع صيحتي بشدة عندما أسمع إمرأة تنادي بأهمية وأحقية الرجل في إمتلاك المرأة بينما المرأة لا تملك زوجها لأن السيد يملك العبد لكن العبد لا يملك سيده. ترتفع صيحتي في مواجهة فكر […]

A never ending fight for Peace in the Middle East?

When I came back from Montreal (Quebec, Canada) to Lebanon in 2006-2007, all my friends called me ‘crazy’: ‘How can you leave a stable and secure environment for a volcano?’ I had my personal and family reasons, and I was convinced of the inevitable change yet to occur in the Middle East. I wanted to […]