Saudi Professor Faces Charges After Fighting for Free Speech
This Opinion was first published on Al-Monitor.com on June 28, 2012
What are the limits of free speech and open dissent in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? They are often unclear and seemingly arbitrary, but there is no doubt that Dr. Mohammad al-Qahtani, a professor and activist, went well beyond them, and he knew it. He was hardly surprised when Saudi prosecutors, finally fed up with his vociferous denunciations of the regime, hit him with a long list of criminal charges. He had predicted it, and in the context of Saudi Arabia, he was asking for it.
Introduction to Higher Education and the Middle East: Empowering Under-served and Vulnerable Populations
Originally posted October 2010
This second edition of the MEI Viewpoints series on Higher Education and the Middle East focuses on Empowering Under-served and Vulnerable Populations.
Saudi Arabia Moves Closer to A New Generation of Leaders
This Opinion first appeared in Al-Monitor on June 16, 2012
The death Saturday (June 16) of Saudi Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz is likely to have little short-term impact on the economic or political life of the kingdom or on its international relations. But it does accelerate the inevitable transition to a new generation of rulers who may have very different ideas about how the al-Saud should rule their people, deal with their neighbors and manage the critical relationship with the United States.
The cacophony of bullhorns, fireworks and frenzied cross-country barnstorming in trucks, busses and three-wheeled “tuk-tuks” emblazoned with candidates’ posters has come to an end, and a historic moment has arrived: tens of millions of Egyptians are heading to the polls today in the first democratic presidential election in the country’s history, an election borne out of the 2011 revolution that ousted former President Hosni Mubarak and injected Egyptians with a novel feeling of excitement for participatory democracy.
Dr. Makram-Ebeid, along with ten other liberal and leftists members, recently resigned from Egypt's Constituent Assembly in protest over its Islamist majority, leaving only five women and five Christians remaining in the assembly. With the transition process in turmoil, a diverse coalition of Egyptian generals, liberals, bureaucrats, and judges are turning to the courts to attempt to diversify the composition of the Constituent Assembly, which is currently almost entirely dominated by Islamists – both Salafists and members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
