Kawthar

Yet, even when recognition of this experience in the media is important, I wonder to what degree this can an open discussion on LGBTQ rights for women in Islam when Muslim women are depicted as victims of Islam, as “secretly” sexualized beings, as girls trying to overcome a religious establishment or as women pursuing a fairy tales usually in the forms of marriage? Is it perhaps a politicized change in media coverage? What will be the next shifts that we can expect to see? - Kawthar

The Syrian government has ordered blocks on text messages when they contain politically sensitive terms such as “revolution” or “demonstration,” according to two people familiar with the filtering systems. A unit of the Syrian intelligence apparatus, known as “Branch 225,” often issues the instructions on which messages to block, they say. Syriatel Mobile Telecom SA, the country’s largest mobile- phone operator, conducts the blocking with equipment from Cellusys Ltd., a privately-held company based in Dublin, according to one of the people, who is familiar with the filtering - Kawthar

Iranian female ninjas (kunoichi) learn Ninjutsu in a club. Iran has a force of almost 3500 female ninjas. - Kawthar

For Khaleed the whole episode was terrible and frightening: “I was interrogated by the criminal investigation bureau for thirty long minutes, but which seemed like eternity. I was then ‘ordered’ to stop meeting people through manjam because ‘there are people there who have contacts with foreign intelligence networks’.” - Kawthar

Police confirmed to the BBC that Hamza Kashgari was sent back to Saudi Arabia on Sunday despite protests from human rights groups. - Kawthar

Among 2011′s best sort-of-children’s books was a magnificent volume culling the best illustrations from 130 years of Brothers Grimm fairy tales — a visual history of some of the most memorable storytelling ever published. Visions of the Jinn: Illustrators of the Arabian Nights is a remarkable tome that applies a similar lens to another infinitely influential piece of timeless storytelling, whose impact spans from the poetry of Goethe and Rilke to the contemporary fiction of Borges and Proust to the visuals and narratives of video games. - Kawthar

The feud is rolling across western Libya, one of the conflict’s many reckonings that are posing an early challenge to the country’s new leaders. Race has made this fight especially toxic: Tawergans say Misurata has ignored betrayals by its other neighbors, singling out Tawerga because most of the residents are black. Graffiti on their emptied homes deepens their conviction: “Misurata’s slaves” appears on many walls. Fighters from Misurata say race had nothing to do with it. The Tawergans’ crimes were unforgivable, they said, and as far as they were concerned, the town had ceased to exist. On Thursday, a spokesman for the transitional government said Misurata had officially softened its stance and would allow residents of Tawerga without blood on their hands to return home. - Kawthar

The militias are proving to be the scourge of the revolution’s aftermath. Though they have dismantled most of their checkpoints in the capital, they remain a force, here and elsewhere. A Human Rights Watch researcher estimated there are 250 separate militias in the coastal city of Misurata, the scene of perhaps the fiercest battle of the revolution. In recent months those militias have become the most loathed in the country. Residents say some of the fighters have sought to preserve law and order in the midst of government helplessness. Militias from Benghazi and Zintan are trying to protect a refugee camp of 1,500 people driven from their homes in Tawergha by fighters from Misurata, who bitterly blamed them for aiding Colonel Qaddafi’s assault on their town. Since the Tawerghans arrived in the camp, which once housed Turkish construction workers in Tripoli, Misurata militiamen have staged raids five or six times there despite the presence of the other militias, detaining dozens, many - Kawthar

The memos, as described by the sources, one of whom has read them and another who is intimately familiar with the case, investigated and debunked reports from 2007 and 2008 accusing the CIA, at the direction of the White House, of covertly supporting Jundallah -- a Pakistan-based Sunni extremist organization. Jundallah, according to the U.S. government and published reports, is responsible for assassinating Iranian government officials and killing Iranian women and children. - Kawthar

In an amateur video allegedly captured on 20 January, Badr Team 1 (who also called themselves the Badr Battalion) accused graffiti artists of being foreign agents and traitors to Egypt. The team called on all honorable Egyptian youth to erase graffiti, as it was "a method for agents and traitors to spread their violent ideologies against the police, the army and Egyptian traditions. - Kawthar

So I had to make a choice, and our latest candidate in the “Let’s Play Dress-Up Like Muslim Women and Call it an Edgy, Disruptive Political Statement” is An-Sofie Dewinter, daughter of Filip Dewinter, a leading member of the Vlaams Belang, the successor to Vlaams Blok, which you may remember as the Belgian party that was actually outlawed due to inciting racial hatred. (To put things into perspective, the Front National and the Austrian Freedom Party are still around. The Vlaams Blok was THAT BAD.) Anyway, our newest niqab artist, An-Sofie, is shown on the pages of Belgian daily Het Laatste News in a bikini, and with a niqab. Over her breasts is a banner that asks “Freedom or Islam?” and over her hips, another banner saying “Dare to Choose.” - Kawthar

. I’m already forced to explain myself to heteronormative straight folks. Now, I have to fight homonormative rigidity about my my emotional and sexual pluralities - Kawthar

Hamza Kashgari, a young Saudi writer, caused a firestorm when he posted a series of tweets on the birthday of Prophet Mohammad last week. In his tweets, Kashgari imagined a conversation with the Prophet in which he said they are equal, and that although he admires many of the Prophet’s characteristics there are also others that he disliked. - Kawthar

One moment that I was privileged to observe was on Thursday night, where four young men –barely in their twenties – stopped in front of the mural Ammar was painting of the 19-year-old martyr Mohamed Mostafa, and stood completely transfixed. Then they began to cry. I asked them what was wrong, and they said ‘He’s our friend; we just came from his burial now.’ And they stared at the mural. Ammar approached them, explained that he wanted to commemorate each and every one of their friends who’d died, and that he’d found their photos on Facebook. ‘If you know any others who died, if you have any photos, please give them to me,’ he pleaded. And they nodded. It’s one thing to see a massive crowd heaving with incontrollable fury and chants of vengeance, it’s another to see young men completely taken aback and touched by the sight of a beautiful graffiti. - Kawthar

Two Saudi female activists have filed law suits against the government for refusing to issue them driver's licences and banning them from driving a car, they told AFP on Saturday. - Kawthar

Qahtani tries to lure and captivate his audience with his artistic tricks. His work reflects on the rampant confusion of Saudi society, a “sexual confusion” that is a taboo subject. - Kawthar

Besheer insists that the movement Egypt suffered from strong repression at the hands of the security forces since its establishment; the iron hand of the security forces tightly gripped the stadium. During the past three years, the security police have routinely arrested several Ultras the night before big matches, and then released them the following day. In one famous incident, the police chased the Ultras White Knights – associated with Zamalek Club – throughout the streets when they demonstrated in memory of the Palestinian Intifada. - Kawthar

As Palestinian LGBT activist Haneen Maikey explains, “It doesn’t matter what the sexual orientation of the soldier at a checkpoint is, whether he can serve openly or not. What matters is that he’s there at all.” Sami Shamali, also a member of the Palestinian LGBT group, Al Qaws, agreed, “the apartheid wall was not created to keep Palestinian homophobes out of Gay Israel, and there is no magic door for gay Palestinians to pass through.” - Kawthar

The protest against the racism and discrimination against Ethiopian Jews continues. Yesterday a few dozen people, most of them Ethiopians, gathered for a small protest near the Tel Aviv Museum. No less than 18 were arrested; among them was Ulet Hararo, who marched last month from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to protest racism and discrimination against his community. According to police, protesters were trying to block a street and the arrests were carried out to maintain public order. - Kawthar

Especially in the Palestinian context, the artistic scene in the Arab world has all too often become obsessed with the lachrymose: emancipatory impulse is cast aside in favour of an inordinate focus on struggle, loss and dispossession - with Handala at least partially superimposed over the canvass. - Kawthar

Besides violent dispersals of peaceful public protests that have resulted in hundreds of deaths, the military council has liberally abused the Emergency Law and arbitrarily arrested over 12,000 civilians--whereas Mubarak subjected 2,000 civilians to military trials during his 30-year rule. These arrests were made under the guise of maintaining security after police withdrew from their posts on 28 January, 2011. However, wanton arrests and military trials of civilians continued even after police returned. - Kawthar

Mansour accused the actor of offending Islam and its symbols, including beards and the Jilbab, a loose-fitting garment worn by some Muslims, the Egyptian news portal Ahramonline reported. - Kawthar

Saying that Quran is not inherently a patriarchal text does not automatically imply that Quran is inherently feminist either. - Kawthar

Pinkwashing has become a commonly used tag for the cynical promotion of LGBT bodies as representative of Israeli democracy. As its use as a shorthand proliferates, it must be situated within its wider geopolitical context. That is to say, pinkwashing works because both history and global international relations matter. So while it is crucial to challenge the Israeli state, it must be done in a manner that acknowledges the range of complicit actors - Kawthar

At what point would such demands no longer be interpreted by Twitter as being "a valid and properly scoped request from an authorized entity?" When the US State Department ruled a foreign government invalid, perhaps? - Kawthar