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Saudi Arabia has Squandered the Opportunity to Renew its Moribund Political System
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 With the approach of the third anniversary of the accession of the Saudi monarch, King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, to the throne in the summer of 2005, it appears that the great hopes for reform in connection with him have dissipated, or are on the way to dissipating. An increasing number of Saudi citizens and intellectuals are disappointed. |
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| Extremists Succeed in Abolishing Women's Athletic Program at Saudi University | | The King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals has suspended its special women's athletic program because of heavy pressure and criticism from by religious hardliners, who have denounced the participation of girls in sports and athletics and demanded the abolition of the sports program once and for all. |
| Supporters of Al-Qaeda in Bahrain Carry Picture of Bin Laden, Behead Effigy of American Soldier | | The leader of the “Al-Adalah Al-Wataniyya” ("National Justice") Movement in Bahrain, Abdullah Hashim, defended the actions of participants in a demonstration the Movement organized in Manama on Saturday, in protest against Bahrain's reopening its embassy in Baghdad. Demonstrators carried pictures of the leader of Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, and beheaded a mannequin representing an American soldier. Hashim said, "Sheikh Osama bin Laden is one of the leaders of the Islamic resistance in the world." |
| Saudi Reformist Abdullah Bin Bjad Al-Otaibi: The Dialogue of Religions and the Ovens of the Extremists | | Abdullah bin Bjad Al-Otaibi is Saudi writer and analyst who focuses on religious and social issues. He has written trenchant analyses of Islamic extremism, and publishes extensively in Saudi and Gulf newspapers. This activity has earned him the enmity of fundamentalists and extremists in his homeland. In early February the Saudi Wahhabi cleric, Abdul Rahman Al-Barrak, issued a fatwa denouncing and excommunicating Bin Bjad and another Saudi writer for articles they had published on contemporary Islamic topics. |
| Jordanian Reformist Shaker Al-Nabulsi:The Kurdish Holocaust and the Crisis of Conscience | | Shaker Al-Nabulsi is a prominent Arab reformist, and he is a forceful advocate for secular democracy and human and civil rights in the Middle East. He has published on issues of civil society, contemporary politics and society, the media, and Islam and has been a harsh critic of Islamist extremism. In addition to his print publications, he has been a frequent contributor to this website. |
| The Issue of Sectarianism in the Arab world | | At the conference of the Second National Dialogue of Bahraini Political Organizations, which convened in Manama on Saturday, March 30, 2008, the editor of the newspaper "Al-Waqt," Ebrahim Bashmi, remarked: "If all the speeches we heard this morning were opposed to sectarianism, then who is a sectarian?" |
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