Amal Hamidallah-van Hees

November 29, 2011

New Civil Society Zine Up and Ready!

In the second issue of Arseh Sevom's Civil Society Magazine, called David and Goliath, we asked contributors to tell us what comes after all the unity, after the giant is slain, after the monster is gone? What comes next? It was clearly a difficult question; one without a simple answer. The story of David and Goliath is a story of the (perceived) weak against the powerful, of prevailing against the odds, of bravery and leadership. However modern day Goliaths aren't so easy to dispel with one little pebble.While we may not have definitively answered the question, "What comes next," the articles in this Zine share ideas about human rights, the Arab Anger, Islamicization, leadership, and women's rights. These all make important contributions to our search for ways forward, while engaging a variety of voices from a range of experiences and locations.
November 23, 2011

Letter from the Editor

The term "Arab Spring" has always felt ominous to me. After all, we all know what happened after the short-lived Prague Spring of 1968, which was brutally squashed. As I write this, we read that more than 32 people have been killed in clashes in Cairo's Tahir Square. Thousands have been arrested. Amnesty is reporting that people in Egypt who dare to express themselves are being arrested and tried in military courts.
November 22, 2011

A letter from an Arab woman to her Iranian friend

In this text given as a speech at The twenty second international conference of the Iranian Women's Studies Foundation (IWSF), Amal Hamidallah-van Hees addresses the fears and hopes of Arab and Islamic women watching the changes in their region. "We are watching with our eyes wide open," she writes, noting that many lessons were learned by the revolution in Iran. She urges women to engage with politics and Islam. "We will claim our space, even the religious one."
November 9, 2011

Contributors

Amal Hamidallah-van Hees (A Letter to an Iranian Woman from Her Arab Friend) is the director of Bridging the Gulf Foundation for human security in the […]