Safwan Dahoul one of the Arab world's leading painters is in London showcasing his work at the Ayyam Gallery and working with the arts organisation Edge of Arabia. The Damascus based artist whose work is owned by institutes and private collections all over the world, now lives in Dubai due...

Why can't Theresa May just prosecute Abu Qatada in an open transparent court instead of deporting him to Jordan? The 'War on Terror' has granted her extraordinary powers for evidence gathering, as well as having special courts without a jury at her disposal. She can charge the accused...

Out of all the places to meet Zuheir Salem, the number two man of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood (SMB), a David Brent-style office in Alperton, north London, is probably the least expected. The office of the SMB is so elusive that even the...

Many Syrians I spoke to on a recent visit to Syria hold the UN partially responsible for the deaths of 70, 000 lives in the unfolding humanitarian disaster that is wracking the country. There is an impression that the UN is propping up the regime by working and delivering aid...

Walid Saffour is sitting in a light, minimalist office overlooking Hyde Park. A representative of the Syrian National Coalition of the Revolutionary Opposition, he seems like a cross between a gentle Syrian uncle and a seasoned diplomat. Yet while he is affable and polite, there is an intrinsic reserve about...

A recent symposium organized by the Emirati Center for Human Rights and the All Party Parliamentary Human Rights Group highlighted the dilemmas that British policy makers face when dealing with Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) countries. The symposium was chaired by MP Mark Durkan and included distinguished academic Dr Christopher Davidson,...

Faddy Sahloul, the founder of Hand in Hand for Syria, rubs his tired eyes and pulls heavily on his cigarette. From his small flat in Rayhaniya, on the Turkish-Syrian border, Sahloul is struggling with the logistics of delivering aid inside Syria. As if this was not daunting enough, he has...

The mountains Jebel Akrad (Mount of the Kurds) and Jebel Turkman (Mount of the Turkmans) in Lattakia are under the control of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). The Sunni brigades in the area were born out of necessity, rather than any overarching political ideology. Zahir Baybar's brigade, for...

There are more ways than one that Turkey is feeling the impact of the Syrian conflict. Apart from the influx of Syrian refugees the crisis is also affecting the politics of many Turks. Some believe that the arrival of NATO patriot missiles in Adana hasn't provided security; rather it has...

On 2 February articles will be written about the Hama massacre but few will really comprehend its impact on Syrian society. For several weeks in February 1982, Assad's forces crushed a revolt lead by a splinter group of the Muslim Brotherhood. In twenty one days the regime killed an estimated...

Abdul Bari Atwan, editor of al-Quds Al-Arabi, is one of the few journalists who met Osama bin Laden in the mountains of Afghanistan. The description of his encounter in his book The Secret History of Al-Qaeda (AQ) is vivid and reveals the tension between Osama the man he met and...

Muhammad Ra'd is not your usual Syrian FSA soldier. He doesn't wield guns nor wear combats. Yet he is the embodiment of his nome de guerre, Abu'l Huda; the father of guidance. To the FSA, him and his likes, are what Pravda was to the Bolsheviks, an information resource that...

A recent Observer article quoted the Hamas leader, Khaled Meshal, as saying "we don't kill Jews because they are Jews. We kill the Zionists because they are conquerors..." Ali Abunimah from Electronic Intifada called it "a blatant mistranslation". The correct translation as anyone who knows...

Richard Wright died on 28 November 1960. The Afro-American writer paved the way for future writers like James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison and Toni Morrison and prepared the ground for the civil rights movement. Both his memoirs Black Boy and Native Son were instant bestsellers and changed the literary scene in...

How do autocratic anomalies like the Gulf States weather the Arab Spring? Given that these states are the offspring of British imperialism it is remarkable that they are so stable. Some like Qatar are spearheading the Arab Spring through its broadcasting capability and funding the Syrian opposition. Others despite their...

When France was moralizing over the Armenian genocide the Turkish Prime Minister, Erdogan accused them of hypocrisy.

France had, after all, not fully recognized its own atrocities in the Algerian war of Independence in 1968. The lofty French revolutionary principles of Equality, Liberty, and Fraternity were not...

When Syrian secret police showed an interest in me, the Swedish embassy was very supportive. When an American convert to Islam texted me in the middle of the night saying: "get me out of here I'm in a Syrian police cell", the US embassy got him out the same day....

Recently, opposition parties have asked the Tunisian Islamist-led government to clarify its position with regards to democracy. This follows a leaked conversation between Rachid Ghannouchi and Salafists where the leader of the Ennahda party, is filmed discussing the inclusion of the shariah in the Tunisian constitution and the...

This week Syrian writer and journalist Samar Yazbak was awarded the Pen Pinter prize jointly with Carol Ann Duffy. Ms. Yazbak was recognized for her courage in opposing the Syrian regime in her book, a woman in the cross fire. The book is an insider's account of the Syrian uprising...