Unwanted Attention

Newsweek Jun 10, 2007 8:00 PM EDT

In the two years since he started writing political commentary on his Web site, Syrian blogger Ammar Abdulhamid has called President Bashar Assad a thug, a dictator, Mr. Bean, the village idiot and Fredo Corleone—the bumbling mob-family brother from “The Godfather.” A 41-year-old novelist and the son of Syria’s most-celebrated screen actress, Abdulhamid wants Assad’s regime replaced by an elected government. Like hundreds of other dissidents in the Arab world, he began blogging with bluntness during a brief window of liberalization that opened after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But geography sets him apart: Abdulhamid writes from his home outside Washington, D.C., having been forced into exile by the Syrian government in 2005. In recent months, he has watched as regimes from Tunisia to Iran jailed bloggers and intimidated others into ditching their keyboards. Now he’s working with another Arab blogger to establish a group to protect the dissenters. “If the regimes are allowed to shut us out of the blogosphere, we have nothing left,” he tells NEWSWEEK. Continue reading “Unwanted Attention” →

I Am Syrian

American Public media – The Story

Today Dick talks with Ammar Abdulhamid and his family. Dick first talked to Ammar three years ago. At the time, Ammar was living in Damascus, running a small publishing house and writing and doing whatever he could to push along the process of reform in Syria. It was dangerous work. Now Ammar is living and writing in the United States. He moved his entire family here, and they all continue to write about Syria, even the teens. Each family member has a blog. They find blogging a way to communicate to the world, and each other.

Smithsonian Magazine: Syria at a Crossroads

By Stephen Glain, July 2005.

Two months after the publication of this feature, my family and I were forced into exile with my family. The article itself was not the problem, at issue were the activities and statements to which the article referred. The entire article can be read at this link. These are the paragraphs that related to me: Continue reading “Smithsonian Magazine: Syria at a Crossroads” →

The Heretical Game!

The recent mention I received in the Arabic version of Newsweek as one of 43 people making a difference in the Arab World was bound to raise eyebrows and generate some cynical, if not downright hostile, responses here. After all, I was the only Syrian on the list, yet very few people around here know me. So how could I be making any difference? – A very legitimate question indeed, and the fact that someone did indeed raise it in the Syrian press on Monday was not particularly surprising to me.

Continue reading “The Heretical Game!” →