Syria’s serial exporters of instability

July 08, 2006 12:00 AM / Ammar Abdulhamid

What do the Assads of Syria think they are doing? Hardly a day goes by in the country without another activist being arrested, banned from traveling abroad, or sentenced to a long prison term. Occasionally, particularly in the case of alleged members of the Muslim Brotherhood, they are handed down a symbolic death sentence – symbolic because these are almost immediately commuted to imprisonment. Continue reading “Syria’s serial exporters of instability” →

The Struggle for Syria’s Body & Soul!

According to Shaaban Abbod of An-Nahar, thestrugglebetween Islamists and secularists in Syria is intensifying. The recent sign in this regard can be seen in the open Letter to the President sent by Syria’s foremost Islamic scholars and Imams proclaiming the existence of an official conspiracy against Islamic education in the country. The leaders of this conspiracy seem to the secular forces in the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Religious Endowment (?), where the new Minister has just issued an edict against admitting students into religious schools at the preparatory level. Continue reading →

Aref Dying?

Sources are reporting that Aref Dalilah’s health is failing quickly and that he is liable to collapse at any given moment. Prison doctors have reportedly recommended that he be subjected to a variety of tests and scans,but, so far, prison authorities have not responded to their demands. Judging from the recalcitrance and indifference of the international community with regard to cases of unlawful imprisonment, torture and crackdowns that are currently taking place in Syria, Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere in the region,Aref Dalilah might as well die of some brain clot or heart attack, or even under torture, and no one will do anything about it, beyond issuing some worn out and meaningless condemnation. Continue reading →

ADC – The Arab Discrimination Committee!

Hardly a day goes by in Syria these days without new arrests taking place or activists getting banned from traveling or sentenced to long prison terms on some idiotic trumped up charges that only diseased minds can conjure. This is what happened when the Assads regime is in a defiant mode, and this is what will keep on happening when the world remains silent. Continue reading →