Many of laborers involved in the process of renovating our building are actually denaturalized Kurds, that is, descendants of Kurdish citizens that have been stripped away of their Syrian citizenship as a result of the 1962 census and the manipulations that took place at that time. In other words, they belong to the very group of people whose basic rights my team and I at the Tharwa Projectare supposed to be busy defending, and are actually doing so, to the best of our restricted abilities. Continue reading “A Heretical Closure!”
Tag: Arabs
Reform starts with a Lebanon withdrawal
Special to The Daily Star
The Syrian regime did not have to find itself in the precarious position it is in today, maligned by all for its behavior. It did not have to find itself facing sanctions imposed by the United States. It did not have to face United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559, calling for a Syrian pullout from Lebanon. And it did not have to face the outrage expressed after the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
In Syria, Building a Civil Society Book by Book
The Chronicle of Higher Education
BYLINE: KATHERINE ZOEPF
Damascus, Syria
Leave it to others to devise grand programs for bringing democracy to the Middle East: Ammar Abdulhamid wants to lay the intellectual foundations of citizenship one book at a time.
Two years ago, with a small group of Syrian writers and academics here, Mr. Abdulhamid, a 38-year-old American-educated historian and novelist, founded DarEmar, a nonprofit publishing house dedicated to making canonical works of Western philosophy, social science, and literature available in Arabic. His goal, he says, is to print books that will foster “debate on a broad range of issues pertaining to civil society and democratization.” Continue reading “In Syria, Building a Civil Society Book by Book”
A political arabesque in Iraq
New York Times
By THOMAS L FRIEDMAN
…Yes, the US invasion of Iraq made America some new enemies, but it also has triggered a huge debate about reform in the Arab world, said Ammar Abdulhamid, who helps run DarEmar, a pro-reform NGO in Syria. ‘‘For some people it forced the reform issue, because they said, ‘Let’s change ourselves before the Americans change us’,’’ noted Abdulhamid. Some Arab liberals want to use the US presence to pressure their governments. Some regimes are feeling very vulnerable and believe the only way to stave off the Americans is to be seen as working on reforms. But one way or another, ‘‘the Iraqi issue is forcing the issue of reform on everyone,’’ Abdulhamid said.
The Ammar Abdulhamid Archive 