Human Rights

Arrested for hugging in Saudi Arabia

So apparently in Saudi Arabia, hugging people can get you arrested by the ‘religious police’, as this story in The Independent reports.   Members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice arrested the two men in Riyadh for violating local laws and engaging in “exotic …

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GenderHuman Rights

Should Brown/Muslim Women Be Sacrificed To Save Culture? The Case of Malala Yousafzai.

In the last year since the Taliban’s assassination attempt on Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani woman who has been an activist for girls’ education in Swat Valley where she’s from, there has been a virtual truckload worth of articles, commentaries, and blog posts that have been written about her, and …

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Human RightsReligion

The Absurdity of Abraham: The troubling morals of Eid al Adha

On a late October morning in 1994, the nation woke to the stirring pleas of a young woman who had just experienced every mother’s worst nightmare. Through her emotional and all too convincing sobs and sniffles, Susan Smith riveted the world with her heartbreaking story of the burly black man …

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Human RightsReligion

Why growing up in Saudi Arabia was awesome, and why I beg you not to go there

I was just reminiscing with Ali Rizvi about growing up in Saudi Arabia. We were foreigners, the children of expatriate workers. We lived in Saudi Arabia at different times; he is far older than I am, and he left in ’91 while I moved to Saudi in ’95. We walked …

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GenderHuman Rights

An Open Letter to the Department of Psychiatry, American University of Beirut Medical Center

Dear AUBMC Department of Psychiatry, This is an open letter from a former patient. The intent of this letter is to expose the unethical treatment of patients in your department due to violation of doctor-patient confidentiality, which is especially crucial when it comes to mental health, and to urge you …

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FreeThoughtHuman Rights

A call for mercy, because of what Muslims and ex-Muslims share

I wrote a blog post a couple of weeks ago. It was read by tens of thousands of human beings. This would be unnerving in and of itself, but the feedback I received is what really moved me.  It was so resounding that I am still shaking from the grace …

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