Stories from and

5 Muslim Countries Where Gays Are Not Prosecuted by the Law

  28 October 2014

The LGBT Muslims blog identified 5 Muslim nations where the legal system does not outlaw homosexuality. The 5 countries are : Mali, Jordan, Indonesia, Turkey and Albania. While the law in these countries does not criminalize gay lifestyles, the LGBT Muslims blog points out that LGBT communities still suffer from...

MENA: Acclaimed Authors’ Favorites of 2012

  29 December 2012

M. Lynx Qualey, blogger, who is interested in Arab and Arabic literature, wrote a series of posts introducing acclaimed Arab poets, novelists, and short-story writers’ favorite Arab reads of 2012. She started with a list of nonfiction books, then followed by a list for poetry [En] and fiction [En].

Peru: “Get out of here, King of Jordan”

  1 October 2012

During his visit to Peru for the Third Summit of South American-Arab Countries (ASPA) from October 1-2, 2012, the King of Jordan, Abdullah Bin Al-Hussein, took a leisure trip [es] from Lima to Cusco on his motorcycle. During the trip, two vehicles from the king's convoy forced a team of...

Jordan: What Happened to Education?

  8 September 2012

Roba Al Assi shares a video of the opening of the University of Jordan in 1962 on her blog And Far Away. She writes: As a graduate of the the institution myself, it is funny looking back 50 years, at a time when education actually mattered in Jordan. How did...

Jordan: Internet freedom – the beginning of the end?

  1 August 2012

Advocating for personal freedoms and a continued open Internet in Jordan, Ahmad Humeid, designer, brand architect and web entrepreneur, blogged at 360east: “Over the past decade, Jordan has been steadily building a reputation in the region as the Silicon Valley of Arabia. Scores of web and mobile start ups are...

Jordan: Orphans Sit-in Attacked

  22 July 2012

Jordanian blogger Ali Al Hasani blogs about the brutal crackdown on a protest by orphans in Amman, Jordan. “They were protesting their horrible living conditions and how the Jordanian government classifies them in a different social security number then the normal Jordanian citizens,” he writes.

Jordan: Punish Rapists

  12 June 2012

Jordanian Mohammad Al Qaq, at Khobbeizeh, calls for no leniency in the punishment of rapists.

Jordan: New Website for Short Stories

  22 April 2012

Project Pen is an initiative to promote short story writing by Arabs and “encourage a new generation of writers, creating new kinds of stories, for a new kind of readership”. By sharing stories across social media, and by connecting writers with each other, Project Pen intends to bypass traditional publishing...

Jordan: The Gay Husband

  12 February 2012

The Arab Observer, from Jordan, posts a letter he got from a reader who discovered that her husband was gay.

Jordan: Photos and Audio of July 15 Protest

  17 July 2011

Reform protests in Amman picked up some heat on Friday after a relatively quiet few weeks. Here's a summary of part of the day as witnessed by Lina Ejeilat, multimedia journalist, co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Jordanian citizen-media platform 7iber.com.

Jordan: Marches to Palestine

  17 May 2011

Salem Husseini posted a Storify article on the Jordanian marches in honor of Nakba, or catastrophe, on the anniversary of the founding of Israel.

Jordan: “Egypt's Revolution. My Revolution.”

  13 February 2011

Humeid of 360east.com traces his personal political journey from Jordan's 1989 political liberalization project, to his blogging career, to the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions. “If I allowed, apathy or hopelessness to creep into my mind over the past 20 years, the courage of the millions of people on the street...