Islam in the Arab transformations

Sami Zubaida 18 February 2013

The Shari’a is largely irrelevant to most important issues of policy and administration in the economy and in government. Its historical and symbolic locus is on family and sexuality: patriarchal rights, segregation of the sexes, enforced female modesty.

BRICS, a new cooperation model?

Mariano Aguirre 22 January 2013

One of the criticisms made of the emerging economies is that they are using cooperation to gain markets, political influence and access to natural resources. But that is what the countries of the North are also seeking.

The black swan of the Gulf

Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi 24 September 2012

The military and security apparatuses of these Gulf states plays a role in keeping the peace, but the best way forward is to build a civil society that is bound by a unifying mechanism such as a functioning, representative, elected parliament.

We may be stateless but we are not voiceless

Mona Kareem 31 December 2011
The stateless in Kuwait have been trapped in poor conditions for two decades. The Arab Spring has provided hope that at long last their voices might be heard.

Gulf States: studious silence falls on Arab Spring

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen 25 April 2011
New demands for political reform in the Gulf are meeting a repressive response by regimes especially panicked when pro-democracy protests swell into cross-sectarian movements for meaningful political reform. This brutality polarises opinion between advocates of reform and proponents of repression. It also poses a dilemma for western policy makers in their engagement with their strategic partners in the region.

Bahrain: evolution or revolution?

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen 1 March 2011
With its oil reserves measured in years rather than decades and facing the imminent yet difficult transition to a post-oil economy, Bahrainis simply cannot afford another wasted ten-year cycle of partial reform and renewed repression. Major unrest in the Gulf States is altering their self-projection as global actors and oases of stability in an otherwise insecure region. In this context, the Bahraini government’s lethal response to peaceful demonstrators inflicted immense damage on its international credibility

Iran takes critical stance on US missile defences

Dries Belet 2 February 2010
Iranian officials attempt to discredit US missile defence deployments. China warns Obama over meeting with Dalai Lama. Somali Al Shabab unite with Al Qaeda’s jihad. Female suicide bomber kills 54 Iraqi pilgrims. All this and much more in today’s security briefing.

This week's editor

Heather McRobie


Niki Seth-Smith is a freelance journalist and co-editor of OurKingdom.

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