Alex is a Beirut-based writer, translator, and managing editor of Al-Jumhuriya English. His first book, 'Vintage Humour: The Islamic Wine Poetry of Abu Nuwas', is due to be published by C. Hurst & Co. in November 2017. He tweets @alexjrowell.
Why are the UN and the Syrian opposition taking part in a sham “constitutional committee” designed to rehabilitate Assad?
Russia told south Syria’s rebel commanders it would protect them if they agreed to “reconcile” with the regime last summer. Dozens have since been killed or arrested.
The linguistic feminist and queer struggle should ultimately focus less on technical grammatical distractions than the empowerment of speech itself, argues Nayla Mansour.
A searing first-hand account of growing up gay in Syria; a journey from schoolyard bullying to deep religiosity to pseudo-scientific “therapy” to attempted suicide to, eventually, revolution.
Remembering the larger-than-life personalities and legacies of Raed Fares and Hammud Junayd, two iconic Syrian democracy activists assassinated Friday.
A previously-unknown Syrian businessman has amassed a fortune during the war. With warm ties to the regime, Russia, Turkey, and the Gulf, he may have a prominent political future too.
Islamic feminism, Tunisian LGBT rights, African-Arab relations, and the troubled history of North African Jewry are just some of the ground covered in this interview with Tunisian-French historian and feminist author Sophie Bessis.
Introducing Al-Jumhuriya’s new “Gender, Sexuality, and Power” series, Karam Nachar outlines the intellectual and moral ethos of the initiative, and argues for the urgency of placing gender and sexuality at the center of the political conversation in the Middle East and beyond.
Every major party to the Syrian conflict without exception shares in the blame for a needless humanitarian disaster that could be resolved in a day.
Syria’s most powerful jihadists have neither agreed to nor impeded the creation by Turkey and Russia of an “extremist”-free buffer zone in Idlib Province. For now, all actors seem content to leave the matter at that.
The disappearance and possible murder of the Saudi Arabian writer has struck such a nerve because, for a change, Westerners are able to see themselves in the victim’s shoes.
Following the collapse of Jaysh al-Islam’s rule in Douma, Yassin al-Haj Saleh traveled to Turkey to seek answers from the city’s displaced residents about his wife, Samira, and three other activists abducted with her there in 2013.
