Polls can be Appalling
The BBC has just released results of a BBC poll with the following take-away: “Arabs are increasingly saying they are no longer religious, according to the largest and most in-depth survey undertaken of the More...
Animal House in the 14th Century
One of the most entertaining Arabic compendia on animal life, taken in the loose sense of the term for things that breathe or are thought to breathe, is the Ḥayāt al-Ḥayawān (Life of Animals) of the Egyptian More...
Chewing on the “Khat” Issue
Before the recent conflict and humanitarian crisis in Yemen, the most likely story in the media about Yemen generally had to do with the stimulant qāt, usually glossed as “khat” in English. The plant in question More...
War and the Housing Crisis
After four years of bombing and military exchanges, Yemen remains a humanitarian disaster made by human hands and arms, not by nature. The number of direct deaths from the conflict continues to rise every day, More...
One-Stop Searching of Arabic Dictionaries
In a previous post I listed a number of Arabic dictionaries available online. For anyone interested in searching a broad array of dictionaries, both classical and modern, there is now one source for 51 different More...
In a Pig’s Bloody Eye
It is tempting, oh so tempting, just to ignore the insanity of President Donald Trump’s torrent of tweets. When someone accumulates a set of lies in less than three years that is rapidly on its way to 1,000, More...
Open Bible, Closed Mind
The current U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, a former CIA director and congressman, gave a speech Thursday, January 10, at the American University of Cairo. He began by pointing out that he was an evangelical More...
I dvrc u
The surreal Saudi reform inaugurated by the Crown Prince MBS to give women more rights (at least some rights) has a new twist. In addition to being able to drive a car and to attend some football games (obviously More...
Peace Talks and War Talk
Sweden is the site for the current negotiations between the so-called legitimate government of Yemen, with Mansur al-Hadi as the ongoing interim president, and the Huthis, a movement also known as Ansar Allah, who More...
Mark Twain on what a Muslim is
According to all three major monotheisms even God needed time to take a rest and so the sabbath was created. With the ongoing conflict, spate of bombings, humanitarian crisis, torture of prisoners and outright More...