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A convergence of so many things, starting with a conversation in a grad school class about religious conversion in the Middle East. The consensus in class was that this was considered apostasy, and not only illegal but dangerous in..

All constitutions are flawed, even (or especially) those that are treated as particularly sacrosanct—such as the US Constitution. The recent protest movement in Lebanon, which began on 17 October 2019, has generated renewed interest in the Lebanese constitution—with a lot of what might be called..

In 1989, representatives of the last elected Lebanese parliament ratified the Taif Accord (officially named “The Document of National Reconciliation”). Signed in Taif, Saudi Arabia, the accord was empowered and coerced by regional and international political and economic will and incentives. Thi..

On Friday, 15 June 2018—the first day of Eid al-Fitr—twelve armed members of the Lebanese Internal Security Forces (ISF) went to a private residence in Ras El Nabe`, Beirut, to execute a court order. The target of this order was a woman named Manal Mansour, who had b..

The past several years have brought into focus dominant ways that sexual and bodily rights are framed, gendered, and politicized in the Middle East in mainstream western media. These can be grouped under three loose themes, each of which deserves further study.

War is often understood as a temporally bounded event. A war begins, and eventually it ends. In the process, people are killed, maimed, starved, and traumatized; infrastructure is damaged; and life-worlds are destroyed. In such context, survival, not life, becomes the goal. Yet..

There are at least 1.5 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon, a number that represents a quarter of Lebanon’s total population. This is the highest concentration of Syrian refugees in the world. Syrians are not the only refugee population in Lebanon. When considered alongside Palestinian, Iraqi, Ku..

[On 31 October 2016, Michel Aoun was elected to the Lebanese presidency by a parliamentary majority. Aoun’s election ended a period of two years during which Lebanon functioned without a head of state on account of the inability of the country’s rival political coalitions to agree on a candi..

The drumbeats have started. Almost immediately after a mass shooting that left over fifty people dead on Latin night in a Florida gay nightclub, Pulse, the news shifted to the identity of the shooter himself. As soon as his name and the fact that his father immigrated (long ago) from Afghanistan..

The conditions of possibility for queer life and queer cities are never singular. Instead, these conditions of possibility are radically different for gender conforming and gender nonconforming people, and for cis men and women. They are also different for racialized displaced persons and refuge..

The past ten years in Lebanon have been a study in political paralysis and escalating anger and frustration among citizens and residents of the country. To recap only the most basic of facts, since 2005 the country divided and polarized in..

Ali al Zein murdered his wife Sara Al-Amin on 18 May 2015. Her murder was shocking in its brutality. It is only one link in a long chain of visible and invisible violence against women in contemporary Lebanon. Structural conditions give ..

Jeanette Feghali, known to millions across the world as Sabah, died last week at the age of 87.  By the time of her death, she had been a star for almost seven decades.

Sabah began her career while still a teenager, movin..