My sojourn in Tunisia inevitably ended up focussing to some degree on the question of the Islamist Ennahda (al-Nahda) party and the future of secularism in Tunisia. It’s a sign of how advanced the secular agenda is in Tunisia that the term is […]
I was in Tunisia for two weeks and had a chance to compare how things are moving there to the situation in Egypt. I like Tunisia and I like the Tunisian dialect, which is getting more comprehensible to me on each trip! […]
Back to Abdelrahman Munif’s Cities of Salt and London-based Palestinian writer Elias Nasrallah’s recent book with a startling rereading of what Munif was trying to say in a work that has come to be regarded as one of the greats of modern […]
Nationalism when it evolved in Europe in the 19th century postulated an ideal of nation states for specific ethnicities. Germany was for the Germans, France was for the French, etc. Realities were more complex. Histories were distorted to promote ethnic unity and create narratives whose inevitable […]
By Andrew Hammond TUNIS | Wed Jul 13, 2011 6:44am EDT (Reuters) – Secularists hope Tunisia’s gradual approach for moving to an open political system from a police state will help box in Islamists but it has created a political and security […]
By Andrew Hammond TUNIS | Wed Jul 13, 2011 9:58am EDT (Reuters) – – Tunisians are debating what kind of relationship they will have with Europe and the United States after an uprising this year unmasked the police state behind what was […]
By Andrew Hammond DUBAI | Wed Jul 13, 2011 7:13am BST (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia has helped damp down democracy movements sweeping the Arab world but is waiting now to see how events play out in places like Syria and Yemen for […]
March 2009 Driving from Tel Aviv to Haifa, you could be forgiven for not realizing you are driving close to the old Green Line that marked the border of the mountainous West Bank with Israel until 1967 when Israel seized the occupied […]
By Andrew Hammond TUNIS | Wed Jul 6, 2011 6:41pm IST (Reuters) – Six months after Tunisia’s uprising, religious tension is rising over the limits of freedom of expression, as Islamists challenge the dominance of liberals in what was once a citadel […]
By Andrew Hammond and Tarek Amara Friday July 1, 2011 TUNIS (Reuters) – At 7.45 am on any given day in the Tunisian capital, you might notice that drivers stuck in rush-hour traffic seem to be chortling away in unison. On Radio […]