Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Any discussion of #MeToo must first acknowledge the fact that the deeply autobiographical testimonies of sexual violence by women actually trace the biography of something else: the workplace. Nested within the accounts of personal violations lies yet another secret, the stunningly dictatorial nature of the workplace, that is, perhaps for the first time, being discussed openly. #MeToo shows the normative nature of the boss’s control over worker’s lives, reproduced each day through the power he holds over employment and enforced each day through intimidation, bullying, and outright violence. #MeToo as our moment to explore possibilities

Homosexuality Salman al-Odah, a leading Saudi cleric with 9 million Twitter followers, said in  an interview with a Swedish newspaper  April 30 [2016] that even though homosexuality is considered a sin in the Torah, Bible, and Quran, according to Islam the punishment comes in the next world, not this one. "Those that say homosexuals are deviants of Islam, they are the true deviants and their actions are a graver sin than the homosexuals themselves,” he added, in a  statement on his website . [T]here is no prescribed execution for homosexuality in the Quran or in Islamic law. Instead, scholars say, the Quran implies that retribution is in the hands of God. As for the  hadith , the sayings attributed to the prophet Mohammad, there is much dispute as to whether he prescribed a particular punishment for sodomy. President Abdul Fattah Sisi [supported and armed by the West], who ousted Islamist president Mohammed Morsi in 2013 and brought back a more secular Egypt...

The Gulistān (Rose-Garden) of Saʿdī of Shiraz. The book was written in 1258. The most recent translator of the Gulistān says: 'Saʿdi’s Gulistan must be one of the most widely read books ever produced. Almost from the time it was written it was the first book studied by school children throughout the entire Persian-speaking and -reading world—from Constantinople to Bengal and from Central Asia to East Africa.' "The story of the Qāḍī of Hamadān appears in the chapter of the Gulistān on “Love and Youth.” For those readers unfamiliar with the story, I will present it here in summary, mainly in my own words, but also sometimes in Saʿdī’s— very much, one might say, in the manner that the story might have been narrated to largely illiterate audiences down the centuries in various social settings. The story goes thus (any phrase in full quotation marks, or for which I provide a Persian transliteration is a direct quotation from Saʿdī; also, any direct speech in si...