Three reformist political prisoners, Mostafa Tajzadeh, Ghorbanali Behzadannejad and Javad Emam, were granted three-day furloughs in Iran.  Tajzadeh was a senior member of the Islamic Iran Participation Front and was arrested for participating in protests during the 2009 presidential elections.  He was sentenced to six years in prison.  Behzadannejad was sentenced to five years in prison for aiding presidential candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi.  Emam was sentenced to one year in prison for ...

According to human rights activists, Syrian gunmen attacked anti-regime cartoonist, Ali Ferzat, on Thursday in Damascus and left him bleeding in the streets.  Ferzat, who is in his 60s, was hospitalized after being "heavily beaten and physically abused."  Wall Street Journal reported that security forces also broke both his hands as a "warning to stop drawing" after Ferzat had released a cartoon comparing President Bashar al-Assad to former Libyan Leader ...

Esraa Abdel Fatah, a political activist and the head of the Egyptian Democratic Academy, reported that Egypt's Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) summoned representatives for August 18 for interrogation.  The summoned representatives include staff members, Hossam Ali, Ahmed Ghoneim, Basem Samir and more.  According to Abdel Fatah, the subpoena did not specify why the representatives of the academy are under investigation, but she believes that it may be related ...

National Press Club (NPC) President Mark Hamrick expressed outrage at reports of the recent imprisonment of Iranian Blogger Kouhyar Goudarzi and his mother.  Last year, the NPC awarded Goudarzi with the 2010 John Aubuchon Press Freedom Award after he "had been incarcerated for months for the 'crime' of speaking his mind."  A month later, Goudarzi had been released from prison. In an interview with the International Campaign for Human Rights in ...

Doug Saunders writes on the Islamist movement in Libya specifically citing Mohammed Busidra as the "post-Gadhafi kingmaker."  Busidra is an "Islamist ringleader who escaped the 1996 one-day massacre of 1,200 of his fellow inmates and survived a decade in solitary confinement."  Throughout the protests against Libyan Leader Muammar Gadhafi, Saunders writes that Busidra has "brought together Libya's disparate moderate Islamist leaders into the country's only united political force."  Additionally, Busidra ...

Two Bahraini women activists, arrested by authorities for participating in pro-reform demonstrations, began a hunger strike protesting against their imprisonment, according to Amnesty International. Roula al-Saffar, the head of the Bahrain Nursing Society, and Jalila al-Salman, the vice president of the Bahrain Teacher's Association (BTA) have been imprisoned for several months near Manama and are the only women who are still in prison as they wait for their trials.  Both women ...

Thousands of protesters gathered in downtown Cairo on Friday in one of the largest Islamist demonstrations, which was an effort to show political unity among Muslim groups.  Islamist groups participating in the demonstration called for the establishment of Islamic law in Egypt and protested against secularist politicians that have been working to prevent them from participating in the drafting of the new constitution.  Protesters chanted, “The people want to implement ...

Over 500 Iranian women's rights activists and supporters released a statement calling on authorities to intervene and put an end to the violence against women, as a response to the sixth reported gang rape in recent months.  The statement says, "the gang rapes represent the height of misogyny and irresponsibility of the military, security, and judicial authorities in Iran" and urges concern for the safety of women.  Several examples ...

The Council on Foreign Relations' Steven Cook wrote an article titled, "Egypt: Her Excellency, Madame President?" which focuses on Bothaina Kamel, a female t.v. presenter and media figurehead who has recently announced that she will be running for the office of the presidency. Although it is almost certain that Kamel won't win the elections, her announcement signals a revolutionary turn in Egyptian politics. Cook wrote, "n a society where the idea ...

Women have played a central role in the uprisings sweeping the Middle East and North Africa, and now, as some of these countries undergo transitions, women’s rights must be incorporated into broader demands for social, economic, and political reform. In the latest POMED policy brief, Isobel Coleman examines the women’s movements in Tunisia and Egypt in the context of the Arab Spring. A transition to an inclusive, authentic democracy will ...

A Saudi Arabian woman was arrested earlier this week in Jeddah for driving during what she said was a medical emergency and will be put on trial.  The unnamed 35-year-old woman was released after her father acted as her "guarantor."  A Saudi daily newspaper, Okaz says that the woman had been suffering from a hemorrhage and did not have access to public transportation or a personal driver to take her ...

Nasrin Sotoudeh, a human rights lawyer and women's activist sentenced to 11 years in prison sent a letter in March 2010 to the head of Iran's judiciary.  The letter was released for the public today: "Your Judge confirmed that Iranian women cannot be ignored under any pretext," Sotoudeh wrote.  Isa Sahahrkhiz, an Iranian journalist and one of the founders of the Society for the Defense of Press Freedom in Iran ...

Al-Masry Al-Youm reports that feminists are dismayed with the progress of protests and are rallying other female rights groups together to defend women's rights against the perceivable threats of resurgent Islamists groups like the Muslim Brotherhood. Feminist Nawal al-Saadawi said, "Women need to unite" in a recent interview. The World Economic Forum's  2010 Global Gender Gap Index (which gauges women's equality) reports that Egypt ranked 125th out of 134 countries. Feminists like Saadawi ...

President and Founder of the National Iranian American Council Trita Parsi and Research Director Reza Marashi write about how Iran views the Arab Spring "as a challenge not only to the status quo powers investing in an order that suppresses the streets, but also the powers that claim to champion them."  Both Parsi and Marashi argue that Tehran's decision-makers are more concerned with winning over the soft power of the ...

On Tuesday, The Brookings Institution held a forum on “The European Union Response to the Arab Spring” featuring Catherine Ashton, the high representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Police.  The forum was moderated by Martin Indyk, the vice president and director of the foreign policy department at the Brookings Institution.  Ashton spoke on the role of the European Union in supporting the Arab Spring. For full text, ...

On Wednesday, Robin Wright, Distinguished Scholar for the United States Institute of Peace and the Wilson Center, discussed her new book Rock the Casbah, which focuses on a new phase of Islamic activism termed “counter-jihad” by Wright. The discussion was moderated by Hala Esfandiari, Director of the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center. Video footage of the event can be found online. For full notes, continue reading. Or click here ...

Geneive Abdo released the "New Green Movement Manifesto" authored by Iranian  intellectuals, who are the leaders of the Green Movement in Tehran.  It was released today in the Iran Primer by the United States Institute of Peace.  The manifesto outlined suggestions for future actions, inspirations and the organization of Iran's Green Movement. The authors recommended the formation of a Green Council led by about ten "leading and known" political and intellectual ...