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Although the talking points about protecting the family echo those espoused by some right-wing politicians in the United States, there are other influences closer to home, specifically Russia.

Russian videos with Turkish subtitles were proliferating on social media, promoting a new law in Russia that makes it illegal to spread “LGBT propaganda.”

Tarek Zeidan, the director of Helem, a Lebanese LGBTQ advocacy group, told The Post of “a cloud of fear and anxiety among the community.” Last week, he said, the organization received “dozens of calls” from people asking for assistance in leaving the country and advice on what to do if they were attacked.

the moral panic over LGBTQ people is ultimately a deflection strategy, “to shift the tension away from the actual problems” in a region beset by economic troubles, political stasis and climate woes.

the nation’s civic consciousness hasn’t dissipated, as many people have bemoaned, “but until it’s translated into a political movement capable of entering the Tunisian political scene, it won’t lead to any substantial change.”

the new setup serves to weaken the legislative branch in a system with Saied and the presidency at its center. “The electoral law cannot be read separately from the new constitution. Everything has been done to prevent parliament from playing a real political role and from acting as a balancing power.”

“I took part in the revolution. I am a citizen, but this country does not treat me as such. I have decided not to vote,” she said. She knows the exact figures for how much inflation rises monthly, and the increases in the prices of taxis, bread and gasoline. Yet “for the first time,” she says, she doesn’t “even know the names of the candidates” running for parliament in her district.

The new electoral law — enacted after Saied ran on a staunch anti-corruption platform, rewrote the country’s constitution and put it to a referendum in July — also eliminates public funding for campaigns. Candidates are left to use their own money to run, or to raise donations from individuals, because funding by parties is also barred.

A new law forbids candidates from speaking with foreign journalists

“Where is the state?”

The disinterest in the ballot box and rejection of politics in its institutional forms, then, do not necessarily correspond to a depoliticization of Tunisian society. Many of the activities carried out by young activists and civil society constitute an alternative way of doing political education at the local level. With increasingly stringent controls on NGO funding, however, many small associations find themselves in a tight corner and fear for their future, including Mobdiun, which benefits from a certain amount of European funding.

“Many would try to leave for Europe, but here we create an alternative.”

“I stopped on the way to school to look at this empty wall, without the candidates’ posters, and I thought it said so much.”

In an August 15 case, six protesters faced charges of “insulting the military” before a military tribunal for chanting “antagonistic” slogans about Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the de facto ruler of the country, in addition to charges of assaulting a police officer. The military court sentenced Hassan Bahgat to six months in prison in another case, 3779/2011, for insulting the military in Tahrir square on August 6

Abu Bakr, a lawyer representing victims in the Mubarak trial and a Kifaya activist, received her summons to appear before the military prosecutor on charges of “insulting the military” on August 16. During the questioning, the prosecutor showed her video footage from the July 23 demonstration in Abbasiya, Cairo, of a protester who, the prosecutor told her, was “insulting” the military. The prosecutor dropped the charges against her when he realized the footage was not of her. lawyer Ahmed Ragheb told Human Rights Watch that this footage was not filmed by the media, which would suggest that the military is filming protesters during demonstrations.

The Mubarak government frequently used overly broad provisions in the penal code to crack down on legitimate criticism of the government’s human rights record or criticism of the political situation, trying editors, opposition leaders, and activists on charges of “insulting the president” or “insulting public institutions.” The military government and courts are using the same provisions.

Military prosecutors have summoned at least seven activists and journalists, including Mahfouz, to question them on charges of criminal defamation after they publicly criticized the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), the military leadership, or alleged abuses by the army. The labor activist and blogger Hossam al-Hamalawy was summoned after he said on television that he held the head of the military police, Gen. Hamdy Badeen, personally responsible for acts of torture by the military police.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee, the expert body that provides authoritative interpretations of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Egypt is a party, states categorically in its recently-issued General Comment No. 34, on Article 19 on Freedom of Expression, that, “States parties should not prohibit criticism of institutions, such as the army or the administration.” By this standard, article 184 of the Egyptian penal code, which criminalizes “insulting the People’s Assembly, the Shura Council or any State Authority, or the Army or the Courts,” is incompatible with international law and should be amended accordingly, Human Rights Watch said

recall the notorious comment made in 2003 by Tel Aviv District Court Judge Zion Kapah, who said a 9-year-old victim of a sexual offender “displayed a promiscuous character,” had initiated some of the encounters and enjoyed part of them

Women are able to take action in the public sphere without having to go through the legal system. In fact, the social networks are game changers in the fight against sexual harassment, and the new rules of the game are far more effective than the criminal code.

Journalists and publishers continued to self-censor due to political and economic pressures when reporting on government policies or material deemed hostile to Islam, the ruling family, and relations with neighboring states.

The Qatar Media Corporation, the Ministry of Culture, and customs officials censored material … The government reviewed, censored, or banned foreign newspapers, magazines, films, and books for objectionable sexual, religious, and political content...

a new “cybercrime” law which Amnesty International denounced as a major setback for freedom of expression in Qatar. Besides criminalising dissemination of “false news” on the internet, it gave the authorities power to ban websites that they considered threatening to the “safety” of the country and to punish anyone posting or sharing online content that “undermines” Qatar’s “social values” or “general order”.

a prison sentence of up to seven years for defaming, desecrating, or committing blasphemy against Islam, Christianity, or Judaism (though the law appears not to be enforced where Judaism is concerned)

The government regulates publication, importation, and distribution of all religious books and materials, but permits individuals and religious institutions to import holy books and other religious items for personal or congregational use.

Christian congregations are not allowed to advertise religious services or use religious symbols visible to the public, such as outdoor crosses.

assertions that rights groups have dismissed as fanciful conspiracies. It says the protests were organised by local extensions of “forces which control global capital”, singling out billionaire philanthropist George Soros. Erdogan has vilified Soros as “the famous Hungarian Jew ... who assigns people to divide nations”. The indictment says the “Gezi Uprising” was fuelled by Osman Kavala, a well-known civil society leader and businessman who has been in jail since October 2017. A picture from Kavala’s phone taken from an academic book showing how different types of bees are distributed across the Middle East was described in the indictment as showing Turkey’s borders violated and redrawn. It said the fact that defendants discussed bringing milk, juice and pastries to Gezi, as well as gasmasks to counter the effects of tear gas, showed they were financing the protests.

The demonstrations, the indictment says, were inspired by the worldwide “Occupy” protests and Arab uprisings starting in 2011 and a book by Boston-based academic Gene Sharp called ‘From Dictatorship to Democracy’. The indictment cites Gezi protest acts that matched Sharp’s non-violent protest methods, such as Roger Waters’ “The Wall” concert in Istanbul in August 2013 when photos of people killed in the protests were displayed on a huge stage backdrop.

the request for life sentences without parole represented a “massive escalation” in Turkey’s crackdown on civil society. “What we are facing is an existential crisis for independent civil society in Turkey,” he said. “It is a blatant attempt to scare and pursue critics on completely trumped-up, fanciful conspiracy theories.”

“You hold these people responsible for all the windows that were broken in June 2013... but provide no evidence. This is not something that can be done legally,”

Istanbul Bilgi University law professor Yaman Akdeniz said the indictment lacked legal detail and reasoning, with only 1-1/2 pages of legal issues in the 657-page document. “Basically, it is shambolic and if it was written by one of my law students, he or she would get a clear F mark,” he said.

investigation was originally launched by prosecutor Muammer Akkas, himself now a fugitive accused of membership of what Ankara terms a terrorist group led by U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, which Ankara blames for the failed 2016 coup.

new ways of building came, like so much else, from the West, first through colonial administration and then through foreign “advisors,” often taking advantage of the insecure land-law of the region, introduced by the Ottoman land code of 1858. By the time France had been granted the mandate to govern Syria in 1923, modernist building types, the mania for roads and motorized “circulation,” the idea that cities should be disaggregated into “zones”—residential, commercial, industrial, and so on—and the obsession with hygiene had all made their destructive mark on the urban fabric

As in Russia and Germany, the arrival of the totalitarian state was prefaced by the arrival of totalitarian architecture

a modern city, another piece of anywhere

Architectural modernism fed into the Arab inferiority complex: concrete high rises, plazas, geometrical patterns, energy-intensive fenestration, sometimes with a mihrab or a dome stuck on in deference to a history that is no longer really believed in—all these have become part of the new vernacular of a hasty urbanization. The basic idea has been to abandon the great tradition of the Ottoman city, with its many communities in their tents of stone, and to “catch up” with the West

Rarely, in any of this, however, has provision been made for the migrants from the villages, who have been compelled to survive in unplanned and unregulated structures, heaped up around the cities with no thought for how they look or for the character of the public spaces beneath them

The old rabbit-warren city of the Middle East was a conflict-defusing device, a continuous affirmation of neighborhood and settlement. The new city of jerry-built concrete towers is a conflict-enhancing device, a continuous “stand-off” between competing communities on the edge of a place that does not belong to them and to which they in turn cannot belong.

in the 1990s there were many popular Syrian TV drama series about how people lived and interacted with each other in the neighborhoods of the old cities in Syria during the late 19th and early 20th century. They depicted the days when the Levant society as it existed in its centuries-old Ottoman era make-up, just prior to the transition into colonial and post-colonial modernity and showed how rich and poor lived together in the same neighborhood, it showed the old houses, the shops & the markets.

We should remember that the idea of replacing the organic city of customary styles with cleared spaces and blocks of concrete, while it originated among European intellectuals, was first tried out in the Arab world. Le Corbusier, who had attempted in vain to persuade the city council of Paris to adopt his plan to tear down the entire city north of the Seine and replace it with an assemblage of glass towers, turned his attention to the North African city of Algiers instead, which was at the time under French colonial administration. As architectural advisor to the French Vichy government during the war he was able to overrule the elected mayor of Algiers and impose his will upon the city—though the Allied victory abruptly put an end to his plans.

Le Corbusier’s scheme is still studied and even treated with reverence in modern schools of architecture. It involved erasing the old city from the map, replacing it with great square blocks that negate the Mediterranean coastline and the contours of the landscape, and surmounting the whole with streets along which automobiles fly above the population. No church or mosque has a part in the plan; there are no alleyways or secret corners. All is blank, expressionless, and cold. It is an act of vengeance by the new world against the old: not a project for settling a place, but a project for destroying it, so that nothing of the place remains

the glitzy restaurant style of Dubai, in which vast gadgets, belonging to no known architectural language but looking like kitchen tools discarded by some gigantic celebrity chef, lie scattered among ribbons of motorway

Care for one’s place is the first move towards accepting the others who reside there. The thoughts “this is our home,” and “we belong here” are peacemaking thoughts. If the “we” is underpinned only by religious faith, and faith defined so as to exclude its historical rivals, then we have a problem. If, however, a resident of Homs can identify himself by the place that he shares with his fellow residents, rather than the faith that distinguishes him, then we are already on the path away from civil war.

decisions are made by officials, and officials belong to the great system of Mafia-like corruption that is the true cause of the Syrian conflict, and which has encouraged the Syrian political elite in recent times to look to Russia as its natural ally

Capitalism’s “creative destruction” is the anti-conservative claim that nothing that exists could not be improved easily in a short time by fast, profitable and “efficient” total replacement.

architect Marwa al-Sabouni, whose book, The Battle for Home, tells the story of how the conflict in Syria has overwhelmed her own city of Homs. She shows that you cannot destroy the serene and unostentatious forms of the Levantine city without also jeopardizing the peace that they symbolized and which to a measure they also protected

Roger Scruton is romanticizing. He therefore completely misunderstands the expressive functional reality of ordinary homes and security by focusing on public architecture, which everywhere expresses elite ideals instead of common ones. Take Florence and the Italian Republics. Frequent wars and not infrequently with Muslim empires meant homes had to be defensible and closed off from streets. Only later, briefly, and elsewhere later like in Britain and the US were isolated farm villages open to welcome trade, or US farm homes isolated away from the necessity of group protections because genuine threats had become to rare to proactively defend against them. Similarly, the divide in the Muslim world is between open plans in port cities secured through trade by larger powers that could ensure protection, versus homes way from ports, deliberately closed off against strangers so as to be defensible against frequent invaders. Most of the Islamic world remains like unstable and insecure early Florence. And homes throughout MENA reflect their isolation and insecurity through closed plans, just as much as Spanish ones from Moorish times do, even in the New World.

Dickens & Madson is instructed to lobby the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations in view of “attaining the presidency of the Republic of Tunisia.” It calls on Dickens & Madson's president, Ari Ben-Menashe, to secure meetings with Trump and other senior US officials before the elections. He’s also to arrange face time with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, to obtain “material support for the push for the presidency.”

statement noted that Karoui would seek legal redress against those who portrayed him “in such a despicable manner.” It closed by referring to Karoui’s “principled and consistent position in supporting the Palestinian cause.” The party apparently felt compelled to emphasize their leader’s pro-Palestinian stance in response to critics’ claims he was colluding with Israeli agents. Ben-Menashe is a former Israeli intelligence officer

The media magnate has cast himself as the champion of Tunisia’s poor through his popular Nessma TV channel and his charity organization, Khalil, named after his 18-year-old son who died in a car crash. Critics disparage him as “Karoui Macaroni” because his charity has donated large amounts of pasta, among other things, to Tunisia’s swollen underclass.

Anger over widespread corruption, joblessness and rising food prices helped Karoui pull in second behind law professor Kais Saied in the Sept. 15 presidential primary, which saw voters rebuff establishment hopefuls, including Chahed and Abdelfattah Mourou of the pro-Islamist Ennahda party.

Some draw parallels between Karoui and Trump, both wealthy populists who have taken on the establishment and whose supporters are apparently immune to allegations of wrongdoing, putting it all down to “fake news.” Chaouachi agreed there may be some similarities. “They are both leaders who think outside of the box, who challenge convention.” She added, however, that “they are fundamentally different, and Mr. Karaoui is unique.”

The first story in the compilation is by Gaza resident Sama Hassan, titled “No." It tells the story of a woman whose husband repeatedly rapes her, sometimes until she is bleeding, but she cannot utter the word “No." “… Over and over he cut into her flesh, which grew increasingly tough until she emitted a groan of pain. … You are nothing but the family’s property, was the first grating thought. Hands and womb, hands and womb." I told Burbara that the story had shocked me. I put the book aside and could not continue reading for a few days. “We put ‘No’ first on purpose,” she explained. “We wanted readers to feel and tell themselves, ‘Wow, what is she telling us? How will we learn more about the women in Gaza who are not heard.’”

Given the nationalistic climate in Israel, with a prime minister who incites hatred of Arabs, I asked Burbara how many Jewish Israelis she thought would read the book. “That is the million-dollar question,” she answered. “But I believe that if you start to drip water on a stone, it digs into its surface and leaves a mark. 'Amputated Tongue' is the first rain that will drip onto the Israeli stone and dig into it deeper and deeper.”

there will be consequences for offences such as “provoking strife”, “promoting, instigating, aiding or inciting morality” and “contempt for religions”.

Earlier this month, Jordan blocked the popular satirical news site AlHudood, in a move denounced as censorship and an attack on freedom of expression.