mideastmessenger.com

 Steve Rhodes, flickr.
Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, spoke yesterday at the UNITY conference of minority journalists about his recent overseas trip to the Middle East and Europe.
 I covered the talk! Check out what he had to say.

PHOTO: Internet Cafe in Cairo. Paul Nendick, flickr. 
Facebook could be an Arab leader’s worst nightmare. An open forum for discussion, networking and planning that’s not easily controlled? The prospect would make the most ruthless dictator shudder.
That’s what Egyptian officials did recently when they detained Esraa Abdel-Fattah, a Facebook user and founder of the site’s group “6 […]

PHOTO: Palestinian hip hop group DAM performs at a party. From left to right, Tamer Naffar, Mahmoud Jreiri. Agnes Varnum, flickr.
Hip hop blasts and booms from the clubs young Americans frequent on weekends. Besides for dancing, however, hip hop and its cousin, rap, have served as ways to transmit political, cultural and societal commentary.
The Chicago Palestine Film Festival at […]

PHOTO: Stray dog in Saqqara, Egypt, Matt Handy, flickr 
SPARE, the Society of Protecting Animal Rights in Egypt, protects animals that are often the targets of poison and killing campaigns to reduce their numbers. The site arranges adoptions of rescued pets, usually to Europeans who take the animals home with them.
Some of the animals are abused […]

PHOTO: Cairo at sunset, Selva Morales, flickr 
The issue of homosexuality in the Middle East is a very sensitive one. It is widely considered taboo and sinful, to say the least, and is therefore not discussed. A crackdown in Egypt on men suspected to have HIV and assumed to be homosexuals has forced people in the […]

Manaqeesh is a traditional breakfast food in the Middle East. They are bread pastries with zaatar, an oregano-like herb commonly used in the area. Here’s an easy way to make them that takes just 15 minutes. Bon appétit!’

PHOTO: People dressed as Guantanamo Bay prisoners protest in Washington D.C. on January 11, 2008, Keith Ivey, flickr. 
Sami Al Hajj is a “household name” in the Arab world according to New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristoff. 
A cameraman for the Arabic news network Al Jazeera, he was captured by American forces in Afghanistan while trying to cover the war. He […]

PHOTO: Jerusalem, Premasagar, flickr
Even board games can’t escape the contentious Arab-Israel conflict. Hasbro recently found that out  the hard way. An employee reacted to complaints from people who said the “Jerusalem, Israel” label unfairly omitted Palestinian rights to the city. The removal of Israel made Jerusalem the only city on the board without a country.
Soon thereafter, people […]

PHOTO: Young women in head scarves in Cairo, Angela Rutherford, flickr.
The use of the head scarf in the Middle East has gotten a lot of press lately, especially with the recent constitutional amendment in Turkey that would allow women to wear head scarves, commonly called hijab, on public university campuses.
A salon in Egypt that caters to […]

On a recent afternoon at Peet’s Coffee in Evanston, IL, Professor Kristen Stilt of Northwestern University’s School of Law and Department of History discussed the recent vote in Turkey that would change the constitution to allow women to wear head scarves on public university campuses. The complex issue has stirred passionate feelings about Turkey’s secularism, Islam […]