Cairo Post

He was seven when - in the Nakba of 1948 - he fled from Birweh, his village in the Galilee. At the age of 12, living in Deir el-Asad, in what had become Israel, with a reputation as a precocious child poet, he was asked to compose a poem for a public reading. The occasion was the celebration of Israel’s "Independence Day" and the poem he read described the feelings of a child who returns to his town to find other people sleeping in his bed, tilling his father’s lands. He was summoned to the military governor who told him that if he continued to write subversive material his father’s work permit would be revoked. That incident set the tone, I think, for Darwish’s life.

 Ahdaf Soueif in The Guardian on the death of Mahmoud Darwish.

On a day when the British government announced that it will spy on Muslim students, since universities have become "fertile recruiting grounds," Martin Newland comments on the current acceptance of undermining all symbols of religion with a skeptical, if not scathing  and supposedly informed eye:

Reactions in everyday secular society to manifestations of religiosity, such as the veil, range from a patronising accept-ance to the downright insulting. We are told, by the diligent self-publicist Salman Rushdie, that the veil "sucks". Columnist Allison Pearson says the veil is a "nosebag" and a "female-inhibiting shroud from the House of Taliban". Yasmin Alibhai-Brown claims that the veil is not mandated by the Qur’an. But what is mandated is that women cover themselves. What is also mandated is that men dress plainly. And the original texts have been followed, as in all the mainstream faiths, by teachings and interpretation which are also considered by the faithful to be linked to the will of God.

I’m sorry Mr. Rushdie but I don’t think I could comfortably vilify a majority of the female population of Cairo and many of the students at AUC. Nor do I think, Ms. Pearson, that any of them believe they are falling in line with the Taliban by being devout.