Make Sense of the world
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Born in the UK to Bangladeshi parents, Shamima Begum left London as a 15-year-old in 2015. Using her British passport, she traveled to Turkey with two of her friends from school. From there, Begum and her friends crossed into Syria, where they met their Islamic State (IS) contacts. While in Syria,...
The impact of the #MeToo movement has no doubt been useful in getting us to speak about the traumas we experience in various spaces. But there is more to be done. Every institution, ranging from private to public, which includes professional, religious, political, educational and social...
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is grappling with COVID-19, an unresolved war in Yemen and collapsed oil prices. At the same time, recurrent purges of opponents of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) are harming the country’s foreign investment climate. Within this context, the ambitious Vision...
In the United States, common narratives circulated by the radical right and right-wing extremists about the coronavirus pandemic include racist, anti-Asian stories of the virus’ origination, xenophobic calls to close all borders as well as “liberation” protests that argue that government...
Sweden has dealt with the global COVID-19 pandemic very differently from the other Nordic countries. All but Sweden are led by women. The female prime ministers in Denmark, Norway and Finland closed down their countries in the middle of March and have dealt with the pandemic in an open, inclusive...
On April 6, it was reported that the Commission on Human Rights was calling for stronger measures to tackle the increased rates of domestic violence incidents in the Philippines due to the lockdown measures that were implemented on March 16. The quarantine is worsening the problem of...
On February 24, Harvey Weinstein was found guilty of a criminal sexual act in the first degree and rape in the third degree. On Wednesday, March 11, he was sentenced to 23 years in prison. On Thursday, March 19, California issued a "stay at home" order, the first statewide measure in the United...
The COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent restrictions on movement have led to unprecedented lockdowns in countries across the world, leaving people with no choice but to remain at home. While for some this means days of ensuing boredom and lethargy, for vulnerable stakeholders, lockdown measures...
The philosopher Martha Nussbaum has a prodigious output and, indeed, it takes a prodigious effort to keep up with it. No sooner had I completed reading the latest trio of her books than a new one was signaled, many of the recent works being based on her delivery of prestigious guest lectures...
This is a story I have been sitting on for over a year, trying to get it right. It is a story about womanhood, immigration, my remarkably uneventful experience of dating R. Kelly, and the intersection between the American pop culture and the #MeToo movement. Let me start by saying that it took...
On February 21, yet another nominal election will take place in Iran, coming on the heels of widespread protests in over 100 cities at the end of last year. It was the third time that the Iranian government faced protests in the last decade and the biggest since the Islamic Revolution of...
