death - The Chronikler

Robust health systems are society’s first line of defence against pandemics

Belgium has long been written off as a dysfunctional and failing state, yet its response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been surprisingly functional

The unlikely demonisation of Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie made a very unlikely target for the fury of conservative Muslims, which is why the opportunistic fatwa issued by a Khomeini in serious decline took the novelist and the world by surprise.

Prisoners of our guilty consciences

The intensifying crackdown on the media and civil society in Egypt leaves Egyptians who are out of the country feeling powerless to help and guilty about the freedoms they enjoy.

Alt-jihad – Part I: When white extremists are dying to kill

In the first of a series of articles exploring the disturbing parallels between radical Islamic and white/Christian extremism, Khaled Diab examines whether far-right suicide attackers could become a phenomenon.

Post-ISIS Mosul, pt 1: The final death of a city?

Its building turned to dust, its citizens traumatised and impoverished, Mosul may have been ‘liberated’ from ISIS but it has become a graveyard. Can this razed and devastated city ever be free again?

Unsung death on the Nile – Part II

Arriving in Thatcherite Britain was a shock to mother’s leftist, post-colonial worldview, but she adjusted, managed to admire her new home and made friends from all walks of life.

FICTION: Escaping terror firma, Part 1: Hell from the heavens

Poetry and song talk of soaring free as a bird, but the heavens are where hell resides. People talk of taking wing, but, me, I’d rather take fin, be free as a fish.

Giulio Regeni is the tip of Egypt’s police brutality iceberg

Many Egyptians find the allegation that the Italian student Giulio Regeni was killed by Egypt’s notorious security apparatus chillingly plausible. Italy must shed its former enthusiasm for the Sisi regime.