Suleiman Jawda

In his book My Conversations with Sadat, prominent Egyptian journalist Ahmed Bahaa El-Din recounted an amusing exchange from a lengthy conversation he once had with President Anwar Sadat. It was shortly after Egypt's victory in the October 1973 War. The country was moving toward a market…

As I was reading the results of Brazil's presidential election, I was reminded of something Egypt experienced during the reign of King Farouk, when the Wafd Party stood at the pinnacle of political life without a serious rival. At that time, a curious phrase became popular among Egyptians: "If…

The truth is that one cannot understand how the Arabs have remained silent about the abnormal situation in which the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, has found itself for some time now. The period I am referring to dates back to 2014, when the Houthi group entered Yemen’s capital and then closed it off to…

The Houthi targeted Makkah, then tried to wash his hands of it by claiming he had not done so, and after that began raising slogans about Makkah holding its rightful place for him and for the members of his group, and about his being incapable of targeting it with anything. If he claimed what…

The decisions that Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi moved swiftly to take as soon as the attack on the Saudi East-West pipeline occurred can mean only one thing: that he is a man who feels the responsibility of his position and acts accordingly. He moved to issue a decision removing a number of…

Those following the appointment of new leadership figures in Iran have for the most part paused at the name of General Mohsen Rezaei, who has taken up the post of secretary-general of the Supreme National Security Council. There are various reasons why an observer would stop at this name in…

The Sadrist movement in Iraq has once again shown that it places the interests of the people above all else. First, it rushed to announce the integration of the members of its military wing, the "Peace Brigades," into government forces - a commendable initiative. Those who had heard Moqtada al…

A former senior Arab official used to respond to questions about corruption in his country by saying, in effect, that corruption exists everywhere. While that was broadly true, his answer often sounded like an attempt to justify corruption at home. Many would reply, again in effect, that although…

Among the supplications frequently repeated by preachers from mosque pulpits is this prayer: “O God, destroy the oppressors by means of the oppressors, and bring us safely out from among them.” It is a prayer that fosters an extraordinary degree of passivity, encourages an unnatural kind of…

Despite the darkness that fills the skies of the region and the world, a faint light can sometimes appear in the distance, drawing us closer to hope than to despair. One such light came from Iraq, when the Sadrist Movement, led by Muqtada al-Sadr, announced that it was handing over its military…