Editor

December 2, 2011
December 2, 2011
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From the Zine: Tips from Peace-Worker Jasmin Nordien

Arseh Sevom -- Arseh Sevom spoke with South African activist Jasmin Nordien about her experiences working in civil society organizations in South Africa. In a post published in the Civil Society Zine, we focus on her experiences throughout the 1990s, when she worked with the Network of Independent Monitors (NIM) reporting on state violence and supporting individuals and grassroots organizations. Jasmin shares some of the lessons she learned about the importance of creating networked organizations, the differences between leadership and management, and the need for clarity of purpose. Jasmin tells us, “...I no longer wanted to monitor the society I did not want to live in. I wanted to build the kind of society that my children and grandchildren would group up in.”
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December 1, 2011
December 1, 2011
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Marking World AIDS Day

Arseh Sevom -- This is the Day Without Art, a day meant to bring attention to HIV/AIDS. Tackling the disease and its attendant stigma has been a task that has given rise to creative, confrontational, and effective civil society actors all over the world.HIV/AIDS has been addressed by many different factions of civil society in Iran. Today we honor the work of Drs. Arash and Kamiar Alaei, who spent several years in prison in Iran on unspecified charges.In an interview, Dr. Kamiar Alaei had this to say about their work:
We had no real idea about how to design a programme, so we just asked patients what they wanted. As a physician, I assumed that what my patients needed most was care. I found out that they also really needed counselling on how to cope with HIV. Some people said their husbands and wives had left them. Some committed suicide out of despair.
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November 29, 2011
November 29, 2011
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New Civil Society Zine Up and Ready!

In the second issue of Arseh Sevom's Civil Society Magazine, called David and Goliath, we asked contributors to tell us what comes after all the unity, after the giant is slain, after the monster is gone? What comes next? It was clearly a difficult question; one without a simple answer. The story of David and Goliath is a story of the (perceived) weak against the powerful, of prevailing against the odds, of bravery and leadership. However modern day Goliaths aren't so easy to dispel with one little pebble.While we may not have definitively answered the question, "What comes next," the articles in this Zine share ideas about human rights, the Arab Anger, Islamicization, leadership, and women's rights. These all make important contributions to our search for ways forward, while engaging a variety of voices from a range of experiences and locations.
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November 23, 2011
November 23, 2011
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Letter from the Editor

The term "Arab Spring" has always felt ominous to me. After all, we all know what happened after the short-lived Prague Spring of 1968, which was brutally squashed. As I write this, we read that more than 32 people have been killed in clashes in Cairo's Tahir Square. Thousands have been arrested. Amnesty is reporting that people in Egypt who dare to express themselves are being arrested and tried in military courts.
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November 22, 2011
November 22, 2011
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From Monitoring to Building: Questions for South African Peace-Worker Jasmin Nordien

Arseh Sevom spoke with South African activist Jasmin Nordien about her experiences working in civil society organizations. In this post, we focus on her experiences throughout the 1980s, when she worked with the Network of Independent Monitors reporting on state violence and supporting individuals and grassroots organizations. Jasmin shares some of the lessons she learned about the importance of creating networked organizations, the differences between leadership and management, and the need for clarity of purpose. Jasmin tells us, "The one thing I learned after working at NIM was that I no longer wanted to monitor. I wanted to build the kind of society that my children and grandchildren would group up in."
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November 22, 2011
November 22, 2011
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A letter from an Arab woman to her Iranian friend

In this text given as a speech at The twenty second international conference of the Iranian Women's Studies Foundation (IWSF), Amal Hamidallah-van Hees addresses the fears and hopes of Arab and Islamic women watching the changes in their region. "We are watching with our eyes wide open," she writes, noting that many lessons were learned by the revolution in Iran. She urges women to engage with politics and Islam. "We will claim our space, even the religious one."
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November 22, 2011
November 22, 2011
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Rock the Casbah

Davi Baker, who blogs for the San Francisco Examiner as the SF Muslim, goes back to the ninth century to speculate on the roots of change in the Arab world. In the work of scholar Patricia Crone, he uncovers political thinkers speculating on the best way to organize society without a caliphate. Consensus, participation, violent overthrow, acquiescence, or anarchy? Baker writes, "Essentially they argued that the Caliph must be agreed upon by the entire community, either unanimously or by consensus, and without this no legitimate Caliph could exist. It was widely accepted that Allah did not impose obligations which were impossible to fulfill, so it was reasoned that there was no obligation to establish a legitimate Caliph."
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