Mamdouha Bobst Center for Peace and Justice – Princeton lecture

A Princeton lecture: neoliberalism banned "social justice" for a quarter century—and the Arab revolutions diagnosed the problem: unemployment, despotism, class inequality. No military solution to ISIS, only drying up its social sources.

Social Justice Lecture

A lecture: the Arab revolutions are a critique-in-practice of neoliberalism—the World Bank forgot about job creation, and "we are ruled by Ali Baba and the forty thieves—and they don't even reach forty."

سنة اولى ثورة: درس اول

First Year of Revolution: First Lesson

As-Safir

Democracy in our countries is revolution — all counter-revolutionary forces share one goal: clearing the streets. Life is provocative!

الرأسمالية المؤمنة و«الدولة المدنية»

Believing Capitalism and the "Civil State"

As-Safir

A "believing bourgeoisie" captures the state — the "Renaissance Project" follows World Bank dictates so faithfully that the Bank itself applauds.

العمل والعمال في الثورات العربية

Labor and Workers in the Arab Revolutions

As-Safir

I am a worker, not a slave — the millions in the squares are workers and unemployed, not middle class, and Islamists replace rights with charity.

الثورات في العام الثالث – الشعب لا زال يريد

Revolutions in the Third Year - The People Still Want

As-Safir

Destroying the Iraqi state in the name of "civil society" unleashed not freedom but sectarian demons — every Arab revolution has two wings: modernist and regressive.

Arab Revolution – AUB

The Arab revolutions are directed not only against the present but against the "until now"—the moment when the voiceless make the experts voiceless.

The Left in Time of Revolution

Bidayat

A founding essay in Bidayat: the Arab uprisings are a movement against neoliberalism—"the people want" is popular sovereignty above all others, and "work, freedom, bread" places unemployment at the heart of democracy.

الاسلاميون في القول والفعل 

The Islamists in Word and Deed

As-Safir

They forbid usury but sanctify profit and replace social rights with charity meat — the "civil state" is dhimmi status in new language.

التأسيس للديمقراطية التونسية امام التحديات

Founding Tunisian Democracy: Facing the Challenges

As-Safir

90% turnout — a referendum on the revolution. Ennahda won and the choice must be respected, but the real test is jobs and bread, not sharia.

Revolutions bring down ideas as well!

Heinrich Boll Stiftung

Revolutions do not merely change governments; they shatter the ideologies that made those governments seem permanent and legitimate, and undermine decades of intellectual frameworks that naturalized authoritarian rule.

الأمل بالياسمين

Hope in the Jasmine

As-Safir

Breaking the fear barrier made everything possible — Tunisia's dictator fell but the dictatorship didn't, and the battle for revolution begins.

إنهـا المـؤامـرة

It Is the Conspiracy

As-Safir

Conspiracy theory never discovers real conspiracies — Yassin al-Hafez's cure: replace "conspiracy" with "interests" and fight for them.