On social media sites and in chat rooms, Arabic-speaking populations could suddenly speak to and entertain each other in their own dialects. But bringing Arabic online wasn’t easy: not only were these dialects spoken, not written, many websites weren’t able to accommodate Arabic script (most social media sites only added Arabic-supported versions in the late 2000s). The solution Arabic-speaking youth developed was Arabizi, a method of transliterating Arabic with Latin letters and numerals to represent letters not present in English.

On March 3rd, Alwaleed Philanthropies and several partners held the 2nd Women’s Empowerment and Integration Forum in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Princess Lamia Bint Majid AlSaud, the secretary general of the Alwaleed Philanthropies, discussed the role of women in the kingdom and their capacity to shape the country’s future. She stated that “we know that women’s empowerment and […]

In this republished article by journalists William Booth and Hazem Balousha, educated and unemployed Palestinians in their 20s discuss lives bereft of opportunity and hope. Nearly 60 percent of young Gazans are unemployed and most would leave if it were possible. With few stable job prospects and no escape, many have resorted to occasional odd […]

The Middle East is often characterized by perpetual conflict, religious extremism, poor governance, and people torn apart by sectarian, ethnic and national differences. However, there are a variety of initiatives whose goal is to promote dialogue and peaceful coexistence between groups of diverse backgrounds, demonstrating that divisions and enmity are man-made problems that can be […]