‘We fall, we rebuild, we dance again’: repression and resilience in queer Beirut

Ghiwa Abi HaidarRights

If you want to understand the progress of LGBTQIA+ liberation in Lebanon’s capital, our nightlife is a great place to start, says Ghiwa Abi Haidar. In a blog for Pride month, she looks back at a scene that has suffered bouts of brutal violence and censorship but where queer people are today once again finding rare freedom and radical joy on the dancefloor.

Who needs religious literacy? In a disaster, maybe we all do

Tara GingerichConflict, Disasters, Humanitarian

Tara Gingerich reflects on her recent work researching religious literacy; what she realised about her own point of view and why we need to engage with religion. I remember when I first started to talk with Oxfam colleagues about the new research project I would be leading, together with the Harvard Divinity School. It was on how Oxfam and other …

Fundamental questions, women’s rights responses

Caroline SweetmanGender, Gender & Development Journal

Caroline Sweetman, Editor of Gender and Development, introduces their latest issue on women’s rights and fundamentalisms. The new issue of Gender & Development focuses on nothing less than the question of what constitutes heaven on earth. While visions of global development suggest that’s about realizing rights and social justice for everyone, religious fundamentalists peddle an alternative vision of heaven – …