In one of the biggest changes in the forty-year history of the Internet, web addresses written in non-Latin characters will soon be allowed.

Former French President Jacques Chirac is ordered to stand trial on corruption charges dating back to his time as the mayor of Paris in the 1980s and 90s.

Saudi Arabia prepares for the annual hajj in the midst of the swine flu pandemic. Vulnerable groups such as pregnant women and the elderly have been advised not to make the trip this year.

Haiti’s senate ousts Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis. Pierre Louis was the fifth prime minister the politically volatile country has seen in the past five years.

Earlier this morning, President Obama spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in a meeting which a senior administration source called “businesslike.” Expressing his impatience, Obama told the Israeli and Palestinian leaders, “We’ve had enough of talks….it’s time to move forward.”

Residents of Sydney, Australia awake to an eerie orange sky as the worst dust storms in at least 70 years engulf the city and move north towards Queensland.

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology officially opens. The university, which boasts the world’s 14th fastest supercomputer and one of the world’s largest endowments, could also become a cultural battleground in this conservative country — the school is co-ed, and female students will mix freely with males and will not be required to wear veils.

Former president and senior Iranian cleric, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani calls for the release of jailed post-election protesters. At his first Friday sermon since the presidential vote, Rafsanjani requests the end of media restraints and makes an appeal for a broadcast debate about the disputed vote.

Chechnya’s president Ramzan Kadyrov denies responsibility in the murder of Russian human-rights activist Natalia Estemirova. Estemirova was kidnapped outside of her home in the Chechen capital, Grozny, and her body was found on Wednesday in the neighboring region of Ingushetia. Oleg Orlov, the head of Memorial human rights group for which she had documented hundreds of cases of abuse in Chechnya, accused the president of her murder.

Pakistan’s former prime minister Nawaz Sharif is acquitted of the hijacking charges that have legally kept him from running for public office. Sharif was convicted in 2000 of hijacking after attempting to prevent the landing of an aircraft in Pakistan carrying former president Pervez Musharraf, who was head of the military at the time. Sharif went into exhile in Saudi Arabia after being deposed in a coup in 1999.

Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir chooses not to attend the Smart Partnership Dialogue conference in Kampala, Uganda, after he was warned of the arrest warrant for seven charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity ordered by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague in March. The African Union, which includes Uganda, decided earlier this month not to cooperate with al-Bashir’s arrest warrant.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg visits South Korea and calls on North Korea to choose dialogue over further provocative action. He does not rule out the possibility of sanctions.

French and Brazilian ships search for debris – and possibly bodies – near the crash site of the doomed Air France flight that disappeared on Monday.

India’s parliament unanimously chooses its first women speaker – Meira Kumar.

Amid a global economic crisis and South Africa’s worst recession, newly elected President Jacob Zuma vows to create half a million jobs in six months. Oponents dismiss his plans as a “wish list.”

A private Chinese firm buys Hummer from General Motors, but says it has no plans to build a new manufacturing plant.

Iran’s Evin Prison

The Committee to Protect Journalists names the ten worst countries in the world to be a blogger.

Burma tops the list — Burmese blogger Maung Thura is serving a 59-year prison sentence for disseminating video footage after Cyclone Nargis last year.

Runner-up Iran has ordered all bloggers to register their sites with the government, and has created a special prosecutor’s office to work with the intelligence service on internet issues. Blogger Omidreza Mirsayafi, jailed for insulting the Ayatollahs and denigrating Islam, died in Iran’s notorious Evin prison last month.

In 2008, more bloggers were imprisoned than any other category of journalist.

“The power and influence of this new generation of online journalists has captured the attention of repressive governments around the world, and they have accelerated their counterattack,” said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon.

Following Burma and Iran on CPJ’s list are Syria, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Tunisia, China, Turkmenistan, and Egypt.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia shook up his kingdom by boldly appointing the first female minister to his government cabinet earlier this week.

Norah al-Faiz is now the deputy minister of women’s education — the most senior role ever held by a woman in Saudi Arabia.

Though al-Faiz occupies a new post, she is still very much bound by the stringent laws that dictate how women live within the kingdom. Like all women in Saudi Arabia, al-Faiz is only permitted to do what her closest male relative allows, based on the guardianship system.

Al-Faiz, who received her master’s degree in education from Utah State University, is fully cognizant of the challenges ahead of her, stating that the “guardianship system” is the first thing that should be removed by the new Saudi government.

During my own time living in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in the late 90s, I recall needing my father — my closest male relative — for anything that required me leaving our compound walls. From driving me to the mall (women aren’t permitted to drive) to accompanying me to a doctor’s appointment, I needed a male escort for everything. And while there is no law stating that a male must accompany a female to the doctor (though a male often has to authorize all procedures at the doctor’s office), females are not allowed to interact with unrelated males—and almost all doctors in Saudi Arabia are males.

Even when it came down to something as simple as getting a shawarma sandwich, I would have to ask my father to order because it was frowned upon for women to enter the restaurant and interact with men. My mother and I would wait in the car as my father walked into the restaurant crammed with men ordering for a parking lot filled with hungry women.

Putting all shawarma aside, women aren’t even permitted to testify in a criminal court unless there isn’t a male witness and the testimony is related to a personal matter. And even then, the testimony of a woman only counts for half that of man’s testimony, leaving it up to the court to decide whether or not it is to be accepted as valid.

Saudi feminist and writer, Wajeha al-Huwaider, said it is unclear if al-Faiz will have any real power, or if she will follow the path of other Saudi women who had been appointed to lower councils but were never heard from.

But Haifa Jamal Al-Lail, dean of Effat College in Jeddah, is more optimistic. “This is not just about having the first woman deputy minister. It’s about having more women in important positions. Al-Fayez’s presence in the Ministry of Education will make women’s voices heard.”

For a country where, under Saudi law, women are considered the property of men, appointing al-Faiz as the first female minister, though she’s only in charge of women’s education, is a big step in the right direction.

WIDE ANGLE’s film The Saudi Question looks at whether the kingdom will find a path to democratic reform or succumb to a rising tide of Islamic extremism.

At least one these suspects, Said al-Shihri — now reportedly serving as deputy chief of Al Qaeda in Yemen — was at the Saudi rehabilitation center when journalist Nancy Durham visited in 2007 and produced From Jihad to Rehab, featured in WIDE ANGLE’s Focal Point series.

Durham reached Dr. Awad Alyami, the art therapist who appears in the video, by phone after hearing about al-Shihri’s return to militancy. Al-Shihri was “not the ideal student,” Alyami said, “not really interested in doing anything with any of us.” But Alyami does not take this example to mean that the Saudi program doesn’t work. “Many students have learned how to see things in a positive way and created balance in their lives through art,” he said.

Until now, the Saudi rehabilitation program has been widely viewed as a model, particularly for Yemen, home to nearly half of the remaining Guantanamo detainees. As Yemen prepares to receive these inmates upon the closing of Guantanamo announced by President Barack Obama, any doubts about the efficacy of the Saudi program could complicate the handover.

Here’s From Jihad to Rehab:

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers in the attacks of September 11, 2001 were from Saudi Arabia. In the aftermath of the attacks, the Saudi government aggressively pursued domestic terrorists, dismantling Al Qaeda cells and rounding up thousands of people for questioning. But after the bombings on its own soil in Riyadh in 2003, the Saudi government adopted a softer approach to counterterrorism – therapy. This new method aims to counter the fanatical ideology of detainees. Islamic religious scholars and leaders challenge the detainee’s violent interpretation of the Koran and highlight peaceful and charitable aspects of Islam. Egypt, Singapore, Indonesia, and the United States in Iraq are among the countries implementing similar programs.

ABOUT THE FILM

In From Jihad to Rehab, Canadian journalist Nancy Durham takes us inside a rehabilitation center in Saudi Arabia, where art therapy and religious re-education are being used to reform militant jihadists, like Ahmed al-Shaya, who went to Iraq on a suicide mission in 2004 where he killed 12 people but survived himself. We meet Juma Al-Dossary who has just returned to Saudi Arabia after spending six years in Guantanamo, and speak with Dr. Awad Alymai, the detainees’ art therapist, about his patients’ transformation.

Nancy Durham is a Canadian journalist who reports from around the world for the CBC.

I have always been drawn to stories of survival in war and revolution. I covered Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution in 1989 and spent the ‘90s reporting on the Balkan wars from all corners of the former Yugoslavia. In 2004, I was embedded with the U.S. Marines in Fallujah for 11 days. We came under random rocket and mortar fire day and night. The Marines told me this was the frontline of the so-called “war on terror.” And it had become that. But for me it seemed clear that the source of the problem lay outside Iraq. Three years later, I had the opportunity to meet some of Saudi Arabia’s ex-jihadists.

As I entered Saudi Arabia’s rehabilitation center on the outskirts of Riyadh, to meet men we’ve heard so much about since 9/11, my minder from the Ministry of the Interior stopped me at the last minute to point out that I was showing a sliver of skin at the nape of my neck. I wound my head scarf round my neck one more time to cover up and tugged on my stretchy black cap to hide any stray hair. My black flowing abaya covered the rest of my body. Rather than feeling hidden, my costume left me feeling oddly exposed.

For all the emphasis on covering up in Saudi Arabia, rehab turned out to be a rather laid back place not far off, say, an American seventies retreat where you might have gone to get in touch with your inner self by sharing experiences in group therapy. But these were men who had previously been slinking off to Iraq to “kill Americans,” as one told me by way of explaining he hadn’t meant to hurt any Iraqi civilians. I interviewed a failed suicide bomber, spent an afternoon with men just back from Guantanamo Bay, and chatted with others who had merely considered making jihad and got caught along the way.

Negotiating access had been challenging. My producer, Seamus Mirodan, and I had asked for a week at the center and were told it would be just one day. In the end, we were given the better part of three days. Although we had a minder with us the entire time, it was clear the Saudi government wanted to show off their program.

It’s been a year since the center opened, and Saudi authorities claim their program has been 95 percent effective. While a handful of graduates have tried to reconnect with their extremists roots after their release, their efforts were thwarted and they were brought back to the center for more counselling. Saudi authorities say they are planning to build three more rehab facilities across the country to meet the growing challenge of deprogramming extremists.

FOCAL POINT spoke to Dr. Horgan about the Saudi program for the rehabilitation of former jihadists, and the common experiences of former terrorists from around the globe.

Click on the audio file below to hear the interview.

Photo courtesy of The International Center for the Study of Terrorism, The Pennsylvania State University.

Launched in December 2008, FOCAL POINT is an online-exclusive series of documentary shorts from Wide Angle, public television’s Emmy Award-winning international affairs documentary series. Like Wide Angle, FOCAL POINT offers a deeper understanding into the forces shaping the world today through compelling human stories, with FOCAL POINT providing a venue for shorter, less formal pieces. FOCAL POINT episodes are produced in collaboration with independent filmmakers, including both veteran Wide Angle producers and emerging filmmakers from around the globe.

Past Episodes

Raise the Last Glass
Field Trip to the DMZ
Pakistan at the Polls
Underground Zimbabwe
From Jihad to Rehab

Producing for FOCAL POINT

We look for character-driven shorts that address international current affairs issues. Films should have a clear story, with an emphasis on verité scenes, and may include interviews, narration, and on-camera reporting when appropriate. We encourage proposals from filmmakers who are reporting from all over the world and also consider finished shorts and works-in-progress. The running time for episodes of FOCAL POINT episodes range from 3 to 30 minutes.

If you have a video or an idea for a FOCAL POINT that you would like to submit, please send an email to WideAngle@thirteen.org , with “Focal Point Submission” in the subject line.

Lauren Feeney, Senior Multimedia Producer
Nina Chaudry, Senior Producer
Tom Casciato, Executive Producer

Jabaji and her mother in abayas, in Saudi Arabia.

The clothing police are cracking down on streaks of vibrant color, bands of glittering crystal and sexy leopard skin prints popping up on the runway—or rather, in this case, in Saudi Arabia’s marketplaces.

Women in Saudi Arabia are required to wear abayas, or shapeless robes, in public places at all times. The mutawa’a, or religious police, require that black abayas be worn loosely to the ground with a head covering. But now, women in Saudi Arabia are taking their black abayas to an entirely new level. Stores all over the kingdom have begun stocking their shops with new abayas embellished with splashes of beads, hints of color, and new fitted cuts.

As an Arab-American, the culture, customs and language of Saudi Arabia are by no means foreign to me. Having spent my early childhood years in Riyadh, I was accustomed to seeing my mother wrap herself in the abaya and venture to the market. But that was before the Gulf War—before the religious police tightened the grips on the kingdom. When I returned to Riyadh in the late 90s (due to my father’s work) I too sported one of these formless tent-like overcoats whenever I traveled in public. My mandatory black abaya was made of a bland chiffon material and conveniently zipped up in the front like a house robe. The scorching heat made my clothing choice under the abaya very simple: pool shorts and a tank top. I rarely ever did my hair or put any thought into my clothes, as I often do at home in New York, because I was restricted to dress within the rigid clothing code that left me feeling nameless. At that time, designer abayas were just starting to pop up. I’d see women wearing fitted abayas made with material from international fashion houses such as Fendi and Versace. But only a few women were togged up in these high-fashion abayas, the rest of us just wore abayas that looked like Hefty bags. I recall being reprimanded in a shopping mall by the religious police because my hairstyle—a simple bun—could be deciphered from under my veil. Another time I was stopped in the marketplace for having red pedicured toes.

But now the plain, shapeless abaya is something of the past. Feeling pressured to meet their clientele’s demands, shopkeepers and designers are putting their livelihoods at risk, facing fines or imprisonment for selling the stylized abayas. In the past, the religious police in Saudi Arabia have raided stores throughout Saudi Arabia, confiscating what they deem to be illicit abayas not in line with the kingdom’s rigid interpretation of Islamic teachings. As recently as last month, shopkeepers in Riyadh were ordered to stop selling adorned abayas.

In Saudi Arabia, home to the holiest site in Islam, these new stylized abayas aren’t solely a shift in style and taste, but rather an outright sign of relaxing social norms in the conservative kingdom.

The salesmen and designers in Saudi Arabia say that women are snapping up the new abayas. “We in Jiddah are fashion conscious,” said abaya designer Ghada al-Sairafi. “I try to come up with a new model every week because of the demand.”

Hanan al-Madani, another Jiddah designer, said abayas are “no longer just abayas.”
“Today, they reflect a woman’s taste and personality,” said al-Madani, whose custom-made abayas sell between $402 and $2,145.

Samar Falan, a Saudi Arabian women’s rights activist, is concerned that the crackdown on the trendy abayas will mark another setback for women in the kingdom.

“They [the mutawa’a] want women to be faceless, nameless and shrouded in blackness,’’ said Falan. “We kept quiet when we should have confronted the radicals. I believe Muslim women should dress modestly and cover their hair, but they do not have to look gruesome.”

In Turkey’s Tigers, WIDE ANGLE closely followed Mustafa Karaduman, the CEO of a Turkey’s largest Islamic-style clothing chain, Tekbir. Karaduman’s goal behind his multimillion dollar clothing empire is to encourage women to dress in Islamic style, adding splashes of style and flair to create more appeal. But this is in Turkey, a secular democracy with a predominantly Muslim population now negotiating membership in the European Union.