Global Voices Online

Muslim pop singer Deeyah has irked the Muslim world with her provocative new music video that shows her stripping off a burka to reveal her bikini-clad body. Mohammed AlMaskati wonders where is this going really; now the west needs to free Muslim women from the Burka’a so that they can go into bigger and “better” things.. like breast implants, eating disorders, chronic happy pill popping, marijuana and eventually fortunes being spent on psychiatry, he said.

Recent Links also in Middle East & North Africa

Adil Najam discusses about a recently released list of 8000 persons including the president of Pakistan and 34 Pakistani politicians who have benefited from the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO), promulgated by former president Pervez Musharraf on Oct 5, 2007. This ordinance “grants amnesty to all those against whom politically-motivated cases were registered between Jan 1, 1986, and Oct 12, 1999.”

Maghreb Blog reports that the sentence of Chakib Khayari, a human rights activist and whistleblower, has been upheld in a Casablanca court. Khayari is set to serve three years in prison for accusing high-level civil servants of aiding in drug trafficking.

Moroccan resident Ibn Ibn Battuta shares a list of nonfiction and travel books that keep him busy on the road in Morocco.