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Women defying hijab laws forced into psychiatric treatment

Authorities in Iran are trying to enforce laws obligating women to cover their hair by sending them for psychological treatment.

Palestinians still long to return

On 15 May every year, Palestinians across the globe remember the "Nakba". Seventy-five years on, many still yearn to return to the land they left behind.

Political cartoons, satire and Islam

As we have seen in recent decades, political cartoons can have explosive potential. Qantara examines the importance of humour and satire in the Islamic world.

France: A chronicle of police violence

Riots have gripped France for days since the fatal police shooting of a teenager on 27 June. It's just the latest in a series of allegedly racist incidents that protesters say the state has failed to adequately address, writes Oliver Pieper

The strings and synths of Sudan

Ostinato Recordsʹ latest release, "Two Niles to Sing a Melody", is not only a collection of sixteen songs from the peak period of the country’s popular music era, the 1970s, it also contains fascinating first-hand accounts from a variety of musicians who survived the purges during the subsequent clampdown on popular culture. By Richard Marcus

Press reboot!

With young Tunisian directors winning international awards, the decision to finally go ahead with a long-planned cinematheque, and a careful festival relaunch, the signs are all there: the winds of change are blowing in the Tunisian film sector. By Sarah Mersch in Tunis

Library restores Palestinian history one manuscript at a time

A library in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem offers a rare glimpse into Palestinian history with its treasure trove of manuscripts dating back hundreds of years before the creation of Israel

Islamist attack in Burkina Faso

"It's part of our lives"

On 15 May Palestinians marked the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, or "catastrophe" – the mass displacement from their homeland in 1948. Tania Kraemer asked some Palestinians how those events continue to define their lives today

The two-state solution – what future?

A two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has practically disappeared from the international agenda. Israel’s unity government has decided against negotiations and Palestinian politics are stuck in deep stagnation. Yet some are working tirelessly to change that. Noam Yatsiv talks to Gadi Baltiansky of the Geneva Initiative