What the Arab world needs most is free expression

Utterance and contradictions.

Freedom has always been a keyword in my life. I work for freedom, like freedom of speech. Recently, I read something about freedom in balance, and also, that there actually are countries in the world where freedom has decreased. Here, Turkey is a leading country.

Lies, fakery, corruption, injustice, disinformation campaigns and impunity are some important keywords when discussing freedom. This is a very complex, intriguing subject. And also, according to me, probably a very subjective topic. What freedom is for me may not be important for you. And vice versa.

Political challenges with regard to freedom. Here, the communist party leadership in China is another example. No need for comments. Moreover, military is sometimes used to block opposition, especially in countries where military has ruled for decades. Religious extremism is also touching upon freedom. Again, very complicated, and also a subject that need a lot of space to be elaborated on.

There is something called freedom house (watchdog organization), and they write about freedom in the world. To date, there is only one Arab country considered to be classified as free, namely Tunisia. Morocco, Jordan and Kuwait are very close and come second. Presently, I am still thinking of a good subject for my next book. I have decided to write about freedom, and this is definetly going to be a tremendous challenge. So, I got inspired by this article. As you might understand, I read various news to find inspiration.

Music can play a role in freedom. Life is always a contradiction and that fascinates me. When I was in Dubai I made some observations. Law was very important. If you made any mistakes against law, immediate punishments were directly put into practice. Furthermore, women often wore quite, strict clothing. However, in the evenings, it was very popular to have bellydancers. Talking about contradiction. To conclude, music contributed to an easy ambience. Music seem to be a place where people can meet, even though different state of minds.

As usual I share a little something with you. These photos are from New Year 2018, Dubai. Mostly, I travel alone, but that doesn’t bother me. Rather often I meet people on excursions etc, and this time I met a family from Sri Lanka. They work at the university and for Blackberry, and live in Toronto, Canada. Since it was so much snow there at that timepoint, they wanted to see their family over christmas in Sri Lanka. We met on the desert excursion, and the evening ended with BBQ and belly dancers in the dark desert. I am still learning photography. It takes time. The other photo is from Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque. What a contradiction, don´t you agree? Talk about freedom and restrictions.