Fadia Faqir is Director of the Centre for Middle Eastern Women’s Studies (IMEIS) at Durham University. Novelist and essayist, her latest novel is Pillars of Salt (Quartet, 1996). She is co-editor of In the House of Silence: autobiographical essays by Arab women writers (Garnet, 1998).

Recent articles

Since 11 September, the images of the war against terror which have been presented to us by the hegemonic western media are predominantly masculine on all sides: George Bush, Colin Powell, Tony Blair, Mohammad Atta, Osama Bin Laden and the male soldiers launching the missiles to smoke out the terrorist. Again and again men have appeared on our TV screens, flexing their muscles, raising their rhetoric to put fear in the heart of their enemy.

The terrorists may still be hiding out in caves, but the caveman mentality is widespread among all the participants in this war. They think that this conflict, which is getting wider and more serious by the minute, cannot be resolved except through military action.