Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi talks with Bloomberg’s Margaret Brennan about Abu Dhabi’s agreement to provide $10 billion to help Dubai World avoid defaulting on a $4.1 billion bond payment, and the prospects for additional bailouts in Dubai. Read more »
Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi and the Future of Journalism
During the 2012 Global Art Forum, the Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art challenges Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi to forecast the future of journalism. Watch the video interview. Read more »
The Social Media Spring?
Commentator Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi describes the ways in which the medium of social media has played an instrumental role in the ‘Arab Spring’, and whether history will over- or under-emphasise its political significance. Read more »
Jassim Buhejji, a life for Bahrain
The Bahraini activist Jassim Buhejji was a quiet figure who nonetheless played a formative role in sustaining the best of his country’s political traditions. Jassim Buhejji’s passing comes at another time of trial for Bahrain. The island is today in need of such level-headed voices that identify themselves as members of an inclusive nation rather than according to sect. Read more »
From the palace to the protest
A favorite topic of contemporary political punditry concerns the role of social media in facilitating the revolutions of the Arab Spring. At the front line of this pioneering activism is Sultan al-Qassemi, the Emirati columnist, blogger and royal family member whose Twitter feed —read by over 100,000 followers—was named by Time Magazine as one of last year’s top 140. Qassemi spoke to NOW Lebanon about his part in the historic upheavals in the region, and where he thinks we are heading. Read more »
The Brotherhood and Gulf security
I was invited to meet leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood following an opinion article I had written for Egypt Independent earlier this month. The piece included for the first time explicit requests made from an Arab Gulf State foreign minister to the Brotherhood for relations between them to be normalized. This offer was in return for assurances that the Brotherhood would not seek to “export the revolution” to the Gulf, that it would not compromise on Gulf security and that future governments develop a systemic economic plan so the Gulf states could commit to further investments in Egypt. Read more »