Blogging for Syria

In March of 2009 I wrote on this blog: Live and Let Live in response to what I considered to be the latest bigoted outcry on the Syrian blogosphere against homosexuality . I was convinced that whoever was attacking homosexuals and their basic human rights would not simply stop at that but might eventually assault my own rights as a liberal and a secular humanist to freely express myself. It was the first time I enter into a direct confrontation online with some of those who were on the other side of what I always believed to exist in Syria, a social and intellectual chasm of religiosity. I claimed then, and I still do, that Syrian individuals, families and communities are divided along lines defined by their degree of adherence to religious practices and traditional mores. Later I was candid enough to confess that my champion defense of secularism was possible only because I lived in a country where my liberal stand was tolerated as long as I didn’t dig deep into politics or poi