 Ahmed Benchemsi — Founder and Editor in Chief of Free Arabs. Founded, published and edited TelQuel and Nishan, Morocco’s two best-selling magazines. Was awarded twice “Best investigative journalist in the Arab world” by the European Union. Blogs at http://ahmedbenchemsi.com/, tweets as @AhmedBenchemsi |
 Nasser Weddady — Civil Rights Outreach Director at the American Islamic Congress by day, co-founder of Free Arabs by night. Activist profiled in The Atlantic as “quietly pulling strings from Boston behind the Arab revolts.” Fluent in 5 languages. Anti-slavery and human rights activist. Blogs at http://dekhnstan.wordpress.com/, tweets as @weddady |
 Mohamed Amer a.k.a “Medo” — Free Arabs’ Video Editor. A Saudi-born award-winning film-maker, he co-founded a film group in 2008 in the Arabic Gulf. His work was shown in the Dubai film festival and other international venues. A jurist by training, Medo gave up a career in law to pursue his passion for cinema at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. |
 Ayla Mrabet — Free Arabs' Music Editor. A Moroccan-Syrian journalist, Ayla is specialized in Arab new-wave culture (and in general, in whatever no one is specialized in.) Hobby: unearthing obscure, weirdly funny Internet content. Underground is her kingdom and arty activism, her holy grail. Self-defines as “Sale gosse” (bad brat). Tweets as @Aylatah |
 Dahlia Mahmoud — Free Arabs' Photo Editor. Sudanese-Egyptian artist, photographer and design professor, award-winning video maker. Lives in Kuwait. Mother tongue: sarcasm. Upholds valiance and creativity to the highest regard, passionate about positive change. Blogs at dolshark.com, tweets as @dolshark. |
 Casey Kapalko — Free Arabs’ Assistant Editor, Casey lived in Morocco and Egypt for extended periods of time. Her interests go from Feminism in the Middle East, ideological hegemony to Arabic grammar rules. Casey recently finished her undergrad degree and is planning to attend Middlebury College’s Arabic program. |
Hisham Almiraat (Morocco) - Medical doctor in Casablanca, cyber-dissident, Advocacy Director for Global Voices. As the co-founder of Mamfakinch.com, Morocco's #1 dissident online platform, was awarded the Google/Global Voices Breaking Borders Prize. Blogs at http://www.almiraat.com/, tweets as @almiraat
Hend al Ashek (Saudi Arabia) - Undercover Saudi journalist living in Saudi Arabia. Plays a pivotal role in organizing the kingdom’s growing civil rights protest movement. For security reasons, she blogs under a pen name.
Mokhtar Awad (Egypt) – Egyptian researcher based in Washington DC, specializes in Egyptian politics and Islamist antics in particular. Monitors Salafi websites all day (someone has to!). Rising young talent. Tweets as @Mokhtar_Awad
Wafa Ben Hassine (Tunisia) Wafa is a Denver-based Tunisian-American Law grad student. A contributor for Nawaat, Tunisia's top journalism/activism platform, Wafa is passionate about democracy, freedom of speech, human rights, open governance and gender equality. Blogs at http://thepoeticpolitico.wordpress.com/ Tweets as @ousfourita
Assia Boundaoui. (Algeria) Algerian-American, documentary filmmaker and award-winning reporter (for her exclusive profile of Nobel Prize winner Tawakkul Karman), focusing on the Middle East and North Africa. Correspondent for the BBC’s "theworld.org". Self-desribes as a "journalist with an antipathy for the objective". Blogs at assia.posterous.com. Tweets as @assuss
Sanaa El Aji (Morocco) - Author behind the "Ahlam- The Independent Woman" column of the Horrific 4 series. El Aji writes in Arabic and is passionate about secularism and feminism. An award winning investigative journalist and a columnist, she published her first Arabic novel “Majnounatou Youssef” in 2003. Writes at http://sanaa-elaji.com. Tweets as @selaji
Ghazi Gheblawi (Libya) London-based blogger, activist, and surgeon by profession. Runs the award-winning Imtidad literary blog featuring one of the first Arabic literary podcasts in the region. Author of two collections of short stories in Arabic and translated several works of poetry and short fiction from Arabic into English. Founder and editor of Libyan news site el-Kaf.com. Tweets as @Gheblawi
Sara Labib (Egypt) - Egyptian blogger and commentator on Egyptian politics. Currently pursuing Master's degree in Law in Europe. Blogs at tabulasara.blogspot.com,tweets as @SaraLabib
Baki 7our Mansour (Algeria) - Secretive dissident and democratic activist, frequent commentator on Algerian, Maghreb and Sahel affairs. Blogs at http://7our.wordpress.com/, tweets as @7our
Amir Ahmad Nasr (Sudan) - Digital marketing consultant and philosopher based in Kuala-Lumpur. Self-defines as “hippie Sufi”. Author of “My Isl@m, How Fundamentalists Stole My Mind And Doubt Freed My Soul” (St. Martin’s Press), a book that will earn him an award or a fatwa (or both). Blogs at http://www.sudanesethinker.com/, tweets as @SudaneseThinker
Telmah Parsa (Iran) - Lives in Tehran, works for the Ministry of Truth (seriously). Hobby: making fools of Ayatollahs on The Daily Beast and Huffington Post. Distinctive features: moody, and a lover of literature. Blogs at http://telmahparsa.blogspot.com/ but doesn’t tweet (get used to it).
Bayan Perazzo (Saudi Arabia) - Lebanese. And American. And Italian, and Senegalese. Fascinated by Saudi Arabia, where she works as a University teacher (Saihat, Al-Qatif province). Gulf Editor for Muftah.org, sociologist, specialist of MENA politics and Islamic studies. Exuberantly free and funny. Blogs at http://alrihla.blogspot.fr/, tweets as @BintBattuta87
Amanda Rogers (USA) Sometimes resident in Algiers, Tunisia, Egypt, or Morocco–an international airport near you. Specialist in visual culture and politics in MENA. Staff writer at Muftah.org, Arabic lecturer, soon to be PhD, Emory University. Fervent believer in sarcasm. Tweets as @MsEntropy
Josh Shahryar (Afghanistan) - Arab-Afghan reporter on human rights for EA Worldview and The Friday Times. Recognized as one of the top social media news curators during the Arab uprisings. Left Afghanistan to seek asylum in the US because of threats from warlords and fundamentalists. Tweets as @Jshahryar
Karl Sharro (Lebanon) – Architect in London. Prolific writer and public speaker on art, urbanism, and Middle Eastern politics. Has addictive deadpan humor and sarcastic wit: whenever he publishes a new text, you just can’t help stopping whatever you’re doing in order to read it. Blogs at http://www.karlremarks.com/, tweets as @KarlreMarks
Reem Smith (Arab American) - Lives between Dubai and New York. Negotiates the life of a hijabi Muslim woman in the PR corporate sector, contending with a whole host of stereotyping. Don't call her an activist or a dissident, she's tired of labels. She is Reem, but Smith is a pen name ("enough to justify about at work everyday without adding this one", she says)
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