Nearly two decades ago, I entered an Egyptian embassy in an Arab state in order to request a visa. I was brought to the consular officer who immediately noticed that I seemed startled by her appearance. "You're surprised at this?" she asked, gesturing to her hijab. Somewhat embarrassed, I indicated that I had never met an Egyptian diplomat who was covered. She acknowledged that there were very few but also spoke of how she had been pleasantly surprised not simply that she was accepted as a diplomat but that some senior people in the ministry were supportive and protective.

Her story was in one sense a bit odd: hijabs have become extremely widespread in Egyptian society, but she was speaking as if she was operating in alien terrain in the diplomatic corps. And in a sense she was. To this day, it is uncommon to find covered women in specific places in Egyptian society; the long beard characteristic of Salafis is similarly all but unknown in sensitive state institutions like the security establishment and the judiciary. The reasons are clear -- security-vetting blocks the entrance of those suspected of Islamist inclinations and those at the top positions of authority in various institutions often work to protect them as enclaves for their part of Egyptian society.

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Giggling over a communal pot of couscous, the girls swap stories and take turns pushing each other across the room on wheely chairs. Douha Rihi, 20, a German language major, wants to study abroad in Berlin. Sana Brahim, 23, is pursuing a master's degree in Microbiology. They don't look like the kind of young women you'd expect to find at the center of a major ideological controversy, but here they are -- all ten of them -- perched on the second level of the university administration building, fighting for their right to wear the full Muslim face veil, called niqab, inside classrooms and during exams.

Along with a group of scraggly-bearded young Salafi men, these girls have been occupying the University of Manouba College of Arts and Humanities administration building since November 28 of last year. Their protest has resulted in the continued closure of one of Tunisia's largest campuses since December 6 and has kept an estimated 13,000 students from attending their classes.

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Armed security officers wearing balaclavas led Nasser Abul, blindfolded and shackled, into a courtroom in downtown Kuwait City on July 19. Accused of crimes against the state, he answered the judge's questions from a wood-and-metal cage in the courtroom. His mother, watching the proceedings, hoped her 26-year-old eldest son would finally be released after nearly two months in detention. The judiciary has refused to grant her wish.

Abul found himself in jail because of a few tweets. Twitter was wildly popular in Kuwait even before protests began in Tunis and Cairo, and its use in Kuwait surged as the Arab Spring provided daily inspiration for news updates and commentary. Between January and March, people in Kuwait wrote over 3.69 million tweets -- more than any other country in the Middle East, according to a June report by the Dubai School of Government.

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A week into the demonstrations in Egypt, Hosni Mubarak's once unshakeable power structure was in full panic mode. What was once unimaginable had become reality: Egyptians seemed on the verge of overthrowing their government. Last week, hundreds of thousands marched through the streets of Cairo, Alexandria, and other Egyptian cities, shouting again and again their Tunisia-inspired mantra: "The people demand the downfall of the regime!"

As one protester told me and my colleague after viewing some of the dead at one of Alexandria's morgues, "We want to uproot this tree all the way down to its roots, and then plant a new tree" -- terrifying words for the entrenched Egyptian autocracy.

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View a slide show of Qataris celebrating getting the World Cup

For much of the last three years, Qatar has been an outsider in the contest to host the 2022 World Cup. In the closing stages of the race, British bookmakers slashed their odds and made it the favorite. Someone somewhere knew something, and they were right. Qatar, a small Persian Gulf country of just 1.7 million people, will be hosting football's top tournament 12 years hence. This is an intriguing and important moment, for 2022 will be the first global sporting mega-event to be held in an Arabic-speaking or predominately Muslim country. In an era of globalization, this is no sideshow, but the most watched event on the planet. Cumulative viewing figures for each of the last few World Cups exceeded 25 billion. Moreover, football -- or soccer, for you Yanks -- is incredibly popular in the region, played and watched more than any other sport.

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My leading image of Abu Dhabi's Formula 1 weekend is from the VIP lawn of a Kanye West concert: two local ladies, their black abayas open to reveal glittery gold bodysuits. It was a peak moment in the  new Middle East, Abu Dhabi spending untold billions to bring the best of the world home, then relishing it. The big winner, other than Sebastian Vettel, was the city itself, represented by the girls in gold lame. With Abu Dhabi's Grand Prix came the world's most advanced track, where races transition from day to night in the sunset of  the Persian Gulf, and the distinction of hosting the last Formula 1 event of the season for the second year in a row (the position is meant to rotate among host cities). Add on the arrival of Kanye and other top acts, and elite guests flown in to party in trackside yachts and at the luxe Yas Hotel. Among the hodgepodge of names in the crowd: Diane Von Furstenberg, Liz Cheney, and Barry Diller.

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The Israeli writer David Grossman's new novel To the End of the Land, which was published in the United States this week, has generated the kind of buzz that publicists dream about. Paul Auster likened Grossman to Flaubert and Tolstoy and declared the book a work of "overwhelming power and intensity." Novelist Nicole Krauss was even more emphatic. In a long blurb, she gushed, "Very rarely, a few times in a lifetime, you open a book and when you close it again nothing can ever be the same.... To the End of the Land is a book of this magnitude."

It's easy to snicker at the breathlessness of such praise (and many did), but it testifies to the reverence with which Grossman is regarded in liberal circles in America and Europe. Though much of his recent fiction (most of which has been translated from Hebrew into English and published widely abroad) deals with quotidian topics like marriage and adultery, drugs, love, and life as a teenager, Grossman is known -- and venerated -- outside of Israel primarily for his critiques of Israeli policy. Slate Group editor-in-chief Jacob Weisberg, writing recently in Newsweek, characteristically described Grossman (and his fellow novelist Amos Oz) as Israel's "national consciences." In June, Grossman won the prestigious German Book Trade Peace Prize for his efforts as an "active supporter of reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis."

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Cheb Khaled, the Algerian rai singer who is probably the best-known Arabic singer on the planet, was selected this summer as one of NPR's 50 Great Voices. Banning Eyre, a regular commentator on World Music on NPR and producer for Afropop Worldwide who has worked tirelessly to promote music from Africa, including the Maghreb, introduced Khaled to the NPR audience. Unfortunately, his introduction of Khaled repeated several unfortunate and misleading myths about rai music. Eyre presents a picture of an exceptional artist who favors tolerance and peace, and whose courageous positions have angered many Muslims and forced him to take refuge in the West. Eyre depicts Khaled as well as a kind of "bad boy," in the image of a U.S. rock'n'roller. Khaled, from "a land [Algeria] torn apart by intolerance and violence," says Eyre, "stood out as an artist who embraced openness and peace." The real story of Khaled is more interesting, one rooted in Algerian politics and in its large and vibrant musical scene.  

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A frail old man, wearing a black turban and ankle-length robes, stepped out of an Air France 747 into a chill February morning. His back hunched, he clutched the arm of a steward as he took faltering steps down a portable ramp to touch Iranian soil. After 15 years in exile, Ruhollah Khomeini had come home, the 78-year-old spiritual leader of a popular revolution that had toppled the shah of Iran and humbled SAVAK, his American-backed secret police force. Several million people from all across the country thronged into the capital to welcome the ayatollah, lining the 20-mile route out to Behesht-Zahra cemetery, where many of the martyrs of the revolution were buried. "The holy one has come!" they shouted triumphantly. "He is the light of our lives!" At the cemetery Khomeini prayed and delivered a 30-minute funeral oration for the dead. Then a boys' chorus sang, "May every drop of their blood turn to tulips and grow forever. Arise! Arise! Arise!"

In the decade between Khomeini's return to Tehran and the imposition of his fatwa on Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses -- and it was almost 10 years to the day that the one followed the other -- Islamism mutated from being a minor irritant to nationalist regimes in Muslim countries into a major threat to the West. The Rushdie affair, and the fatwa in particular, seemed like a warning that the seeds of the Iranian revolution were being successfully scattered across the globe, not least into the heart of the secular West.

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