Maysaloon - ميسلون

I met Phil Rees last night, author of "Dining with Terrorists". A very soft spoken man with interesting ideas who appears to be challenging commonly held assumptions. I was pleasantly surprised when we both started talking about Dr Ali Shariati and his influence on non-Western models of political development and "ways of life". He's definitely onto something with his new documentary and it looks like it might ruffle quite a few feathers. It will be out at the end of the month apparently, on Channel 4 here in the UK. He also gave me a copy of his book, which I have just started reading, and it is quite interesting - more later.