Arts and Culture in the Mideast

Zabana!

In the opening scenes of Gillo Pontecorvo’s seminal 60s film, The Battle of Algiers, a man with an expressionless look on his face is escorted to the guillotine by two French guards. Although reticent at first, he soon breaks his silence – much to the chagrin of his escorts – loudly chanting Allaho Akbar! (God is great) and Thanmirt e’Jazayer! (long live Algeria), stirring his comrades to raise their voices and join in. ‘Shut up! There he is!’ exclaims Ali La Pointe, the film’s ill-starred hero, as he and his fellow inmates rush to a hole in the wall to catch a fleeting glimpse of the mysterious man’s final moments. Swiftly and unceremoniously, the man is placed beneath the merciless blade of the macabre instrument, which – in a bleak and chilling instant – comes crashing down.

Encounters With Islam: An Interview with Author Malise Ruthven

Malise Ruthven is an internationally recognized scholar on Islam and the Middle East. Born in Dublin in 1942, Ruthven was educated at Cambridge University (M.A., English Literature and Ph.D., Social and Political Sciences). He is a former scriptwriter with the BBC Arabic and World Services. Ruthven has taught Islamic Studies, cultural studies and comparative religion at the University of Aberdeen, Dartmouth College, the University of California, San Diego and other colleges.

Ruthven is the author of more than a dozen books, such as Islam in the World (Oxford, 1984); A Fury for God: The Islamist Attack on America (Granta, 2002); Islam: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 1997), and A Satanic Affair: Salman Rushdie and the Wrath of Islam (Chatto and Windus, 1989).

Fashion Line “Mohajababes” Brings Kaftan Couture to the Masses

With the rise of Middle Eastern-inspired fashion and the blend of “modest” dressing with high fashion, kaftans are no longer reserved for covering up at the beach.

International designers such as Camilla Frank, Emilio Pucci and Missoni have already refashioned the kaftan as couture according to Western silhouettes and textures; but, now young Americans of Middle Eastern heritage are reviving the kaftan to cater to the growing modest Muslim fashion market by using traditional embroideries and less revealing cuts.

Solar Mamas

While many may not know Egyptian-American filmmaker Jehane Noujaim by name, her award winning documentary film, Control Room, made a resounding impact worldwide. Released in 2004, Control Room exposed the difference in reporting on the US invasion of Iraq between Western media and the Arab news network, Al Jazeera, and earned Noujaim the 2006 TED Award for her vision to change the world through film.

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

Once upon a time in Anatolia, wandering Persian mystics surrendered their souls to the Beloved, itinerant bards recited tales of love and chivalry to the sounds of the saz, and nomads and bandits roamed the steppes far and wide on horseback, in the great tradition of their Turkic forebears. Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s recent film, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (a reference to Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West), however, has little to do with the reckless beauty of the Anatolian plains; rather, it tells of a murder investigation – based on true events – in which the darker aspects of the Turkish countryside are chillingly depicted.

Goodbye – Be Omid-e Didar

Iranian films have a reputation for being painfully real, and Goodbye is certainly no exception to the rule. Directed by Mohammad Rasoulof, who, like the protagonist in his film, had a falling out with the authorities – along with fellow filmmaker Jafar Panahi – the film is at once a window into the bleakness of modern day Iran, and a reflection of the director’s own predicament.

Mohamed Mahmoud Graffiti, the Threat of Memory and an Unfinished Revolution

The news a few nights ago that “someone” had painted over the Martyrs’ Mural on Mohamed Mahmoud street predictably aroused attention on social media; artists refusing to be erased returned immediately. A few on Twitter quickly pointed the finger at Morsi’s Islamist dominated government and read the destruction as evidence of the Muslim Brotherhood’s long-term plan to crack down on art and expression in line with conservative irreligious ideology. Some called it an attack on Egyptian pluralistic history - the images mixed Pharaonic, Christian and Muslim symbols. A walk along Mohamed Mahmoud Street, site of the Egyptian Revolution’s worst clashes between demonstrators and security forces, suggests a different interpretation. Rather than an imposition of Islamist moral values on the public realm, the eagerness to demolish the Martyrs’ Mural appears, to me, to be a calculated move to curtail possible protests—in short, politics as usual under an Egyptian regime that remains far from fulfilling promises of the revolution.

On Saudi Arabia: Author Karen House Discusses The Middle Eastern King

Karen Elliott House is one of America’s most knowledgeable experts on Saudi Arabia. For the last thirty years, she has studied the Kingdom as a writer for the The Wall Street Journal. Her new book, “On Saudi Arabia” (Knopf, 2012), is a rare look inside one of the most fascinating and mysterious countries in the world.

In her new book, House aims “to peel back the bindings of tradition and religion that wrap the Saudi mummy to explain how the society works, how Saudis think and live, and how events in the desert kingdom may unfold.”

House studied at the University of Texas at Austin and at Harvard University. She has taught at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics and was a fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. She worked for the The Wall Street Journal for more than three decades, including as Publisher from 2002-2006. She has received numerous awards for her reporting, including the coveted Pulitzer Prize. House is a former director and a current member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the board of the Trilateral Commission.

Karen Elliott House discusses On Saudi Arabia with Aslan Media contributor Joseph Preville.