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Beirut’s drag-queen scene

The Middle East is known for its conservatism, but with its febrile nightlife and more liberal mores, Beirut has long been hailed as a relative haven for the region’s LGBTQ community, though not without challenges.

Performers usually turn up in their street clothes, transform into a whole new character, then shed their costumes again before slipping back outside. Anissa, though, will be making an entrance tonight. A car to the venue has been organized, and she wants to enjoy the reactions of her fellow passengers. 

Five Yemeni hip-hop dancers thought their problems had ended when the Islamist militants who had banned them from performing were defeated in the port city of Mukalla nearly three years ago by forces backed by the United Arab Emirates, says Reuters.But last month Yemeni security forces briefly detained the five members of the WaxOn band, broke their equipment and only released the dancers after they had signed a document saying they would stop dancing hip-hop in public.

“The police said it was a religious sin,”

Since AQAP was driven out, Mukalla has been largely peaceful compared to the rest of Yemen, which has been devastated by nearly four years of fighting between the Saudi-led coalition and the Iran-aligned Houthis.

The Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT), Turkey’s public broadcaster, has cancelled a radio program featuring Turkish singer Sibel Tüzün because she supported an opposition hashtag after the cancelation of the results of the İstanbul mayoral election

Muhammet Safi, the head of the archives department at the Turkish presidency, on Tuesday tweeted a list targeting celebrities who had supported the opposition hashtag.

There’s a cutting-off-the-nose-to-spite-the face aspect to a Saudi plan to turn Qatar into an island by digging a 60-kilometre ocean channel through the two countries’ land border that would accommodate a nuclear waste heap as well as a military base. If implemented, the channel would signal the kingdom’s belief that relations between the world’s only two Wahhabi states will not any time soon return to the projection of Gulf brotherhood that was the dominant theme prior to the United Arab Emirates-Saudi-led imposition in June of last year of a diplomatic and economic boycott of Qatar.

The message that notions of Gulf brotherhood are shallow at best is one that will be heard not only in Doha, but also in other capitals in the region

the nuclear waste dump and military base would be on the side of the channel that touches the Qatari border and would effectively constitute a Saudi outpost on the newly created island.

The move is officially banned by the Saudi Interior Ministry’s National Drug Control Commission, which consider the move to be a reference to cannabis consumption.

“the move is a well-known move…known to represent smoking hashish which leads to addiction.”He added that there was “no doubt” that anyone taking part in the move would be subject to questioning and punishment.The move could warrant a prison sentence, a fine or both.

it’s the cleric’s King of Pop-inspired crisis of faith and the ways it’s manifested and ultimately assuaged that gives the film its unique depth. To that end, Salama gently, effectively examines the role religion can play in one’s life and outlook versus how a secular, more free-thinking existence may offer greater latitude but not always better or happier choices.

ACOR Photo Archive’s material is a unique collection due to the diversity of subjects it includes. It currently provides a representative record of Jordan’s archeological and social history spanning from 1955 to the early 2000s. Photos soon-to-be-digitized will feature subjects from the 1970s onwards in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Palestine, and Iran. Its historic photos of important sites are free to use and could be mobilized to support research proposals and grant applications.

The ACOR’s archival images are valuable as records of change for both archaeological-cultural heritage sites (more than two-hundred are represented in Jordan alone), as well as daily life in the Middle East over the past seventy years. Indeed, this record of change means that the archive has the potential to impact future heritage preservation projects across the region. They allow visual comparison with the past, thereby illustrating recent damage and helping experts and local communities decide how sites should be managed in the future.

NYU Abu Dhabi’s archive has an extensive collection of historic photos featured on its Instagram page (widening its popular appeal through more tongue-in-cheek posts). Darat al-Funun, an art gallery housed in Amman’s fashionable Jabal al-Webdeih district, also hosts an exhaustive online archive of video and images relating to the gallery’s exhibitions. It also features artist talks and musical performances over its almost thirty-year history. On a smaller scale, there are commendable efforts at documenting the modern visual heritage of the region, such as the Sultan-al-Qassemi-managed Instagram dedicated to highlighting the architectural heritage of the Emirate of Sharjah in the UAE. (You can check out ACOR’s instagram here.)

In Oman, the Gulf Cooperation Council country with the greatest linguistic diversity, eight of the country’s 10 languages are threatened or dying

the minority languages in Oman belong to three families: the Indo-Iranian Kumzari, Lawati (also known as Khojki), Zadjali and Balochi; the Modern South Arabian Harsusi, Bathari, Hobyot, Mehri and Jabbali; and the Bantu language Swahili. Only Balochi and Swahili have enough world speakers to be considered safe from extinction.

Some of the risks these languages face are due to the structural reforms — mainly in the field of education — instigated by Sultan Qaboos bin Said for the last five decades to promote national unity over a constellation of identities scattered across the state, with an emphasis on language. Ever since a coup orchestrated by British intelligence in July 1970 overthrew Sultan Qaboos’s father, Sultan Said bin Taimur, the state's official language, Arabic, has been a key element of this newly crafted Omani identity. 

A Moroccan court on Monday sentenced rapper Mohamed Mounir, known as Gnawi, to one year in jail for insulting police on social media.

The song, Aach al Chaab - which translates to "long live the people" - has been viewed more than 15 million times on YouTube since it was released last month.

rages against the authorities and criticises the country's widening economic gap, a message aimed at the disillusioned younger generation

On July 28, The Economist ran a story on what it said is why women are so much “fatter” than men in Arab countries. The story, titled “Why women are fatter than men in the Arab world,” laid the blame primarily on cultural restrictions on women that hinder their access to exercise and outdoor spaces. To accompany the short report, The Economist chose a photo of Enas Taleb during her performance at Iraq’s annual cultural Babylon Festival, thus portraying Taleb as an example of such overweight.

Taleb, 42, is a veteran of Iraqi TV dramas who began her career in locally produced shows at the age of 16. From 1996 to 2002, there were hardly any TV shows that did not include her as one of the main protagonists. She has appeared in ads and music videos in Iraq over the past two decades and is admired and respected among audiences and peers alike for her highly praised on screen performances and down-to-earth offscreen persona. Until The Economist used her image depicting “fat” Arab women, Taleb had largely remained distant from controversies, be they political, social or religious, unlike many other artists in Iraq’s entertainment scene. Also unlike many in the entertainment business, the married mother of two adolescent daughters has hardly changed her appearance over the years, eschewing the usual plastic surgeries that have become commonplace throughout the Arab world.

Also not properly examined in The Economist piece are other influences, like a culinary culture that encourages the overconsumption of carbohydrates, especially sweets and refined sugar, as exemplified by a rise of imported trends like junk food and sugary soda drinks that are not properly condemned by local health authorities. A general predilection for staying up late at night, which is common behavior throughout the Arab world, could also be an understudied factor contributing to the epidemic in the region.

a film based on “The 1,001 Arabian Nights” is a risky venture. On the one hand, Hollywood Golden Age standards like “The Thief of Baghdad” (1924) and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” (1944) get applause even from someone like Jack Shaheen, who in his book “Reel Bad Arabs” tries very hard to sniff out anti-Arab sentiment. On the other hand, Disney rolled the dice in 1992 and wound up with “Aladdin,” one of the most scandalous films ever made. This was thanks to an ill-advised song lyric about the Middle East: “Where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face.” (The 1993 VHS version tossed out this carbuncle but kept the phrase “It’s barbaric, but hey it’s home.”) The 2019 Will Smith reboot of the same name, one of that year’s highest-grossing films, didn’t do much in the eyes of critics to update Orientalist caricatures. Teachers still use the 1992 version to show what not to say about Arabs and Islam. Another Disney production, 2010’s “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time,” which was based on the Persian national epic “Shahnameh,” got panned for casting Jake Gyllenhaal, a white actor, to play a Persian character. And the list goes on.

both Byatt and Miller get much of the folklore right. Viewers learn that djinn come in many varieties, including those who fear God, like Alithea’s djinn insists he does, and those who don’t. Djinn are made of “smokeless fire” while humans are made from dust, based on the Quran’s chapter 55, “The Merciful.” Djinn can live for thousands of years, change size and shape, make love, eat and sleep (the djinn in the movie says his kind don’t do the latter). All this and more, drawn from Islamic folklore through Byatt’s story, makes Robin Williams’ blue meanie from the 1992 “Aladdin” look like the cardboard cutout he is

at a time of heightened sensitivity to who gets to tell stories, can Hollywood still celebrate the Middle East?

a rare public glimpse of how Israel and its American allies harness Israel’s influential tech sector and tech diaspora to run cover for the Jewish state as it endures scrutiny over the humanitarian impact of its invasion of Gaza.

reveal the degree to which, in the tech-oriented hasbara world, the lines between government, the private sector, and the nonprofit world are blurry at best. And the tactics that these wealthy individuals, advocates, and groups use -- hounding Israel critics on social media; firing pro-Palestine employees and canceling speaking engagements; smearing Palestinian journalists; and attempting to ship military-grade equipment to the IDF -- are often heavy-handed and controversial.

Members of the hasbara-oriented tech world WhatsApp group have eagerly taken up the call to shape public opinion as part of a bid to win what’s been described as the “second battlefield” and “the information war.”