Author Archives: Arab America

Discover the 10 Egyptian movies that are considered to be the best ever produced in the country.

Source: theculturetrip.com

Women filmmakers and protagonists are strongly represented at the 14th annual Chicago Palestine Film Festival, which opened last night at the downtown Gene Siskel Film Center and runs through 30 April.

The opening feature, Eyes of a Thief by Najwa Najjar (Pomegranates and Myrrh), was Palestine’s entry to this year’s Academy Awards (watch the trailer above).

Shot on location in Nablus and Bethlehem, Najjar’s second feature-length film is inspired by the true events of the fatal shooting of 11 Israeli soldiers at a West Bank checkpoint in 2002.

Dramatic storytelling is promised in the first few minutes — protagonist Tarek is hidden and nursed by a nun and priest in a church after being shot and wounded by soldiers, and he makes his escape only to be arrested at a checkpoint. But the plot sputters on.

It is hard to believe that Tarek (performed by Egyptian actor Khaled Abol Naga) did not receive any news of his wife and young daughter when he was in Israeli prison for ten years, and that there was no crowd to give him a hero’s welcome upon his release. And very little of his story is believable after that.

Algerian singer Souad Massi makes a fine enough acting debut as seamstress Lila, but her character is given limited emotional range and she’s strangely passive when her developer husband-to-be is put on impromptu public trial by Tarek in an improbable showdown.

The most enjoyable performance of this film is that of Malak Ermileh as a fearless, tough-talking orphaned girl who was taken in by Lila. There is also an ensemble of men who gather at a coffee shop and provide comic relief and political commentary. But they cannot save this plot, the points of which are overemphasized by distracting melodramatic music.

What festival goers may most appreciate is the film’s unambiguous message of the righteousness of armed resistance and the treatment of Palestinian collaborators as a primary obstacle on the road to freedom.

May in the Summer

May in the Summer, the sophomore feature by Cherien Dabis (Amreeka), makes its Chicago premiere.

Fans of Dabis’ earnest first film won’t find its sympathetic characters in her second. Instead, an attractive, wealthy but dysfunctional family in Amman become increasingly unhappy and shouty as the clock winds down to title character May’s wedding to Ziad, who, like May, is a New York City intellectual.

cherien_dabis_foreground_and_alia_shawkat_background_in_may_in_the_summer_photo_courtesy_of_cohen_media_group.jpg

Cherien Dabis in May in the Summer
It’s hard to know why the two got engaged in the first place, plunging themselves into this morass of unhappiness, since the audience doesn’t see much of their relationship in the film.

But a wedding is an excuse for Dabis to throw together and test the relationships between May and her two sisters; their bitter, divorced Palestinian mother; and their absent and remarried American father. All of them have secrets that they try and fail to keep from one another before May’s big day. But it’s hard for the viewer to have an emotional stake in whether May, performed by Dabis, goes through with it.

“Refugee film”

Other new Palestinian feature films included in this year’s festival are Villa Touma by Suha Arraf and The Wanted 18 by Paul Cowan and Amer Shomali.

Israel’s two largest movie funders banned recipients from identifying their work as Palestinian after Arraf registered Villa Touma as Palestinian at the 2014 Venice Film Festival, putting her in the crosshairs of the Israeli press and political elite.

“It is my refugee film,” Arraf told The Electronic Intifada in a recent interview. “Like Palestinians everywhere, it is stateless.”

Set in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, Arraf’s directorial debut depicts three women from an aristocratic Palestinian Christian family who take in an orphaned niece whose behavior doesn’t conform with their severe and secluded lifestyle.

The Wanted 18 meanwhile is a buoyant celebration of a West Bank village’s grassroots resistance against the Israeli occupation during the first intifada.

As Selma Dabbagh explains in her review for The Electronic Intifada:

“The Wanted 18 was a surprise. It is a film about a real story that captivated director Amer Shomali’s imagination as a child, the story of how the town of Beit Sahour bought 18 cows from an Israeli kibbutz in order to start producing its own milk. It tells the tale of a town trying to attain independence by boycotting taxes and produce. It is the story of nonviolent resistance, its heroics and psychology.”

Rich history

Documentary films which uphold Palestine’s rich and diverse history — Heba El-Attar’s The Voice of a Condor pays homage to the longstanding and sizeable Palestinian minority in Chile — are also featured at this year’s festival.

Encounter with a Lost Land by Maryse Gargour (The Land Speaks Arabic) recollects the memories of the Jaffa-born daughters of a French doctor and gives a glimpse of the cosmopolitan center of Palestinian intellectual life which was lost in 1948.

The history of the Zionist conquest of Palestine, Britain’s pernicious role, and how Jaffa was emptied of its people and filled with strangers, is told by these women and their father in his letters.

Meanwhile, the Palestinians who have managed to cling on to their property in Akka, another historic coastal city in the country’s north are the subject of It’s Better to Jump.

As Sarah Irving describes in her review for The Electronic Intifada:

“Director Patrick Stewart does an admirable job in It’s Better to Jump of conveying both the staggeringly long history of this beautiful port and the challenges which beset its people on a daily basis” as Israel uses tourism development schemes as a means of insidious ethnic cleansing.

Journey of a Freedom Fighter by Mohammad Moawia honors the life of Rabee Turkman, a Palestinian fighter who laid down his gun and took up cultural resistance at Jenin’s famed Freedom Theatre.

The half-hour documentary is painful to watch because Turkman’s journey is cut brutally short when he succumbs to kidney failure as a result of Israeli bullet wounds from his days in the armed resistance.

There is some consolation that the wide-eyed and romantic Turkman achieved his dream of acting on stage in Europe and pursued this despite the stigma of leaving behind his fellow fighters, who are embarrassed by their former comrade.

Uncomfortable questions

Excellent new shorts are also to be screened at this year’s festival.

A father (Makram Khoury) on his deathbed asks his son a question decades too late in In Overtime, written, directed by and starring Rami Yassin. Sentimentality is avoided as both father and son achieve some sort of liberation as they acknowledge what they’ve let fear prevent them from broaching all these years.

Viewers can feel the tension tightening in their shoulders as a drone buzzes incessantly in Condom Lead, invading the most intimate moments of a Gaza family’s home. In Tarzan Abu Nasser’s smart short, the occupation is intangible but smothers the intimacy between a young couple, giving insight to the siege’s profound and pervasive toll on all aspects of life.

Hajjar by Rana Khaled Al Khatib is an ode to a people who survived the uprooting of their nation. Animation and poetic images of sand moved by the wind accompany the testimony of Hajjar, an 82-year-old Nakba survivor who now lives in a refugee camp in Lebanon. She recounts her family’s forced march from Palestine, memories of the absurd and the tragic tumbled together. Bittersweet is the flavor of Palestinian memories.

Around the same age as Hajjar are Yossi Schwartz and his wife Rivka in Mirror Image by Danielle Schwartz. The couple live in Binyamina, a settlement near Haifa in present-day Israel, where Hajjar and other refugees like her have never been allowed to return.

Hajjar’s memory of 1948 and how her village was conquered is clear. More evasive are Yossi and Rivka, who both did military training with the Haganah, the principal Zionist militia that cleansed Palestinians like Hajjar from their land.

Yossi and Rivka are interrogated by Danielle, their granddaughter, about the provenance of a grand mirror displayed in their home. To Yossi and Rivka, it doesn’t matter whether that mirror was plundered or purchased from the Palestinian village of Zarnuqa. What matters is that it is now theirs — reflecting the pervading attitude among Jewish Israelis about the violent and unjust genesis of their state.

Source: electronicintifada.net

Following the heavy coverage of AIPAC’s (the virulently pro-Israeli government lobby) multi-day annual Washington convention in March, the mainstream media might have been interested for once in covering alternative viewpoints like those discussed at the April 10th conference “The Israel Lobby: Is it Good for the US? Is it Good for Israel?” (Israellobbyus.org). Fairness and balance in reporting should produce at least some coverage of such an event.

Organized by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, which was launched about thirty years ago by a British Army Officer who served in World War II and two retired U.S. Ambassadors to countries in the Middle East (wrmea.org), the day-long program at the prestigious National Press Club should have been intriguing to reporters. After all, are they not interested in important, taboo-challenging presentations on a critical dimension of U.S. foreign and military policy?

The presenters were much more newsworthy than most of the speakers at the AIPAC convention who redundantly restated the predictable AIPAC line. “The Israel Lobby: Is it Good for the US? Is it Good for Israel?” had presenters ranging from the courageous, principled columnist, Gideon Levy of Israel’s best and most serious newspaper, Haaretz; Princeton Professor emeritus of international law and the former UN Special Rapporteur for Palestinian territories, Richard Falk; former members of Congress, Paul Findley (R-IL) and Nick Rahall (D-WV); author and an Israeli general’s son, Miko Peled; Dr. Jack Shaheen, the award-winning author documenting stereotypes of Arabs and Arab-Americans in Hollywood and the U.S. media; and even a former AIPAC supporter M. J. Rosenberg (mjrosenberg.net) who witnessed the power of AIPAC money as both a congressional staffer and later an AIPAC senior staffer in the nineteen eighties.

Gideon Levy, the dean of Israeli Journalists, who knows first-hand the situation on the ground in Israel and occupied Palestine, referred to Israel’s intensely intrusive pressure on the U.S. during Iranian nuclear negotiations. He offered the phrase: “United States of Israel,” and said, “many times when someone looks at the relations between Israel and the United States, one might ask, who is really the superpower between the two?”

Mr. Levy described Israel as a society that “lives in denial, totally disconnected from reality” that “lost connection with the reality in its backyard, it totally lost connection with the international environment.”

The veteran journalist stunned the packed audience when he said that “the two state solution is dead.” With the Israeli occupation going “deeper and deeper,” he pointed to the “systematic dehumanization of the Palestinians,” Israelis presenting themselves as occupying victims and the belief by many Israelis that they “are the chosen people” and “have the right to do what we want,” as the basis for the occupation.

The serious, continuing breaches over decades of international law by Israel and its backer, the U.S. government, were described by Richard Falk who felt the brunt of these powers during his six-year term as the UN Rapporteur just for connecting the facts to the laws, and noting widely acknowledged continuing violations of UN resolutions and the Geneva Conventions.

Former Congressman Paul Findley spoke of politicians cowering before AIPAC because of the “anxiety over being accused of anti-Semitism.” AIPAC is a leading anti-Semitic organization against the Arab peoples and the thousands of innocent civilian Palestinians and Lebanese children and adults slaughtered by the U.S.-armed Israeli armed forces. (See Doctor James Zogby’s remarks about ‘The Other Anti-Semitism’, delivered Hebrew University in Israel in 1994.)

AIPAC, knowing that the Israeli military was engaged daily as brutalizing occupiers, has never openly disavowed its support for such destruction of innocent humans and human rights even when the videotaped devastation horrified the civilized world. AIPAC was conspicuously silent during the illegal U.S. invasion and violent sociocide of Iraq—a nation that did not threaten the U.S.

A surprise speaker was the just defeated 38-year veteran of the House of Representatives, former Congressman Nick Joe Rahall. Apparently, now extricated from AIPAC’s Congressional clutches, he is now free to stand tall for human rights and speak freely and describe the congressional obeisance to the Israel lobby from the inside.

Unfortunately, there was no panel representing either U.S. taxpayers, who foot the bill for the billions of dollars spent yearly, nor the U.S. soldiers who have been sent to kill or be killed in military invasions and other attacks backed by this self-defeating Israeli-U.S. government alliance that just worsens the insecurities in the Middle East, spreads into savage sectarian struggles and portends more boomerangs against peace and justice in the world.

So, where were the reporters of the mainstream media? Where was C-SPAN during a week when Congress was on a holiday and their cameras were not preoccupied by Capitol Hill activities—its foremost priority? Apparently, the American people were only to see and hear the extreme views of AIPAC that do not even command the support of a majority of American Jews who do favor a two-state solution, along with a majority of Arab-Americans.

It is true that a few members of the mainstream media RSVP’d to attend this conference, but they did not show up or write anything about it before or after.

Nonetheless, thanks to the Internet, you can see the entire one-day conference online.

In the meantime, how about a little retrospective evaluation, by those so authorized, in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Associated Press and Reuters to make better judgements about providing balanced news the next time around. As for the absentee “fair and balanced” Fox News—well, what do you expect?
Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His latest book is The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future. Other recent books include, The Seventeen Traditions: Lessons from an American Childhood, Getting Steamed to Overcome Corporatism: Build It Together to Win, and “Only The Super-Rich Can Save Us” (a novel).

Source: www.countercurrents.org

President of AAEF says Foundation believes that cementing right knowledge is very important to fight stereotyping and discrimination. Middle east online, HOUSTON (Texas) – The Arab-American Educational Foundation (AAEF) celebrated officially the establishment of the Chair of Modern Arab History at the University of Houston. Dr. Aziz Shaibani, the President of AAEF said at the … Continued

Flourishing this week in the garden with our cherished spring rains, having overwintered with ease like Italian parsley, also a biennial—is chard. It’s an amazingly hardy plant that can be harvested now through summer and fall for Mediterranean recipes, where chard is native to the region; it delightfully thrives in the Pacific Northwest and is easy to grow.
Italians use it with pasta, of course; Egyptians call it colcas and cook it with taro root and coriander in a broth; while in the Arabic I grew up with, it is called al-siliq or siliq, from which the Spanish word for chard, acelgas originates. Spaniards cook acelgas with beans, sausage, or potatoes; Mexican recipes include a sopa with macaroni and a braised version called acelgas guisadas. Tunisians combine chard into a delicious sounding chick pea, tomato, and onion ragout called morshan, and the Iraqis call their version of this yahne. The French are famous for a rich tart including this nutritious green called tart aux blettes, with eggs, crème fraîche and cheese. Asians from India to Japan have numerous ways of seasoning and preparing this versatile vitamin and phytonutrient-rich green leafy vegetable.

We Lebanese and other Arab countries use it braised or sautéed with a classic dressing of garlic mashed into a paste with salt, lemon juice, and olive oil—fabulous on any steamed or sautéed greens including chard, spinach, kale, asparagus, artichokes, and beet greens. It is added to lentil soups at the last minute for flavor and nutrition. The ribs and stems trimmed from chard leaves to make rolls, are steamed or sautéed and are drizzled with tahini sauce.

If you’re not growing your own chard, our local farmer’s markets are abundant with these lush organic greens. Whether you use green, red, yellow, or rainbow chard in Mediterranean, Asian, or any inspired recipe, the options are endless. Chard is truly a versatile and beneficial fresh ingredient to keep on hand and in the garden for your international culinary adventures.

A recipe from Alice’s Kitchen featuring chard as a spring time substitute for summer time grape leaves in making stuffed rolls—vegan or lamb with rice. Here’s how to make the vegan version, called waraq siliq (meaning chard leaves) using lots of Italian parsley, spearmint, green onions, tomato, garbanzo beans and rice rolled in a leaf and then cooked in a pot. Make more than you think you’ll need, as they’re fantastic the next day, either reheated, at room temperature, or cold. Sahtein! (Arabic for good health!). Enjoy!

Ingredients

20 or so chard leaves (red or green)

Filling

1 cup brown rice, soaked and rinsed
1 bunch green onions, or 1 Spanish or red onion
1 bunch Italian parsley, finely chopped
½ bunch spearmint, finely chopped
1 cup tomatoes, finely chopped (use organic canned since it’s not summer)
½ cup garbanzo beans, precooked or canned, drained and rinsed
1 t. salt
½ t. black pepper
¼ t. cayenne pepper
¼ cup lemon juice
⅛ cup olive oil, extra-virgin cold pressed

Lebanese chard roll platter (photo © linda dalal sawaya)

For the pot
4 cloves garlic
⅓ cup lemon juice
2 ½ cups water
⅛ cup olive oil 

Pick, rinse, and remove central rib from chard leaves. Layer ribs, stems, and small leaves in the bottom of a large pot.

1. In a large bowl, add seasonings to rice and mix well; add lemon juice and olive oil. Mix in chopped vegetables and garbanzos; taste and adjust seasoning.

2. Place a leave with rib side down on a clean surface and add stuffing mixture along the bottom edge leaving room on the sides to fold leave in holding the mix.

3. Roll each leaf with stuffing up tightly, like a carpet and place on top of the ribs, tucking them close to each other in the pot forming rows. Each layer is perpendicular to the layer 

below it; continue stacking the pot until all the filling is used up.

4. Nestle whole garlic cloves in between them and pour water, lemon juice, and olive oil over them. Press a plate on top of the rolls, top side down, to hold them together during cooking.

5. Cook over high heat until boiling, then simmer until rice is done, approximately 45 minutes for brown rice. Let stand in pot for 15 minutes before serving as a main dish or appetizer.

Note: My garden’s chard leaves are huge, so the rolls are fairly large, much larger than grape leaves. If the leaf is small, two leaves can be overlapped to widen so as to cover the gap where the rib was removed.

—Linda Dalal Sawaya is a Portland artist, cook, Master Gardener, and author of Alice’s Kitchen: Traditional Lebanese Cooking

Source: www.golocalpdx.com

Andalusian Arabs and Africans from Mali were among the first travelers to discover the Americas, some 180 years before Columbus arrived there, according to a new documentary film.
Madinah’s Taibah University screened the film at the Sixth International Exhibition and Conference on Higher Education on Wednesday. The conference and exhibition is sponsored by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman, and was launched by Minister of Education Azzam Al-Dakhil.

Khaled Abul Khair, a university member, said the material for the film was collected over two-and-a-half years from various specialized research centers such as the Andalus Center for Studies in Morocco, Sao Paulo University, Federal University of Bahia, the Duchess Luisa Isabel Alvarez Archive in Spain, and research institute in Mali.

The director of the film also consulted more than 33 researchers and university professors and historians in Spain, Morocco, Brazil, Mali and Senegal. This information was corroborated by Western and African historians. It showed that long before Columbus, travelers from Asia, Africa and Europe, which included the Phoenicians, Japanese, Scandinavia’s Vikings and a Chinese Muslim explorer had visited the Americas.

“We also have evidence about the role of the Andalusian Arabs, and King Abu Bakr II of Mali who made a voyage with his army to Brazil 180 years before Columbus was said to have discovered America,” he said.

There is also evidence to show that the Andalus Arabs, in the early phase of their downfall in the thirteenth century, had “transferred much of their civilization to Timbuktu in the gold-rich kingdom of Mali,” Abul Khair said.
Abul Khair said the documentary was prepared based on scientific facts reported by Western scholars whom he met during his travels to Spain and Brazil. It is also based on two books written by Alvarez, who was the duchess of Medina Sidonia City. The two books are We Were Not Us (1992) and Africa Confronts Africa (2008).

The film has interviewees speaking in various languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, French, Arabic and English, while its music was composed by British composer Ali Keeler with influences from Europe, Asia and Africa.

Source: www.arabnews.com

n a sign of the growing political clout of the borough’s Arab and Asian communities, organizations representing the two groups are joining forces to co-sponsor a debate featuring two of the three candidates for the Southwest Brooklyn-Staten Island seat in Congress.

A coalition of non-profit community-based, advocacy, and social service organizations will host what is being termed as a non-partisan candidate forum on Sunday, April 19, at the Happy Healthy Adult Daycare Center, 1874 86th Street, at 2 p.m.

Two of the three candidates in the race – Democrat Vincent Gentile and the Green Party’s James Lane – have confirmed their attendance at the forum. Republican-Conservative Dan Donovan was invited but is not participating, according to the debate’s organizers.

Lane, a third party candidate, was not invited to a major debate on April 14 held on Staten Island that was co-sponsored by NY1 and the Staten Island Advance.

The forum’s co-sponsors include: APA VOICE, Asian Americans for Equality, the Arab American Association of New York, Asian American Federation, Brooklyn Asian Community Empowerment, Common Cause NY, Make the Road New York, MinKwon Center for Community Action, OCA-NY Advocates, and United Chinese Association of Brooklyn. 

Donovan, Gentile and Lane are running in a special election on May 5 to represent the 11th Congressional District. The seat became vacant with the resignation of Republican Michael Grimm, who resigned from Congress after pleading guilty in Brooklyn Federal Court to a charge of tax fraud in January.

The 11th Congressional District is made up of the entire borough of Staten Island and parts of Southwest Brooklyn, including sections of the neighborhoods of Bensonhurst, Dyker Heights, Bay Ridge and Gravesend.

The forum’s organizers pointed out that the district is home to a diverse constituency, boasting a population that is 12 percent Asian, 16 percent Hispanic and seven percent African-American. In recent years, the Bay Ridge and Bensonhurst portions of the district have also seen increasing numbers of Arabs and Asians moving in.

The New York Times reported on Thursday that Bensonhurst has the largest number of Chinese-born residents, 31,658, of any neighborhood in New York City. The Times cited a 2013 report from the Department of City Planning called “The Newest New Yorkers.”

Linda Sarsour, executive director of the Arab American Association of New York, said her organization is working hard to register voters and educate members of the community on political issues.

“CD11 is home to the largest Arab community in New York City; a community that is growing in both size and political power. The Arab American Association of New York will continue to tirelessly conduct voter registration and political education in our community, and advocate on behalf of the issues that are most urgent and critical. In this effort, we are eager to partner with a congressman who will fight with us, and who will do his part to end racial profiling, achieve comprehensive immigration reform, and fix our broken criminal justice system,” Sarsour said in a statement.

“We encourage CD 11’s constituents and residents to join the forum. This is a great opportunity for us to ask and find out what the candidates commit to do before the election and hold them accountable for their action afterward,” stated Steve Chung, president of the United Chinese Association of Brooklyn.

Jo-Ann Yoo, Executive Director of the Asian American Federation (AAF), said Asian-American leaders are eager to have the community’s voice heard on important issues.

“Asian Americans are moving beyond enclaves to make their homes in every neighborhood in our city. In fact, we are becoming more influential and making significant contributions to our city’s civic life. Yet, our community needs are often overlooked based on stereotypes of the model minority or as the perpetual foreigner. AAF is pleased to lend our hand to this candidate forum to ensure that the next congressional representative understands the Asian community, appreciates our contributions as well as our needs, and is willing to champion the needs of those most vulnerable in his district,” Yoo said.

Source: www.brooklyneagle.com

“The loss of Andalusia is like losing part of my body,” H.R.H. Prince Turki al-Faisal told me.

I had asked him what the loss of Andalusia meant to him as an Arab. The son of King Faisal, widely celebrated in the Muslim world, Prince Turki heads The King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s preeminent think tank, and has been Saudi ambassador to the U.S. and the U.K. The question had excited the normally taciturn prince. The mask of cultural and royal impassivity developed over a lifetime of diplomatic dealings had dropped as his body and voice expressed high emotion. The image of Andalusia had struck a nerve: “The emptiness remains.”

“‘Andalusia was the exact opposite of Europe at that time — [then] a dark, savage land of bigotry and hatred.'”

When I asked him what Andalusia meant to him, he replied, “I have a passion for Andalusia because it contributed not only to Muslims but to humanity and human understanding. It contributed to the well-being of society, to its social harmony. This is missing nowadays.” For the prince, “Andalusia was the exact opposite of Europe at that time — [then] a dark, savage land of bigotry and hatred.”

At its height, Andalusia produced a magnificent Muslim civilization — religious tolerance, poetry, music, learned scientists and scholars like Averroës, great libraries (the main library at Cordoba alone had 400,000 books), public baths, and splendid architecture (like the palace complex at the Alhambra and the Grand Mosque of Cordoba). These great achievements were the result of collaboration between Muslims, Christians and Jews — indeed the work of the great Jewish Rabbi Maimonides was written in the Arabic language. It was a time when a Muslim ruler had a Jewish chief minister and a Catholic archbishop as his foreign minister. The Spanish had a phrase for that period of history — La Convivencia, or co-existence.

The civilization of Muslim Spain was the embodiment of the Islamic compulsion to seek ilm, or knowledge. Andalusia produced many firsts, the first person to fly, Ibn Firnas, after whom a moon crater was named in present-day Cordoba, as well as a bridge in present-day Cordoba and the first philosophical novel, by Ibn Tufail. Through Spain, Europe received models for universities (Oxford and Cambridge are examples), philosophy and literature (for example the work of Thomas Aquinas), and the study of medicine originating from the work of Avicenna and Abulcasis.

Prince Turki connected Andalusia with the earliest days of Islam and talked excitedly about the charter of Madina, which he said was the first written constitution for society providing a social framework for the state itself. He underlined the importance of the concept of knowledge or ilm in this vision. Ilm, he pointed out, meant studying the Quran, fiqh, or Islamic law and hadith, or the sayings of the Prophet. But ilm also included the learning of non-religious subjects such as mathematics and science. “Andalusia,” the prince sighed, “transcends space and time.”

He described the lure of Andalusia in his desire to pray in the mehrab of the Grand Mosque of Cordoba. As the Spanish authorities very consciously claim the building to be a cathedral, Muslim prayers are specifically banned. Yet the mehrab has attracted Muslim visitors like moths to a flame. It was here that Allama Iqbal visiting from British India could not resist sitting down to pray. His image at prayer in the Grand Mosque is known throughout the Muslim world. Iqbal’s famous Urdu poem, “Mosque of Cordoba,” which hangs in the office of the mayor of Cordoba, was written after his visit.

Following Iqbal and that iconic image, I prayed on the same spot in the early 1960s when I visited Cordoba as an undergraduate. The security guards were few in number and disinterested in the visitors. They merely looked away. The scale of both the Muslim achievements and the Muslim loss weighed heavily on me even then as a young man not quite 21 years in age. Andalusia made me feel that there was a special part of my history in Europe that was not known and yet I found it so compelling. The prince recounted saying his prayers on that very spot at the mehrab, too, during his visit in the 1980s when the authorities gave him special permission. “You cannot help yourself,” he said softly, as if to himself.

“‘Andalusia,'” the prince sighed, “‘transcends space and time.'”

Security was much more strict in the 1990s when I was filming “Living Islam” for BBC TV, and I noted that there was a thick silken rope which acted as a partition to block off entrance into the mehrab. Our English producers, however, managed to convince the guards with that mixture of bravado and arrogance they reserve for the continent. I was thus able to pray in the mehrab, which was recorded by the BBC for the section on Andalusia. Our attempts to pray there failed miserably in the summer of 2014 when we were there to conduct a study of Islam in Europe. Not only had the authorities built high ugly steel railings to prevent anyone coming close to the mehrab, the security guards and church officials hovered around inside the mosque. They were on high alert as rumors of Muslims determined to reclaim the mosque for Islam were circulating. Every time we came near the mehrab, the guards would close in and ask us to move along.

Dr. Amineh Hoti, a member of the research team, made it a habit of visiting the mosque, just opposite our hotel, when it opened first thing in the morning — and then again during the day. She appeared to be in a trance, and I saw that Andalusia was already working its magic on her. As a father, I nonetheless worried that she may try to say her prayers and get in trouble with the security people. Thankfully there was no untoward incident.

Around that time, Amineh interviewed a educated young, married woman with a Syrian background and asked her what the loss of Andalusia meant to her. The Arab woman could not control her emotions. She burst into tears. Amineh, who was already pent up, also began to cry, and as the two put their arms around each other and sobbed, the guests in the lobby wondered about the source of the bereavement. Later, Amineh was able to excitedly point to Iqbal’s famous poem hanging just behind the mayor in his office when we called on him. She introduced the topic of Andalusia to her students in Lahore and was able to help them think about how to live with those of other religions and cultures.

Ambassador Ahmed with his team calling on the mayor of Córdoba. Iqbal’s famous poem is framed behind them (Akbar Ahmed).

The question of why and how it all ended for Muslims still remained. When I asked the prince the eternal questions — What went wrong? Why did Islam collapse so soon after the fall of Andalusia? — he blamed it on the loss of Andalusia itself and then the sustained assaults by the Crusaders from the West and the Mongol eruptions from the East.

“Europe destroyed Andalusia,” the prince explained. “With the loss of the spirit of Andalusia was lost the idea of service to humanity. The circle of European ignorance and bigotry was now complete.” But Muslims and Jews who would be eventually expelled from the Iberian Peninsula were not the only victims. “Nobody was spared,” he said. “Christians themselves now faced the horrors of the Inquisition.”

Spanish rulers were obsessed with erasing Muslim history or replacing it. Charles V was shocked to see the travesty that was the doing of his officials in converting the Grand Mosque in Cordoba to a cathedral. He uttered his immortal words to the effect that they had taken something unique in the world and made it a commonplace available everywhere. Charles would himself attempt a similar exercise at the Alhambra in a palace that still stands inside the historic site. Thankfully the damage to the Alhambra remained minimal as it was not seen as a religious building.

History became an exercise in self-deception. For example “El-Cid,” and the prince smiled when he mentioned the film about the Spanish hero starring Charlton Heston, was nothing more than a “mercenary.” “He fought for money,” he said.

Around the time when Muslims were facing defeat in Spain, the Mongols erupted from the East to attack the heart of the Muslim world. He talked of the destruction of the libraries and books in Baghdad when that city was captured in 1258. “Centuries of civilization was razed to the ground.”

“Andalusia at its height shows us clearly that associating a group like ISIS with Islam and calling its leader a caliph is a travesty.”

History seemed to have stopped for the Arabs after the destruction of Baghdad in the 13th century. There would be great Muslim empires in the future — the Ottomans, the Safavids and the Mughals — but they would not be Arab. They would be Turk, Persian and Indian. In contrast, Andalusia was a civilization brought to Europe primarily by the Arabs. Arabic was its lingua franca and Islam its dominant religion. The founder of the greatest of the dynasties of Cordoba was Abdur-Rehman, known as the “falcon of the Quraysh,” a prince with kinship ties to the prophet of Islam himself.

Once the destruction began in the West and the East, it could not be stopped. It spread like the apocalypse. Mosques, libraries and baths — anything that reminded people of Islam — were systematically destroyed in Andalusia. It was the same in the East. The Mongols did not stop at the destruction of Baghdad. Prince Turki especially regretted the destruction of Samara, a city patterned on the legendary Madinat al-Zahra in Andalusia. Visitors from Spain would describe the marvels of that city to the court in Baghdad and the caliph was determined to create a similar city outside Baghdad. Now, like the original, it lay in ruins. The irony was that while Mongols destroyed Muslim cities in the East, the Andalusian Madinat al-Zahra was reduced to rubble by Muslim tribes from North Africa, which overthrew the dynasty in Cordoba and were expressing their contempt for the Andalusian way of life.

There were two distinct Muslim responses which emerged from that time and would cast their shadows on the present. Both Jalaluddin Rumi and Ibn Taymiyyah lived at the time of the destruction of the Arab world. Rumi was alive when Baghdad was sacked. Ibn Taymiyyah was born five years after its destruction. The impact of that time is clear in the way these two looked at the world. Rumi responded by consciously rejecting barriers and differences between people and reaching out to everyone with love. Ibn Taymiyyah responded in exactly the opposite way by underlining the threat to Islam and advocating for the drawing of rigid boundaries around the faith. He famously issued a fatwa against the Mongol rulers, even those who claimed to have converted to Islam because they did not adhere strictly to the sharia. He declared a jihad against them which was compulsory for all Muslims. The notion of Islam in danger may be traced to Ibn Taymiyyah. Both men continue to influence Muslim thinking in our time. Mystics throughout the world are inspired by Rumi, groups like the Wahhabis and the Salafis draw their inspiration from Ibn Taymiyyah.

Partal Palace is reflected in a pond in the Alhambra compound in the Spanish city of Granada (ODD ANDERSEN/AFP/Getty Images).

How did the prince see the condition of the Muslim world today, I asked. Is it as simple a division as suggested by the binary between Rumi and Ibn Taymiyyah? The prince in reply stretched out his hands to indicate that the ideological movements today are like so many fingers flowing in parallel but different lines.

Prince Turki’s passion for Andalusia is neither idiosyncratic nor restricted to his generation. He told me the story of his famous father visiting Spain as a guest of General Franco. When Franco asked him how he could accommodate his royal guest, King Faisal said he would pay for the construction for the most magnificent cathedral in Europe if the general could give him the Grand Mosque of Cordoba. Franco said the building meant nothing to him and he had no objection. He could hand it over the next morning. But if he did so, he would be lynched by the people of Spain. As an alternative he offered the king the best piece of land in Madrid itself, atop a hill overlooking the city. King Faisal accepted the land and built what is now the Islamic Center there.

“‘You don’t have a monopoly on what is right.'”

I was able to interview the prince at the Ditchley Conference on Islam in March 2015. We spent several days together at the historic estate — famous as the country retreat of Churchill during the Second World War and located next to his ancestral home, Blenheim Palace. I requested the prince for a one-on-one interview in the context of my study of Islam in Europe. He was enthusiastic about the project and invited me to his center to present the findings when completed. During the interview he was relaxed, thoughtful and courteous. We both understood that the answer to my final question was in fact a matter of immediate concern to Muslims and non-Muslims everywhere. What lessons could Muslims and non-Muslims learn from Andalusia?

“To be more humble, he said. “Not to think that they have all the answers.”

The prince urged both Muslims and non-Muslims “to be inclusive. You don’t have a monopoly on what is right.” He emphasized the idea of ilm, the need “to continue learning till we die,” never to abandon “the search for knowledge.” The lesson of Andalusia, above all, appears to be that history does have lessons to teach us. Andalusia was about a common “humanity.”

Spain has much to teach people about how those of different religions and cultures can live together in harmony and thrive. It can remind us of the Spanish concept of La Convivencia. Both Muslims and non-Muslims will benefit from being reminded of Andalusia. They will also know that Andalusia at its height shows us clearly that associating a group like ISIS with Islam and calling its leader a “caliph” is a travesty. And there is no lesson greater for everyone than to recall that there was a time, however brief, when people of different cultures and faiths lived together, worked together and prospered together.

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Nada El Barshoumi StepFeed.com Fattoush is my preferred salad of choice when it comes to Lebanese or Arabic cuisine – I almost always order it the same way, no bread, dressing on the side, and easy on the lemon (you would think that asking for dressing on the side would omit the need to say … Continued

California’s water woes have been in the news. But with its concert at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center on April 26, the Nile Project aims to direct your thoughts toward H2O in another part of the world.

A music-and-education initiative founded in 2011, the Nile Project is anchored by a collective of 27 instrumentalists and singers from Egypt, Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda and seven other countries along the Nile River Basin. The group’s shows feature regional languages, traditions and instruments (the oud, the kawala, the Ugandan adungu). After a show in January, the New York Times called the performance “euphoric.”

The Nile Project also works with universities to mount programs designed to increase knowledge about the river’s ecosystem. The music, too, is meant to have an educational and civic dimension: By showcasing the collaboration of musicians from different countries, the project’s leaders hope to nurture the kind of cross-cultural dialogue and understanding that could help prevent water-related conflicts.

Source: www.washingtonpost.com

An Egyptian-American activist, Mohamed Soltan, was recently sentenced to life in prison by an Egyptian court. His sin? Participating in a sit-in in protest of the 2013 ousting of Mohamed Morsi, the first democratically elected president of Egypt in over thirty years, by a violent military coup that left thousands dead.

As Egyptian-Americans, the idea of our government arresting any one of us for engaging in peaceful acts of dissent is despicable. We believe we have a strong moral duty to denounce, just as Soltan did, actions undertaken by the Egyptian government that violate human rights or contravene international law.

For 8 years, the Egyptian government has enforced an illegal blockade of the Gaza strip that has systematically denied Palestinians their basic human rights in Gaza. Although Egypt only shares a 12-kilometer border with Gaza, it has, along with Israel,  implemented a system of collective punishment through domination of Gaza’s air, sea, and land borders. There has been no indication of any easing of the blockade, and tensions have only recently increased.

Source: dailyprincetonian.com

The story of how Palestinian-American chef and restaurateur Sameh Wadi ended up in Minneapolis is standard fare in the chronicles of American immigration — a cousin went first, and so his family followed. Wadi, 31, was born in Kuwait to Palestinian refugees, and after living briefly in Jordan and then Canada, he arrived in the Twin Cities at the age of 13 and hasn’t left. He often ponders the question: “Couldn’t my cousin have picked somewhere warmer?”

That same cousin and Wadi’s late father, Ali Wadi, opened Holy Land, a grocery store, bakery, and restaurant that is now a well-loved Minneapolis institution, and Wadi followed in their footsteps when he opened his Mediterranean restaurant (heavy on the North African and Levantine influences), Saffron, at age 23. “With Saffron, I put all my eggs in one pita pocket,” says Wadi. “I opened a fine-dining Middle Eastern restaurant in a failing economy in Minnesota, and that might sound like an unfortunate series of decisions. But I’m really glad I did it.”

Today, the restaurant has taken off, and become a more casual iteration of its original self. Wadi’s flavors are exciting to Minneapolis’s growing foodie population, and as he gets older, the chef says he’s more confident in his cooking and tends not to hide behind different sauces and purees, but rather offers humble dishes that often reflect his Palestinian roots. A favorite in this category are his grandmother’s slow-cooked green beans, served with a wedge of lemon.

Wadi has also seen success in other corners of the culinary world — in 2010, he became the youngest chef, the first Middle Eastern-born chef, and the first chef from Minneapolis to ever appear on the Food Network’s “Iron Chef America,” where he battled famed Japanese Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto. He’s also been a James Beard semifinalist for Rising Star Chef of the Year, and his first cookbook, “The New Mediterranean Table,” comes out on April 14th.

“My aim with this book is to get people more comfortable and confident in cooking Middle Eastern and Mediterranean food — I’m trying to get them involved in our cuisine,” Wadi explains. “The recipes are geared more toward the home cook, and while they’re inspired by traditional flavors, many of them have a modern twist.”

As is the case with so many Palestinians, Wadi’s love affair with food is no random occurrence — in fact, he can trace its roots back to another cookbook he had a hand in creating with his family.

“I’ve been infatuated with food since I was a child. My mom and dad wrote a cookbook that they called ‘The Encyclopedia of Palestinian Cuisine’ — it never got published, but I still have the raw manuscript,” he says. “My parents and uncle tested recipes and took photographs and did calligraphy. They never thought of it as a way to make money, but rather as an honorable thing to do. It’s preserving the culture via food, and telling people about a history that’s in danger of being forgotten.

The manuscript not only included recipes, but also described species of fish, herbs, and vegetables that were indigenous to Palestine, and what outside influences have been formative in shaping Palestinian cuisine. Wadi soaked it all in, and while his family had high hopes that he’d pursue a career in electrical engineering, he knew he was fated for another path. After stints in photography, and a job at the family grocery store, Wadi found his calling in culinary school. “It was the first time in my life something made sense to me,” he says. “I knew this was something I could do.”

He worked under other chefs for three years after school, opened Saffron, and today Wadi and his brother Saed, a Saffron co-owner, continue to expand their local empire. They started a food truck called World Street Kitchen that did so well they opened a brick and mortar location by the same name. They’ve also launched a full service catering company, called W&W Catering and Events, that services large-scale events like weddings, galas, and holiday parties. Finally, there’s Spice Trail, Wadi’s line of hand-ground, hand-packaged spices.

“I’m busy, but working with food satisfies my curiosity and there’s a real sense of excitement to it,” says Wadi. “And like I said, it’s more than just food, it’s a culture we’re trying to preserve. They’re intertwined.”

Source: imeu.org