Author Archives: Arab America

H.H. Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, Member of the UAE Supreme Council and the Rulerof Sharjah, highlighted Sharjah as an investment safe haven that focuses on building human capacity Sharjah, United Arab Emirates – The Emirate of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) recently hosted the World Forum for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), … Continued

Muslim American comics are busy dispelling the notion that Islam is no fun.

The Axis of Evil Comedy Tour brought a Muslim comic sensibility to a series of live shows and a 2007 Comedy Central TV special. Now the stars of that irreverent show have branched out. 

The comedians—Ahmed Ahmed, Maz Jobrani, and Dean Obeidallah—are caught in the crossfire between Islamic extremists and Western rightwingers. “Yeah, it’s a double-edged sword. That’s why I’m bipolar,” quips Ahmed.

Ahmed was born in Egypt but grew up in Riverside, California. A fixture at SoCal comedy clubs, Ahmed’s credits include Iron Man and the Adam Sandler comedy You Don’t Mess With the Zohan. 

“In this world of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, there’s no way I can please everybody, so I’ve got to do what I love doing: being funny,” says Jobrani. “I really don’t pay attention to what the extremes are saying.” 

Jobrani’s credits include Curb Your Enthusiasm, Showtime’s Shameless, and recurring roles in The Knights of Prosperity and Better Off Ted, but he may be best known for his role opposite Ice Cube as the affable owner of the Holy Moly Donut Shop in the 2002 movie Friday After Next. The “Persian Pink Panther” is currently on a standup comedy tour tied to his new book.

“It’s unlike any time we ever had in America right now—worse than after 9/11,” says Obeidallah. “After 9/11 people were in shock and didn’t know much about Muslims, so they’d ask you lots of questions. Now, there’s the drumbeat of negative images by ISIS and Al Qaeda. Then add to that professional anti-Muslim bigots, who literally make a living selling books, giving lectures, to scare you about Muslims. Then you have Republican elected officials and a few voices on the Left—Bill Maher, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris—continuing this drumbeat: ‘Don’t trust Muslims; they’re not like us; they don’t share our values.’ ” 

Obeidallah is a standup comedian, Daily Beast writer, and Sirius XM radio show host born and raised in New Jersey. His West Bank-born father is a Palestinian who came to America in 1957, while his U.S.-born mother is of Sicilian heritage. Obeidallah appeared in and co-directed (with Max Brooks, Mel’s son) the ComedyCentral.com 2007 web series The Watch List and is in the 2013 comedy performance film The Muslims Are Coming! He has also been a commentator on many news programs, including The Ed Show, The Situation Room, The Young Turks, and Democracy Now, as well as The View.

Obeidallah recently met with President Obama as part of a group of Muslim-American leaders.

“I’ve never seen more anti-Muslim rhetoric spewed, from Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana, saying Muslims want to create ‘no-go zones’ in America where only Muslims can go or impose Shariah law, which is absolute fabrication, to state representatives in Oklahoma saying, ‘Muslim Americans are a threat, should be cut out like a cancer,’ to representatives in Congress and other Republican officials saying horrible things,” he says. “And there’s no pushback by Democrats at all. We need Democrats to help us, to counter anti-Muslim bigotry.”

Obeidallah is concerned that anti-Muslim violence is building: “I made that very point to the President.” A week later, three Muslims were murdered in North Carolina.

After the killings in Paris and Copenhagen, the comics are worried both about violence against artists and an increasingly negative perception of Muslims. Ahmed was on the bill with comedy legends Dick Gregory, Tom Smothers, and Lewis Black at a February 28 Washington, D.C., benefit concert to support the Bill of Rights.

“They’re finding out more about the guy who did the [Copenhagen] shooting, and it turns out he’d been in gangs, had a violent past,” says Jobrani, who says that he isn’t that religious himself. “These are crimes, criminals, they should be called that, even though they might be getting manipulated by people using the Islamic faith.” 

But is one person’s freedom of expression another’s hate speech? 

“My job is to be funny—not to offend,” explains Jobrani. “Sometimes some comedians and artists think: ‘I should offend.’ Then you need to be ready for the repercussions. That doesn’t mean anybody should be killed, but the marketplace should dictate what you do.”

“I’ve seen white comedians try to use the ‘N word’ in a bit and it bombed terribly; other white comedians use it, and it was hilarious and black people were laughing,” he adds. “It depends on your intention. I’m not a big supporter of offending to offend. That’s not comedy or art to me. That’s just pushing the envelope that doesn’t have to be pushed.”

Ahmed directed 2010’s Just Like Us. In the documentary, a group of comics living in the West, including Whitney Cummings (2 Broke Girls), Ahmed, and Jobrani, go on the road to perform at Dubai, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon to “tell the story of how comedy does exist in the Middle East but the rest of the world hasn’t been exposed to it,” says Ahmed. The title refers to the notion “that they laugh just like us over there.”

There are, he notes, different standards regarding doing standup at the Sunset Strip’s Comedy Store or Laugh Factory and onstage in venues families attend in the Middle East, “where this is a new format of comedy. Just being present is edgy and dangerous already,” says Ahmed. So, comic routines have to be tailored to be more family friendly and G-rated, Ahmed notes. Political considerations have to be taken, too—especially in Egypt, where “God forbid, you poke fun at a politician, you’re subject to prison,” he says.

On the other hand, in Beirut, he says, “The promoter said, ‘Say whatever the fuck you want.’ ”

“The first time we went out with the Axis of Evil to the Middle East, promoters would tell us: ‘Stay away from sex, politics, and religion,’ ” says Jobrani. “And we’d jokingly say: ‘OK. Hello and good night.’ ” 

Jobrani likens the region’s emerging comedy circuit to America “in the ’50s—Lenny Bruce was being arrested for things he was saying. So you’re gonna have that now in the Middle East; it takes time to catch up and have more freedom of speech onstage.” 

The globetrotting comic has entertained in seven Middle Eastern countries plus Malaysia, but never in his native Iran, which Maz’s family fled after the revolution. “I’ve done jokes about the leadership and also hosted human rights events, so I have a feeling if I went to Iran I’d get in trouble,” Jobrani confesses.

Obeidallah has performed widely in the Middle East, including the West Bank, and from 2008 to 2010 produced the Amman Comedy Festival in Jordan. Did he alter his comedy while performing there? 

“In almost every country, you did,” he answers. “There were limits on jokes about the leadership, internal politics, you couldn’t talk about sex and no jokes about religion.” 

“It’s not based on Islamic values, it’s just keeping control of people,” he adds. “The limits of political dissent are not based on the Koran, it’s based on people who want to stay in power.” 

The Muslims Are Coming! chronicles interactions between American audiences and Obeidallah and other Muslim-American comics, including Palestinians Maysoon Zayid and Aron Kader, as they stage free, live comedy shows in southern and western states. Notables who agreed to be interviewed for the film include Jon Stewart, Lewis Black, Rachel Maddow, Janeane Garofalo, Russell Simmons, Cenk Uygur, and Congressman Keith Ellison. They are the talking heads between the comedy bits.

Ahmed maintains his career in Hollywood has been restricted because of his background. 

“There aren’t any roles out there for Middle Eastern guys portrayed positively,” he says. “Hollywood isn’t ready to make an Arab-American actor a hero.” 

Ahmed believes his acting career suffered because he didn’t change his name. And, he says, an alleged terrorist with a similar moniker keeps him on the no-fly list.

Jobrani, whose new book is titled I’m Not a Terrorist But I’ve Played One on TV, says, “I don’t judge other actors who take the terrorist parts because people have mortgages and kids to feed—that’s just the reality of the world we live in in Hollywood.” 

In his memoir, Jobrani recounts his losing battle when he tried to “humanize” the Afghan terrorist he was cast to play in a 2002 made-for-TV Chuck Norris flick. He balked at wearing a turban, arguing this would hardly make his nefarious character inconspicuous in the U.S.-set thriller. 

“I decided not to do any more terrorist parts, but then the TV show 24 came calling and said, ‘We have a terrorist role’—and I said, ‘No thank you,’ ” he recalls. “And they said, ‘But he changes his mind halfway through the mission.’ I said, ‘Ooh, the ambivalent terrorist; that sounds interesting.’ So I played one more terrorist. That was it, and I haven’t done any more since.” 

Jobrani points out another factor: “The truth is, in America, the first time I did a TV appearance with my standup, on Premium Blend, I had to submit my set, and I mentioned a few products, Mercedes Benz, 7-Eleven, and they said: ‘You can’t mention these products. You can change it to another product, but not these, because they may be sponsors.’ So I quickly realized that in the Middle East, God is God, and in the West, Mercedes, a product, is God. I’ve experienced different kinds of censorship.”

He also experienced some moments of overwhelming irony during the Bush Administration. A heckler shouted at him: “ ‘You can’t make fun of our President during a time of war, he’s our commander-in-chief!’ ” 

“I was like, ‘Really? Supposedly that’s the reason why we’re in Iraq—to bring democracy,” he recalls. “And you’re saying I can’t have freedom of speech?”

When the Axis of Evil wanted to entertain at USO shows, troupe members were told jokes about the war and the Bush regime were prohibited. So they decided to skip it. 

Ahmed avoids taking “cheap shots at the underdog,” avoiding jokes about “the handicapped, cancer, rape; I know religion is supersensitive among Muslims so I don’t reference the Prophet.” But in America, he says, “I’ve had people come up to me after my shows—during my shows—literally try to pick fights with me or heckle me during my set or say racial slurs.”

Currently, Ahmed is developing a London-shot comedy special titled Ahmedica and a feature called Comedy of Errors, which Bassem Youssef, the so-called “Jon Stewart of the Middle East” and Rima Fakih, the ex-Miss USA of Lebanese descent, are involved, too.

Jobrani says he sees an evolving comedy scene in his travels to the Middle East over the last several years.

Ahmed credits the messenger of Islam.

“The Prophet was a very funny storyteller and would include humor in his preaching and conversations,” he says. 

As humorless fanatics in both hemispheres escalate the “culture war,” maybe a sense of humor can help chill things out.

Source: www.progressive.org

Sunday is the Orthodox Palm Sunday, celebrating when Jesus returned to the city of Jerusalem. The day is known as  Shaa’nineh in Arabic and is one of most important dates in the Orthodox religious calendar.

The event enables families to come together celebrate mass, and the day is traditionally a familiar affair and an excuse to cook up a good feast and is well celebrated across the Levant nations of Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and beyond.

Palm Sunday also starts the Holy Week, the run up to Easter.

The Middle East though, long associated with Muslims, has a wealth of Christian traditions. With dwindling numbers some Christians are increasingly feeling marginalized.

Coptic Christians in Egypt have come under particular stresses, inspite of President Mohammed Morsi saying that he will be the president “for all Egyptians”. Attacks have been frequent and often violent. On the holiday of Palm Sunday, the coptic pope in Egypt, Pope Tawadros II, warned that many are considering emigrating after months of attacks.

Last week, Syria witnessed a worrying development for Christians the world over, as two bishops were kidnapped in Aleppo. Reports suggested the two had been released,  but this has yet to be confirmed and the pair remain missing.

Across the region, there are some signs of good news, however. In Jordan, the minority Christian population celebrate the feast day freely, even with legally enshrined rights enabling workers to enjoy time with their family. Inspite of this Jordan remains divided with little cross-religion love.

As ever with the tumultuous Middle East, there is much to be concerned about, but there always remains a little ray of sunshine on a spring Palm Sunday for the Christians across the region.

Source: www.albawaba.com

On Thursday, 9 April, DCAF (the Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival) will host a night that will feature, among others, the very prolific Boikutt. The Ramallah-based musician will perform in Sherazade Club.

More commonly known by his Arabic name, Moqataa  مُقاطَعَة (Boycott), he refuses to collaborate, support or compromise on anything less than just. While this is his general position on everything social and political, perhaps the fact that he is also Palestinian makes everything seem less ambiguous and not just another artist grandstanding some intangible principle.

Much has been said and assumed about the generally spotlight-averse artist, including his social status and the contradictions between what he raps about and who he is. And he hasn’t helped his case much by remaining at a distance from the media. There isn’t much out there about Boikutt personally in the virtual world, except for his music.

From Ramallah to the Underground

Born in the US, having lived in Cyprus, before eventually ending up in Jordan, with the 1993 signing of the now-defunct Oslo Accords, Boikutt family, like many in the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation), were allowed to return to Palestine.

Before the world of rap, Boikutt grew up around music; his parents being listeners to the likes of Fairouz, Sheikh Imam and the Rahbani brothers. He began playing piano at the age of seven. He didn’t like the piano, however, and eventually moved on to other instruments, like the oud and guitar.

In 1996, like most musicians in the region during this period, Boikutt’s access to music came from tapes passed around between friends and travelling relatives. In his case, a major life transition came via a CD from a family friend which introduced him to the infinite possibilities of bedroom music production. Eventually, the debut of the internet in the region and online music sharing sites like Napster broadened his access and got him into trip-hop, electronic, jazzy beats and down-tempo genres.

Meeting a friend in school with similar tastes in rap and electronic music, the talented rapper Asifeh, and along with his brother, who performed under the name Aswaat, eventually lead to birth of Ramallah Underground (RU) band. At the height of its fame, the musical collective RU received both critical and public acclaim for how their music both impacted the local art scene and how it became a voice connecting Palestine to the outside world. In the regional hip hop scene, RU changed how rap was experienced and produced because of how they were able to make it work in Arabic.

Credited with being some of the founding artists in the Arabic hip hop scene, particularly in Palestine, Asifeh, Boikutt and Aswaat were able to fuse a sound made up of down-tempo beats, trip hop, and old school hip hop with traditional Arabic and quick lyrics. The music they produced as a collective isn’t the kind that you experience lightly — it’s not meant to make you dance your sorrows away, but rather think your pains through.

The three explicitly forced the audience to reconsider the truth they lived.

“With Ramallah Underground, it was very important to talk about the situation in a very realistic way. The situation here and around us, not just Palestine. I think this is what made us different; we were not only talking about Palestine, but something global. We were talking about the oppressed person, the colonised subject in the whole world. Of course, we use Palestine as an example, because this is what we see in our daily lives. But it’s not just about here. We collaborated with people from all over the world because we were talking about the same things on any given track,” Boikutt told me during our meeting in Ramallah in 2014, adding how, as Palestinians, they were not unique in the struggle, “because people in the Philippines were also struggling against the system, which I think is a world system of a capitalistic package of democracy, that is trying to be spread all over the world, which is not something that we wanted and were trying to fight against.”

In their seven years of collaboration between 2003-2010, before disbanding for many reasons, including geographical distance, Ramallah Underground produced more than 25 tracks, all free for download, and travelled all over the world with performances in Austria, Australia, the UK, Egypt, Holland and the US.

Producer, artist, MC and lots of things in-between

Four years after Ramallah Underground disbanded, Boikutt has become established regionally as both one of the strongest producers in the hip hop scene and an innovative musician in his own right. In 2008, for example, he was approached by the Kronos Quartet, a quartet famed for constantly experimenting with the formal structures of the string quartet, to produce a track. He created ‘Tashweesh’ (Interference), which combines strings, electronics and sampling. The track later appeared on the Kronos Quartet’s 2009 album, Floodplain.

Boikutt has steadily worked towards building himself and expanding his connections with music, which over the long term greatly benefitted his debut album. Besides producing music for both himself (his single track releases), he has also produced for various artists, including ElRass, Far3i, Bukue One, Spiritchild, and Tamer Abu-Ghazaleh, and has been featured as an MC on albums for artists such as Heliodrome, Slovo, Bonnot, and Lethal Skillz.

His artistic CV is one to pay attention to, because when he’s not making music for himself (and others) and producing soundtracks for contemporary dance theatres and both local and international film scores, he’s working on his other side-project, Tashweesh. A collaboration between his brother and installation artist Basel Abbas, and visual artist Ruanne Abou-Rahme, the project mines “the collision between sound and video field recordings, archive material, vocals, breaks and soundscapes.”

Hayawan Nateq

All these productions and collaborations eventually led to the much awaited 2013 release of his eclectically inspired album, Hayawan Nateq. Taking two years to finish, the result is a home studio production that on a technical level represented a vast undertaking for Boikutt, as he did everything himself, including composition, production, recording and mixing and mastering — processes that often involve at least three different people. The finished sound is purposely raw, unclean, distorted, and typically characteristic of Boikutt who tends to shy away from the clean, perfected sounds of studio productions.

The album is a statement on many levels. On the technical side of music production, Boikutt wanted to illustrate that the do-it-yourself attitude offers a lot of freedom to artists struggling between the desire to produce and financial constraints.

“You don’t need money or big sound engineers to create your music. Today, it’s possible to build yourself and teach yourself. And, my other statement with this album is that we [as Palestinians] have to strengthen ourselves. We can’t sit and wait for Israel to break down, because it’s not going to happen and they are busy working all the time. We have to be able to stand for ourselves and to gain a certain self-respect for ourselves and, in this way, change how we interact with each other.” 

Lyrically, the album is a reflection of society in general, and of Palestinian society in particular, though through a broken mirror.

“With the distorted and unclean sounds on the album, I’m trying to agitate the audience into a conversation. For me discussion is very important because it is the start of anything.”

While the album has received some negative feedback because of Boikutt’s experimentation with effects and his straying away from straight up hip hop, the artist emphasises that his work is a lot deeper than just throwing out words and some good beats. “For me it’s really important to actually create a discussion as opposed to saying messages that are one way, you know like one-sided.”

The conversation Boikutt has consistently with the audience and through all his projects touches on many issues, including egos in the music scene, the commodification of music, the politics in Palestine, the presence of the Palestinian Authority, the misuse of religion and the brainwashing of religious authority. On a broader level, his art is always pushing listeners to question the realities they think they know.

Source: www.albawaba.com

The City of Gaithersburg is scheduled to proclaim April as Arab American Heritage Month on April 6 to celebrate Arab Americans contribution to the community.

The annual proclamation will be held during the Mayor and City Council Regular Session at 7:30 p.m., and the celebration continues on April 23 when the City’s Multicultural Affairs Committee presents “Caring and Advocacy: Arab Americans Making a Difference.”

This reception, from 6 p.m. to 7:15 p.m, will highlight traditional Arab cuisine, and feature a presentation by Minaret of Freedom Institute President and Director Imad-ad-Dean Ahmed- an internationally known interdisciplinary scientist, author, and senior lecturer at the University of Maryland, as well as an adjunct professor at Wesley Theological Seminary.

According to a press release, both events are open to the public but registration is necessary to attend the April 23 reception.

Email SKnupp@gaithersburgmd.gov by April 9 or call Sharon Knupp at 301.258.6350.

For more information on Gaithersburg’s Multicultural Affairs Committee, click here.

Gaithersburg City Hall is located at 31 South Summit Avenue

Source: www.mymcmedia.org

Following the apology issued by Pine Bush High School for a reading of The Pledge of Allegiance in Arabic on Wednesday, there were a lot of questions and feelings (on either side) about how the situation was handled.

more: Is It Wrong To Recite The Pledge Of Allegiance In Arabic? One School Stands Divided

Some people were adamant that the pledge should only be read in English, while others were convinced that the distinction was a reflection of bias, and not simply a mandate of the rules.

But another question remains.

What impact does this divide have on Arab American students?

The Policies At Play

After many people complained about the Pledge of Allegiance being read in Arabic, Pine Bush High School said that in the future, they would adhere to State Education Department regulations, which they said requires the Pledge be said in English.

However, Dennis Tompkins, New York State Education Department spokesman, released a statement when the controversy blew up, saying that, “State regulation specifies the wording of the Pledge, not the language.”

This means that the students can read the Pledge of Allegiance in any language they want, they just can’t change the ending to be “with liberty and spaghetti for all.”

So Why Not Arabic?

Linda Sarsour, the Executive Director of the Arab American Association of New York says that incidents such as the one at Pine Bush aren’t rare, and are indicative of a larger trend in the United States. While working on a national campaign called “Take on Hate” with the Arab American Association, Sarsour has found that cases like this occur across the country every day.

“It’s part of a growing anti-Arab sentiment and it’s not an isolated incident,” Sarsour told MTV News. “Unfortunately it’s happening in more places in this country.”

more: Learn More About Bias At LookDifferent.org

Referring to the school district’s superintendent saying that the apology was issued after the school received complaints from students and residents who lost family members in Afghanistan, Sarsour notes that the criticism cited by most publications perpetuated incorrect information and demonstrated “a deep level of misunderstanding when it comes to Arabic countries.”

Arabic is not really spoken in Afghanistan — the official languages are Pashto and Dari — and while some people may speak Arabic there, Sarsour says these kinds of comments wrongfully equate vastly different cultures and nations, not to mention stereotypes and biases.

Sarsour says she is disappointed that the school — as an educational institution— did not correct the inaccurate information, and instead apologized.

“When [the school] apologized, they told the community ‘you’re right.’” says Sarsour. “The school didn’t take the leadership to say there is some misinformation.”

As studies conducted by The American Arab Institute on the “American Attitudes Toward Arabs and Muslims” show, racism against these groups remains prevalent in the United States.

The study says that the media plays a huge part in this problem through poor representation of Arab individuals, playing up stereotypes and allowing similarly biased anti-Arab blanket statements to go unchecked.

“It’s bigotry that is acceptable in this country. You don’t see pundits getting fired, elected officials being removed [for making racist comments toward Arabs.] It’s not the same type of response,” says Sarsour.

Embracing Individual Identities

Back at Pine Bush, Senior Class President Andrew Zink, who has been vocal in the support of the reading, has received backlash on social media and in school.

Facing a possible impeachment from his student leader position, he told MTV News that he still has no regrets and will continue to pursue opportunities for conversation and education.

“There are many students who feel I don’t represent them anymore, and if they believe in closed-mindedness and intolerance then they’re right — I don’t,” says Zink.

Sarsour says that the fear and chaos surrounding ISIS, paired with comments from individuals who think that all Arabs are Muslims and all Muslims are terrorists, leaves many young people struggling to make sense of it all. “They have no connection or relationship [to ISIS], but this simple connection makes them feel responsible,” she says. “And, when the school apologized, how is a child supposed to feel now?”

“We live in a time where young people who are Arab American are struggling with their identity,” says Sarsour. “I hope kids don’t allow this experience to make them feel less-than, as they too are just as American as any other kids in their school.”

Source: www.mtv.com

Rawan Naji’s uncle was waiting with his family in Damascus, the capital of Syria, for their American visas when the Syrian government bombed a civilian area that included his two children’s clothing factories, which burned to the ground in 2014.

Naji, a third-year political science student, said her uncle and his family had planned to sell their two factories and use that money to buy plane tickets to come to Orange County, where Naji and her parents live.

Although Naji said she is relieved that her uncle and his family are safe from the war in Syria, she said seeing them lose their livelihoods back home has made her feel sad that she cannot help them. Her uncle, who works late as a chef and grocery store employee and comes home exhausted, has told her he would rather be in Syria than here, she said.

About four years have passed since the beginning of the Syrian civil war, but violence and unrest in the country have intensified. The United Arab Society, a UCLA student group, sought to mark the anniversary through its Syrian Revolution Week last week.

The group coordinated events and documentary showings in the evenings and placed poster boards on Bruin Walk during the day to educate students about Syrian history, culture and the ongoing civil war. Undergraduate Students Association Council General Representative 1 and 2 offices both sponsored the week’s activities.

Jodutt Basrawi, a third-year engineering geology student and United Arab Society president, said the group’s goal is to humanize Syria.

Demonstrations began in 2010 as the Arab Spring, an upwelling of civilian rebellions in North Africa and the Middle East against authoritarian regimes, spilled into Syria in 2011 and has continued ever since.

The peaceful protests against Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria, quickly escalated into violence that led to the formation of a rebel force, the Free Syrian Army. A brutal crackdown by the government ensued, including its use of chemical weapons and barrel bombs against its own civilians.

So far, the war has killed more than 200,000 people and led to the displacement of 50 to 60 percent of the Syrian population, said James L. Gelvin, a UCLA history professor who has written several books and articles on the region.

In recent months, the Islamic State group has joined the battlefield and further complicated the war.

The death of thousands, displacement of millions and destruction of infrastructure has caused Syria to little resemble the country it once was, Gelvin said.

Despite the violence, Naji’s mother decided to travel to Syria last summer to visit family.

Her mother told Naji that bombings were audible in the distance in Damascus, and the city once vibrant with night life was quiet by 6 p.m.

After going to a mosque one day, Naji’s mother and uncle stopped at a nearby coffee shop for refreshments, Naji said. The day after, the coffeehouse was bombed, Naji said.

Naji said she thinks the strictness of the authoritarian government in Syria has engendered fear in some citizens that they are constantly being watched.

When the Syrian government visited Naji’s grandmother and aunt in 2013, Naji said her aunt had to stuff her “Free Syria” flag in the drain of the kitchen sink to hide it from government home inspectors, who performed random searches to make sure civilians weren’t collaborating with rebel forces.

Naji said she remembers how difficult it was early in the war to learn about the situation.

“Every time we would ask our family, ‘Is there something going on?’ they would have to say ‘no’ for their lives,” she said.

Gelvin said he thinks the complexity of the war has caused many to predict a bleak future.

“It’s going to end up with both sides exhausted, but like prize fighters not able to deliver a final blow,” Gelvin said. “A permanent failed state is the prospect. (Syria has) disappeared from the face of the earth.”

Despite this forecast, Basrawi said he believes the best solution to the war is to establish Syria as a heterogeneous nation full of a diverse range of people. He said he thinks the government should provide its citizens with many of the same freedoms democracies provide their citizens.

Although the violence continues, Naji said her grandmother will never leave Syria.

“She’d rather die in her own home than somewhere else,” she said.

Source: dailybruin.com

Galerie Lelong is pleased to announce its first solo exhibition by the Lebanese-born artist and writer Etel Adnan. Adnan’s vibrant, expressive paintings, works on paper, and tapestries demonstrate her commitment to communication beyond the confines of the written or spoken word, and her use of color, shape, gesture, and perception help to create the landscapes for which she is well known in a variety of media. For the first time in New York, a film by the artist will also be on view in the exhibition. Galerie Lelong will host an opening reception on Thursday, April 2, from 6pm to 8pm.

Color and light are the two dynamics that inform Adnan’s ongoing series of landscape paintings of Mount Tamalpais (Marin County, California). Adnan has said that “light is everything for me,” and the sunlight expressed in her paintings and other works is often symbolized by a red rectangle or square. Having left home at an early age, Adnan’s interest in and exploration of physical and emotional diaspora is evident throughout her work, with the concept of returning to a place strengthened through memory. As one of the most important voices in Arab and Arab-American literature, Adnan’s accordion-fold books (leporellos) fuse her visual and linguistic prowess, which Galerie Lelong will present along with one of the artist’s tapestries. Translating the rich colors and delicate sensory shifts of her paintings and works on paper to wool, Adnan’s tapestries recall the vibrant Persian rugs of her childhood.

Equally an artist, social observer, and commentator, Adnan was born in Lebanon in 1925 to an Arab father from Damascus and Greek mother from Smyrna. After being educated in Beirut, at the Sorbonne, the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard University, Adnan returned to Lebanon in the early 1970s. Six years later, after the first year of the Lebanese Civil War, Adnan moved to Paris where she currently lives and works.

Adnan’s work has been exhibited widely. Last year, The Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Qatar, presented the largest exhibition of her work to date with the retrospective Etel Adnan in All Her Dimensions, curated by Hans-Ulrich Obrist. According to Obrist, Adnan is “one of the great poets of her time and also a wonderful visual artist: so she bridges these two things. . . . What is so key about Etel is also how many artists of the younger generation she inspires. . . . She is an artist’s artist.” Adnan’s inclusion in the 2014 Whitney Biennial garnered significant critical praise, and in 2012, Adnan presented in Documenta (13), where she was also a Documenta resident artist and writer. Adnan authored a volume of Documenta’s notebook series, 100 Notes – 100 Thoughts, and in 2014, Nightboat Books released a two- volume edition of Adnan’s collected writings. Galerie Lelong will present a solo exhibition of Etel Adnan’s work in Paris from February 12 to March 28, 2015. A catalogue will be produced in connection with the exhibition, featuring texts by Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Jean Fremon, and Cole Swensen. Galerie Lelong will organize a solo presentation of Etel Adnan’s work at the ADAA Art Show at the Park Avenue Armory from March 4-8, 2015. Adnan’s work is currently on view at the Museum der Moderne, Salzburg, through March 8, 2015. The gallery will also host a reading of Adnan’s poetry in conjunction with her exhibition in April.

Source: www.nyartsmagazine.com

Tim Raphael director, producer, dramaturge, and adapter, is creative and collaborative by nature. An associate professor of arts, culture and media at Rutgers University-Newark, his background is in theater and performance studies. He also has an abiding passion for political issues like immigration.
He fused the two by starting the Center on Migration and the Global City in 2009. As director of the center, he has recently embarked on a multiyear project called “Newest Americans: Stories From the Global City,” a multimedia and multidisciplinary collaboration among journalists, artists, research faculty and students that is documenting unique stories from Rutgers-Newark, which has been hailed, for nearly two decades, the most diverse college campus in the nation.

This month, the Newest Americans project premiered Notes for My Homeland, the first in a series of short documentary films, which is showing on National Geographic’s Proof website.

Notes for My Homeland tells the story of Syrian-American composer and pianist Malek Jandali, an American citizen who blends traditional Arab music with Western harmonies. In the film, which features Jandali’s music plus archival video and photos from Syria, Jandali looks at his Syrian identity from an American perspective, against the backdrop of the current Syrian dictatorship, civil war and the Arab Spring.

Jandali, who has performed in concert halls throughout the world, is no ordinary musician. On January 31, he became the first Arab-American composer to premier work at Carnegie Hall. His song Watani Ana (I Am My Homeland) was inspired by the killing of children in the Syrian city of Dara’a. After he performed it during a demonstration in Washington, D.C., his parents were attacked in their home in Syria.

Jandali also has a connection to Rutgers, which comes via his oud player, Mohamed Alsiadi, a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies at Rutgers-Newark. Alsiadi met Jandali at a music academy in Damascus in 1992 and is also featured in the film.

Syrian-American composer and pianist Malek Jandali is the first subject of the project.
“It was exciting to produce this piece on Malek,” says Raphael. “The story radiates from Rutgers-Newark, contains both a local and global narrative, and looks at issues of our times through both a cultural lens and from a human perspective.”
Notes for My Homeland was produced by Talking Eyes Media in partnership with Rutgers and VII photo agency. The documentary series kicked off by Notes is but a piece of the larger Newest Americans project, which is taking an in-depth look at immigration and the idea of American identity, offering both a glimpse into the world these newest Americans are navigating and transforming, and a vision of our demographic future.

Other components of the project include a Newest Americans website, which will feature a tri-annual digital magazine; audio files of oral histories done by students and Newark residents; faculty and student works created in various classes; lectures, film screenings, gallery exhibitions and books; and a special project on immigrant detention and incarceration.

“A half-century from now, the U.S. will look like the Rutgers-Newark campus. So, I wanted to begin to understand what processes are driving change and how we’ll look going forward,” says Raphael. “Bringing smart, creative people together gives us infinite possibilities with this project, and getting students and faculty involved reinforces our campus as an anchor institution in Newark.”

To accompany Notes for My Homeland, on March 26 the New Americans project will hold an afternoon panel with artists and documentary filmmakers who have worked in Syria, along with an evening concert by Jandali, Alsiadi and cellist Laura Metcalf, who is also in the film. The concert will take place in the Essex Room at the Paul Robeson Center.

Source: news.rutgers.edu

Although 19 percent of the residents of Upper Nazareth are Arab, municipal libraries in the northern Israeli town don’t have a single volume in Arabic. On Monday, two local residents filed a formal administrative complaint in the hope of changing the situation.

The libraries in the town, located just outside the predominantly Arab city of Nazareth, have books in Hebrew, Russian, English, Spanish and French, but not Arabic. Moreover, Upper Nazareth’s libraries offer a range of enrichment activities for children, but few are conducted in Arabic for the estimated 2,000 native, Arabic-speaking young people in town.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which filed the petition on behalf of the two residents, said that for some three years it has been in contact with the Upper Nazareth municipality and with the Ministry of Culture and Sport about this situation.

In response, the municipality announced that efforts are under way to establish a separate library for the city’s Arab population at a community center in the Kramim neighborhood. However, ACRI claims that the collection currently consists of books filling a single set of shelves, adding that, even if it were more substantial, “residents are insistent in their demand that Arabic [volumes] be integrated into the other public libraries in the city.”

“Arabic is one of the official languages of the country and as taxpaying residents of the city, it is our right, as adults and children, to funding and resources that enable access to books in our language in every field, as well as leisure and cultural activities in Arabic – just like the other residents for whom Hebrew or Russian is their native language,” said Hani Salum, one of the petitioners.

Failed effort to find a building

In response, the Culture Ministry stated: “The Ministry of Culture and Sports supports public libraries and works to develop them on behalf of all of the country’s populations and sectors, without regard to religion, gender or race. The support for public libraries is allocated in an equitable manner, to properly address the needs of the community.

“Accordingly, more than 60 libraries, including the Upper Nazareth public facilities, which are located in Arab and mixed communities and serve the Arab sector, are supported on an ongoing basis by the Culture Ministry. The Upper Nazareth municipality designated a building at the time for a library that would serve the Arab sector of the city, but the building was not found to the suitable and therefore the purchase of books in Arabic was stopped.” 

The ministry noted that it was decided to establish an Arabic-language division at one of the local branch libraries, and that the ministry will continue to help underwrite the purchase of books and digital media in Arabic there. The ministry added that there is, in fact, a range of library-based enrichment activity in Arabic for preschoolers in Upper Nazareth, including story hours and musical programs.

“In any event,” it concluded, “the petition in question has not yet been received at the Culture Ministry and its response on the subject will be provided to the court.”

Source: english.pnn.ps

In the United States, most schools recite the Pledge of Allegiance daily. But what happens when the pledge is said in a language that, for the past 14 years, has been associated with an enemy?

Those at a school in New York asked themselves a very similar question this month when they said the pledge in Arabic as part of National Foreign Language Week. This recitation resulted in a firestorm, led by the school’s own students and parents, and eventually to a public apology from the school.

Laura Ingraham, a right-wing commentator, compared saying the pledge in Arabic to allowing “skinheads” to say the pledge.

“How about we just celebrate our country?” Ingraham asked. “How about we just celebrate America? Here’s America, here’s our pledge, say it in English.”

But this is America, Ingraham. The school was celebrating our country. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, over 60 million Americans do not speak English at home. Detroit is a hub for native Arabic speakers in the U.S., according to The Atlantic. In fact, Arabic speakers have increased in the U.S. by 21.7 percent since 2013, according to CNS News — probably as a result of refugees and other people fleeing persecution.

The U.S. was where, in 1620, the Puritans landed at Plymouth to escape religious persecution from an English society that thought they were too radical. From 1880-1920, the U.S. became a home to over 20 million immigrants. These people spoke a multitude of languages and introduced various cultures to America. Without these people, New York wouldn’t have Chinatown, Little Italy, or Carnegie, Ben Ash and Katz’s Deli — a culinary tragedy.

At the turn of the 20th century, Irish, Catholic and Jewish people were treated in much the same way as Arabic-speaking people are today.

English is not the official language of the U.S., nor should it be. The U.S. is home to too many different cultures, and wishing for that to be otherwise is, frankly, un-American.

Sure, our majoritarian culture stresses English as a primary language. Students at the UA are required to take English 101 and 102, or 109H. However, English is not the only language worth speaking, and this belief is reflected in the policy requiring most Bachelor of Science students to study a language to the second semester and Bachelor of Arts students to the fourth.

It’s naive to think English is the only language that benefits the U.S.

“The U.S. government has framed [Arabic] as a critical language to its security and has invested significant amounts of resources into Arabic language training programs,” said Tatiana Rabinovich, a UA graduate student and an Arab history instructor.

Knowledge of Arabic benefits the U.S. and should not be looked down upon. However, Rabinovich said she also sees the lack of respect for Middle Eastern languages.

“Unfortunately, many Americans do not know the difference between Arabic, Persian and other Middle Eastern languages,” she said.

9/11 changed the American perspective of the Middle East. The actions of a few led to the discrimination of many.

Not only does Ingraham’s comments highlight the naivete of American citizens, but it goes to show that we are not always the best at bringing cultures together.

About 100 years ago, some of my ancestors would be told to stop speaking Yiddish, German or Russian, but today, Arabs and Latinos are asked to shed their languages and cultures to become more “American.”

Arabic is not an enemy language; many U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states also speak Arabic. Arabic is the language of the Middle East (and the Islamic holy texts), and it belongs to the region and to all Muslims, not to extremism.

If people want to pledge allegiance to the flag in Arabic, let them. If that’s the language that makes sense to them, it’s better than reciting incomprehensible words without passion or meaning.

“One nation, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.”

People should have the liberty and freedom to pledge allegiance in whatever language they choose and whichever language makes the sentiment more genuine.

Source: www.wildcat.arizona.edu

A high school in Pine Bush, New York, had an opportunity to teach teens about tolerance and respect—but its administrators totally blew it by caving to the demands of misinformed children, their parents, and other district residents. As part of Pine Bush High School’s Foreign Language week, the Pledge of Allegiance was recited over the loudspeaker Wednesday morning in Arabic, which sparked fury among many students and parents.

The school came up with the idea to allow students to recite the pledge in different languages throughout the week, in an effort to increase appreciation for cultural diversity. It isn’t clear how far they were able to take things because their plan backfired after an Arab-American student read the words in Arabic over a loudspeaker.

Several students and members of the community voiced their anger over social media, with many expressing more or less the same sentiment as this one:

Some students outright refused to participate in the school’s diversity week and argued that they believed the Arabic recitation was disrespectful to the members of the military who are fighting overseas.

So, how did Pine Bush High School respond? Did administrators use this as an opportunity to remind students and residents that there is a major difference between Islamic terrorists and Arab-Americans who abhor what is going on in countries like Syria and Afghanistan?

No. The district apologized instead, which is pretty much a slap in the face to Arab students and all others who believe it is wrong to demonize an entire group of people based on the horrific actions of relatively few people.

More from The Stir: Teacher Forces Student to Recite the ‘Pledge of Allegiance’ Even Though It’s Against His Religion

I understand Americans have lost their lives fighting in the Middle East, but our military is bravely defending the rights and freedoms of people who include Arab-Americans. As far as I know, the Pledge of Allegiance belongs to ALL Americans and neither teens nor adults should get to decide who has the right to recite it in their own language.

Now, on the other hand, I feel an argument could be made that the Pledge should only ever be said in English. I don’t agree with that argument, but at the very least it isn’t discriminating against one specific group of people, but rather defending the notion that all American citizens should speak English.

What happened in Pine Bush—which the school district more or less validated by apologizing—was an example of adults doing the complete opposite of standing up for what’s difficult but right, which sets a poor example for young people who need guidance. With one simple apology, these teens have been taught that it’s okay to feel fear and hatred toward an entire group of people based on the language they speak.

Do you think this school should have apologized?

Source: thestir.cafemom.com