Author Archives: Arab America

Aasif Mandvi, widely known as the Senior Muslim Correspondent on The Daily Show, is premiering a new sitcom parody “Halal in the Family” on award-winning humor website, Funny Or Die, on Thursday, April 9. The short-form web series, which uses humor to examine anti-Muslim bias, stars Mandvi, Sakina Jaffrey (House of Cards) and notable special guests Samantha Bee (The Daily Show), Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter (The Roots) and Jordan Klepper (The Daily Show).

In 2011, “The Daily Show” aired a single episode parody starring Aasif as part of a segment on anti-Muslim bias. Mandvi and Lillian LaSalle of Sweet 180 recognized and seized the opportunity to turn this single episode into a web series for social good. Halal in the Family builds on work Mandvi has done with Muslim groups by addressing a range of issues, including cyber bullying and hate networks, media bias, and the exploitation of anti-Muslim prejudice for political gain.

Halal is produced by LaSalle and directed by Miles Kahn, a producer on The Daily Show. It was developed as part of a campaign to combat anti-Muslim bias coordinated by Moore + Associates, a strategic communications firm. Themes for the series were chosen in consultation with the project’s Advisory Council, including such prominent Muslim, interfaith and civil rights organizations as the Center for New Community, ACCESS/National Network for Arab American Communities, Muslim Advocates, Auburn Seminary, and SAALT.

“Through my work on The Daily Show, I saw how satire can open people’s eyes and shift perspectives on controversial topics,” says Mandvi. “With Halal in the Family I had a chance to create an all-American Muslim family dealing with common forms of ignorance and prejudice, resolving them – in classic sitcom fashion -by the end of each episode. I’m excited that all four episodes will premiere on Funny Or Die, which is a trail blazer in the world of comedy.”

Halal in the Family will continue to work with its Advisory Council to provide viewers with a unique opportunity to engage more deeply in the issues raised by the web series. Ways to get involved in the social action campaigns and additional information on the series can be found at [www.halalinthefamily.tv] and on Facebook or Twitter.

About Aasif Mandvi

Aasif (@Aasif) has become known for projects that take on the issue of race and religion, from “The Daily Show” to his much acclaimed roles in the off-Broadway show “Disgraced,” and “Sakina’s Restaurant.” Best known for his role as Senior Muslim Correspondent on “The Daily Show,” Aasif’s next role is starring in HBO’s “The Brink”, where he is also a writer and producer. He also recently released the book “No Land’s Man” from Chronicle Books, which is a laugh-out-loud account of a second-generation immigrant’s search for meaning and identity in an increasingly confusing world.

About Lillian LaSalle/Sweet 180

Lillian LaSalle and Sweet 180, the producer of Halal in the Family, is a talent management and production company that specializes in the representation of award winning actors, writers, directors and composers and produces feature film and television properties, such as Mandvi’s feature film, TODAY’s SPECIAL, Independent Spirit Award winner, SWEET LAND, starring Alan Cumming and Sundance film, LOGGERHEADS.

Source: www.broadwayworld.com

This is the time of the year when Christians the world over — more than 2 billion of us — reflect upon the crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord.

In light of the tragic massacre of Christian college students in Kenya on Thursday, and the ongoing threat against Christians in other nations, this Holy Week we are calling upon Christians to also reflect upon the crucifixion, beheading, stoning, enforced slavery, sexual abuse, human trafficking, harassment, bombing and displacement of hundreds of thousands of Christians — and others — whose faith alone has made them a target of religious extremists.

Countless lives have been utterly destroyed in nations such as Iraq, Syria, Libya, Pakistan, India, Egypt, Kenya and Nigeria.

In June 2012, Bishop Shlemon Warduni of Iraq told the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, “We beg you to help. We want only peace, security, and freedom. Please no more death, no more explosions, no more injustice.” By then, nearly every remaining church in Iraq had constructed a blast wall around its building to buffet the threat of the inevitable church bombing.

Source: edition.cnn.com

The FIFA president is to meet the Palestinian football chief to discuss the latter’s request that Israel be barred from international competition, the Palestinian Football Association (PFA) said Saturday.

A PFA statement said that FIFA’s Sepp Blatter would meet Jibril Rajoub ahead of the world governing body’s next congress in Cairo in late May, but did not give a date for the talks.

FIFA declined to comment when contacted by AFP on Saturday.

The Palestinians want Israel suspended because of their “racist behavior against Arabs”, with the statement claiming that Blatter had recently contacted Rajoub and assured him that “serious discussions were under way for the Palestinian draft resolution to be submitted to a vote at the next congress in May.”

The PFA also protested at the creation of “five clubs in settlements on land occupied since 1967, clubs participating in Israeli national championships in violation of international law.”

The PFA last called for Israel’s suspension in November after Israeli forces raided its headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

It has also cried foul over Israeli travel restrictions on Palestinian players.

To be passed the Palestinian resolution must win the support of at least 156 other delegates at the 209-member congress.

The Palestinians were upgraded from observer entity to a United Nations “observer state” in 2012, and although not yet universally recognized as a state, their national football team gained FIFA recognition in 1998.

A FIFA delegation visited the Gaza Strip in January and pledged $1 million to help rebuild stadiums there, many of which were damaged during the conflict between Israel and Hamas last July and August.

Source: maannews.com

Palestinian Christians said they would not tolerate a repetition of the Israeli restrictions and violence which have in past years marred Holy Week festivities – culminating on Easter Sunday – and have vowed to pursue “other means” if no marked changes are made.
Speaking to journalists on Tuesday, community leaders expressed concerns that Israeli restrictions will prevent them from celebrating Easter this week, beginning with the Good Friday procession in Jerusalem, where thousands flock to walk along Via Dolorosa – the path believed to have been walked by Jesus before his crucifixion.
“There is one major change this year, and this is April 1, which is the day Palestine officially becomes a member of the International Criminal Court,” said Bassem Khoury, a Christian from Jerusalem, and former Palestinian minister of economy. “Denial of freedom of religion is … an issue we will pursue if we are denied [access to our holy sites].”
For almost a decade, the Easter celebrations have been marked with clashes between local Christians and Israeli troops, who regularly prevent worshippers from accessing the religious sites.
“Since 2005, Israel has closed the Old City of Jerusalem for us,” said Hind Khoury, former Palestinian minister of Jerusalem affairs. “We arrive to celebrate Palm Sunday and Holy Friday only to find the access doors closed and many Israeli military checkpoints along the way.”
This Friday, pilgrims and visitors will walk down the cobbled Via Dolorosa through the walled Old City, many bearing wooden crosses, to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where tradition has it Jesus was buried before rising again three days later.

Source: www.aljazeera.com

As part of it’s mission in Iraq, the Arab Human Rights Academy is running psychosocial support projects for displaced children, aged between 4 and 12, in the form of painting and arts workshops. You can read more about the background, idea, theory and practice of the project here.

The paintings of the displaced children are not only valuable as part of trauma therapy – they also hold value as objects of reflection, snapshots of the hopes and sufferings of children who have been ripped from their homes, sometimes from the very arms of their parents, and thrown into the unknown. Despite the harrowing and frightening circumstances these children  find themselves in, we can see in their art hope, love, and a longing for home.

The Arab Human Rights Academy is offering original, high-quality prints of these works, available for the price of £11. Postage is available in the UK, and included in the price. For overseas postage or large orders, please contact us on info@arabhumanrights-academy.org and we can arrange for the piece to be sent to you via a method of your choosing. None of this money will go to the Academy; every penny will go to supporting the child and their family, to helping them achieve the dreams which at this moment are only realized in paint. By purchasing a painting you will not only own a valuable piece of art – you will be supporting the lives of some of the most vulnerable children on earth.

Source: www.arabhumanrights-academy.org

“It’s hard to believe that Hassan Ahmad Dennaoui – better known to his readers and listeners as Big Hass – has only been in the industry for four years. But during that time, the 35-year-old Saudi Arabian has turned himself from an army of one into a force to be reckoned with in the regional underground music scene.

After falling in love with Arab hip-hop in 2009, Hassan founded Re-Volt Magazine, an online outlet that focuses on “real hip-hop culture through its six elements and the richness of our Arab culture in all domains.”

Hassan elaborates: “When I heard artists such as Lowkey [UK/Iraq], Omar Offendum [Syria/U.S.A], Shadia Mansour [Palestine/UK] and The Narcicyst [Iraq/Canada], they simply made me believe and realize that hip-hop is a culture. And it made me go back to its roots… its essence, which is power of the word and a voice of the voiceless.”
Shortly afterwards, the media mogul also bagged a presenting gig, hosting the Kingdom’s first ever FM hip-hop radio show, called “Laish Hip Hop?” Al Arabiya News met Hassan to find out more about his journey so far and what else he has in store.

Tell us a little more about your background. What made you choose a career in music?

I’m pretty much like everyone else; I got into music, simply because it made me feel good and free. I actually learnt the English language from music, as well as from the game of basketball. Being in Saudi Arabia at the age of 16, we as nationals were not allowed to go international schools at the time, and so my father – may his soul rest in power – decided to change that and took us to Sharjah, UAE, where we actually started to learn English. Music lyrics and watching late night NBA basketball games helped me improve my English tremendously.

Source: english.alarabiya.net

Appalachian State University recently formed a partnership with the American University of Ras Al Khaimah in the United Arab Emirates, which will allow both universities to exchange students and faculty.

While this agreement allows students to study the Arabic language in a place where it is commonly spoken, AURAK also gives students many other unique opportunities.

“We wanted to find opportunities for our students that are in our Arabic language program, but also we have students who are in [the] global studies [major] who would be interested in that region,” said Jesse Lutabingwa, associate vice chancellor for international education and development.

Lutabingwa said one of the main points of this agreement was to give students at Appalachian an opportunity to continue their studies in a region previously unopened to student exchange.

“Students have been going to the region through third party study abroad providers, but those are expensive for the students,” Lutabingwa said. “When our students go, for example, to study at this university, they will pay the same thing they pay here.”

Being an American university, the main language of instruction at AURAK is English.

“That makes it much easier for us to send students there who are not necessarily studying Arabic, but they are interested in the region,” Lutabingwa said. “So, students could go there to study anything that is offered [at AURAK] because they do not need to be worried about language issues.”

Lutabingwa said student exchange is not the only way Appalachian plans to strengthen this new relationship with AURAK. Student exchanges lay the foundation for other forms of connection between universities.

“We are also working on several different things for faculty exchange and faculty research,” Lutabingwa said. “While we start with the student exchanges, we continue to explore other opportunities for engaging each other.”

For instance, AURAK has a research center that focuses on renewable energy. Lutabingwa noted how facilities such as this could open opportunities for collaborative research in solar energy.

Sophomore global studies major Ramsey Wyles said she is pleased with the agreement because the global studies major has a Middle East focus and Appalachian offers a minor in Arabic.

However, Wyles has concerns with AURAK being an American University. Since English is the main language of the university, Wyles saw the possibility of students not fully engaging the culture of that region.

“My only worry is that you can be in the country physically but not culturally, and that isn’t really studying abroad in its fullest sense,” Wyles said.

However, Wyles expressed that, despite this one issue, she is definitely interested in taking part in this program and sees it as a good opportunity for any student at Appalachian interested in the region.

Source: theappalachianonline.com

A student at Pine Bush High School in upstate New York recently recited the Pledge of Allegiance in Arabic to help celebrate National Foreign Language Week. By the end of the day she had been verbally harassed, the class president who had invited her had been punished and the school was in an uproar.

This is perhaps an isolated case (though a similar controversy took place in 2013 in Colorado). But it indexes two disturbing trends that overlap when it comes to anxieties about Arabic language.

Chicago Arabic program sends debate team to Qatar
The first is willed monolingualism and a widespread fear of foreign languages. The second is open and unchecked racism toward Arabs and, by loose association, non-Arab Muslims.

The situation seems to be getting progressively worse. Hate crimes toward Muslims are five times more common today than they were before 2001, and though Muslims make up only about 1 percent of the U.S. population, 14 percent of religious-based hate crimes target Muslims, according to FBI reports.

Source: www.chicagotribune.com

It’s the final leg of my marathon series of meetings in Israel – I am here with a delegation of Hispanic entrepreneurs – and my tour bus is climbing the slow but steady hill up to Nazareth. In the old city this afternoon, just hours before the sabbath, we will be meeting with a few Israeli Arab entrepreneurs. It’s a fitting venue for the conclusion of our journey. It’s the place where one big story began, and another is about to begin.

Nazareth is a mostly Arab town in the north of Israel, and home to a number of new accelerators – including our host this afternoon, the Narareth Business Innovation Center (NBIC) – who share the mission of serving Arab entrepreneurs who have been left out of the central narrative of the Israeli tech miracle. Among the entrepreneurs we meet this afternoon, one in particular stood out for me: Dr. Firas Swidan, whose company (Gene-Way) is about to launch an MVP (minimum viable product). Three reasons why.

First, there’s the story of the founder. Born in Nazareth on the 24th of December (I kid you not), Firas has led a life of culture-crossing adventures, and is now poised to do it at scale. As a tenth-grader, he was recruited to study at a Jerusalem-based magnet school that served both Arabs and Jews. From there he went on to study mathematics at Technion — the so-called MIT of Israel – under a special scholarship for talented students; he graduated summa cum laude. And from there, studies in brain research at The Hebrew University, studies in bioinformatics in Munich, back to Technion in Israel for a Ph.D. in computer science, then post-doctoral research and work in industry in the US (including a stint at Intel INTC +0.03%) and New Zealand. But he kept returning to Nazareth — where he and his company today are based — and each time with a new view of what the city might become.

Source: www.forbes.com

the spring of 1967, Egypt’s president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, lamented to the U.S. ambassador in Cairo that the war in Yemen had become his “Vietnam.” He subsequently explained to an Egyptian historian how the conflict spiraled out of control: “I sent a company to Yemen and ended up reinforcing it with 70,000 troops.”

Over the course of the five-year war, from 1962 to 1967, Nasser lost more than 10,000 men, squandered billions of dollars, and painted himself into a diplomatic corner from which the only way out was through war with Israel. As Nasser himself would realize by the war’s end, Yemen was to Egypt what Vietnam was to the United States — and what Afghanistan was to the Soviet Union, what Algeria is to France, and what Lebanon is to Israel.

Not surprisingly, the predominant takeaway for Egyptians was “never again.” Never again would they send their boys to fight for a dubious cause on a remote battlefield. Never again would they waste their modern army to build a nation where there was none. Never again would they set foot in Yemen.Never again would they waste their modern army to build a nation where there was none. Never again would they set foot in Yemen.

Perhaps “never” is too strong a word. A half-century later, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is once again contemplating the dispatch of ground forces to Yemen, this time in support of the Saudi-led assault on the Houthis. Sisi has already committed Egypt’s navy and air force to the military campaign and has said that ground forces would be sent “if necessary.” As the Saudis, the Egyptians, and their allies hover on the brink of another military adventure in Yemen, history offers some stark lessons of the challenges that may block their road to victory.

Source: foreignpolicy.com

Delta Airlines is leading an effort to petition the US government to sanction Etihad Airways, Emirates and Qatar Airways. They charge that these three airlines have received government subsidies and are unfairly competing with US carriers resulting in a loss of jobs for American workers. Americans for Fair Skies, the coalition formed by Delta, has submitted a brief of its complaint to Congress, started an online campaign and is sponsoring TV and radio advertisements to make its case. 

What is troubling is that because its case is weak, the coalition has shamefully stooped to subtle and not-so-subtle Arab-baiting in the effort to demonise the Arab carriers.

In one ad, for example, Etihad, Emirates and Qatar Airways are described as coming from the “oil rich Arabian peninsula” and receiving “billions of government oil money”. If you didn’t get the point, an accompanying graphic shows an Oriental-looking structure that turns out be an Arab bank pumping dollars into an airplane. So much for subtlety.

One of the leaders of the effort, Delta Air Lines CEO Richard Anderson, threw all subtlety to the winds in a mid-February CNN interview. Noting that the Arab carriers had rebutted the allegations and countered with the charge that the US airlines themselves had been the recipients of a $15-billion Congressional financial package after 9/11, Mr Anderson said it was “a great irony” that such talk came from “the UAE from the Arabian Peninsula” because “our industry was really shocked by the terrorism of 9/11, which came from terrorists from the Arabian Peninsula”.  

An Emirates spokesperson responded by noting that Mr Anderson’s statements “were deliberately crafted and delivered for special effect”. His assessment is spot on. The crass comments and the content of the US airline coalition’s ads are part of a tried and tested strategy used by politicians and businessmen alike.    

For example, in their effort to win public support for renewable energy, liberals, environmental groups and companies that would benefit from the expanded use of wind and solar power, could make an environmental impact argument or a case for resource conservation. Instead, all too often, they fall back on Arab-baiting. At the 2008 Democratic party convention, for example, then Montana governor Brian Schweitzer repeatedly referenced “Arab oil” or “Middle East oil”. Each time he did so with a snarl and each time, he was greeted by thunderous applause. And in a famous 2009 TV ad promoting energy independence, the same point is made by ominous-sounding Arabic music against a desert backdrop featuring burning oil wells guarded by American soldiers. Arabic script was thrown in for good measure.

All of this is deliberate. Pollsters who have conducted focus-groups on this issue have established that if a politician speaks about “dependency on oil” he gets a less emotional response than if he were to add “Arab” or “Arabian” or even “Middle East”. And just as politicians pay attention to such polling data, so do airline CEOs.

The US airlines’ campaign itself is based on flimsy charges of subsidies and protectionism. In reality, the US aviation industry was founded on both. In 1998, Congressional Research Services completed a study of US government subsidies to American aviation from 1918 to 1998. It totalled $155 billion.

In addition to the post 9/11 bailout and loan guarantee bills, the US government continues to fund infrastructure and operational services and to provide subsidies to US airlines for “essential air services” (subsidies underwriting costs for airlines to keep smaller markets on their routes) and the “reserve air fleet” (subsidies for agreeing to make their planes available, if needed, to the government). There’s also an indirect subsidy in the form of the requirement that government employees must “fly American”. Airports and the air traffic control infrastructure are built and maintained by tax-exempt entities. And a federal law prohibits foreign carriers from flying passengers between US cities.

Source: www.thenational.ae

Traveling in an old car, young Iraqi filmmakers had taken off at noon Feb. 18 from the headquarters of the Iraqi Independent Film Center on Al-Rasheed Street, heading toward the National Theater. They were accompanied by a folk music band to celebrate the 6th anniversary of the center and the 12th year of independent Iraqi cinema.

The first Iraqi feature film to be made after the fall of the Baathist regime was “Ghayr Saleh” (“Invalid”), directed by Oday Rasheed. The movie was produced independently. Following that came British director Mohammed Darraji’s “Dreams,” which tackles the chaos that spread in Iraq over the last three decades.

Iraq’s Independent Film Center is a dream come true for young people who aspire to make cinematic productions that do not follow any ideology nor succumb to the whims of the government, but instead reflect real life concerns, all the while meeting technical and international standards.

Iraq does not have a long history of filmmaking, with just 100 films from the declaration of the Iraqi state in 1921 to the fall of President Saddam Hussein in 2003. Most of the films produced were aimed at mobilizing people. They praised the Iraq-Iran War of the 1980s and Hussein, while others were purely commercial, including mediocre comedies.

During the Feb. 18 celebration, the Independent Film Center showed six feature and short films, some of which had won awards at international festivals. Among them was director Salman Salman’s “Hadiaat Abi” (“Gift of My Father”), which won the the 2015 Berlin International Film Festival’s Crystal Bear Award. Organizers distributed a document detailing the center’s productions over the past six years.

Also at the gathering, the center’s managers broke red pens, a symbolic reference to the pens of officials who obstructed a proposal for the Ministry of Culture to fund films for the center to produce. Mohanad Hayal, director and media center manager who oversees young filmmakers in training, said, “Breaking a pen is part of fighting the corruption prevailing in the country in general, and in the cinema sector in particular.” He told Al-Monitor, “The center has produced films that received 100 Arab and international awards. It is high time we celebrated these achievements.”

The Independent Film Center has produced some 20 films since its establishment, including features, documentaries and shorts. Despite all the efforts of youth in cinema production in a country crawling with security tensions, not to mention political conflict, movie theaters in Iraq remain a mess. Not one has been renovated because of the government’s lack of interest in cultural infrastructure.

Hayal lamented, “Our center has communicated with the government through the Ministry of Culture and the parliament to renovate and build movie theaters, but our proposals went unheard. After the negligence we were shown, the center resorted to mobile cinema, which is a high-resolution big screen that shows films in the open air.”

In an interview with Al-Monitor, Wareth Kwaish, an ambitious young man who produced his first film, “Once, They Were Here,” said, “The center gives us the space to learn a lot through allowing us to brainstorm ideas and develop them.” Kwaish added, “The Iraqi Independent Film Center develops our tools and brings us closer to the techniques of making movies.”

The center has managed to show 45 films in 14 Iraqi provinces, reaching the countryside, including al-Ahwar, the marshes in southernmost Iraq. The center has tried to expand its activities, but the Iraqi government bureaucracy has hampered its efforts. Hayal said, “In 2006, the center submitted a 30-page project to the Iraqi parliament explaining a mechanism to establish a fund to support independent cinema. The project was supposed to be brought to the attention of the parliament, but it was ignored.”

Source: www.al-monitor.com