Omaima Khalil

She has an amazing voice...

Shahrazad Goes Live

I don't always agree with Fatima Mernissi, but she does have the most fantastically bizarre and yet wondefully commensensical ideas.

In 'The Satellite, The Prince and Sheherazade', she explores "the empowerment dynamics of satellite broadcasting" and "Arab audiences' fascination with strong female hosts and war reporters". These women, who have become household names across the Arab world, fit the "Sheherazade profile, the brainy, self-confident storyteller":

Promoting strong female stars has proven to be a fantastic asset for the Saudis' most threatening TV rival. Al Jazeera is winning crowds every night through the eloquence of its news anchors, Jumana Nammour and Kaduja Bin Guna, and economics expert Farah al-Baraqaui. While state televisions and oil-funded channels traditionally limited their staff by censoring them and denying them the right to decide freely about their program content and what guests to invite, Al Jazeera'ssuccess is due precisely to the freedom its programmers and speakers enjoy, which allows them to become credible communicators. "

Channels that want to be viable are required to rely much more heavily on high-impact 'brands' and product lines. Al Jazeera demonstrated the worth of such assets when it developed a range of programs whose titles and presenters have become household names inside and outside the Arab world," explains Naomi Sakhr, the author of Satellite Realms: Transnational Television, Globalization and the Middle East.

The most famous reporters in the Middle East today are probably the Palestine-based Al Jazeera reporters, Shirin Abu 'Aqla and Jivara al-Badri, who are admired for their courage and professionalism. "History will remember that day when there was no one to speak up in the entire Arab nation, from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf, but women such as Shirin Abu 'Aqla and Jivara al Badri and Leila Aouda," comments Ali Aziz, the columnist of the avant-garde Egyptian magazine 'Critiques' (An-Nuqqad), "while male leaders and gallon-wearing generals have disappeared from our sight and hearing."

Fairuz's ya sharazade

Katia Nasser discussing her experience as a war correspondent during the 33 day war:

Chad case

I'm getting a lot sick at the Europeans-in-captivity coverage of the Chad case, the focus is completely on that and I heard very little about the children until Jazeera finally gave the parents and relatives a chance to tell their story - in an interview which the English channel copied and pasted as per usual.

The Poet And The Journalist

I missed the beginning of Tamim Barghouti's poetry reading - performance actually- in Ramallah on Aljazeera Live, but I could see that almost half the people in the audience were pointing their phones/cameras at him, so I wasn't too worried.

Sure enough someone had uploaded the entire 'concert' on youtube - and I found out that he had been introduced by Jivara AlBudeiri! I thought I recognised her voice, but I wasn't entirely sure until I read this account of the evening from the Al'ayam newspaper.

Perfect right? The next Mahmoud Darwish introduced by the most passionate and committed journalist on Aljazeera. If only words really were more powerful than bullets.

Muslimas' Glam Mags Galore

A Magazine For And By Today's Modern Muslimah
By Muna Shikaki

Azizah ($8.50) is very much a glossy women’s magazine. It has articles on fashion, food, travel, books and relationships. Its 112 pages contain articles, photographs, and illustrations, and a quarter of its pages are devoted to ads. The magazine’s “Well-Being” section covers topics like massage and aromatherapy; its “Destinations” section mentions places to pray throughout the world (including one on mosques in the U.S. Virgin Islands).

Fashion sections have models wearing modest clothes, some with backdrops of the beach. A long garment that covers most of the body from the neck down, the djilbab, is modeled with a college backdrop (“This denim-look djilbab is perfect for the campus.”) A “wrap and snap” black djilbab looks as if it could be put on in a second.

Yet the magazine also delves into serious topics such as AIDS in the Muslim community, birth control in Islam and polygyny. It includes headlines like “America’s First Muslimah Judge” and “How Inclusive is the Muslim Community of the Disabled?”

...Though the magazine doesn’t posit itself as a controversial magazine, it is not complacent. Sometimes, the simple act of covering a topic can be seen as taking a stand.

But some of the most important articles are not necessarily the most provocative ones. “How Inclusive Is the Muslim Community of the Disabled?” questions the absence of ramps for wheelchairs in mosques. In the same issue, a disabled woman writes a heart-wrenching story about making the pilgrimage to Mecca in her wheelchair.

The article, and the magazine in general, reflects a “multiple critique,” a term championed by Miriam Cooke, professor of modern Arabic literature and culture at Duke University, for the way in which Islamic feminists critique Western culture and Islamic patriarchy without abandoning their religious identities. “The ability [of Muslim women] to say, ‘I don’t like what the Saudis do’ doesn’t mean I can’t also say ‘I don’t like what Bush or a Muslim cleric is doing,’” Cooke said. “I can talk about all these various communities to which I belong.”

Muna Shikaki, who wrote the above in the New York Review of Magazines, is one of Alarabiya's corespondents in North America.

Her colleague Nadia Bilbasey had a report on a teen-Azizah magazine: Muslim Girl, which both the non-hijabi (wearing an 'Allah' pendant) and the muhajaba girls she interviewed enthused over.

The Magazine's Editor-in-Chief, Ausma Khan, was interviewed by Alsarq Al-awsat

What do you hope to achieve?
So many things! We want to make a difference in the lives of American Muslim girls by giving them a forum where they can express themselves and see their stories told in a positive and celebratory spirit. We want to give Muslim girls the tools for empowerment, education and enlightenment. It can be really difficult and isolating for Muslim youth when the only images they see of themselves are negative or frightening ones.

We are seeking to provide a counter-point and we hope to bring out all those wonderful stories about Muslims that are rarely told. For example, one Muslim girl helped others in Malawi through the Peace Corps, another American Muslim girl worked with tsunami victims in Indonesia. We also feature an amazingly accomplished Muslim woman who is a BBC news anchor, a lawyer and journalist (Mishal Hussain). There are wonderful things that Muslim girls and women are doing every day to make a difference to their families, schools and communities. We think that telling stories like these will give Muslim girls confidence and will re-affirm their pride in their own heritage and values.

At the same time, we are showing how much a part of American life Muslim girls are and how much they have in common with other teens. When you clear up misunderstandings and provide information to people who genuinely desire to know more about Muslims, that’s bound to make a positive difference in this world – individual to individual, community to community, and nation to nation.

What is the process of choosing the cover girl and is it a requirement that she wears Hijab?
We’ve asked girls to write in to us via the website if they would like to be on our cover. We are looking for girls who are proud to be American Muslims, who find their values empowering and who want to reach out to other girls. As long as a girl subscribes to Islamic values and dresses modestly and with self-respect, she does not have to wear the hijab to appear on our cover. We are looking for a girl who has a great story. Our first cover girl, Wardah Chaudhary, was really excited about the concept of the magazine and really keen to reach out to other Muslim girls and share her own experiences. She is a bright, articulate, wonderful young girl whom we think other teens will look up to and identify with. Again, we celebrate diversity and we seek to be as representative and inclusive as possible.

Sandcomics - Arab cartoons and national identity

This advert has been running on all UAE channels for a while, and what with the repetition and the cool graphics, I felt compelled to go check out the website it advertised.

Turns out there is a new bilingual Emarati comic that will be distributed both in printed form, at an as yet unspecified price, and an online edition will provide a downloadable page every day.

The idea, in the words of Ahmad Almansuri, is that it should "promote national identity and show the traditions of this Gulf state to visitors "

I find the whole concept of 'native pride' a bit iffy, and as for Sandman as the incarnation of the spirit of the past ...as Asia said "DAMMIT! muslims PLEASE be original ".

Some of the artwork is very good, but not up to the standards of the TV trailer. And the super hero Ajaaj doesn't seem to have been fully developed - what can you say to this for example:

Then there's the name.

3asifa Ramliya (Sandstorm) not being a very catchy, they came up with Ajaaj. Which has a sort of nice ring to it…only instead of conjuring up some primeval force bearing the ‘values of the desert’ into a futuristic city, it is - to me at least- synonymous with those ‘ayam 3ajaj‘ when you’re cooped up at home, with nothing to do but think about whether to dust or not to dust.

So overall it was a bit disappointing. I was expecting something like the Khaleeji cartoons last Ramadan, the Saudi and Emarati ones were pretty awesome.

Almost every national Arab channel has a short let's-make-fun-of-ourselves cartoon during the fasting month, usually aired around if6ar time, for a local audience.

Highlander has blogged about our own 7aj 7mad, the great dissector of Libyan mores, who desperatly needs a make-over as her photo makes clear.

Last year the Saudi's aired يوميات مناحي on their pan-Arab mbc - it dealt with topics from youth unemployment to Iraq. Sort of like 6ash ma 6ash but more understandable :P, so it was the content rather than the technical presentation that mattered.

It was the Emarati الفريج however, broadcast on Dubai, that broke the usual format of a well-meaning male fool as the central figure and representative of the 'national character'.

Instead there were four older Emarati women of varying ethnic and social backgrounds, personalities, and I.Q levels. It was visually visionary too, being the first Arab 3-D animation.

Darfur

The documentary Al-Arabia couldn't show:

Part 1
Part2

Landet som icke är

Jag längtar till landet som icke är,
Ty allting som är, är jag trött att begära.
Månen berättar mig i silverne runorom ländet som icke är.

Landet, där all vår önskan blir underbart uppfylld,
landet, där alla våra kedjor falla, landet,
där vi svalka vår sargrade pannaI månens dagg.
Mitt liv var en het villa.
Men ett har jag funnit och ett har jag verkligen vunnit—
Vägen till landet som icke är.

Edith Södergran

Literary Journalism - an oxymoron?

"In the region's cultural history, journalism evolved from the French tradition of partisan journalism married to the Levantine fondness for belles lettres "adab" literature rather than the alternative Arab literary tradition of "hadith"…sacred reporting, with its seemingly obsessive stress on reliable sourcing and research to ensure objective accounts of what the Prophet Muhammed really said and did." Arab Talk Shows and TV Journalism, a TBS article by S. Abdallah Schleifer

What a delightfully Fatima Mernissi-esque idea!! It’s a fascinating way of classifying the unclassifiable Arab media scene:

On the one hand, Levantine Adabies + Frenchies = partisan journalism where rhetorical considerations take precedence over fact.

And on Schleifer's other hand Khaleeji Hadithites + Anglo-Saxonites = Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabia: Now supplanting Egypt and the Levant, the traditional providers of news gossip for old men in Qahwas to squabble about while playing tawla and sipping thick black coffee.

...like i said, it's interesting, whether you agree with it or not. But why the dichotomy between objective journalism and adabi style?

For example, Yousri Fouda in Siri lil ghaya uses Riwaya language in what are essentially investigative reports about subjects such as Israel and Hizbullah's prisoner swap, the effects of Depleted Uranium in Iraq, Sufi brotherhoods in North Africa...

In Siri lil ghaya the Riwa’i narrative hasn't affected the journalism, it just added another dimension to it. As a conter-orientalising comment: Arab culture since the Jahiliya has always placed a high value on poetic style.

Another Egyptian who I think has a similar ‘hybridizing’ style is As3d Taha. His documentary series Yu7ka ana is definitely my favorite. Literally it means something like "it is related/told" but the phrase is actually used in the sense of "Once upon a time".

It has a definite folkloric quality as Taha draws on the repetitive, rhyming language of traditional fables to tell the story of the war in Kosovo, Venzeula's original inhabitants, religious oppression in Central Asia, the orange revolution in Ukraine and of Fort Makuna - where Morrocan political prisoners where held in secret for decades.

A lot of Arab TV journalists write in such a deadly booooooring way.... perhaps they fall into the western factual/literary divide ....or maybe it's just that they're working in a visual medium?

And (although irrelevant to the above) I couldn't resist the opening - this on the "arbiters of global opinion":

Looks are deceiving. Right now the mood among Western journalists taking a fleeting look at the new Arab public affairs talk shows that have become the hottest popular format throughout the region in all their variations is upbeat, amazingly positive. A new world of free speech is dawning in the region and according to the columns appearing in the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune and other arbiters of global opinion, most of the credit goes to Al-Jazeera channel. Well, there are a number of ironies right there

....multiplied to the power of ten in a post-9/11, post-Kabul, post-Baghdad, post-al-Hurrah world