Dabke and the liberation of dance
“Dance is resistance. It’s the most refined way for us, the Palestinian people, to express our cause… Dance is a form of liberation.”
Read MoreRamadan: The road to hell is paved with pious intentions
The ban on eating and drinking in public during Ramadan in some Muslim countries is wrong. Piety cannot and must not be imposed by law.
Read MoreOmar Sharif was an actor without borders
The late Omar Sharif was living, breathing, walking proof that there is nothing inherently irreconcilable between the Middle East and the West
Read MoreEgyptian Jews, love triangles and conspiracy theories
Despite outlandish conspiracy theories, a Ramadan TV drama about Egypt’s lost Jewish community is not a missive to Israel but an ode to pluralism.
Read MorePutting Palestine on the culinary map
The most delicious way to a society’s soul is through its stomach, believes the creator of Palestine on a Plate.
Read MoreLiving in a selfie-centred world
The selfie fad has reached epidemic proportions, but we don’t live in more narcissistic times. Selfie-absorption is as old as civilisation itself.
Read MoreISIS’s war on women in Mosul
Before ISIS began targeting Iraq’s minorities and cultural heritage, it set to work veiling women in a new dark age, reversing decades of hard-won gains.
Read MoreArabic: The language of confusion?
If an Arab says he’ll kill you, don’t worry – he wants to buy you dinner. Whether Arabic dialects are a single language is political, not linguistic.
Read MoreSexual harassment and toxic masculinity in the medina
In Egypt, sexual harassment is a largely urban phenomenon fuelled by a sense of male powerlessness, insecurity and unrealistic gender ideals.
Read MoreAn ode to Google doodles
Google doodles must be the most fleeting yet most highly visited exhibition on the planet honouring both the famous and the quirky.
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