Society

'Risk their future, or risk their lives': Ten years on, Syrian children remain without education

After nearly ten years of war in Syria, children continue to face the brunt of the crisis with attacks on educational facilities, staff and with the COVID-19 pandemic adding further disruptions, over 50 percent of them remain out of school. The UN children's agency, UNICEF estimates that above 2.4 million children are out of school inside the country, of whom 40 percent are girls. "The education system in Syria is overstretched, underfunded, fragmented and unable to provide safe, equitable and sustained services to millions of children," the Syria Crisis Regional Humanitarian Coordinator, Muha...

From Palestine to Germany: Rashas Nahas pays homage to her cultural background with new album

Rashas Nahas is not here to meet your expectations of how a woman should be expected to behave or express themselves. Especially in the context of her Palestinian culture. "As a woman, most of the time in our societies, we are expected to behave in a certain way, to fit a specific aesthetic, or body language or genre. I have no energy for this," she laughs. "I just don't. I prefer to ignore these standards really, and to be myself without thinking about how I am perceived." This attitude has certainly benefited Rasha. Just last month, the singer/songwriter released her debut album Desert. She ...

Six voices, six letters, lost between countries, languages and lives in Hoda Barakat's new novel

Usually, when you open up a book, which begins with a letter, you presume that the answer is hidden somewhere in the pages. Instead what you get with Voices of The Lost, is a sense of ambiguity and a human chain revealing that we're all much more similar than we recognise. That we see our stories inside one another, even those whose circumstances on the surface seem opposing to ours. In Hoda Barakat's epistolary novel, each letter is connected yet is not opened by the intended receiver. Beginning with a man who is later defined as "lovesick" and both paranoid of the government following him as...

As Egypt toughens female genital mutilation laws, will the reforms be enough to stop it?

For the second time in six years, Egypt has toughened legal penalties against the perpetrators of female genital mutilation (FGM), almost a year after a 14-year-old teenager lost her life while undergoing the heinous procedure in southern Egypt. On January 21, the Egyptian cabinet approved amendments to the law passed in 2016, toughening the prison sentences for undertaking FGM (female genital cutting or female circumcision) to up to 20 years in case of the victim's death. The law is expected to be referred to parliament for final approval soon. The amended law sets a minimum of five years in ...

This pandemic-inspired podcast is bringing the ancient world of Mesopotamia back to glorious life

It started in earnest, explains curator of cuneiform collections, Jon Taylor, discussing the birth of his furlough-inspired, passion-podcast. During the summer of 2020, as Britain and other corners of the globe sank into lockdown, the Thin Edge of the Wedge (TEW) podcast — an Aladdin's Cave of all-things Mesopotamian — was born. "It's basically just me," Taylor jokes, beneath my crackling phone-line, describing a one-man-led production, headquartered in his back room, managed on a shoestring budget. The series boasts a growing audio library of episodes covering a wide gamut of subjects; kings ...

Agate Mousse: Exploring the fear of mortality and the eternal cycle of life and death

In 1816 English Romantic poet John Keats wrote: "Life is but a day; A fragile dew-drop on its perilous way/From a tree's summit." These few verses from the poem Sleep and Poetry could be an effective log line presenting the central themes of Selim Mourad's new film Agate Mousse, one of the most original titles taking part in the Tiger Competition of this year's virtual edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam (1-7 February 2021). The picture opens with a long list of names of extinct species recited by the Lebanese director's tranquil voice, followed by a static shot depicting him ...

Bhasan Char: Everything is not what it seems at this new Rohingya refugee island

For some Rohingya refugees, life on the Bangladesh island of Bhasan Char provides a welcome escape from the yaba gangs patrolling the sprawling camps of mainland Kutupalong. But in the same vein, it is claimed that insufficient healthcare is jeopardising the wellbeing of the island's new inhabitants. Furthermore, a lack of female doctors is also causing anxiety amongst Rohingya women, indicating all may not be what it seems beyond the shiny new facade of the silt-formed isle. Sources on the ground have told The New Arab how availability of medical treatment and facilities in Cox's Bazaar outwe...

Except for Palestine: An indictment of American progressives' silent complicity with Israeli occupation

As celebrations abound following Trump's exit from the White House, followed by expectations of a return to normalcy in the US, many are also cautious in their hopes. Many progressives are indeed celebrating, but some assert Trump's policies are distinctive only because they are brash and threatening, rather than a disruption of long-standing American policy. In fact, many assert that they are a continuation, albeit a gross and dangerous one, of standard American policy, like immigration. For example, it was the Obama administration, rather than the Trump administration, which oversaw the high...

Is 'European Islam' the future of Western Muslim identity?

After every extremist outrage in Europe, media coverage predictably questioned the relationship between Islam and violence, the integration of Muslims into European cultures and whether radical or conservative strands of Islam have displaced an imagined "true Islam." Following two failed incidents at British airports in 2007, EU policymakers met in Brussels to discuss how to tackle violent extremist and engineer a peaceful, so-called "European Islam" or an "Islam of Europe," as suggested a year earlier by Nicolas Sarkozy. The aftermath of these occurrences lead to addition questions about who ...

A Covid catastrophe: Afghanistan's female entrepreneurs face a huge battle to survive the pandemic

Up against Afghanistan's heavily patriarchal society, Razia Sarwary faced considerable challenges as a woman launching her own business. Now, along with many other female entrepreneurs, she says she is facing a tougher battle than her male counterparts to recover from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, and she has far more to lose if her business goes under. With her father out of work and suffering with a drug addiction, the 24-year-old felt setting up a business was the best way to support her family and she launched her clothing company Zeb Boutique in central Kabul in August 2019. "My un...