Art and Culture

The Muslim stand-up comedy festival will be held in New York City for the first time . The Muslim Funny Fest will take place between July 21 and 23 and  14 Muslim stand up comedians  will participate in it . The comedians Dean Obeidallah and Maysoon Zayid, are co-producing the event.  They have been putting together the New York Arab American Comedy Festival for …

Indian Embassy in Egypt is organizing “India by the nile” festival for the the third time in Cairo between 30 March and 16 April as a way to encourage tourism in Egypt . And to celebrate Indian culture with variety of activities shows Indian contemporary and classical music, dance, theatre, visual art, film, food and literature. It also provides an …

On FEBRUARY 28, a Concert Fundraising Dinner for Qawsain Knowledge House performed By Dawud Wharnsby. Dawud Wharnsby is a Canadian singer-songwriter, performer, poet and an educator. He plays guitar, mandolin, banjo, bazouki, oud, bodhran, bongos, djembe, clarinet and tin whistle.  

Finding Fateh By Joobin Bekhrad- Reorient ‘Hello, can you hear me?’ I say, raising my voice a pitch, surmising our connection has been lost after a lengthy pause. I take another sip of tepid, bitter coffee from a stained white mug. ‘… Yes, I can hear you …’ comes the shaky, distorted voice on the other end of the line. …

By Jonathan Cook  I watched American Sniper the other night and it really is the most puerile propaganda imaginable. It is not even as though it is simply unfair to the “enemy” – that is, mostly ordinary Iraqis, who are shown to be ruthless and heartless killers filled with irrational hatred for the American soldiers sent to liberate them from …

By Carol Memmott – The Washington Post The author Ausma Zehanat Khan Inspector Esa Khattak , a Canadian Muslim, is kneeling on a prayer rug woven by his Pakistani ancestors when his phone rings. He takes the call, finishes his prayers and sets off to investigate the suspicious death of a man who may be a fugitive war criminal. “The …

Source – ARAMCO WORLD In recent years, street art has grown from an edgy, often illegal practice associated with urban decay to something almost fashionable associated with civic vitality. One of the people responsible for this change is Mehdi Ben Cheikh, a French-Tunisian who in 2004 founded Galerie Itinerrance in Paris, which is dedicated to showing street art. His goal …

Syrian Hazem Sharif was declared the winner of singing contest “Arab Idol” for 2014 on Saturday’s grand finale in Beirut. The audience broke into cheers and applause, chanting “Syria! Syria!” and “Hazem!” when the 21-year-old was declared by judges Ahlam, from the UAE, Lebanese singers Wael Kfouri and Nancy Ajram and Hassan Al Shafe’ei, an Egyptian music production expert, as …

WELCOME TO ALGIERS, BABY. Joobin Bekhrad- Reorient Overshadowing, perhaps, even the bloody civil war that subsumed the country throughout the 90s and seeped insidiously into the early 2000s, the War of Independence remains, as one could well argue, the single most important and defining event in modern Algerian history. Beginning in the mid-1950s, only a short while after Gamal Abdel Nasser’s rise …

 What will it take for Hollywood to recognise Palestinian cinema? By Hamid Dabashi- After it was premiered in Ramallah at the Ramallah Cultural Palace, Najwa Najjar’s second feature film “Eyes of a Thief” (2014) is now officially selected as this year Oscar contender in the best foreign-language film category from Palestine. Six years in the making, the nomination of Najjar’s …