Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Rachel Williamson
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A new Saudi ‘project’ for the Middle East: Exclusive interview with Jamal Khashoggi
“The Saudis bring stability back to the region, and stop Iranian intervention. That is the larger picture; that is the larger aim.” Never one to shy away from controversy, Saudi journalist and commentator Jamal Khashoggi has long been known within Saudi Arabia for his...
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‘The Iraqis have always defended the Palestinians’: A conversation with Yousif Naser
Exile and war have long been dominant themes in the work of Iraqi artist Yousif Naser; pain and death rendered in large, black strokes, a chaotic jumble of eerie shadows and figures. The paintings from one of the artist’s most recent and better known series Black Rain, for example,...
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Why can’t I be a Sushi? New film project challenges the stereotypes of sectarianism
“Sectarianism” has fast become the buzz word of the 21st century Middle East politics; rolled out and dusted off every time a journalist or political analyst wants to make a pseudo-intellectual statement about intercommunal violence in the region. Much like Samuel Huntingdon’s much-denounced “clash of civilisations” thesis, the use...
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Calais: Art of the Transit Zone
The recent scale of tragedies in the Mediterranean— now rather morbidly dubbed “the sea cemetery”—have elicited media narratives on sunk migrant boats that often conceal policies and practices that put their lives at risk in the first place. Many reports don’t take into account that while lives lost are...
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Iraq’s bloody legacy lives on
On 16 May, 2003, Iraqi excavation teams uncovered the first of what would become a gruesome series of mass graves scattered across the country that bore physical testament to the brutal regime of recently deposed president Saddam Hussein. The 15,000 bodies discovered in Al-Mahawil, close to the Iraqi city...
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Yemen through its literature: A nation besieged
The recent Saudi-led bombing campaign against Yemen has been reduced to a simplistic narrative of a Sunni-Shia divide driving national conflict – reminiscent of an essentialist “clash of civilizations” trope. This sectarian paradigm attributes all conflict to the notion of cultural boundaries developed over centuries-old divides. Although limited in...
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The Orwellian logic of the international aid effort in Nepal
As the shockwaves from the recent devastating earthquake in Nepal have rippled across the globe, so too have international and multilateral pledges to provide the country with financial and humanitarian aid. While there is no denying the desperate need of Nepal’s most remote and vulnerable populations, many of whom...
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Of migrants, murder, and historical myopia
Nearly 2,000 people have been killed this year while attempting to make the perilous sea journey across the Mediterranean to the supposed safe haven of Europe – or rather, 2,000 and counting. In the wake of the grim news of a further 900 reported deaths over the weekend, there...
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Graphic novels about Palestine reveal the exceptional everyday demands of exile
Baddawi (2015) is a coming-of-age graphic novel by Chicago-based artist Leila Abdelrazaq about a boy raised in a refugee camp in northern Lebanon; it’s a poignant tale based on her father’s early life. The eponymous Baddawi is the refugee camp where Ahmad was born after his parents’ expulsion from...
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Imperialist fantasies: UK policy and the bloody legacy of Iraq
In a recent article for the London Review of Books entitled “The new world disorder”, Tariq Ali argues that “he occupation of Iraq one of the most destructive acts of modern history… Iraq was treated as no other country has been treated before.” The significance of the Iraq...
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Islamism and transitional politics
In the heady aftermath of the 2011 uprisings that swept the Arab world from the Maghreb to the Gulf, the unprecedented rise of Islamist parties in countries such as Tunisia and Egypt took many analysts by surprise, earning the accolade of the “Arab Winter”. Now, four years on, the...
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Arab Sci-Fi: The Future Is Here
Science fiction from the Arab world has been capturing the attention of western audiences as of late. This year, sci-fi across the fields of literature, film and art in the region is getting much of the critical attention it lacked in the past. Next month, the Middle East Film...
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Sinan Antoon: The haunting poetry of death
“What does it mean when a society disintegrates? What do people do? How do they make sense of a world in which the human dimension is missing completely?” Iraqi author, poet and academic Sinan Antoon is speaking at a literary event in London to celebrate his achievement in being...
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Racialised narratives in the battle for the Holy Land
Very few enduring historical conflicts have involved such a polarisation of discourse and a reliance on racialised constructions of the other than that between Israel and the Palestinians. Even the terms generally used to refer to the dispute themselves – from the “Arab-Israeli conflict” to the rather cumbersome designation...
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Samah Jabr: The ‘invisible damage’ of life under the occupation
“There is a wish for Palestinians to be stateless, but also faceless and voiceless.” Samah Jabr, one of Palestine’s first female psychiatrists and a trained psychoanalytic psychotherapist, has spent her life witnessing and treating the psychological effects of the continued Israeli occupation on the Palestinian population. Not content to...
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Open the border, or the Egyptian initiative will be another strike against Gaza
Having a neutral position on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is to have a bias towards the aggressor. Israel does not need anyone to help it militarily or on the intelligence level, or anyone to understand its criminal tendencies; it needs people to turn a blind eye to its crimes. Being...
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Female entrepreneurs make their mark across the Middle East
Starting a business in Egypt is never an easy feat, but poses a unique set of challenges and advantages for Egyptian women in particular, who are increasingly leaping into entrepreneurial ventures. Yasmine El-Mehairy, the co-founder of Arabic-language parenting website Supermama, explains that the newness of “entrepreneurialism” in Egypt allows...
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Iranian bankers look to Rouhani reforms to save industry
Bankers in Iran are hoping that new President Hasan Rouhani will follow through on hints that reform is coming to the industry, which is saddled with dangerous levels of bad debts. Mr Rouhani’s economic advisor, Masoud Nili, was quoted in the Tehran Times saying that the banking sector was...
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The rise of gender selection among Middle Eastern couples
Sex selection is a dirty phrase in Western countries, but Middle Eastern couples are jumping on fertility technology as changing attitudes make it easier and more acceptable to ‘make it a boy’. Euphemistically called ‘family balancing,’ couples throughout the Middle East are turning to a technique called PGD, or...