6 min read Share Spotlight is a newsletter about underreported cultural trends and news from around the world, emailed to subscribers every Monday. Sign up .I loathe Pride month. Before you jump to any conclusions, I’m not some conspiratorial right-wing reactionary. I’m queer, nonbinary, Iraqi-Egyptian and am firmly on the left when it comes to my political positions. But I really do hate Pride.It’s not just the fact that even Udon noodle brands pretend to be bastions of gay rights for the month of June or that meaningless political platitudes like “being you is worth it” are blasted...…6 min read Share Spotlight is a newsletter about underreported cultural trends and news from around the world, emailed to subscribers every Monday. Sign up .I loathe Pride month. Before you jump to any conclusions, I’m not some conspiratorial right-wing reactionary. I’m queer, nonbinary, Iraqi-Egyptian and am firmly on the left when it comes to my political positions. But I really do hate Pride.It’s not just the fact that even Udon noodle brands pretend to be bastions of gay rights for the month of June or that meaningless political platitudes like “being you is worth it” are blasted...WW…

12 min read Imagine stepping into a dark exhibition space where a life-sized black and white film is projected onto fabric panels, transporting you to Cairo in the 1930s: Street trolleys weave around busy streets where women and men are in Eastern and Western dress. Painted crimson red, the next rooms are dedicated to the first Egyptian feminists. A 78 rpm acoustic gramophone plays a record of songs by Munira al-Mahdiyya, one of the rare women to produce a commercial recording before World War I. One floor up, parting red velvet curtains, you enter an extraordinary world of cinema and...…12 min read Imagine stepping into a dark exhibition space where a life-sized black and white film is projected onto fabric panels, transporting you to Cairo in the 1930s: Street trolleys weave around busy streets where women and men are in Eastern and Western dress. Painted crimson red, the next rooms are dedicated to the first Egyptian feminists. A 78 rpm acoustic gramophone plays a record of songs by Munira al-Mahdiyya, one of the rare women to produce a commercial recording before World War I. One floor up, parting red velvet curtains, you enter an extraordinary world of cinema and...WW…

10 min read Share “Letter from Kabul” is a newsletter in which our contributors provide their own unique glimpses into life on the ground in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.To read them first, to our newsletter.While the Taliban’s return to power could be seen as marking the end of the war in Afghanistan, I have learned to be wary of what my country’s future might hold. Peace is meant to have been within our reach at several different points in the past 20 years; each time we have been left with only more violence. In May 2003, while I was still in the early days of high school, U.S....…10 min read Share “Letter from Kabul” is a newsletter in which our contributors provide their own unique glimpses into life on the ground in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.To read them first, to our newsletter.While the Taliban’s return to power could be seen as marking the end of the war in Afghanistan, I have learned to be wary of what my country’s future might hold. Peace is meant to have been within our reach at several different points in the past 20 years; each time we have been left with only more violence. In May 2003, while I was still in the early days of high school, U.S....WW…

15 min read Share Jack Shaheen’s 2009 book “Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People” amounts to a 600-page blacklist of lampoons, insults or distortions of Arabs in movies. Many titles on the list belong there. Most aren’t exactly shrines to great cinema: “The Lady of the Harem” (1926); “Tarzan and the Leopard Woman” (1946); “Kiss the Other Sheik” (1968); “The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington” (1977); “Bloodsucking Pharaohs in Pittsburgh” (1991). Such B movies use caricature as their stock-in-trade, making us wonder if anyone, Arabs or no, comes off “looking real.” Less easily...…15 min read Share Jack Shaheen’s 2009 book “Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People” amounts to a 600-page blacklist of lampoons, insults or distortions of Arabs in movies. Many titles on the list belong there. Most aren’t exactly shrines to great cinema: “The Lady of the Harem” (1926); “Tarzan and the Leopard Woman” (1946); “Kiss the Other Sheik” (1968); “The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington” (1977); “Bloodsucking Pharaohs in Pittsburgh” (1991). Such B movies use caricature as their stock-in-trade, making us wonder if anyone, Arabs or no, comes off “looking real.” Less easily...WW…

23 min read Share Muhammad Sadiq Akif was not in Kabul as the city fell to the Taliban last August. An insurgent propagandist who had been chronicling the frantic last days of the war on Twitter, he was over 60 miles to the southeast, in Loya Paktia. Taliban control there was tenuous and the surrender of a regional CIA-created militia, the notorious Khost Protection Force, was still being negotiated. Akif arrived in Kabul days later. Across the city, fluttering in the summer wind, was the Taliban’s white flag. His prayers had been answered.“I cannot explain how I felt,” Akif told me...…23 min read Share Muhammad Sadiq Akif was not in Kabul as the city fell to the Taliban last August. An insurgent propagandist who had been chronicling the frantic last days of the war on Twitter, he was over 60 miles to the southeast, in Loya Paktia. Taliban control there was tenuous and the surrender of a regional CIA-created militia, the notorious Khost Protection Force, was still being negotiated. Akif arrived in Kabul days later. Across the city, fluttering in the summer wind, was the Taliban’s white flag. His prayers had been answered.“I cannot explain how I felt,” Akif told me...WW…

12 min read Share A family discussion about what constitutes traditional Belgian and Egyptian clothing, sparked by the curiosity of our Belgian-Egyptian son, got me thinking about the relationship between fashion and identity.Iskander suggested that Egyptians and other Arabs were lucky because they still retain their own distinctive traditional dress, whereas Belgians had moved away from theirs. However, in reality, Arabs are not so different from Europeans.Every society has its traditional clothing, and almost every society has moved radically away from these traditions in recent times,...…12 min read Share A family discussion about what constitutes traditional Belgian and Egyptian clothing, sparked by the curiosity of our Belgian-Egyptian son, got me thinking about the relationship between fashion and identity.Iskander suggested that Egyptians and other Arabs were lucky because they still retain their own distinctive traditional dress, whereas Belgians had moved away from theirs. However, in reality, Arabs are not so different from Europeans.Every society has its traditional clothing, and almost every society has moved radically away from these traditions in recent times,...WW…

8 min read Share This piece was originally published in New Lines magazine’s Just Landed newsletter, which you can sign up for .In the lead-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and during its early hours, all eyes were on the story. Some observers started saying that despite being thoroughly necessary and deserved, this global investment in the Ukrainian cause, by the international community and by the media, has been somewhat different from that which has historically been devoted to other conflicts around the world. Some of those observers hinted publicly that, to the West, some victims of...…8 min read Share This piece was originally published in New Lines magazine’s Just Landed newsletter, which you can sign up for .In the lead-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and during its early hours, all eyes were on the story. Some observers started saying that despite being thoroughly necessary and deserved, this global investment in the Ukrainian cause, by the international community and by the media, has been somewhat different from that which has historically been devoted to other conflicts around the world. Some of those observers hinted publicly that, to the West, some victims of...WW…

26 min read Share In 1965, Frank Herbert published the novel “Dune,” the first in a classic series about a planet called Arrakis that is rich in “the spice,” a precious resource of the distant future. The saga narrates the story of the Atreides, a family that comes to rule the planet and the indigenous Fremen. The tale is often understood as an anti-colonial epic. It projects into the eons Middle Eastern, African and Asian cultures, alongside indigenous traditions across the Americas. In particular, it imagines a thoroughly Muslim future.But the saga may appear contradictory. Herbert...…26 min read Share In 1965, Frank Herbert published the novel “Dune,” the first in a classic series about a planet called Arrakis that is rich in “the spice,” a precious resource of the distant future. The saga narrates the story of the Atreides, a family that comes to rule the planet and the indigenous Fremen. The tale is often understood as an anti-colonial epic. It projects into the eons Middle Eastern, African and Asian cultures, alongside indigenous traditions across the Americas. In particular, it imagines a thoroughly Muslim future.But the saga may appear contradictory. Herbert...WW…

14 min read Share As the summer of 2011 drew to a close, the fire engine stationed in the Tunisian hilltop town of Thala was due to be taken back to the main city of the region — Kasserine — some 35 miles away. It happened every year: The government would allocate firefighting resources to Thala during the year’s hot months to deal with the wildfires that frequently broke out in the surrounding forests.But that year, the residents of Thala weren’t going to accept the status quo. About 80 people gathered in front of the fire engine to protest, blocking the fire engine from driving out of...…14 min read Share As the summer of 2011 drew to a close, the fire engine stationed in the Tunisian hilltop town of Thala was due to be taken back to the main city of the region — Kasserine — some 35 miles away. It happened every year: The government would allocate firefighting resources to Thala during the year’s hot months to deal with the wildfires that frequently broke out in the surrounding forests.But that year, the residents of Thala weren’t going to accept the status quo. About 80 people gathered in front of the fire engine to protest, blocking the fire engine from driving out of...WW…

18 min read Share Hundreds of people died — many of them in their sleep — when rockets laden with the nerve agent sarin struck Ghouta, a rebel-held area on the outskirts of the Syrian capital early one morning in August 2013. It was the deadliest chemical attack anywhere in the world since the 1980s.Considering that Ghouta was under fire from the Assad regime’s forces at the time, that the casualties were on the rebels’ side and that the regime had previously admitted possessing chemical weapons, there was one obvious suspect. The regime, however, insisted it was not responsible.Russia, as...…18 min read Share Hundreds of people died — many of them in their sleep — when rockets laden with the nerve agent sarin struck Ghouta, a rebel-held area on the outskirts of the Syrian capital early one morning in August 2013. It was the deadliest chemical attack anywhere in the world since the 1980s.Considering that Ghouta was under fire from the Assad regime’s forces at the time, that the casualties were on the rebels’ side and that the regime had previously admitted possessing chemical weapons, there was one obvious suspect. The regime, however, insisted it was not responsible.Russia, as...WW…