First tango in Tehran
On a recent evening at a highly-guarded location in north Tehran, a group of young men and women gathered to practice something exciting but deeply illegal: the tango. In recent years a dance class craze has swept the middle class and wealthier neighbourhoods of Iran’s cities, with young Iranians eagerly signing up to learn the samba, salsa, zumba, tango and other passionate dances that fire the imagination but involve some complicated steps.
‘Persian girls are natural dancers. We learn how to dance from the childhood, in front of the mirror, at parties and weddings,’ says Atefeh, a 21-year-old software engineering student in Tehran. ‘But they way we dance isn’t practiced, we’re not good dancers when it comes to duet dances like tango or samba.”
Source: Iran Wire
Middle East sectarianism explained: the narcissism of small differences
Two weeks ago, my friend Alsajjad from Qatar posted the following on his Facebook account: “I would love to call my son Alhussain. But then he would become Alhussain Alsajjad. And this double name in a majority wahhabi population would earn him a considerable dose of discrimination for his entire life. And I don’t intend to damage the lives of my children.”
Here we go again, I thought, when reading my friend’s status update: sectarianism. So I called Alsajjad in Doha and asked him about the backstory of his post.
“You know,” he told me, “my own name, Alsajjad, is already a problem here. It put me into weird situations. People here assume that a person with this name must be a Shia. Of course I’m aware that it is unusual for a Sunni to carry that name.”
Source: Your Middle East
On Super Mosquito: an interview with Sudanese cartoonist Khalid Albaih
Khalid Albaih is a Sudanese cartoonist who shot to international fame in 2011, when one his drawings predicting the fall of the Middle Eastern authoritarian regimes went viral after the start of the Tunisian revolution. His cartoons have struck a chord with young revolutionaries from Egypt to Yemen. In his interview with SAMAR, he talks about the role of cartoonists in society, and the importance of the Internet in fostering debate.
Source: Jadaliyya
