ihya

ihya is a curator of the cultural trends and events shaping the MENASA region (Middle East, North Africa & South Asia), a source of research collating art, literature, film, politics and science

[ihya]

The Most Important Design Of 2017

By creating the Pro Hijab, Nike sends an important message about inclusion and encourages a generation of Muslim girls to think of themselves as athletes.

Nike’s Pro Hijab won General Excellence in the 2017 Innovation By Design Awards, Fast Company‘s annual celebration of the best ideas in design. 

[Photo: Vivienne Balla/courtesy Nike][Photo: Vivienne Balla/courtesy Nike]

[ihya]

This Designer (And Former Refugee) Is Protesting Trump’s Immigration Ban With Fashion

For the Lebanese-Canadian designer Celine Semaan, the ban was personal.

[ihya]

Iran has opened possibly the world's biggest bookstore

Construction of the Tehran Book Garden was completed in 2016. It occupies a 110,000 square-metre site within the Abbasabad Complex, which also includes the Sacred Defence Garden Museum and the National Library and Archives of Iran.

The internal space hosting its bookstores, galleries and theatres measures 65,000 square metres.

If all of this indoor space is counted, then the book garden easily wins the title of the world’s largest bookstore.

[ihya]

A Different Story from the Middle East: Entrepreneurs Building an Arab Tech Economy

Middle Eastern startups are overcoming cultural and other barriers to tap into a growing local taste for technology, from Bitcoin wallets to digital publishing.

by Christopher M. Schroeder  August 3, 2017

[ihya]

Sadiq Khan Takes On Brexit and Terror

After a disastrous few months, London’s first Muslim mayor tries to protect his city’s future.

By Sam Knight

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Maryam Mirzakhani obituary

Iranian mathematician who was the first woman to win the Fields medal

In 2014 the Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani, who has died aged 40 of cancer, was awarded the Fields medal, the discipline’s most celebrated prize. The 52 previous recipients had all been men. Maryam won it “for her outstanding contributions to the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces”.

[ihya]

Trump’s Policies Are Sending Precious Startup Jobs to Canada

RAYA BIDSHAHRI’S HANDS shook as she sat in her dorm room in February, reading the email that had been sent to all Boston University students.

“It was a warning letter,” she says, about a ban the Trump administration planned to institute against travelers and immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries, including Iran, where Bidshahri was born and where her family still lives.

Bidshahri had moved to the United States three years earlier to study neuroscience, and was just months away from graduation, after which she wanted to launch her online education startup in the Bay Area. She planned to take advantage of something called the International Entrepreneur Rule, which would give immigrant founders who raise at least $250,000 in funding temporary legal status in the United States while they build their businesses. For Bidshahri, the rule was perfectly timed. Finalized in the last days of President Obama's tenure in office, it was set to go into effect this July, just months after she received her diploma.

[ihya]

Advocates Rally Around Afghan Girls' Robotics Team Denied Travel Visas to US

An online petition calls on Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to grant visas to six Afghan girls invited to compete in Washington, DC this weekend.

Care2, a social networking website focused on social justice, has launched an online petition asking Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to step in and grant these girls visas. As of press time, the petition was creeping up on its goal of 25,000 signatures.

[ihya]

Introducing PEG —

The new wearable for politicians that blocks the stench of war crimes

The Personal Embarassment Guard (PEG) completely blocks the smell of war crimes in Syria.

[ihya]

Hunted, haunted, stateless and scared: the stories of refugee scientists

Displaced researchers face huge challenges making lives abroad, even if they find work.

Gunjan Sinha

When the war in Syria reached Aleppo in 2012, geographer Mohamed Ali Mohamed fled with his family to a town about 50 kilometres to the north. For two years, he trekked back on public transport every day to teach at the University of Aleppo, despite the constant street fighting and air strikes. By 2014, it had become too dangerous to continue. Then money and food began to dwindle.

Ali Mohamed had been invited to do research in Germany, but there was no easy way to get out of Syria. So he paid a smuggler to guide him into Turkey. He went in the dark of night — leaving his family behind — and travelled with three other men through the mountains on foot, “with the constant fear of being shot to death”, he says. From there, he made his way to Berlin.

Ali Mohamed is a refugee scientist — and one of the lucky few able to carry on his research. He is working in Germany, thanks to a new fellowship for displaced scientists offered by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Berlin. The initiative is one of several that act as lifelines for scholars who are forced to flee because of their research, political views or, like Ali Mohamed, war in their home countries.

Read more:

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Under the abaya — or cloak — that is traditional for women to wear on the Arabian Peninsula, “we’re just like all women around the world,” says Bekita Ahmed, a young Qatari designer. “We love fashion, we love trends.” The abaya has become an object of high fashion, and a favorite starting point for young designers like Ahmed. After all, it’s the most publicly visible garment worn by women in these oil- and gas-rich regions of the Persian Gulf who otherwise indicate their designer tastes with handbags, shoes and sunglasses.

Watch our video to hear from the newly educated generation of women who are transforming not only style but also society, by starting small, entrepreneurial fashion ventures. And maybe the rest of the world is listening: Dolce & Gabbana just launched its first line of abayas.

[ihya]

THE SOUND OF UPHEAVAL IN THE MIDDLE EAST WILL MAKE YOU DANCE

By Anjali Vithayathil

In the wake of the Arab Spring, and thanks to the increasing ease with which tech makes culture accessible, music is proliferating across the Gulf and Levant. Deezer, a streaming service, launched in the Middle East in 2013, and Lebanon-based Anghami and Morocco-based Yala Music both have at least 1 million downloads each since launching several years ago. Anghami, founded by Eddy Maroun and Elie Habib, is the largest streaming service in the Middle East, now reaching about 20 million users, from a user base of 3 million back in 2013. It has a catalog of approximately 15 million songs, the largest for Arabic music.

(Image: TamTam. SOURCE ANDREW H. WALKER/GETTY)

[ihya]

THE SYRIAN RAPPER FINDING A STAGE IN BERLIN

BY NADJA SAYEJ

Originally from Tartus, a Mediterranean coastal town, Hajar is a new, powerful presence on the rap scene at a time when the world faces a dearth of Middle Eastern pop-cultural voices. He’s the subject of two new films, one from the West, another from the East: a musical documentary created by local production company Berliner Moment, and Homeland, by Turkish artist Halil Altindere, which premiered at the Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art in June. 

He was supposed to tour the U.K. this summer, but was refused a visa. (The U.K. embassy in Berlin didn’t respond to requests for comment.) He’s also helped start a Syrian activist network in Berlin, where he organizes regular music and film events, as well as demonstrations — including one for the five-year anniversary of the uprising. Protesters chanted “Long live Syria, down with Assad.”

[ihya]

This Organization Is Rescuing Artists and Scholars from Syria and Iraq

ARTSY EDITORIALBY ANNA WALLACE-THOMPSON

The Institute of International Education’s Scholar Rescue Fund (IIE-SRF) has been established to address the crisis in the region’s education sector: Universities and institutions in Syria and Iraq have been either forced to shut down, or must operate on cripplingly underfunded budgets. In many cases, academic staff must choose to leave or continue under increasingly difficult political and financial circumstances. Sporadic operating capabilities and a lack of resources make it hard for students to enroll, let alone study. Turkey may soon be facing a similar crisis if reports that 1,577 deans of Turkish universities have been asked to resign, along with the cancellation of 21,000 private school teachers’ licences, are true. No reason so far has been given, though doubtless it is part of further crackdowns by President Erdogan in the wake of last week’s failed military coup.

Furthermore, the Institute of International Education (IIE) conservatively estimates that there are roughly 100,000 university-qualified Syrian students currently living in Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon as refugees. “While ISIS is destroying Syria’s fabled and archaeological past,” says Dr. Allan Goodman, President and CEO of the Institute of International Education (IIE), “the war is destroying the future of its arts. At the same time, we are hearing about artists and intellectuals who are continuing to generate new art in the context of the war.”

(Images Left: Jumana Jaber, Inheritance. Right: Jumana Jaber, Chaos. Images courtesy of Christie’s).

[ihya]

Pokemon Go Trend Adopted By Syrian Children Begging To Be Saved

‘I live in Kafr Nabl, the Aleppo countryside. Come catch me.’

Children in war-torn Syria are using a heartbreaking new tactic to remind the world they are still in terrible danger.

Images of forlorn-looking boys and girls holding pictures of cartoon monsters from the wildly successful game Pokemon Go (the slogan of which is ‘Gotta catch ‘em all’) are circulating online.

The images feature banners in Arabic, one of which translates as “I live in Kafr Nabl, the Aleppo countryside. Come catch me.”

Sara C Nelson

[ihya]

Meet The Two Female Filmmakers Who Want To Change How You Perceive The Middle East

With its massive catalog of images, Firehorse Films reveals a more human side of life in a tumultuous region.

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Qatari genomes provide a reference for the Middle East

Researchers have assembled a reference genome to reflect the variants in Middle Eastern populations.

Sedeer El-Showk

A reference genome specific to Arab populations was recently published by geneticists in Qatar and New York, facilitating future research into genetic diseases and the application of precision medicine in the region.

The availability of a Qatari reference genome should enable doctors to treat Arab patients using precision medicine, a process which involves incorporating information about a patient’s genome in the prediction, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases.