Juhood: Vol 2 Issue 1 by Juhood: Duke University's Journal of Middle Eastern and North African Affairs

Letter from the Editors

n behalf of the Juhood Editorial Board, we are proud to present you with the second edition of Juhood, Duke University’s Journal of Middle Eastern and North African Affairs. Juhood is an embodiment of Duke Undergraduates' attempts to broaden the scope in which members of the Duke community engage and understand this region of the world. Currently, when we think of the Middle East and North Africa our minds start flashing images of revolutions, conflicts, deaths, violence. The series of revolutions throughout the Middle East and North Africa known as the Arab Spring has once again spotlighted the region. However, we are relieved to know that students studying the region have engaged with multiple dimensions and apscects of the area, avoiding a simplified depiction. This issue of Juhood includes submissions that rethink the conventional approaches to the region and also develop a distinguishable and complex representation of the Middle East and North Africa. Naomi Reimer, Samantha Tropper, and Eileen Adams’ pieces examine the distinct place Arab and Muslim women occupy in common gender discourse based on their unique cultural and religious perspectives. Adams’ paper on Yemeni Gender Equality analyzes the different frameworks of thinking about gender in Yemen and the Western world through the perspective of the third Millennium Development Goal. Tropper challenges the French legal notion of laicite (absence of religious involvement in the government) as Islamophobic and a violation of human rights. Naomi Reimer’s photo essay on hijabi women builds on these themes through the lens of the both secular and religious nation of Turkey. Munty Natour, Fernando Revelo La Rotta, and Andi Frkovich examine the role of different art forms on political movements and in identity representation in the Middle East. Natour’s piece highlights major Palestinian hip-hop groups’ narrative role in resistance to occupation. Frkovich also takes a musical theme, showing how the Turkish Kemalist government used folk music as a tool of national unification. Revelo La Rotta’s essay highlights the role of Iraqi art in expressing feelings of alienation and exile by Iraqi refugees in recent years. We hope that this second issue will encourage the Duke community to explore the Middle East and North Africa through their own unique lenses.

Fernando Revelo La Rotta, Co-Editor-in-Chief Sabrina Rubakovic, Co-Editor-in-Chief

Staff Co-Editors-in-Chief

Copy

Design Advisory

Thanks

Cover Photo

Fernando Revelo La Rotta, '13 Sabrina Rubakovic, '13 Amanda Young, '14 Claire Coyne, '15 Leena El-Sadek, '15 Sarah Elsheryie, '15 Fernando Revelo La Rotta, '13 miriam cooke

Professor of Arabic and Arab Cultures and Director of the Duke University Middle East Studies Center

Kelly Jarrett

Associate Director of the Duke Islamic Studies Center and the Duke University Middle East Studies Center

Ylana Miller

Visiting Associate Professor of History

Mbaye Lo

Assistant Professor of the Practice of the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Core Faculty of Duke Islamic Studies Center

Rebecca Stein

Associate Professor of the Departments of Cultural Anthropology and Women Studies and Core Faculty of Duke Islamic Studies Center

The University Publications Board (UPB) John Spencer Bassett Fund Committee Duke Islamic Studies Center (DISC) Inside Dome of Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, Turkey Taken by: Fernando Revelo La Rotta

The information provided by our contributors is not independently verified by Juhood: The Journal of Middle Eastern and North African Affairs, referred to hereafter as Juhood. The materials presented represent the personal opinions of the individual authors and do not necessarily represent the views of Juhood or the Duke University community. Juhood: The Journal of Middle Eastern and North African Affairs Volume 2, Issue 1, Spring 2012 â&#x20AC;˘ Copyright ÂŠ 2012

Contents

GOING BACK TO THE BACKWARD: A Re-evaluation of Gender Equality from the Yemeni Perspective

PALESTINIAN HIP-HOP: Narrative Functions and Articulations of Resistance

22 26 44

COVERED: Hijabi Women in Turkey

Eileen Adams

Munty Natour

Naomi Riemer

EXPRESSIONS OF THE THIRD SPACE: Iraqi Art in Exile

Fernando Revelo La Rotta

Samantha Tropper

LAÏCITÉ, THE REPUBLIC, AND THE VEIL

MUSICAL TRANSCULTURATION: A Challenge to the Kemalist National Identity

Andi Frkovich

Going Back to the Backward: A Re-evaluation of Gender Equality from the Yemeni Perspective Eileen Adams

hen the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) published its 2010 edition of the Human Development Report, it acknowledged both large successes and substantial shortcomings, as progress in global development remained unevenly distributed. Facing the growing challenge of inequity necessitated a transition from the “traditional focus on aggregates” toward an era of targeted aid, enabled by the development of “new tools.” Thus, the UNDP introduced a set of three new poverty indicators, including the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI). Smooth adoption of this new standard of poverty analysis first required a change in the way poverty discourse itself was framed. The definition of poverty had to be broadened to include the reality that it can be manifested in many different dimensions with profound regional and even local variations. Thus, poverty analysis shifted in focus to address needs in context. In, 2011, the world mapped out the most pressing of these needs with its introduction of the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs). They include, among other things, eliminating poverty, combating HIV/AIDS, and creating environmental sustainability. However, it is the third item on this unprecedentedly specific list that will be of particular interest here: “promote gender equality and empower women."1 It is a statement both generally noncommittal and provocatively bold, for in this statement of intent, the third MDG makes a striking assumption. It assumes all countries mirror the West.

1. UNDP. Human Development Report 2010: Summary (Gordonsville: VHPS, 2003), 3.

Just as poverty could not be fully embodied in an aggregate measure, gender cannot be understood independently of two of its critical factors, context and perspective. Gender equity’s inherent need for definitional adjustment based on these factors renders it, as it is understood within the MDGs, irrelevant in certain contexts. This essay will focus on a specific context where Western gender equality discourse finds no place: Yemen. The unique nature of Yemen as an elaborately segregated society makes it incompatible with the highly Westernized approach taken by the third MDG. We must now reevaluate all we assume to know, and consider a new perspective — the one that should have taken precedence all along: the perspective of the Yemeni women.

I. THE MISGUIDED WESTERN APPROACH 2. Hirschkind, Charles and Saba Mahmood. "Feminism, the Taliban, and Politics of Counter-insurgency," Anthropological Quarterly 75:2 (2002): 339-54.

… [I]mages of veiled women, so skillfully marshaled by organizations like the Feminist Majority, were explanation enough for what most Americans already knew: that Islam in a variety of its forms, and in particular socalled Islamic fundamentalism, is generally oppressive of women.2

– Hirschkind and Mahmood

The Western construct of gender relations works in strict oppositions. Subordination and insubordination, segregation and integration–these are terms that have resulted from the West’s binary worldview, in which there can only be two alternatives, both mutually exclusive.3 This perception has allowed the West for decades to establish understandings both of itself and of foreign nations, ushering in its allies under favorable labels and casting aside the remainder of the world under the distinctly unfavorable. Such oppositions have divided the world, according to a Western perspective, into the developed and developing, capitalist and socialist, free and oppressed. These categories facilitate marginalization, allowing mainstream America, along with the rest of the West, to turn its perceptions into facts like the one Hirschkind and Mahmood identified as the intrinsic oppressiveness of Islam.

Going Back to the Backward: A Re-evaluation of Gender Equality from the Yemeni Perspective

3. Ibid, 352-3.

4. Hirschkind. "Feminism, the Taliban, and Politics of Counterinsurgency," 347 .

5. Elia, Nada. "Islamophobia and the 'privileging' of Arab America Women" NWSA Journal 18:3 (2006), 155.

6. Ibid, 158.

7. CEDAW, "Considerations of Reports Submitted by States Parties under article 18 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women: Sixth Periodic Report of States, Yemen. United Nations' (2007) 13-4 . 8. Hirschkind. "Feminism, the Taliban, and Politics of Counterinsurgency," 350.

9. Elia. "Islamophobia and the 'privileging' of Arab America Women." 157.

10. Rathgeber, Eva M. "WID, WAD, GAD: Trends in research and practice." The Journal of Developing Areas. 24:4. (1990). 493.

11. Back to History. Timeline: Women’s Rights and Feminism. (2010).

12. 1. UNDP, Human Development Report 2010: Summary.

13. Ahmed, Leila. "Western Ethnocentrism and Perceptions of the Harem." Feminist Studies: 8:3 (1982) 523.

As a consequence of this knowledge, the West has come to view women of Islamic nations as “victims of their own culture,”4 reducing all of their institutions to structures of segregation and demonizing men as “enemies” of development.5 Yet, this perception does not just define Yemen. Rather, by “othering” Yemen as a nation that is both backward and inhumane, the West simultaneously defines its own role in the issue of gender inequity, implicating itself as the heroine of these women.6 And certainly the depicted severity of the conditions makes this seem appropriate. In its Sixth Periodic Report on Yemen, the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women characterized Yemen’s patriarchal society as having “no interest in women’s role in society” and identified the perpetuators of this system to be the poorly educated.7 These types of generalizations were used especially in the aftermath of 9/11. The Arab man was no longer merely a backward figure from abroad, but also a threat to Western life.8 As a result, efforts surged to “liberate” Muslim women throughout the Middle East, to rescue those who bear the “burdenous” burqa and other veiling symbolic of oppression to the Western eye.9 To the West, these ideas seemed to further justify the need for intervention, legitimizing Western development policy as a means of establishing not only the original intent of heightened human dignity, but also heightened global security. The assumption was that a more developed world, devoid of the backward ideologies that drive terrorism, would be a more secure world. With these perceptions of Yemeni women, the West also worked to justify the process by which it would achieve its development goals. As it viewed Yemen’s system of oppression to be inherent in the nation’s institutions, the West constructed its gender policy to specifically target the institutions in which segregation seemed most severe. The third MDG therefore seeks to achieve specific percentages of female representation within the political, economic, and educational sectors. Their reasoning assumes that once numerical equity is achieved in these structures, the status of women will naturally improve, a perspective that has influenced gender policy for decades.10 Indeed, this method of targeted intervention had been implemented in the West itself, as nations like the United States employed devices such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or the Education Amendments Act of 1972, which guaranteed equal employment opportunity and access to academics and athletics regardless of sex.11 Policies like affirmative action sought to incorporate women to numerical levels that once reached, ensured sufficient status improvement. In this way, Western policy attempted to dismantle existing gender-segregated institutions and replace them with gender parity. As the West tries to extend these national agendas to the international realm, it has encountered some trouble with translation. Much of the Middle East, now ten years into the Millennium Program, has seen only minimal gender-parity improvement, and within the region, Yemen stands out as particularly far behind in reaching MDG three.12 Such vast discrepancy between the goals for achievement and their reality in practice casts doubt on the validity of the current approach and demands a re-evaluation of its methodology. In the same way that the West "knows" Islam to be generally oppressive, it knows that gender disparity is rooted in institutions. Yet, Arab-American author Leila Ahmed claims these ideas are manufactures in the West,13 products of the binary Western thought that categorizes all nations as either like the West, or in the process of becoming like the West. As a result, the third MDG has merely attempted to overlay the Western model for gender development on top of existing gender structures in Yemen, neglecting to acknowledge Yemen’s own unique circumstances. To establish

Juhood: The Journal of Middle Eastern and North African Affairs

a culturally compatible gender policy, the West cannot rely solely on what has worked in its own history. Instead, it must now ask the question of what the real story is and find the answer by making use of the abundant characters who live this story.

II. A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE: FROM THE EYES OF YEMEN Through such strategies women's knowledge, views, and experience ultimately will become important components of national decision-making processes.14 – Eva M. Rathgeber

14. Rathgeber. "WID, WAD, GAD: Trends in Research and Practice." 500.

The reason for the third MDG’s difficult application in Yemen is an issue of context. A key distinctive feature of Yemeni culture is segregation’s embedment within cultural and personal value systems. In a Western context, this has no equivalent, and therefore Yemeni gender relations can only be understood through careful consideration of women’s own expertise, as Rathgeber affirms. We must look at gender not just in the context of Yemen as a nation, but in the context of Yemen as a collective of people for whom gender relations are an integral part of the everyday. A recurring theme of Yemeni discourse on gender is the notion that gender segregation is upheld by both men and women. Anne Meneley reports in her ethnography of a Yemeni town that “modest comportment cannot be understood as merely being enforced by male members.” This is seen in the ways that women can prevent husbands from entering their own homes and men depend on women for fostering political life through the complicated maintenance of familial friendships.15 More than a political tool, however, the ideas of “appropriate comportment” and modesty are made largely personal. While they are in many ways reflective of broader cultural practices, these ideas are what give Yemeni women their sense of identity — their means of understanding themselves as moral, pious, and good in the eyes of not just men, but other women, themselves, and even God.16 Achieving this sense of positive identity involves such cultural practices as “gender segregation, female circumcision, veiling, the submission of physical appetites to the will, and self-expression."17 In this way, the concept of oppression becomes more complex, for it is not as didactic as Western discourse suggests; with segregation so deeply embedded into the formation of women’s very identity, the issue can no longer be understood as an imposition of those in power upon the powerless. Women depend on segregation for structuring themselves. To so significantly challenge these systems, the MDGs threaten to shatter the foundations of these women’s lives. With issues of gender so complexly intertwined with even as basic a level as the personal construction of the self, the MDGs are shown to be even more inaptly suited to Yemen’s context. By targeting specific institutions, the third MDG neglects to acknowledge the depth of the issue and its delicate connection to the individual. The assumption that individual equity will follow institutional equity seems to no longer be valid in a system where segregation is rooted in personal values. Indeed, the most successful gender development policies have been those that “were designed in such a way as to realistically reflect the contexts within which men and women worked.”18 The third MDG does not possess this flexibility of design to allow it to adjust to varying contexts; nor does its institutional focus “realistically reflect” the way gender inequity is actually manifested.

Going Back to the Backward: A Re-evaluation of Gender Equality from the Yemeni Perspective 9

15. Meneley, Anne. Tournaments of Value: Sociability and Hierarchy in a Yemen Town. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996). 82..

16. Ibid, 84.

17. Ibid, 81-2.

18. Rathgeber. "WID, WAD, GAD: Trends in Research and Practice." 498.

19. Ibid, 494

20. Meneley. Tournaments of Value: Sociability an hierarchy in a Yemeni Town. 221

Such target-specific approaches will ultimately fail to achieve their intended outcomes because they do not address, as Kate Young describes, the “totality of social organization, economic and political life in order to understand the shaping of particular aspects of society."19 They do not sufficiently utilize women’s own knowledge, which Rathgeber notes as being of vital significance in making policy successful. Academics from across the spectrum echo this same need for context: “Deniz Kandiyoti suggests [that] we have to see how… gender segregation… [is] articulated morally and legally in different historical, national, and transnational contexts, in various political and economic relations of power.”20 Numbers can no longer be significant when they fail to address these changes in “relations of power.” Other nations have reached these targets using quotas and political appointments to give women representation; however, there remain substantial gaps in equality as this new female power is not legitimate. By streamlining the international targets for gender parity and empowerment into the tight frame of the third MDG the goal loses its ability to make effective change across global contexts. And in nations such as Yemen where context differs so acutely, success, as it is defined by the third MDG, can be deemed impossible.

III. QUESTIONING SUCCESS: A MATTER OF NEEDS Yet this framing of the “empowerment” question may itself contain a problem, situated as it is in a set of assumptions about empowerment and emancipation steeped in our own understandings of how political struggles to achieve gender equality occur.21 – Anne Meneley

21. Ibid, 234.

22. Hirschkind. "Feminism, the Taliban, and Politics of Counterinsurgency." 353.

23. Moghadam, Valentine M. Modernizing Women: Gender and Social Change in the Middle East. (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1993) 7.

24. Ahmed, "Western Ethnocentrism and Perception of the Harem." 531.

In considering the distinct context of Yemen’s gender structures, we must call into question the validity not just of the West’s approach, but also of its intentions. Meneley begins this process, suggesting that the definition of success is not necessarily ubiquitous, and others argue along similar lines that “we tend to forget that the particular set of desires, needs, hopes, and pleasures that liberals and progressives embrace do not necessarily exhaust the possibilities of human flourishing.”22 Under the MDGs, the idea that “development” may be harmful more than it is helpful is easily discarded. Certainly, the radical notion that the “universal right” of gender equality is being mistaken for a cultural practice is not even considered. However, evaluation of gender equality in Yemen necessitates a parallel evaluation of our constructs of success, of the fundamental reasons why Western society even pursues parity. In qualifying these notions, my goal is not to discard the decades of “misery research” that have shown Middle Eastern women to suffer such severe deprivation, nor is it to conduct an inquiry of “dignity research,” which has justified those same conditions as practices of cultural enrichment.23 Rather, my own goal is to strike a balance between the two, independent of preexisting bias. “[T]o believe that segregated societies are by definition more oppressive to women, or that women secluded from the company of men are women deprived, is only to allow ourselves to be servilely obedient to the constructs of men, Western or Middle Eastern."24 It is these constructs that should be most feared. Determining the applicability of gender parity to Yemeni society requires identifying the needs of women as they are identified by the women themselves. Doing so reveals a surprisingly familiar set of values that suggests an underlying universality in terms of generalized basic needs. Women emphasize their desire for education, job

Juhood: The Journal of Middle Eastern and North African Affairs

opportunity,25 and reduced domestic violence.26 Yet, they do not need nor want the imposed Westernization that has so often accompanied development. Yemeni women are not interested in following Western cultural norms, for to do so would entail sacrificing the customs that establish personal identity. They look instead to gain choice, to have options available, but not necessitated, and to have the freedom to have equal footing with men in some spheres and maintain segregation in others. Ultimately, this “ability to make choices” is the cornerstone of empowerment.27 Yet, Western development efforts continue to mandate cultural overhaul, alienating the very populations they are trying to integrate by associating gender equality with Western culture, threatening individual personhood, and turning parity from a basic human right into a “‘foreign’ ideology,” against which Yemeni women must compete for legitimacy.28 Thus, Yemeni women are more limited, trapped in the respect that even as they strive toward universal concepts, they fall more under Western design. As these women suggest, “success” must in some ways encompass many of the same opportunities toward which the third MDG was striving; yet, parity in Yemen and the West will not be constructed in the same way. Success will not be evidenced in increasing proportions of representation – these numbers are irrelevant. Instead, “we need a way to think about the lives of Muslim women outside this simple opposition” that numbers imply.29 It is not enough to interpret this as the need to “change [Yemeni] society’s value system,"30 though it is fair to say that current policies have failed to achieve their goals because of a general neglect of ideology.31 The reality necessitates a redefinition of our own understandings of gender equality, for the “successful” overhaul of Yemen’s ideological system would not actually be success, in the sense that it would not liberate women. We must undertake a “more nuanced strategy”32 of providing choices by making opportunities available. Success will be achieved not when MDG benchmarks are reached or statistics deemed favorable, but when the women of Yemen themselves can say with confidence that they knew what choices existed, had the freedom to pursue any, and made their decisions based on their own wants.

V. CONCLUSION: EXTENDING LIGHT OF THE ARAB SPRING

PERSPECTIVE

Our ability to respond, morally and politically, in a responsible way … will depend on extending those powers of sight.33 – Hirschkind and Mahmood 2002 Choice lies at the heart of gender equality. Much like the poverty with which this discussion began, it cannot be strictly measured by aggregate numbers; no dollar-a-day benchmark can adequately capture the number of impoverished people around the world, and neither can a series of benchmarks truly reveal the achievement or lack of gender parity. These limited measures lack regional perspective and consider no context but one: the West. And just as the MPI was adopted as a means of broadening the view of poverty, considering more perspectives, more factors, and more choices than the obvious one of income, gender policy must now follow suit, as Hirschkind and Mahmood suggest, and expand its perspective. Implementing these changes will not be easy. Western ideology has long dictated the path of development, and it is likely that many will express fierce resistance to what they will continue to consider backward. In addition, collecting the anthropological data

Going Back to the Backward: A Re-evaluation of Gender Equality from the Yemeni Perspective 11

25. Twine, France Winddance and Kathleen M, Blee. Feminism and Antiracism: International Struggles for Justice. (New York: New York University Press, 2001). 85. 26. Zoepf, Katherine. "Fighting for the Right to Have Limited Rights. New York Times. June 2010. 27. Kabeer, Naila. 2003. Gender Mainstreaming in Poverty Eradication and the Millennium Development Goals: A Handbook for Policy-Makers and Other Stakeholders. (London: The Commonwealth Secretariat, 2003). 170. 28. Moghadam. Modernizing Women: Gender and Social Change in the Middle East. 168. 29. Hirschkind. "Feminism, the Taliban, and Politics of Counterinsurgency." 353. 30. CEDAW. "Considerations of Reports Submitted by States Parties Under Article 18 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women: Sixth Periodic Report of States Parties. 19. 31. Rathgeber. "WID, WAD, GAD. Trends in Research and Practice." 495. 32. Hirschkind. "Feminism, the Taliban, and Politics of Counterinsurgency." 346. 33. Ibid, 353.

required for establishing an appropriate response will involve a commitment greater than any developed nation has yet demonstrated. Yet, re-evaluation remains essential, and the events that swept North Africa and the Middle East this spring are further testament to the immediacy of Yemeni women’s search for choice.

34. Kasinof, Laura. "Women Irate at Remarks by President of Yemen." New York Times. April 2011.

35. Ibid.

36. Kasinof, Laura and Robert F. Worth. "Among 3 Women Awarded Nobel Peace Prize, a Nod to the Arab Spring." New York Times. October 2011.

In April of 2011, the New York Times ran the article “Women Irate at Remarks by President of Yemen.” President Ali Abdullah Saleh had chastised Yemeni women for mixing with men during national protests, claiming that in doing so, they had violated Islamic law. The response was swift and substantial. Thousands of Yemeni women took to the streets in protest, rebuking their leader for daring to question their personal honor.34 While this instance points to female empowerment—and certainly a greater degree of empowerment than the country’s dismal MDG ratings would suggest—the much more significant observation to be made is the reason why women reacted in such force. Prior to the president’s remarks, women had been only minor participants in the social upheaval, remaining at home at their own will or at the will of their families. It was only when the option of protest—the choice to participate—was suddenly limited by the president’s claims of immorality that women surged to the frontlines. There was a widespread intention to “prove [the president] wrong,”35 to show that women were not only desiring of choice, but capable of making a choice. This demonstrates the significant power of possessing choice, and when this power was encroached upon, choice was deemed worth fighting for. As upheaval continued in Yemen throughout the spring and summer, women gained a prominent role within the movement. Their involvement climaxed in October 2011 with the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to one of Yemen’s own women’s rights activists, Tawakkul Karman. An Islamist and a woman, Karman’s selection is particularly meaningful; Cairo University professor Nadia Mostafa elaborates that “it means Islam is not against peace, it’s not against women, and Islamists can be women activists, and they can fight for human rights, freedom and democracy."36 This is precisely the type of re-evaluation of the backward that will be essential in the coming efforts to achieve gender parity. It will demand a rethinking of fundamental ideologies that have not been touched for decades. It will require innovation, interactive dialogue, and committed partnership. Yet, If this relentless push for innovation can be carried through with minds wide open, the women of Yemen will finally see the liberation they deserve, a liberation fueled by choice.

Juhood: The Journal of Middle Eastern and North African Affairs

Palestinian Hip-Hop: Narrative Functions and Articulations of Resistance

Munty Natour

n Akko, Israel, from the raised fists of two female rappers clad in street-chic t-shirts and caps, white smoke rises. The cloud shoots up, pitched directly into the swing-line of a young Palestinian hip-hopper wielding a baseball bat. The cloud explodes upon impact, and from its depths a trio of Gazans standing amongst the sandy rubble of destroyed buildings waves away the swirling smoky remains, their arms flowing in silent tandem with their mouths rapping words unheard behind the soundtrack of the computerized video clip. The scene then shifts back to the two girls from Akko, holding mikes. Then to Lod, Israel, near TelAviv, where another trio of young rappers on-stage swings their arms at the crowd, fore- and middle-finger extended in the shape of a “V,” for peace and for victory. 1. Salloum, Jacqueline. Slingshot Hip-Hop. Fresh Booja Productions. (2009).

2. ‫ الشعب يريد اسقاط النظام‬or “The people demand the regime’s downfall”

3. Litvak, Meir. “Introduction.” In M. Litvak (ed.): Palestinian Collective Memory and National Identity, (2009). 1.

This teaser trailer to Slingshot Hip-Hop, Jackie Salloum’s documentary1 about the nascent Palestinian hip-hop movement, traverses a wide geographical expanse as it connects the dots of the Palestinian hip-hop movement. Yet the reality the Palestinian people find themselves living is defined by fragmentation. Land, borders, political affiliations, walls, barbed wire and checkpoints all physically impede these young Palestinians from meeting and interacting with each other. Despite this, they establish and maintain a connection, circumventing the dictates of reality by ascribing to a common hip-hop culture. Palestinian hip-hop is a means by which Palestinian youth connect, making use of the internet to upload, download, and discuss hip-hop music. One of the most popular Palestinian hip-hop websites on the internet, PalRap.net, expresses the Palestinian desire for connection by a banner: “The people demand the end of their division.” A variation of the political chants popular during the 2011 uprisings throughout the Middle East,2 the statement encapsulates the spirit of Palestinian hip-hop: furious, digital, revolutionary, resistive, fresh, re-appropriative, intolerant of the status quo. This study seeks to describe hip-hop in Palestine, focusing on DAM from inside Israel. It will examine how the body of music of these groups engages the Palestinian national collective narrative, that is, as the set of views, memories and opinions of Palestinians regarding matters of social, political, and cultural importance. In the absence of a government, an economy, political representation, even physical unity in a discrete geopolitical entity, individuals with an identity shared by a supra-individual group may continue to ascribe an intact unit so long as they can point to a common, collectively consented-upon narrative history.3 Viewing the genre as such a narrative within the Palestinian collective narrative potentiates an understanding of who the young Palestinians producing this music are, how they have constructed their past, what their current concerns are, what societal challenges they identify, and what solutions they offer to these challenges. In addition to this, Palestinian hip-hop itself is an active element of the socio-political milieu that influences its environment even as its environment influences it: the way hip-hop groups engage the Palestinian master narrative engenders real, meaningful, and useful resistance in various ways. I argue that Palestinian hip-hop arises out of a need for discursive space within a continued context of oppression and statelessness. By asserting its existence in the cultural realm, the resulting hip-hop movement restates the current efforts of Palestinian resistance in new digital-cultural terms: the Palestinian nation is extant culturally and electronically. This allows Palestinians to hold on to their identity in their ongoing modern context of continued statelessness and military occupation.

Juhood: The Journal of Middle Eastern and North African Affairs

PALESTINIAN APPROPRIATION OF HIP-HOP The stagnation of the post-Oslo period, in which the “wait and see” attitude of Palestinians hoping for autonomy and statehood was rewarded with deepening entrenchment of the Israeli occupation and widespread corruption in and oppression by the Palestinian Authority, led to a violent demand for change whose culmination was the Second Intifada. On the front of popular culture, Arab pop songs waxing sentimental about love, imported from countries like Lebanon and Egypt, became tired and cliché to a new Palestinian generation. This new generation demanded organic Palestinian cultural expression that channeled its frustrations and expressed its challenges. Hip-hop is fresh, new, and it fulfilled this demand. Hip-hop’s central practice of sampling, an artistic tool that embodies recreative innovation wherein sound bytes are taken from their original source environments, combined and edited overtop a foundational beat to create new music, allows young Palestinians to piece together a new culture out of pieces from an older culture.4 The interruption of one text and its reappropriation in another redefines that original text, allowing hip-hop artists to dismantle previously wearied sound texts and re-express them in new terms.

4. Allen, Ernest Jr. “Making the Strong Survive: the Contours and Contradictions of Message Rap.” In W.E. Perkins (ed.). Droppin’ Science: Critical Essays on Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996). 8.

Palestinian rappers rely on their audience’s prejudices towards rap to communicate their situation even before one thump of bass-line or record scratch. Rap connotes social, economic, and political displacement. Even more specifically, rap, with its origins in the landscape of the African-American ghetto, communicates an existence of urban fracture, a denial of public space, as well as economic and social decay. Hip-hop’s resilience stems from simplicity: word and beat. Nothing short of violence can silence the voice of rappers determined to speak. Aided by the Internet, specifically social media, music videos uploaded by rappers attain permanence in the harddrives and servers of millions of users across the world. Their message spread, digitized and therefore immortalized, rappers’ voices inherit an existence independent from the political nation-state entity of Palestine.

REGARDING AUTHENTICITY: “SPITTIN’ TRUTH” As R.D.G. Kelley notes5, hip-hop groups must retain their authenticity, or trueness to their street origins, to maintain an ethos of street culture in the eyes of their audiences. Without this authenticity, hip-hop groups lose their authority to speak on behalf of their community. Even when artists achieve fame and success on a wider stage, they still reference their ‘hood back home.6 A group is regarded as “authentic” by its audience so long as its audience recognizes and identifies with the societal problems it discusses. The concept of authenticity connotes ideas of remaining connected to the cradle of the urban ‘hood, the “place where it all began,” as one rapper, Suheil Naffer, refers to his hometown neighborhood in Lod in Slingshot Hip-Hop.7 However, authenticity, as it is used to describe African-American hip-hoppers’ struggle between becoming mainstream and remaining “real,” cannot be completely mapped to Palestinian hip-hop. At the center of the African-American authenticity debate has stood a conflict between economic sell-out to media corporations on the one hand and staying true to the economic hardship of the streets on the other. As a result of economic sell-out, the work produced by African-American rappers is brought into doubt, since they may be suspected of diluting their message to appease mainstream audiences. Economic hardship

Palestinian Hip-Hop: Narrative Functions and Articulation of Resistance

5.Ibid.

6. A prominent example from recent times would be Jay-Z’s ode to New York City, “Empire State of Mind.”

7. Salloum. Slingshot Hip-Hop.

8. For instance, Malek, a hip-hop artist from the Israeli-Palestinian town of Baqa al-Gharbiyeh, released a song titled “Masari,” Arabic for “money,” indicting money as the source of Palestinian problems.

9. Kahf, Usama. “Arabic Hip Hop: Claims of Authenticity and Identity of a New Genre.” Journal of Popular Music Studies. 19:4 (2007) 359-385. 10. Abbas, Basel. “An Analysis of Arabic Hip Hop.” (London: SAE Institute, 2005). 11. Massad, Joseph. “Liberating Songs: Palestine Put to Music.” In R.L. Stein and T. Swedenburg (eds.): Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Popular Culture.(Durham: Duke University Press, 2005). 195.

is a key element of many parts of Palestinian society and is thus a topic addressed by Palestinian hip-hop . However, the question of economic sell-out has yet to become relevant to authenticity debates in Palestinian hip-hop.8 Nascent Palestinian hip-hop groups have not yet gained widespread fame or access to mainstream media outlets that will co-opt them and dilute their message. Previous studies have also presumed that Arab societies, Palestinian society included, inherently mistrust Western cultural products9, which in turn compels Palestinian rappers to emphasize the Palestinian qualities and themes of their music.10 However, no evidence to date suggests that resistance to hip-hop in Palestinian society is due solely to Palestinian mistrust of a Western musical form, except in Gaza, where Hamas’ recalcitrance is due to both cultural and moral concerns. In fact, Western influence on Arabic music is already a well-established phenomenon in liberation songs: “Al-7ulm al -3arabi/The Arabic Dream,” a hit from the 1990’s expressing sorrow at the Pan-Arab dream’s unfullfillment, features Western martial rhythms; George Qimriz’s rendition of Mahmoud Darwish’s “Sajjil, Ana 3arabi/Record I am an Arab” is noted to be “part sentimental Western pop, part martial."11 Furthermore, if the main issue in authenticity was societal resistance to a Western cultural product, groups would have to address the issue of sell-out to Western culture directly, stating in no unclear terms their denial of hip-hop as a Western genre at the very least. Simply emphasizing an Arab-Palestinian identity is not sufficient to deny the Western qualities of hip-hop. Such refusal is apparent in only one song of the corpus of songs of the four groups examined in this paper and cannot be taken to indicate a trend among Palestinian hip-hop in general. If fear of Western influence and mistrust due to economic sell-out are respectively marginal or late influences on the content of Palestinian rap music, the motivations for claiming authenticity in Palestinian hip-hop must derive from other sources. For instance, the need for authenticity may be generational: a youth movement that hasn’t gained the approval of its elders; or it may be related to hip-hop’s ubiquity as a worldwide genre: rappers must localize a distant, neutral, global genre to give it relevance; or it may be related to issues of identity: Palestinians must first claim Palestinian-hood to attain authority as representatives for their community; or the need for authenticity may directly follow from a particular local environment, as with PR in Gaza. As will be shown, claims to authenticity are the most crucial step in the evolution of a Palestinian hip-hop group, allowing them to gain support at and move beyond the local level to speak to a broader audience.

12. Kahf. "Arabic Hip-Hop: Claims of Authenticity and Identity of a New Genre." 367.

13. Ibid.

Kahf argues that authenticity in Palestinian hip-hop consists of three “dimensions [which] operate as sites of identification in which the artists delineate between the authentic voice of Palestinian hip-hop and other genres of music”: the socio-political, the emotional-experiental, and the rhetorical.12 The first dimension, socio-political, addresses the Palestinian street reality that is insufficiently acknowledged by other popular cultural forms such as Arab pop; the second emotional-experiential dimension, portrays Palestinians as morally righteous victims of a delegitimized other; the third dimension, the rhetorical dimension, is a self-reflection on the hip-hop genre’s ability as a Western form to address Palestinian problems.13 Though these multiple dimensions classify authenticity claims by subject matter, this framework must be complicated to allow for the polyvalence of narratives within Palestinian society. Palestinian hip-hop is only one instantiation of the Palestinian national collective narrative, which competes in multiple arenas to establish the credibility of its own narrative: musically with

Juhood: The Journal of Middle Eastern and North African Affairs

other forms of Arab music as well as within the Middle-Eastern hip-hop scene; socially with other subgroups within Palestinian society such as differing age groups; and politically with other civil organizations and political parties in Palestine. Here, I argue that, within the discursive context of Palestinian society and the Palestinian collective narrative, Palestinian hip-hop groups claim authenticity in multiple arenas by incorporating and reexpressing key elements of the Palestinian master collective narrative. By their nature, these elements are identifiable by Palestinian audiences as consensus opinions regarding Palestinian reality. The more a hip-hop group can express sentiments that resonate strongly with members of Palestinian society, the more popularity they obtain, and the wider their purchase on their audience becomes. Thus their authority to put forth their interpretations of the Palestinian situation increases. At this point, it must be noted that Palestinian appropriations of hip-hop meet with resistance locally. One group from Gaza, Palestinian Rapperz (P.R.), has even been removed from the stage during one of their performances by Hamas police officers, ostensibly for the behavior of female audience members, who were waving their hands along with the music.14 Sticking out like a sore thumb, hip-hop is novel in the Arab world, a foreign form. In Slingshot Hip-Hop, one Gazan rapper recollects the recalcitrance of his neighbors when he began to “wear baggy,” that is, wearing the baggy pants and sports jerseys popular in hip-hop.15 Although this study is less concerned with the musical features of Palestinian hip-hop as it is with the lyrical narrative it produces, examining how the genre intersects or departs from traditional Arab music reveals which aspects of the music are prioritized over others. Within the context of traditional Arab music, Palestinian hip-hop artists legitimize their music in varying ways. Contrasting hip-hop with pop, Palestinian hiphop artists excoriate the meaninglessness of Arab pop’s romantic subject matter. In Cozzens, Tamer Naffar of DAM posits that audiences grow tired of Arab pop music, “‘thirsty’ for something like rap that can offer them ‘truth, [not] bullshit.’”16 Musically, many hip-hop artists attempt to legitimize their music by aligning it with the traditional Arab maqam tradition as a high cultural form (thaqafa), and not as a popular street form. Traditional instruments such as the oud (3ud), ney, and tabla (6abla) in Palestinian hip-hop are in many cases deployed as expressions of the genre’s Arab heritage. These non-verbal features, which include sampled measures and beats from well-known traditional Arab music, are intended to legitimize hip-hop within Arab music. However, word remains sovereign in Palestinian hip-hop, since “in the Arab musical tradition, the words, poetry, and vocalist often take a position of predominant importance.”17

THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS: PALESTINIAN HIP-HOP

APPROACHING

Hip-hop in Palestine may be considered a reaction to the dictates of a specific sociopolitical and economic environment. In fact, economic hardship and socio-political exclusion are apparent in the lyrics of most Palestinian rap songs, which represent an awakening of inner-city Palestinian youth to the drug problems, economic disintegration, and political immobility of Palestinian society. However, hip-hop must be understood as an independent socio-political movement that structures young Palestinians’

Palestinian Hip-Hop: Narrative Functions and Articulation of Resistance

14. Nissenbaum, Dion. "Palestinians Embracing Hip-Hop to Push Perspective of the Victims.” Jewish World Review. Sept, 2005. <http:// www.jewishworldreview.com/0905/ arab_hip-hop.php3.>.

15. Salloum. Slingshot Hip-Hop.

16. Cozzens, Richard C. “’We’re not Gs – We’re Arabs’: Arab Identity in the Politics and Poetics of Rap in Jordan, Syria and Palestine.” Departments of Music and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. (Harvard College, 2008). 103.

17. Ibid, 111

worldviews and effects real economic and socio-political change for the members of the hip-hop nation. 18. The “conflict” in Bar-Tal and Salomon’s definition refers to what they term “the context of intractable conflict” defined as a conflict that is “protracted, irreconcilable, violent, of zero-sum nature, total and central.”

19. Stein, Rebecca L., and Ted Swedenburg. "Popular Culture, Relational History, and the Question of Power in Palestine and Israel." Journal of Palestine Studies 32:4. (2004). 1. 20. Ibid, 10.

Palestinian identity arose from a shared collective memory of displacement, its crossborder collective narrative made possible in a world increasingly connected by mass media and computer-mediated communication technology. Bar-Tal and Salomon provide a useful way to organize Palestinian discourse on the collective level of society. They define two narratives: the collective memory narrative (society’s collective remembered past) and the ethos of conflict18 narrative (society’s collective present beliefs). These two narratives combine to create a collective national narrative that serves cognitive functions necessary for a society in conflict: explaining how/why the conflict situation arose and continues; justifying society’s actions against enemies; delegitimizing the opponent; mobilizing society to act; assigning meaning to political actions; and creating, maintaining, and reasserting a positive social identity. This collective national narrative is then available to members of its society, and differing groups engage and manipulate the collective national narrative in various ways to suit their needs. Local environment structures much of the content of Palestinian hip-hop and thus heavily influences the content and style of music produced by artists in those environments. However, one consideration must be noted. To argue that the social, political and economic forces of Palestinian history caused Palestinian hip-hop to emerge is to reduce the complex interplay of new as well as traditional cultural influences within the events of Palestinian history and the current socio-politico-economic Palestinian situation. The danger of this kind of reduction is that it risks oversimplifying Palestinian hip-hop as a commodified byproduct of the realm of the political. Noting this concern, Stein and Swedenburg argue against relegating Palestinian popular culture to this “epiphenomenal” position.19 Instead, they call for relational histories that focus less on distinct “identities” as units of analysis, but rather on relations between actors in multiple discursive arenas: political, social, cultural.20 In this sense, hip-hop culture is one of many actors on each of these stages: culturally, hip-hop jockeys for narrative authority with other forms of Palestinian art; socially, hip-hop is a movement at the intersection of generational differences, gender differences and socio-economic class in Palestinian society; finally, Palestinian hip-hop expresses the political ideology of subaltern young Palestinians who aim for real change in the political arena in conjunction with changes in the cultural and social arenas.

DAM: DA ARABIAN MCS, ETERNAL, BLOOD 21. DAM Official Website - Damrap. com. <http://www.damrap.com/>. 22. This point is contentious: rap appeared simultaneously in different parts of Palestine. M.W.R., another early rap group based in Akko, claim that they were the first to rap in Arabic, whereas DAM’s original work was in English. 23. http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=XJDqUOFGAZg, accessed Jan. 15, 2011.

Hailing from Lod/Lydda, a mixed Arab-Jewish city twenty minutes from Tel-Aviv, brothers Tamer and Suheil Naffar began experimenting with rap in 1998 to comment on the drug problems, crime, and squalor of their home neighborhood.21 Joined by their neighbor Mahmoud Jreri in 1999, the trio formed the first Palestinian rap group22, DAM, Da Arabian MCs. Tamer Naffer explains the name in an interview with Amy Goodman of DemocracyNow!: “’dam’ is ‘eternity’ in Arabic and ‘blood’ in Hebrew. So it’s eternal blood, like we will stay here forever.”23 DAM’s career took off in 2001 following the Second Palestinian Intifada. Widespread rioting throughout the West Bank and Gaza erupted following a controversial trip by Ariel Sharon, a right-wing Israeli minister, to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s second holiest site. Suicide bombers attacked Jewish cities and the Israeli government responded

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in kind with military strikes into the Occupied Territories, with civilian casualties on both sides. DAM released “Meen Irhabe/Who’s the Terrorist,” a song indicting popular Israeli views of Palestinians. Posted to the internet, the song resonated strongly with Palestinians disenchanted with Israeli governmental policies not only towards IsraeliPalestinians but also towards Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. To this date, “Meen Irhabe” has been viewed on YouTube over half a million times.24 DAM cites widely diverse influences, including American rappers alongside Palestinian poets Mahmoud Darwish and Tawfiq Ziad, cartoonist Naji al-Ali, and intellectual Edward Said.25 Many of DAM’s rap influences are primarily pioneers of 1980’s AfricanAmerican political message rap: Public Enemy (Chuck D, specifically), XCLAN, Tupac Shakur, and A Tribe Called Quest.

24. YouTube.com; this number is a compilation the viewcounts for two video versions: one with 248,145 views, the other with 256,202.

25. Salloum. Slingshot Hip-Hop.

DAM’s first full studio album, Ihda’/Dedication, was released in 2006 on Red Label Records. Consisting of 14 tracks, the album includes a range of tracks such as rap songs (“Mali 7uriye/I Have No Freedom,” “3’areeb fi Biladi/Stranger in My Own Country”), more conventional sung songs (“Ya Sayedati/My Lady”), collaborations with compatriots Sameh Zakout (SaZ) and Saba3 (“Warde/Brother,” and “Al-7uriye l’Unta3/ Freedom for My Sister”, respectively), and a spoken word introduction consisting of a speech by Gamal Abd al-Nasser. The front cover of the CD jacket contains an overhead shot of the band members standing arms-crossed and heads looking upward on a redearth ground with children playing marbles at their feet. The album photo emphasizes the Palestinian concept of sumud, or steadfastness, with DAM’s feet firmly planted on the ground. The three band members are in the foreground while the children play in the background, the spatial and age arrangement recalling a plant growing upward. DAM, whose members pride themselves on being the “first Palestinian rap crew,” seem to declare to the world the arrival of a new, organic, authentically Palestinian artistic movement. Importantly, DAM invests in Pan-Arab ideals. In “Muqadime/Introduction,” the opening to their album Dedication, samples sound bites from the speeches of Gamal Abd al-Nasser, Egyptian President from 1956 – 1970 and leader of the Pan-Arab movement during that time. Speaking over an electronic xylophone melody and beat, Nasser proclaims: “In the life of nations, generations promised by destiny… will witness critical points of change in history.” DAM is sensitive towards their relations with the rest of the Arab world. In one portion of Anat Halachmi’s documentary Channels of Rage, Tamer Naffer comments that a DAM concert in Egypt has been cancelled, stating that he believes the reason is that Arabs in outside countries do not trust Israeli-Palestinians, who are considered collaborators with Israel.26 Furthermore, in “3’areeb fi biladi,” Naffer raps: “They call me a traitor/An Arab within the ’48 [borders]/your hand on your head [i.e., say what you will],/we are Palestinians forever.” The pan-Arab identification performs the double function of both allowing DAM to mend what it perceives as a schism with the Arab world and situating their Palestinianness within an Arab continuity that predates Zionism.27 The second part of this argument is a narrative-level refutation of what Palestinians perceive as the Zionist foundational lie – that the landless Jewish people populated an empty, undeveloped people-less land. The Arabic side of their bilingual group name, DAM, connotes not only continued perpetual existence, but also a continuation of a perpetual past existence. Further, in

Palestinian Hip-Hop: Narrative Functions and Articulation of Resistance

26. Halachmi, Anat. Channels of Rage. (Tel Aviv: Anat Halachmi Productions, 2003).

27. Litvak. Palestinian Collective Memory and National Identity. 118.

“3’areeb fi biladi,” DAM explicitly states that “Our brothers continue to build its [the land’s] foundations/ Arabic are the foundations of the mosques and villages.” Later in the song, they appropriate Jesus, a Jew, as an Arab: “A tear of pain screams, I’m falling on the Arabic cheek of Muhammad and the Messiah [Jesus].” As Litvak notes, this portrayal of Jesus as Arabic, not Jewish, implies that the people of Palestine have been ethnically Arab, not Jewish, for thousands of years. Further, DAM directly refutes the portion of the Israeli collective narrative that delegitimizes Palestinian claims to land, statehood, and identity. For instance, DAM flatly rejects the Israeli view of Palestinians as amoral, barbaric, and violent. In “N3’ayer Bokra” DAM states to Palestinian youngsters: “You are not a terrorist, you are not an animal. You are a human. What’s ruining your name is a thing called politics.” DAM continues in the song to reject the political violence of the Second Intifada, quoting Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish: “Yeah we’re tortured, but if you can’t handle it don’t grab weapons, pick up a pen and record: ‘I am an Arab.’” Thus DAM offers artistic creativity as a channel for the frustrations of young Palestinians. Regardless of whether this is an effective tactic to combat the Israeli-Palestinian situation, DAM’s unstated goal is to offer the creative Palestinian as an alternative to the Israeli stereotype of Arabs as evil, irrational, brutal murderers.

28. Oren, Neta and Daniel Bar-Tal. “The detrimental dynamics of deliegitimization in intractable conflicts: The Israeli-Palestinian case.” International Journal of Intercultural Relations. 31. (2007). 115

At the same time, DAM continues to legitimize Palestinian actions during the Israeli narrative that suicide bombings are the result of Israeli governmental policy. In “Meen Irhabe,” DAM accuses a diffusely-defined Israeli other: “From how much you’ve raped the Arab spirit, she’s become pregnant and given birth to something called the suicide operation.” DAM invokes a sexual metaphor that serves two functions. The first function implies the newborn-like innocence of those who perpetrate the suicide attacks – they know no better. DAM makes the claim that the Arab reaction, the “suicide operation,” is more reflexive than premeditated. The second function is to debase Israeli morality by likening the Israeli government’s treatment of Arabs to rape. DAM continues to dehumanize the Israeli other, stating “Democracy? By God you’re Nazis!” The statement mobilizes Palestinians against an implied threat of looming Holocaustlike genocide.28 “3’areeb fi biladi”, DAM further challenges Israeli narrative dominance by celebrating “thirteen martyrs” killed during clashes with Israeli security forces at the beginning of the Second Intifada. The month is referred to in Palestinian society as “Black October,” and the names of the thirteen victims, each name a word in Arabic, are woven into the song (seven mentioned in the following excerpt): Thirteen martyrs, destiny is near/ when rocks are in hand, thirteen martyrs:/ the greatness [3ala2] of our country,/ the pillar (3imad) of our country./ Black October proved that leadership is in our blood. /If everyone is born [Walid] under occupation,/ how can they not throw (Ramy)[stones] back at their past? They throw themselves like a sword (Saif),/ battling against weapons that consider our blood [as cheap as] water,/ killing the peaceful(Musli7) voice with live ammunition" Apart from commemorating a side of the event essentially ignored by Israeli media, DAM’s rap serves to solidify a positive Palestinian in-group identity. Since the First Intifada, Palestinian culture elevated the purported brutalization of young male

Juhood: The Journal of Middle Eastern and North African Affairs

Palestinians at the hands of Israeli military and police forces to a coming-of-age ritual.29 Young men taken from their homes returned with stories of the violence and victimization they endured in prison. These Palestinians enjoyed new-found respect from their community. Thus, violent victimization by Israelis became honorable. DAM appeals to this facet of Palestinian culture, emphasizing the Palestinians’ “peaceful voice,” their victimization, and their “tear[s] of pain” elicited by the Israeli occupation. Narrating portions of the Palestinian collective narrative, DAM’s message is powerfully resonant with the Palestinian people. DAM today enjoys popularity as one of the most prominent Palestinian rap groups on the scene. Having benefitted from the outpouring of Israeli-Palestinian support following “Meen Irhabe,” DAM likes to emphasize the point that their music represents the general opinions of their compatriots: “They [Israeli-Palestinians attending our shows] get it,” says Suheil Naffer, referring to the political and social exclusion of his countrymen from Israeli and broader Arabic society.30 DAM even actively involves their audiences in-concert; for instance, during performances of "Meen Irhabe," as the audience raps along in participation, Tamer Naffar holds the microphone towards the audience and encourages them to sing along. The concert-like quality of the performance diminishes, and the event becomes rally-like, an outlet for the expression of popular opinion. DAM becomes an extension of grassroots Palestinian youth society. Echoing Chuck D’s assertion that rap is the “Black CNN,” Tamer Naffar notes in an interview with [We are Al-Jazeera]. In comparing DAM’s work to reporting, Naffar appeals to Palestinian perceptions of Al-Jazeera as dedicated to reporting the truth that other outlets, especially Israeli outlets, will not report. Thus, DAM certifies their message rhetorically, ensuring that their listeners realize that they are using rap to re-spin public perceptions of Palestinians. DAM’s music points to key conflicts central to Israeli-Palestinian youth culture. They identify and order the problems faced by Israeli-Palestinian society, while also prescribing solutions to those problems. They directly tackle the question of the IsraeliPalestinian place in the Middle-East, forging a positive social identity for their in-group by asserting their participation in an Arab continuity. However, DAM’s most vital narrative function is simply that they put forth a Palestinian narrative. Despite the imbalanced power dynamic present in the information structure of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, DAM makes a message heard in a neutral art from appreciated, or at the very least understood, by artists throughout the world. DAM’s collaboration “Warde/Brother” with their cousin, Sameh Zakout, asserts “to anyone who asks: rap came from us.” Yet “anyone who asks” likely already knows that rap as an art form didn’t originate in Palestine. DAM and SaZ are not claiming credit for the genre of hip-hop or rap as an art form. Rather, this assertion expresses a more profound meaning: that youth Palestinian cultural output is alive and flourishing despite the political fragility of the Palestinian state.

CONCLUSION Hip-hop has heralded the emergence of a new young group of Palestinians. The purpose of this study has been to identify the ways this group of Palestinians engages their master national narrative by detailed examination of their primary socio-cultural output,

Palestinian Hip-Hop: Narrative Functions and Articulation of Resistance

29. Peteet, Julie. “Male Gender and Rituals of Resistance in the Palestinian Intifada: A Cultural Politics of Violence.” American Ethnologist. 21:1 (1994). 31-49.

30. Salloum. Slingshot Hip-Hop.

hip-hop. The corpus of hip-hop texts, musical and otherwise, reveals that the groups function as ethos of conflict narratives, as described by Bar-Tal and Salomon, explaining how and why the conflict arose and continues, justifying Palestinian actions against their enemies, delegitimizing their enemies, moving youth to agency by subversion of the oppressive societal structure imposed on them, and enforcing a positive in-group Palestinian identity. Above all else, Palestinian hip-hop is an informative movement, centered on describing the new Palestinian youth to Palestinian society and the world. The new Palestinian is a singular, unified expression of hodge-podge elements. Palestinian hip-hop artists are oppressed, sometimes violently; they are urban streetdwellers, unaided and jaded by politics narrating from a position of authority granted to them by their ability to express the frustrations of the Palestinian collective. At the same time, Palestinian hip-hop artists transcend the pale of traditional Palestinian musical culture and the limitations of conservative Palestinian society. One of the ubiquitous markers of this separation is their preference to eschew convention and to “dress baggy”, highlighting their role as critical observers with a uniquely critical perspective on the Palestinian situation. Functionally, the Palestinian hip-hop nation organizes youth resources into potential wells of agency. Made widely consumable by the internet, artists have the ability to reach Palestinians throughout the globe. As of yet, hip-hop has not been co-opted by political powers to influence youth opinion, though this may present a challenge in the future. Instead, artists use hip-hop to emphasize a dynamic present by describing an oppressed past and warning of a stagnant future. The power to control what happens is placed squarely in the hands of Palestinian youth. The message is straightforward: learn about your Palestinian history and identity, work hard for your future now; otherwise, you will remain doomed to live a future unchanged from your past.

31. DAM Official Website - Damrap. com. <http://www.damrap.com/>.

32. "Meen irhabe"

Importantly, the new Palestinian hip-hop artists engender useful resistance. On one level, the narrative of Palestinian hip-hop competes with preexisting narratives to promulgate a particular perspective of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In many ways, the text of Palestinian hip-hop re-narrates elements of Palestinian master collective narrative. In this narrative, Palestinians are undeservingly the most oppressed people in the world: the whole world is free, yet the Palestinians are not31; the introductory clip to Meen Irhabi features former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark asserting that, along with the Iraqi people, the Palestinians are “the most terrorized people in the world.” These assertions perform a bivalent function. Here, Palestinian hip-hop artists state and exploit an inverse karmic correlation between victimization and moral superiority. They argue that their abject destitution grants them the moral authority to demand concessions from the world. At the same time, wrapped up in this argument is an authenticity claim that certifies Palestinian hip-hop artists to their own society. The narrative that they construct, true or not, resonates strongly with Palestinians, reinforcing a positive in-group social identity. The Palestinian hip-hop narrative also offers a limited view of the other that serves to justify Palestinian actions during the conflict. In songs by DAM, the other is given a limited voice. The opinions expressed by the other are hypocritical, espousing democracy and quality while denying Israeli-Palestinians both. The other is a subjugator who wants Palestinians “on their knees.”32 The ethos of conflict narrative thus portrays a battle between an overpoweringly violent physical apparatus and a victimized Palestinian youth. In such an unfair conflict, hip-hop groups argue, Palestinians cannot

Juhood: The Journal of Middle Eastern and North African Affairs

be blamed for the violence that they perpetrate. Another articulation of this narrative is that politics (specifically, Palestinian statehood) is a deleterious process: corrupt political leaders created, maintain and will continue to fuel Palestinian statelessness; politics has ruined the Palestinian name33. Implicit in this refusal of politics is a rejection of the political processes that have rendered Palestinians stateless, a strategic maneuver that ostensibly allows hip-hop artists to create a new existence for themselves outside the conventional channels of politico-national power. Hip-hop, then, becomes an act of alternative nation-building, answering questions of identity and belonging while providing an abstract digital canvas for the nation to inhabit.

Palestinian Hip-Hop: Narrative Functions and Articulation of Resistance

33. DAM Official Website - Damrap. com. <http://www.damrap.com/>.

Covered: Hijabi Women in Turkey Naomi Riemer

hese pictures of hijabi women and girls were taken throughout Turkey during the Duke in Turkey Study Abroad program in July and August of 2011. Professor Bruce Lawrence’s course, Islam and Empire, shed light on the concept of Islamic and secular interaction and cooperation within modern day Turkey using the Muslim imperial past and the current Islamist Gülen Movement as bookends bracketing hundreds of years of regional history. Given Turkey’s history and its hopes for future membership in the European Union, the photos represent a spectrum of women who all have chosen to wear hijab in today’s Turkish Republic.

Expressions of the Third Space: Iraqi Art in Exile Fernando Revelo La Rotta

hroughout many generations, Iraqis have had to leave their homeland due to some kind of traumatic event, experience or in search of safety and stability. During the 20th century, the Iraqi Diaspora grew exponentially. As an effect of the Iraqi Diaspora, thoughts, concepts and ideas also left Iraq and collided with perspectives and ideas from all around the world. How does this collision and interaction of ideas and concepts affect the many cultural producers that have left Iraq? They produce art, literature, and poems among many other forms of cultural products and are categorized under the term Iraqi. But are they simply Iraqi or are they a product of the experiences and feelings that the artists encounter through exile? The three artists considered in this study, Dia Azzawi, Hana Mallalah, and Ahmed Alsoudani, are exiles and they return to their homeland by implementing artistic and cultural elements of Iraq into their works, and, in doing so, they express and reflect on their experience and status of exile.

1. Said, Edward. "Reflections on Exile" in Reflections on Exile and Other Essays. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000). 137.

2. Ibid, 140.

THE THIRD SPACE: EXILE Before exploring the works of the three artists, the space in which they produce their works, in this case their status of exile needs to be explored. Edward Said describes exile in his work “Reflections on Exile” as the “unhealable rift forced between a human being and [his or her] native place, between the self and its true home.”1 Exiles are uprooted from their country, their land, and everything they know and planted on a different part of the world. It shatters their notion of national identity, for now they are living in the space in between two worlds and, at the same time, this movement leaves the exile feeling nostalgic for his or her homeland.2 However, the exile is now “always out of place.”3 The exile's new home is foreign, and they are now outsiders, but they are also susceptible to different experiences, emotions, and ideas. Some of the exiles encounter anguish, loss, discrimination, marginalization, alienation, and longing, among many other feelings and experiences.4 They also come into contact with people with different understandings of the world and life, and with alternate views on gender, sexuality, political understandings, and cultural practices.5 Most people are principally aware of one culture, one setting, one home; exiles are aware of at least two, and this plurality of vision gives rise to an awareness of simultaneous dimensions, an awareness that— to borrow a phrase from music—is contrapuntal.6

4. O’Brien, David and David Prochaska. Beyond East and West: Seven Transnational Artists. (Champaign: Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign. 2004.) 11. 5. Ibid.

6.Said. "Reflection on Exile." 148.

7. Ibid.

8. O'Brien. Beyond East and West: Seven Transnational Artists. 91.

9. Ibid.

This experience of exile, as described above, exposes the exile to different experiences that they had never imagined, which leads them to see “‘the entire world as foreign’ mak[ing] possible originality of vision.”7 Besides broadening the exiles’ minds and exposing them to different ideas and thought, their movement from one place to another results in the “creation of a different mental and artistic space,” which David Prochaska terms “the Third Space.”8 This space is defined by not being at the “locale where one comes from, nor a second place [one] moves to,” but instead a new space defined by the contact and interaction of different peoples and ideas.9 It is the space in which “peoples geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other.”10 It is no longer about where they are born, but about living in between— neither at home or where they live presently.11 This new space shows that exile is not only about the experience of anguish or loss, but that it perhaps “reinforces the need to reference and sustain aspects of Iraqi culture” through the artists’ return home through their art.12 It is also an experience that brings awareness to the artists’ position as global and part of a diaspora, and exposes them to new art scenes and different audiences.13

Expressions of the Third Space: Iraqi Art in Exile

3. Ibid, 140-143.

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid, 89.

12. Faruqi, Samir. "Art as a ‘Psychological Outlet› : Expatriation and The Work of Contemporary Iraqi Artists." Contemporary Practices. Web. 1 May 2011. <http:// www.contemporarypractices. net/essays/volumeVIII / artpaspapsychololgicaloutlet.pdf>.72.

13. Ibid.

ALTERNATE FRAMEWORK 14. Duhon, Amanda. Contemporary Art of Iraqis and Categorical Assumptions of Nationality: An Analysis of the Art and Narratives of Hana Mal Allah, Adel Abidin, and Wafaa Bilal. Thesis. (Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, Aug 2008.) 1. 15. Ibid, 2. 16. Howard, Michael C. Transnationalism and Society. (Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2011). 5. 17. Ibid, 20. 18. Siemiradzki, Henryk. "Iraqi Contemporary Art... - MutualArt." MutualArt.com - The Web's Largest Art Information Service. Web. 27 Apr. 2011. <http://www. mutualart.com/Open Article/Iraqicontemporary-art-influenced-byexp/0A1E857532D58ACF>. 19. Pomegranate Gallery. “Contemporary Iraqi Art” (New York: Pomegranate Gallery Press and Falk Art Reference. 2007). 20. 20. Siemiradzki. "Iraqi Contemporary Art...-MutualArt." 21. Pomegranate Gallery. "Contemporary Iraqi Art." 20. 22. Siemiradzki. "Iraqi Contemporary Art...-MutualArt." 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid. 25. "Beyond The War: Contemporary Iraqi Artists of the Diaspora - 2010." LTMH Gallery. Web. 27 Apr. 2011. <http://www.ltmhgallery.com/ exhibitions/2010-01-07_beyond-thewar-contemporary-iraqi-artists-of-thediaspora/>. 26. Ibid.

After having defined the experience of exile, a framework needs to be established in order to analyze the works of the three artists. Due to the lack of information and resources regarding contemporary Iraqi art, this category of art has been victim to marginalization and misrepresentation by scholars and Western art institutions. The traditional categorization of Iraqi art has been under the term “Islamic Art,” which suggests that contemporary Iraqi art has been ignored and misrepresented.14 It has also been argued by many scholars that the only framework to explore Iraqi art is through the notion of national identity.15 This is problematic, especially for those Iraqi artists who have lived in exile. Instead it is necessary to take into account their experience of exile and the feelings, new ideas, and perspectives the artists may have gained throughout their exile experience. It is more beneficial to understand their works as reflections of their individual experiences and as products of the global networks and interconnections known as transnationalism. The cultural production of Iraqi artists in exile is heavily influenced by the notion of transnationalism. Their experiences and existence within the Third Space shapes and influences their artistic creations and expression. Transnationalism is “essentially about humans creating boundaries and then crossing them. The creation of these boundaries entails processes of exclusion and inclusion by which membership within that [which] is being bounded is defined, including some and excluding some.”16 The creation of state boundaries, the process of crossing them and the context of transnationalism are what produce the experience, status, and more importantly the space of exile. It influences the Third Space through a development of “combination of ties, positions in networks, and networks of organizations that reach across the borders of multiple states.”17 Transnationalism is the term that in itself encompasses the Third Space and explores the flow and transmission of ideas and concepts through the cross-border migration of groups of peoples.

DIA AZZAWI Known as the “pioneer of Modern Arab art,” Dia Azzawi is also an Iraqi artist in exile.18 He was born in Baghdad in 1939, and obtained a degree in Fine Arts from Baghdad University in 1964.19 He fled Iraq in 1976, returning only to curate an exhibition in September 1980.20 He has been living in London since then, and he is known as one of “the first Iraqi expatriates to introduce Arab abstraction to Europe.”21 Despite living in London and having English citizenship, his works are characterized by vibrant and dynamic colors, which he terms to be “Arab Colors.” Azzawi’s artwork often features “symbols from legendary Sumerian periods, which create an ambiguity and mystery within the storytelling.”22 Most of the shapes in his artworks fuse with indistinguishable forms.23 His paintings are symbols of nostalgia of the past and also “defy inevitability and reach into the future and to freedom."24 The pieces “Destined to Live” (Figure 1) and “Wounded Iraq” (Figure 2) do not exemplify the work of Dia Azzawi, but they were submitted by the author for two exhibits that revolve around the themes of exile and diaspora. The first piece “Destined to Live” was part of the exhibit held at Leila Taghinia-Milani Heller Gallery in 2010 under the title “Beyond the War: Seven Expatriate Iraqi Artists.”25 The gouache and ink on paper piece “dwells in themes of separation caused by the war in Iraq.”26 It lacks the colors that are symbolic of Azzawi’s work and that establish a connection for Azzawi between his exile and his homeland. The lack of Azzawi’s vibrant colors could be understood as a representation

Juhood: The Journal of Middle Eastern and North African Affairs

Figure 1: Destined To Live Dia Azzawi Gouache and Ink on Paper 2009 14x9in <http://www.ltmhgallery.com/ exhibitions/2010-01-07_beyond-thewar-contemporary-iraqi-artists-of-thediaspora/>.

Figure 2: Wounded Iraq Dia Azzawi Wood, print, and plaster relief. 2009 51x58x5cm ArtSawa. My Homeland. Dubai: ArtSawa, 2010. Web. 27 Apr. 2011. <http://www.babil-nl.org/ c02x011akarts.pdf>.

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of the increasing distance between himself and his homeland—a distance that increases every minute he spends outside of Iraq. The tonality of the neutral and ground-like colors exudes a feeling of nostalgia and lacking. The black hole on the right represents the void in the identity of Azzawi that was caused by his exile from Iraq. The black hole is gradually encroaching upon the figure, which is struggling to keep itself up. Again, this is another reference to and reflection of the difficulties and hardships that an expatriate experiences during exile. The structure and form of the figure—two legs with the head looking down in between—is a reference to the Third Space. The figure is supported by two legs, which is symbolic of the two spaces that serve as a ground and base for Azzawi, but the figure resides in the space created by the experience of exile. 27. ArtSawa. My Homeland. Dubai: ArtSawa, 2010. 27 Apr. 2011. <http://www.babil nl.org/ c02x011akarts.pdf>.

The second piece “Iraq Wounded” is part of the exhibit My Home Land, which was held in Dubai and was curated by Azzawi himself. The goal of the exhibit was to invite Iraqi artists from different parts of the Diaspora “to explore their feelings toward the catastrophic events that occur daily in the different Iraqi Cities.”27 The piece “Iraq Wounded” is a relief composed of wood, print, and plaster. It consists of a distorted map of Iraq with a wellknown Mesopotamian relief imposed upon the map. The distortion of the map is an artistic representation of the endless boundaries of Iraq for they extend further than what is geographically bound. The Mesopotamian relief of the wounded tiger is a representation of the hardship that Iraq has undergone. It is a representation of the pain and suffering that the people in Iraq feel due to the war and occupation, but at the same time is the pain that an expatriate feels when pondering upon Iraq. The two pieces by Azzawi function as an output for the feelings of the artist towards his status of exile. They attempt to define the status of exile as one based on and informed by the Iraqi heritage, but also one that is open, vulnerable, and at the same time supported by the experiences, thoughts, and ideas of the new home of the exile. Azzawi represents in “Destined to Live” the effects and feelings of living in between two spaces, and not belonging or fitting into either space. Even though Azzawi identifies himself as Arab—specifically Iraqi—the influences and experiences of living in exile cannot be ignored as represented by these two pieces.

28. Duhon. Contemporary Art of Iraqis and Categorical Assumptions of Nationality: An Analysis of the Art and Narratives of Hana Mal Allah, Adel Abidin, and Wafaa Bilal. 14. 29. Ibid, 13. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid, 14. 32. Ibid, 27. 33. Garabedian, Christina. Stolen Dreams, 22 min. (Al Jazeera.net: Witness Program, Sept 6, 2007).

HANA MALALLAH Although only an exile since 2007, Hana Malallah artwork since then is also a product of the Third Space.28 She was born in Thee Qar in 1985, and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Baghdad, where she eventually acquired her PhD in 2005.29 Her mentor and inspiration is Shakir Hassan al-Said. Her art before the exile was “saturated with symbolic references of the region, but they also represent the nation’s contemporary struggles to exist peacefully.”30 After her self-imposed exile, her works exhibit “struggles of a people [and her] own concerns for cultural identity.”31 She tries to demonstrate that Iraqi culture can be maintained despite the diaspora. Her works are characterized by ancient Mesopotamian symbols, abstractions, and her signature element—the use of “smoke and fire to create blemishes on the canvases and paper.”32 The themes of her work are about catastrophe, and she tries to create this message even through the colors of her pieces.33 The two pieces analyzed in this study “Vivid Ruins” (Figure 3 and 4) and “The Shroud” (Figure 5) were both produced after her self-imposed exile. The first piece “Vivid Ruins” was part of an exhibit with the same name that was held in London in the gallery The Mosaic Rooms. The piece is a large canvas with burned pieces of cloth and string on it. She

Juhood: The Journal of Middle Eastern and North African Affairs

Figure 3: Vivid Ruins Hana Malallah Many layers of burned clothes on canvas mirror and string 300x300cm 2009 <https://collections.exeter. ac.uk/repository/bitstream/ handle/10472/5290/MalAllah%20 Vivid%20Ruins.jpg?sequence=1>.

Figure 4: Vivid Ruins Detail <https://collections.exeter. ac.uk/repository/bitstream/ handle/10472/5290/MalAllah%20 Vivid%20Ruins%20det. jpg?sequence=3>.

Expressions of the Third Space: Iraqi Art in Exile

Figure 5: The Shroud Hanna Malallah Mixed Media on Canvas 2009 40x40in <http://i1.exhibit-e.com/ gtemplate/0937b7ae.jpg>.

34. Siemiradzki. "Iraqi Contemporary Art... - MutualArt."

is trying to recreate in artistic form the ruin and destruction of Iraq through the use of a technique she calls “Ruins Technique.”34 “Vivid Ruins” is trying to reconstruct Iraq through pieces of destroyed materials. She uses objects that were residue of the war in Iraq and part of the everyday life of Iraqis—hence the name “Vivid Ruins,” for these are ruins that are experienced and lived every day. It is also a symbolic of her struggle to piece together her Iraqi identity after being exposed to different perspectives regarding the war as an exile in London. “Vivid Ruins” is her way of returning back to her homeland and attempting to create a connection between her current state and her cultural heritage. The second piece “The Shroud” is part of the “Beyond the War” exhibit that Dia Azzawi’s “Destined to Live” was part of. It is composed of burnt paper on canvas. The message is similar to that of “Vivid Ruins” as a piece trying to express the ruins in Iraq and attempting to reconstruct her Iraqi identity. It is also an abstract representation of the loss that is experienced daily in Iraq and her longing for Iraq. The tile “The Shroud” is a reference to the cloth or sheet in which a corpse is wrapped for burial. However, the shroud is not an intact piece of cloth. Instead, it is pieced—together resemblance of a cloth that is filled with blemishes from smoke and holes created by fire. Malallah is trying to show that even death during war is not peaceful, for it leaves people in mourning and it is a product and reminder of destruction. Both pieces are an abstracted representation of the ruined Iraq, and of her disrupted and

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new identity as an exile. An important element to take into account is the audience for these pieces. She is now creating for a global audience, and the goal of her pieces is to communicate and make tangible the lived pain and destruction, and the sorrow that war and exile produce. These pieces are meant to strike the viewer and make them question their privileged state, and to establish a connection toward the death and destruction caused by war and the alienation and marginalization caused by exile.

AHMED ALSOUDANI Ahmed Alsoudani’s pieces are “shocking in a world where so little now shocks us.”35 Alsoudani was born in Baghdad in 1975, and at the age of 20 he decided to flee Iraq after defacing an image of Saddam Hussein in a neighborhood mural.36 He left to avoid political persecution, for as he says Iraq was a country where “all ideas, even private thoughts, could land you in jail.”37 After leaving Iraq, he sought refuge in Syria. While Syria is welcoming to Iraqi exiles, it refuses to give refugees status as legal residents.38 So, Alsoudani decided to leave Syria and he was granted asylum in the United States, where he was able to attend school and eventually graduated from the Yale University School of Art.39 He is now 36 years old and a very successful artist. His large pieces are valued today somewhere around 30,000 dollars. His pieces are characterized by large, abstract, and colorful figures, and his themes revolve around war and exile, not specific to Iraq, but all wars. Most of Alsoudani’s pieces are untitled for he describes them as being parts of a larger whole. The two selected pieces are both untitled, but they depict the “odd sense of ‘inbetweeness’ that accompanies the nomadic globalism that so many of us experience.”40 The first painting (Figure 6) is an abstracted depiction of exile. It is composed of two figures that seem to be looking away from each other. It is a reference to the distance that exile creates

35. Alsoudani, Ahmed, Robert Goff, and Cassie Rosenthal. Ahmed Alsoudani. (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2009.) 7. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid, 8. 39. Ibid, 7.

40. Ibid.

Figure 6: Untitled Ahmed Alsoudani Acrylic on canvas 2008 72x84in <http://www.booooooom. com/2010/09/20/ artist-painter-ahmed-alsoudani/>.

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between two entities: the self and his/her homeland and the self and his/her family. The two figures are the two spaces in which exile takes form: the homeland and the new home. The figure on the right is pierced with sticks or spears, which is a representation of the physical violence that occurs in the homeland that is usually the reason for exile. It is also representative of the violence that family members and friends who remain in the homeland experience. The figure on the left, however, is a representation of the loss and alienation that an exile experiences once he or she leaves the homeland. The figure on the left is also attempting to look towards the figure on the right, but cannot look at it completely. It is a reference to the guilt that the exile sometimes feels when reflecting upon the suffering of friends and family in the homeland.

Figure 7: Untitled Ahmed Alsoudani Charcoal and acrylic on paper. 2008 22x30in Scanned from Ahmed Aldoudani

41. Alsoudani. Ahmed Alsoudani. 11

The second piece, aslo untitled, (Figure 7) is described by Alsoudani himself as a self-portrait. It is a painting that was created using gesso, charcoal, and paints. The painting depicts an abstracted and distorted head. Alsoudani argues that the self-portrait looks nothing like himself, but that it has a lot to do with how he interprets and sees things as a painter.41 The painting presents to the viewer an atmosphere of pain and fear. The figure in it looks toward the viewers in despair, and with a hint of sadness in its eyes. The eyes and mouth have lines over them that resemble cages—a jail constructed through alienation in a place where the artist feels that he has no voice. It is the symbolic representation of the marginalization and estrangement caused by exile. He is alone and silent, but at the same time the space between the bars on his eyes are wide—wide enough to let him see through them and be open to new experiences and visions in his current state of being bound by exile. Both pieces depict shocking images that are a product of the Third Space of exile. The colors and images show the disrupting nature of exile. I picked these two images specifically from the catalog of Alsoudani because the focus of the paintings is exile. Most of the other paintings by Alsoudani focus on the destruction caused by war, as seen in his large murals “Baghdad 1” and “Baghdad 2.” Regardless, there are still influences from his experience of exile in most of his paintings, for the perspectives he has encountered outside of Iraq and the experiences as an exile has changed his image, cultural expression, and identity.

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Even though all of these artists are categorized under the term Iraqi Art, their experiences of exile and their transnational influences must not be forgotten. The exile experience is highly disturbing and disrupting. It leads the exile to feel alone, alienated, and marginalized. At the same time, the exile is conscious of the distance that exists between him/her and his/her home country. The exile is also susceptible to influences of their new home. Therefore, they could be considered global artists, for they serve a different audience, and in doing so are altered and informed by these audiences. Exploring Iraqi artists and art as products of the Third Space created by exile presents the viewer with a different perspective and interpretation of works that cannot be simplified by a single discourse.

Expressions of the Third Space: Iraqi Art in Exile 37

Laïcité, the Republic, and the Veil Samantha Tropper

he issue of state secularity has arisen numerous times in history. The Greeks and Romans both had different ideas about secularity, equality, and citizenship, which have shaped the ideas of countries today.1 France professes itself a secular state with the goal of guaranteeing equal rights and opportunities to all citizens.2 However, in practice, the secular laws surrounding a specific piece of clothing worn by Muslim women are promoting institutionalized inequality. The hijab (veil or headscarf) has been an emblematic Muslim tradition practiced for centuries, but the French government sees it as a sign of separation and inequality between men and women. The veil, its history, and the reasoning behind it must be understood before it can be judged. Muslim women who choose to wear the veil have a right to freedom of religion as given in international human rights documents and this right is being infringed upon by the French government and their legal interpretations of the nature of secularism (laïcité).

1. Bowen, John R. Why the French Don't Like Headscarves. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). 15. 2. "Constitution de la République française," Article 1. L’Assemblée Nationale. 4 Oct 1958. <http:// www.assembleenationale.fr/ connaissance/constitution.asp>.

A look at France’s conflict-ridden history can begin to explain why public displays of religion are taken so seriously. Maximilien Robespierre led a persecution of all religions but Catholicism in the 1790s.This bloody past led the French to reject the public practice of religion, and so the idea of the “generic French citizen” emerged as one who did not have outward markers of religion that separated him/her from the majority of French society.3 But this form of “equality” denies people their individual freedoms and does not allow them to express their ideas, opinions, beliefs, and values in society in ways that are not disturbing to the general public, but could actually create inter-cultural and inter-faith dialogue and allow for people’s religions to remain an important part of life. Complete and total secularism creates a neutral society in every sense, and that should not be a goal. Full neutrality allows a type of censorship to exist in society because, in this case, it denies certain people the right to express themselves religiously.

3. Bowen. Why the French Don't Like Headscarves. 24

In France, laïcité further evolved in concert with the Law of December 9, 1905 on the separation of Church and State. This law, as an article in L’Express stated, “required people to show their face upon entrance to a public service or public transportation and to remain uncovered as long as they are at a public service.”4 However, it does not use the word “laïcité,” which, in fact, is never clearly defined in French law.

4. “Les recommandations de la mission parlementaire sur la burqa.” L’Express. Jan 2010. <www. lexpress.fr/actualite/societe/ les-recommandations-de-la-missionparlementaire-sur-la-burqa_843902. html>.

Laïcité cannot be taken to mean the same thing as “secularism” does in the United States. Joan Wallach Scott points this out in her book, The Politics of the Veil: “Laïcité means the separation of church and state through the state’s protection of individuals from the claims of religion. (In the United States, in contrast, secularism connotes the protection of religions from interference by the state.)”5 This means that there is a neutral public sphere without signs of religion, because that is seen as separation amongst the people. But in order to have this neutral sphere, people still need to have freedom of religion. There are many interpretations of what laïcité really means which makes it difficult to determine when a law in the name of laïcité goes too far.The Law of December 9, 1905 on the separation of Church and State specifically states, “The Republic does not recognize, nor provide salaries for, nor subsidize any religion,” so there would be no state-sanctioned religion.6 But in practice, minority religions are much less accepted by the state today and, in fact, “[the] government subsidizes the Catholic religion far more than it does other religions.”7 With great North African immigration and colonialism in the 19th and 20th centuries, France found itself more and more invested in Islamic affairs. In the beginning of the 20th century, Algerian men immigrated to France to work, with the eventual goal of returning home. But after Algeria won its independence from France in 1962, there

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5. Scott, Joan Wallach. The Politics of the Veil. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). 15

6. “Loi du 9 décembre 1905 relative à la separation des Églises et de l’État.” Assemblée Nationale. <http://www.assemblee-nationale. fr/histoire/eglise-etat/sommaire. asp>.

7. Bowen. Why the French Don't Like Head Scarves. 27

8. Bowen. Why the French Don't Like Headscarves. 67 9. Scott. The Politics of the Veil. 22. 10. Edmiston, William F. and Annie Dumenil. La France Contemporaine. Fourth Edition. (Boston: Heinle Cengage Learning, 2010). 219. 11. Scott, Joan Wallach. Parité! Sexual Equality and the Crisis of French Universalism. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005). 28. 12. Scott. The Politics of the Veil. 22-23. 13. Bowen. Why the French Don't Like Headscarves. 67 14. Ibid, 89. 15. Ibid, 90. 16. Ibid. 17. Scott. The Politics of the Veil. 35 18. Choudhury, Nusrat. “From the Stasi Commission to the European Court of Human Rights: L'Affaire du Foulard and the Challenge of Protecting the Rights of Muslim Girls.” Columbia Journal of Gender and Law. 2007. 19. Bowen. Why the French Don't Like Headscarves. 128

20. Geisser, Vincent. “L’islamophobie en France au regard du débat européen.” In Leveau, Rémy & Khadija Mohsen-Finan, eds. Musulmans de France et d’Europe. (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2005). 77.

was a “demographic transformation of the immigrant population” because the Algerian men brought over their families and the Arab population in France grew. By the 1980s, the children of these immigrants had begun to demand their rights as French citizens.8 In September 1989, an incident occurred, called “L’Affaire du voile,” in which a middle school principal denied three young Muslim girls entrance because they refused to remove their headscarves. The principal defended his actions in the name of laïcité, but many in the international community viewed it as blatant discrimination against Muslims. (The principal later called the incident a problem of “insidious jihad”9). This finally raised questions of rights with respect to laïcité, because of perceptions that “the girls’ individual rights were not respected.”10 The state then made a step toward the less neutral idea of equality when the Conseil d’Etat “found that the wearing of the head scarf was not a violation of the separation of church and state since the law applied to buildings and curriculum but not to students unless they engaged in activities that disturbed the peace.”11 Despite this ruling, not much changed, since “the legacy of the Algerian War, the long-term suspicion of Islam, the visible difference that ‘native French’ thought they saw between themselves and these new strangers,” as well as global events like the 1989 fatwa issued on Salman Rushdie by the Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini and the first Palestinian intifada in 198712, caused a growing fear of Islam in France.13 In September 1994, Minister of Education François Bayrou responded to this fear “with a directive that required principals to ban all ‘ostentatious’ signs from schools. He made it clear that the directive was aimed at excluding all headscarves from schools.”14 Continued war in Algeria and the explosion of bombs in Paris and Lyon in 1995 further perpetuated French society’s Islamophobia because political Islam was being used as a tool to show that, “headscarf = Islam = terrorism.”15 French society began to associate the removal of the headscarf with a myriad of other good things happening.16 By 2004, the situation had reached a critical point, one in which “there would no longer be compromises or mediation—it was either Islam or the republic.”17 On March 15, 2004, then-President Jacques Chirac signed into law a bill that banned “the wearing of symbols or clothing by which students conspicuously manifest a religious appearance” in public primary and secondary schools.18 Islamophobia then seemed rampant in society because while Muslim women and girls protested the law, they were in a minority who did. However, “Le Monde took a strong position against the law… charging that such a law would ‘stigmatize, marginalize, and exclude a part of the population when the country has more than ever a need for integration.’”19 This poignant position on the subject brings to light the idea that the law is a form of discrimination, a violation of human rights, and an unnecessary step in the direction of a neutral but virtually unequal and oppressive republican society. Some believe that this 2004 law was spurred on by the events of September 11, 2001, in the United States. The international community became even more wary of fundamentalist Islam after those events. Islam itself and all Muslims began to be associated with the radical people who committed the terrors of 9/11 so much that “the hijab came to be identified by a majority of the actors in French society… as an expression of a threatening Islam and the symbol of a new fundamentalist Muslim who was putting the secular and republican values in danger.”20 These values about the republican view of equality are not something for which they should strive because they promote the suppression of individual freedoms. The idea of the hijab relating to fundamentalist Islam must also be

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addressed. Ideally, “public services must teach people to distinguish between Islam and radicalism” by allowing the veil to be worn by Muslim women so non-Muslim French citizens can observe that these women are not fundamentalist and potentially dangerous Muslims, but are simply devout followers of their religion who are only trying to express themselves and their relation to their religion.21

21. Bouzar, Dounia et Lylia. La République ou la burqa: Les services publics face à l’islam manipulé. (Paris: Éditions Albin Michel, 2010). 125.

On April 11, 2011, French president Nicolas Sarkozy “formally banned the wearing of full veils in public places… [and France became] the first country in Europe to impose restrictions on a form of attire that some Muslims consider a religious obligation,” as stated in The New York Times.22 According to this article, the law “is viewed by supporters as a necessary step to preserve French culture and to fight what they see as separatist tendencies among Muslims.” However, these so-called “separatist tendencies,” in reality, are simple expressions of belonging to a certain religion.

22. Erlanger, Steven. “France Enforces Ban on Full-Face Veils in Public.” The New York Times. 11 Apr 2011. <http://www. nytimes.com/2011/04/12/ world/europe/12france.html?_ r=3&scp=1&sq=french%20law%20 on%20the%20burqa&st=cse>.

The French Constitution only mentions religion in relation to the claim that it will be a secular state. However, it also says that the State “assures equality before the law of all citizens without distinction of origin, race, or religion. The State respects all beliefs.”23 The aforementioned laws defy these statements in the constitution because the prohibition of a religious garment is not “respecting” their beliefs. In her lecture, “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?” Lila Abu-Lughod describes why Muslim women choose to wear the veil: “Everywhere, such veiling signifies belonging to a particular community and participating in a moral way of life in which families are paramount in the organization of communities and the home is associated with the sanctity of women.”24 The French idea of “equality” is total neutrality, meaning a lack of any factors that separate the French people from each other. This came from the French Revolution which, in 1789, caused a complete recreation of the governmental system after the feudal regime was taken apart. The revolutionaries conceived of a democracy as “the complete sacrifice of the individual to the res publica,” where “there were no politically relevant differences within ‘the people.’”25 This idea extended much farther than the French Revolution of the 18th century. As President Jacques Chirac noted in a speech in 2003 about religious symbols, “it is the neutrality of the public space that permits the peaceful coexistence of different religions."26 In a society such as this, people may be seen as equal, but they are surrendering their individuality to achieve it. However, one might even argue that religion is not a “politically relevant” difference because it exists mainly within the private sphere. John R. Bowen addresses this in his book, Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves, when he distinguishes between “la religion” and “le culte,” the actual French term used in the laws to specify what the French state’s religious regulations and freedoms. “Le culte” is the “outward expression” of one’s relationship to God, which includes “the celebration of the culte, as in the mass; its buildings; and the teaching of its principles.”27 In this sense, “le culte” becomes part of the public sphere and, according to the French, is therefore something that should be controlled in order to ensure the republican view of equality. The hijab developed in Islam as a humble form of dress for Muslim women. It signifies modesty and allows women to participate in the public sphere without sacrificing their morality and humility.28 It also represents one of the most basic concepts of Islam, as exemplified in this statement by The Institute of Islamic Information and Education: Why do Muslim women have to cover their heads? This question is one which is asked by Muslim and non-Muslim alike. For many

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23. “Constitution de la République française.” 24. Abu-Lughod, Lila. “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others.” In American Anthropologist. (American Anthropological Association. 2002). 785. 25. Scott. Parité! Sexual Equality and the Crisis of French Universalism. 13.

26. Bowen. Why the French Don't Like Headscarves. 29.

27. Ibid, 17.

28. Ali, Mary C. "The Question of Hijab: Suppression or Liberation.” Institute of Islamic Information and Education. <http://www.jannah. org/sisters/hijab2.html.>

29. Ali, Mary C. "The Question of Hijab: Suppression or Liberation.” Institute of Islamic Information and Education. <http://www.jannah. org/sisters/hijab2.html.>

30. Ibid.

women it is the truest test of being a Muslim. The answer to the question is very simple - Muslim women observe HIJAB (covering the head and the body) because Allah has told them to do so.29 Muslim women who follow their religion closely choose to wear the hijab as a sign of their belonging to the religion as well as for a service to God. Quran 33:59 is the most cited reference for the obligation of hijab: “O Prophet, tell your wives and daughters and the believing women to draw their outer garments around them (when they go out or are among men).”30 In today’s view, the wearing of the hijab is a choice to be made based on how the woman feels about the different interpretations of the Quran and her own values and beliefs about modesty. However, for the amount of Muslim women who do wear the veil, it is empowering: A Muslim woman who covers her head is making a statement about her identity. Anyone who sees her will know that she is a Muslim and has a good moral character. Many Muslim women who cover are filled with dignity and self esteem; they are pleased to be identified as a Muslim woman. As a chaste, modest, pure woman, she does not want her sexuality to enter into interactions with men in the smallest degree.31

31. Ibid.

Many politicians who judge the veil may not fully understand its uses and the reasoning behind it and therefore cannot properly judge its supposed separating nature.

32. Diffendal, Chelsea. “The Modern Hijab: Tool of Agency, Tool of Oppression.” Chrestomathy: Annual Review of Undergraduate Research, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, School of Languages, Cultures, and World Affairs. College of Charleston. Volume 5. (Charleston: College of Charleston, 2006). 129. 33. Kelley, Sean Paul. “Ban The Burqa But Not The Nun’s Habit!” The Agonist. 24 Dec 2009. <http://agonist.org/sean_paul_ kelley/20091224/ban_the_burqa_ but_not_the_nuns_habit>. 34. Bowen. Why the French Don't Like Headscarves. 70. 35. Ibid, 71. 36. Ali. "The Question of Hijab: Suppression or Liberation.” 37. Bowen. Why the French Don't Like Headscarves. 71.

The issue of women’s rights that is brought up with this concept of laïcité in relation to veil-wearing women is not entirely valid. Some feminist scholars say that the veil is “inherently oppressive”32 because women wear them out of fear: “fear of fathers, fear of brothers, fear of deathly reprisals because the woman's or family's honor has been besmirched, or fear of family and local community ‘values.’”33 Many see Muslim women as being forced to wear the veil because they live in a patriarchal society. But it is the complexity of the reasoning behind the veil that has caused it to be ignored by scholars and political figures.34 A sociological study by Françoise Gaspard and Farhad Khosrokhavar found that young women who wear scarves wear them to accomplish two things: “defining themselves in Islamic terms and entering the world of post-secondary education and work.” Furthermore, “these women tended to be educated and successful, and to regularly pray, fast, and observe dietary rules.”35 The majority of Muslim women in France are not forced to wear the veil by their husbands or any other person but choose to because it actually empowers them: devout Muslim women cover themselves to be seen for their minds instead of their bodies. A woman who wears the veil chooses to because then she is “concealing her sexuality but allowing her femininity to be brought out.”36 This turns women into intellectual beings instead of sexual beings, which gives them authority to a certain extent and makes them equal to men. Gaspard and Khosrokhavar also noted that they “did not find women with allegiances to political Islamic groups; to the contrary, all the girls and women emphasized their right to make their own decisions.”37 The veil, in part, gives them this right and is also for educational purposes within Islam. Veil-wearing women are liberated within their niqab because they are not being objectified by men. It is also a separation of men’s and women’s spheres, which some people see as inequality for women, but in reality is quite the opposite. Islam itself does not oppress women but gives them the option to maintain their modesty from men outside their family with the veil. They are not forced, as evidenced by the previous studies. The so-called

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“liberation” from the veil with this April 2011 law was ill-received by the affected women in France because the veil has been their choice and their way of life for so long; they do not want to change it and they should definitely not be forced to change it. It is ingrained in their belief system, which is not so easily modified with oppressive laws by Chirac and Sarkozy. Nor would they want to change it, just as many religious people in the world would not want to change some of the fundamental beliefs associated with the practice of their religion. Even more than this basic disregard for the Muslim belief system, the French government and laws go against many human rights documents. The French document from 1789, The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, declares in Article 10 that, “no one can be disquieted on account of his opinions, even religious, as long as their manifestation does not disturb the public order established by law.”38 The veiling laws violate this Article because they make it illegal for women to wear the veil when it in no way disturbs the public order. The French Constitution’s Preamble recalls this Declaration, which clearly influenced many of its articles.39 A number of laws in history have been changed because they were declared unconstitutional and not in accordance with the Declaration of the Rights of Man. The laws from 1905, 1994, 2004, and 2011 are clearly in violation of the right to free expression of religion. Furthermore, as this Declaration gives everyone the rights to “liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression” in Article 2, and then states in Article 4, “Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else,” the veiling bans from 2004 and 2011 violate the rights given to all women in this Declaration. The Constitutional Council was created by the Constitution to determine the constitutionality and legality of French laws and referenda.40 Since the veiling laws violate this Declaration, the Constitutional Council has a duty to repeal them and declare them unconstitutional. The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was approved by L’Assemblée Nationale in 1789 but was soon followed by the French Revolution, after which the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen from the Constitution of Year I (1793) was adopted. This document reinforces its predecessor in Article 7, which states: “The right to express one's thoughts and opinions by means of the press or in any other manner… [and] the free pursuit of religion, cannot be forbidden.”41 Under the new veiling laws, Muslim women are not being allowed to pursue their religion freely. This Declaration also states: “There is oppression against the social body when a single one of its members is oppressed: there is oppression against each member when the social body is oppressed.”42 However, this is not recognized, since the majority of French society shares the republican concept of equality being neutrality that also developed during the French Revolution. The French government and people are accountable to the international community as well. In 1983, France ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.43 Article 2 of said Convention states: States Parties… undertake: (e) To take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women by any person, organization or enterprise; (f) To take all appropriate measures, including legislation, to modify or abolish existing laws, regulations, customs and practices which constitute discrimination against women.44

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38. “Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen de 1789.” Ministère de la Justice et des Libertés. <http://www.textes.justice. gouv.fr/textes-fondamentaux-10086/ droits-de-lhomme-et-libertesfondamentales-10087/ declaration-des-droits-de-lhomme-etdu-citoyen-de-1789-10116.html>. 39. The Constitution of October 4, 1958,” Preamble. Assemblée Nationale. <http://www.assembleenationale.fr/english/8ab.asp>. 40. “The Constitution of October 4, 1958.” Title VII. 41. “Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen from the Constitution of Year I (1793).” <http://www.columbia.edu/~iw6/ docs/dec1793.html>. 42. Ibid, Article 34. 43. “United Nations Treaty Collection.” United Nations. <http://treaties. un.org/Pages/ViewDetails. aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=IV8&chapter=4&lang=en#22.> 44. “Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.” Department of Economic and Social Affairs: Division for the Advancement of Women. United Nations. <http:// www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/ cedaw>.

45. "United Nations Treaty Collection."

46. “History of the Holocaust – An Introduction.” Jewish Virtual Library. The American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. <http:// www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ jsource/Holocaust/history.html>.

47. “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” 10 Dec 1948. United Nations. <http://www. un.org/en/documents/udhr/index. shtml>.

48. “The European Convention on Human Rights.” Council of Europe. 4 Dec 1950. <http://www.hri.org/ docs/ECHR50.html#C.Art9>.

49. Choudhury. "From the Stasi Commission to the European Court of Human Rights: L'Affaire du Foulard and the Challenge of Protecting the Rights of Muslim Girls.”

50. Rogers, Rebecca. “Reading The Politics of the Veil.” H-France Review 9.53, April 2009. <http:// mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/ rogers190710.html>.

51. The law forbade Jewish skullcaps (yarmulke), Sikh turbans, large crosses, and headscarves. See Rebecca Rogers, “Reading The Politics of the Veil.”

The secular laws specifically target Muslim women, which is blatant discrimination on the part of the French government, not the “elimination” of it. The law of 1905 that separated Church and State should have been repealed after this Convention was ratified since it has the potential to (and in this case, did) discriminate against women of a particular group. So in keeping with the Convention signed during François Mitterrand’s term, France would have the responsibility to remove said law and prevent new ones like it from forming since their ratification did not come with reservations pertaining to this Article or any others that relate to this topic.45 The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was created in 1948 as a response to the events of World War II, where over six million Jews died because of their religion.46 To keep this kind of persecution from happening again in the future, Article 18 of the UDHR states: Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes the… freedom, either alone or in a community with others in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.47 The wearing of the veil is the manifestation of observance of Islam for certain devout women who interpret the Quran as mandating it. Denying them the right to manifest their religion is a type of persecution because it explicitly discriminates against one specific religion and one aspect of the practice of it. The European Convention on Human Rights states virtually the same thing as the UDHR in Article 9.48 The international community therefore has a responsibility to take action against these laws with more than just protests. The United Nations should be intervening and sanctions should be set against France and Nicolas Sarkozy while these laws exist. These veiling laws are discrimination against one religion, Islam, and against the devout women of that faith. If France were truly a secular, neutral society, all signs of religion would either be permitted or banned. While the law of March 15, 2004 bans “the wearing of symbols or clothing by which students conspicuously manifest a religious appearance,”49 in practice the people told the most often to change their clothing because of this law are Muslim girls and women.50 Furthermore, the law Sarkozy passed on April 11, 2011 specifically banned the face veil, which is only worn by Muslim women, because it is an ostentatious sign of a religion that Sarkozy sees as disturbing the public. It is not a coincidence that Sarkozy has banned an article of clothing that is exclusively Muslim, but has not addressed the wearing of habits by Catholic nuns in public places.51 Why are these habits, which are simply another form of religious dress for devout adherents to that religion, not seen as disturbing to the public? This even goes against the idea of the republic, which Sarkozy claims to support. John R. Bowen relates the headscarf, the nun’s habit, and France’s past: The headscarf and mosque are not objectively more visible than the nun’s habit and the cathedral, but they are, or were, subjectively shocking because they were new or foreign—or perhaps, as reminders of a bloody, recent colonial past, not foreign enough. Muslims’ demands to live their religion publicly also made explicit the contradictions already in place between French ideas about religion’s private character and the still-public role of France’s Catholic heritage. The public ubiquity of crosses and churches could be ignored—had

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52. Bowen. Why the French Don't Like Headscarves. 20.

to be ignored—for reasons of civil peace, but ignoring crescents and mosques was more difficult.52 Catholic nuns in France are free to wear their habits in any public place without fear of being fined, unlike niqab-wearing Muslim women. Sarkozy’s and much of French society’s Islamophobia are exhibited in these laws, especially when viewed in contrast with their Catholic counterparts and even the republican ideal of equality and neutrality. French society itself has a skewed version of what it means to be “equal.” The French revolutionaries created this version of equality as neutrality to guarantee everyone’s rights, but in practice it has denied these rights to minority groups and to Muslim women in particular. The republican ideals of the French have created a stifling living space for Muslim women who choose to wear the veil. Their individual freedoms of liberty and the right to practice and observe their religion, as outlined in many international human rights documents, are being violated. The laws of laïcité from 1905, 2004, and 2011 explicitly discriminate against this small group of about 2,000 women in all of France.53 The wearing of the hijab does not disturb the public in any way and while it is an obvious sign of a religion, it is not the only one that is in existence in French society today, but it is the only one explicitly banned in the 2011 law and one of the few in the 2004 law. Neither of these laws addresses the Catholic nun’s habit, which is highly comparable to the hijab, since only devout female members of the religion wear it, and by choice. This choice helps define them and give them a sense of belonging, while also turning them into intellectual instead of sexual beings in the eyes of other members of society. Islamophobia has become rampant in western and developed societies after the tragic events of September 11, 2001, in the United States. However, the world must learn to differentiate among fundamentalist Muslims and the vast group of other Muslims, who are not dangerous terrorists, but are just trying to live their lives by following the Quran and the words of God. They want to live in peace; the world must let them.

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53. Joseph, Sarah. "Burqa ban turns right into crime." CNN. 13 Apr 2011.< http://articles.cnn. com/2011-04-13/opinion/joseph. burqa.ban_1_niqab-face-coveringveil-burqa-ban?_s=PM:OPINION>.

Musical Transculturation: A Challenge to the Kemalist National Identity Andi Frkovich

he year 1923 marked a major turning point in Turkish history. Following the decline and partition of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, a crisis of identity emerged in Turkey. This “crisis of identity” raised the issue of what the country’s role should be in the new world order and how the national Turkish identity should be modified to help ensure Turkey’s economic, political, and cultural success in the new system.1 In this context, the Republic of Turkey was founded under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who adopted the modernization of Turkey as his principal goal in order to eradicate the social and cultural illness that he believed had led to the Empire’s decline. The Kemalist notion of modernization was predicated on the belief that the construction of a monolithic national identity based on Enlightenment ideals and European secularism was essential to the transformation, advancement, and empowerment of Turkey. It was perceived that Oriental influences would hinder progress by tying the Turkish people to a failed Ottoman Islamic past. Comprehensive national unity was to be the essential ingredient of Turkish modernization. Thus, the identity Atatürk attempted to impose was both location-specific and homogenous. As an effort to unify Turkey, it actively excluded the local traditions of minority groups, as well as any influences from Turkey’s cosmopolitan, late Ottoman identity.2 In order to impose this national identity, Kemalists used music as a tool of dissemination. Anatolian folk songs, which Kemalists viewed as the origin of Turkish culture, were gathered, standardized, and infused with Western elements, creating an artificial musical synthesis that was intended to embody a culture of modernized Turkish authenticity predicated on folk culture. Kemalists then imposed this synthesis by implementing policies that simultaneously increased the public’s cultural contact with the new genre and suppressed old musical styles that conflicted with Kemalist notions of identity. In doing so, they hoped to capitalize on the “cognitive graspability” of various musical elements, such as beat and harmony, to popularize Kemalist nationalism.3 Essentially, they hoped that the ability of music to transcend cultural boundaries would allow a broad audience to subconsciously connect with the authentically modern Kemalist identity, which was expressed through the artificial hybridity of the genre.4 However, despite extensive efforts on the part of Republican reformers, the majority of Turkish citizens were unable to identify with Kemalist versions of music and identity due to their exclusive, monolithic nature. In their attempt to impose homogeneity, Kemalists failed to recognize that the inherent nature of both music and identity is transcultural. That is, they failed to realize that both music and identity are formed organically as a result of interactions between various cognitive and cultural factors, including ethnicity, religion, subjective experience, and history. In consequence, music and identity cannot be artificially created and imposed.5 The attempted imposition of a homogeneous identity engendered a cultural void within Turkish society. In response to this void, spontaneous syntheses of transcultural musical genres, such as Arabesk and Turkish popular music emerged. This created an alternate musical culture of cosmopolitanism and alterity. In this way, music, with its innate “cognitive graspability,"6 served as a powerful tool to contest state identity and resurrect Turkey’s traditional Ottoman legacy.

Musical Transculturation: A Challenge to the Kemalist National Identity

1. Feldman, W. "Cultural Authority and Authenticity in the Turkish Repertoire." Asian Music. 22:1. (1991). 73-111.

2. Ibid.

3. Stokes, M. "Music and the Global Order." Annual Review of Anthropology 33. (2004). 47-72.

4. Ibid.

5. Huddy, L. "From Social to Political Identity: A Critical Examination of Social Identity Theory." Political Psychology 22:1. (2001). 127-156.

6. Stokes. "Music and the Global Order." 47-72.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND: THE “WEST-ORIGIN” MUSICAL SYNTHESIS 7. Akman, A. "Modernist Nationalism: Statism and National Identity in Turkey." Nationalities Papers 32:1. (2004). 23-51.

8. Feldman. "Cultural Authority and Authenticity in the Turkish Repertoire." 73-111. 9. Stokes. "Music and the Global Order." 47-72 10. Feldman. "Cultural Authority and Authenticity in the Turkish Repertoire." 73-111. 11. Akman. "Modernist Nationalism: Statism and National Identity in Turkey." 23-51. 12. Feldman. "Cultural Authority and Authentiity in the Turkish Repertoire." 73-111. 13. Signell, K. "The Modernization Process in Two Oriental Music Cultures: Turkish and Japanese." Asian Music 7:2 (1976). 72-102. 14. Gabriel Skoog, K. S. "Synthesizing Identity: Gestures of Filiation and Affiliation in Turkish Popular Music." Asian Music. 40:2. (2009). 52-71. 15. Tekelioğlu, O. "The Rise of a Spontaneous Synthesis: The Historical Background of Turkish Popular Music." Middle Eastern Studies. 32:2. (1996). 194-215. 16. Signell. "The Modernization Process in Two Oriental Music Cultures: Turkish and Japanese." 72-102 17. Akman. "Modernist Nationalism: Statism and National Identity in Turkey." 23-51.

One of the main ways Atatürk tried to impose a national identity was by engaging in various forms of epistemic violence aimed at erasing all traces of Turkey’s cosmopolitan, Ottoman Islamic past. Fearful of Islam’s potential to serve as a cultural rallying point and undermine state authority,7 Atatürk abolished the Caliphate and banned all Islamic courts and schools in 19248 before going on to ban all Sufi sects and religious orders in 1925.9 In an effort to minimalize the perceived backwards influence of the “East” and Islam, Atatürk replaced the Ottoman Arabic alphabet with its Latin counterpart, required that the adhan (or call to prayer) be recited in Turkish, adopted Italian and Swiss penal codes, and deemed the wearing traditional forms of Eastern headwear, such as the fez, the hijab, and the sarık as uncivilized. 10 Realizing the cultural potential of music to shape the national identity, Atatürk sought to erase all forms of classical Turkish art music , a musical genre characterized by an Eastern alaturka melody and a solo vocalist accompanied by an instrumental ensemble.11 Because this genre incorporated transnational musical influences and was especially popular in the Ottoman courts, it resurrected the Ottoman legacy, which Kemalists viewed as a historical reminder of the failure of the Ottoman Empire,12 and embodied the cultural pluralism that Atatürk sought to erase. In consequence, Atatürk closed the Doğu Müziği Şubesi, a late Ottoman musical conservatory, in 1926. In 1934, he placed a twenty-month ban on the broadcasting of classical Turkish art music over the radio, which was followed by the implementation of a more comprehensive system of censorship that designated what specific musical genres could and could not be broadcast publicly.13 Because of its mystical nature and historical association with Turkey’s Ottoman Islamic past, the traditional music of tarikats, or Sufi religious orders, also came under attack and all but disappeared with the abolition of zayiyes and tekkes (Sufi cloisters and lodges) in 1926.14 To replace these forms of music, Kemalists constructed a new musical genre, Turkish folk music, which was predicated on a three-pronged classification of West, East, and Origin. According to this classification, the East was associated with backwardness and was deemed taboo. The West, which was considered an archetype of modernity, was adopted as a model. Turkish folk music was generated organically by the people of Anatolia, and therefore it was viewed as the “Origin of Turkishness” and as a symbol of the national essence. It came to form the base of the new Kemalist musical genre.15 Using this three-pronged synthesis as a guide, Turkish folk music was created by collecting, rearranging, and polyphonizing traditional folk songs according to Western standards. The songs were then infused with Western melodic and harmonic techniques.16 In doing this, Kemalist Republicans hoped that this would produce a “West-Origin” musical synthesis that was simultaneously national and modern.17 Kemalists hoped that the diffusion of this “West-Origin” musical synthesis would aid in the imposition of a national identity. Thus, they went to great lengths to ensure its successful dissemination. The Turkish government broadcast examples of Western music in a variety of public venues ranging from the radio to state-sponsored ballroom dances to the ships of Turkish Maritime Lines. Talented Turkish musicians were sent abroad to be educated and orchestras began offering free Western classical music concerts. In addition, free music classes aimed at promoting both Western classical music

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and Turkish folk music were offered at community centers known as Halkevleri, or the “People’s Houses,” which were established to help spread Kemalist culture.18 However, these efforts to popularize Turkish folk music largely failed. In their attempt to modernize folk music, Kemalists reprocessed traditional songs so as to “redefine them as part of an imagined identity.”19 To this end, thousands of folk songs were collected from designated regions of Anatolia and standardized to erase any undesirable Ottoman Islamic influences; the lyrics were “Turkified”, and the music’s rhythmic structure was adjusted to reflect key lyrical changes. These changes were predicated on what Değirmenci refers to as the “myth of origin,” or the false belief that the notion of folk implies innate cultural unity amongst the people of a certain region.20 In supporting the “myth of origin,” Kemalists ignored the fact that the Ottoman legacy imbued Turkey with a historically cosmopolitan identity.21 In attempting to erase the manifestations of cultural plurality in the process of modernizing folk music, Kemalists created a disconnect between the musical representation of the Turkish folk identity(s) and its lived reality.22 Because of this, the imposed music of the “West-Origin” synthesis failed to speak to key elements of the people’s identity and thus hindered the ability of the Kemalist musical synthesis to transform society from the inside out. In consequence, Turkish folk music did not continue to be broadcast as a result of popular demand, but rather survived due to the government’s continued efforts to implement the genre.

18. Signell. "The Modernization Process in Two Oriental Music Cultures: Turkish and Japanese." 72-102. 19. Huddy. "From Social to Political Identity: A Critical Examination of Social Identity Theory." 127-156. 20. Değirmenci, K. "On the Pursuit of a Nation: The Construction of Folk and Folk Music in the Founding Decades of the Turkish Republic." International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music. 37:1. (2006). 47-65. 21. Stokes, M. "Voices and Places: History, Repetition and the Musical Imagination." The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 3:4. (1994). 673-691. 22. Gabriel Skoog. "Synthesizing Identity: Gestures of Filiation and Affiliation in Turkish Popular Music." 52-71.

THE EMPIRE TO REPUBLIC CRISIS: FANTEZI Eventually, Kemalists’ insistence on imposing an artificial, homogenous identity produced a sort of “empire to republic crisis.” This was essentially a crisis of identity that resulted from Republican attempts to erase the Ottoman legacy, which had played a key role in shaping the organic identities of many of Turkey’s citizens. The prevalence of the problematique of identity engendered by the “empire to republic crisis” is evidenced by the fact that it appears as a major theme in various works of Turkish literature, including Ahmet Tanpınar’s A Mind at Peace and Halide Edib’s The Clown and His Daughter. In both of these works, the authors represent the capital of Ottoman Turkey, Istanbul, as suffering from a social and cultural illness induced by the Kemalist denial of the Ottoman legacy. They go on to argue for the possibility of a cultural union between elements of Kemalist nationalism and Turkey’s Ottoman Islamic legacy. These authors’ calls for more comprehensive and inclusive forms of culture and identity are paralleled by the cultural backlash that highlighted the inadequacy of Atatürk’s fantasy of cultural homogeny. In an effort to reconnect with Eastern, more traditional aspects of their identity, Turkish citizens began rejecting synthesized forms of Republican music, choosing instead to tune into Eastern stations like Radio Cairo.23 Similarly, Arabic movies and their soundtracks became increasingly popular, to the extent that in 1938 a ban was placed on the importation of Arabic movies and the public broadcasting of Arabic lyrics to their soundtracks.24 When one considers the unique ability of music to enable the “politics of the multiple” by simultaneously combining heterophonous elements, conveying meaning in forms that transcend language, and producing a collective, simultaneous experience amongst its listeners25, it is not surprising that in the context of this cultural backlash, music served as a powerful tool to challenge Kemalism.

Musical Transculturation: A Challenge to the Kemalist National Identity

23. Stokes. "Voices and Places: History, Repetition and the Musical Imagination." 673-691. 24. Tekelioğlu. "The Rise of a Spontaneous Synthesis: The Historical Background of Turkish Popular Music." 194-215. 25. Stokes. "Music and the Global Order." 47-72.

26. Tekelioğlu. "The Rise of a Spontaneous Synthesis: The Historical Background of Turkish Popular Music." 194-215. 27. Akman, A. "Modernist Nationalism: Statism and National Identity in Turkey." 23-51.

One of the first musical genres that emerged to challenge notions of Kemalist nationalism was the fantezi genre. As the popularity of Arab films within Turkey grew, so did the popularity of their soundtracks.26 The Kemalist ban on broadcasting the original Arabic lyrics of these songs led to the creation of a new musical genre, fantezi, which redubbed the lyrics of Arabic songs in Turkish and occasionally reworked the music itself so as to circumvent the restrictions imposed by Republican censorship.27 Through its ability to incorporate Eastern musical influences into Turkey’s popular musical culture, the fantezi genre served as a useful starting point for the musical contestation of Kemalism.

ARABESK: MASTER NARRATIVE OF THE “OUTSIDER” 28. Tekelioğlu. "The Rise of a Spontaneous Synthesis: The Historical Background of Turkish Popular Music." 194-215.

29. Ibid.

30. Ibid. 31. Stokes, M. "Islam, the Turkish State and Arabesk." Popular Music 11:2. (1992). 213-227. 32. Tekelioğlu. "The Rise of a Spontaneous Synthesis: The Historical Background of Turkish Popular Music." 194-215. 33. Ibid.

34. Stokes. "Islam, the Turkish State and Arabesk." 213-227. 35. Ibid.

Perhaps the largest musical challenge to the monolithic culture of Kemalism came in the form of the Arabesk genre. As rural immigrants began to establish themselves on the outskirts of large cities in the late 1940s, a cultural demand for a more authentic, rural music that incorporated Eastern and Ottoman Islamic aspects of identity was engendered.28 In response, Arabesk, an “East-West” musical synthesis, was created. Largely considered to be Occidental, Arabesk turned the Oriental styling of Republicanproduced music on its head.29 Arabesk draws on the repertoire of traditional melodic progressions of Eastern music, known as makam, to form the base of its melodic constructs, while it employs Eastern vocal techniques and traditional Turkish instruments, such as the bağlama (a long-necked lute) to give its music a distinctly Eastern flavor. At the same time, Arabesk acknowledges the influence of Kemalist modernization on Turkish identity by incorporating Western sonorities, modified versions of Western musical polyphony, and Western instruments, such as extended strings and the electrosaz (an electric variation of the bağlama), into its compositions.30 In doing so, Arabesk enables its listeners to construct a subjective space of inner alterity (or personal negotiation) within the larger context of the national identity. This allows its audience to grapple with more complex, pluralistic, and subjective notions of personal identity.31 This space of alterity opened by Arabesk, in combination with its incorporation of Eastern musical elements, led Republican cultural elitists to immediately decry the genre as “degenerate”.32 Arabesk was viewed by Kemalists as a form of cultural rebellion undertaken by the lower-class, reactionary periphery of Republican society to challenge the Kemalist elites. As a result, it was banned by the Turkish Radio and Television Commission in 1948.33 Upon examination of the lyrical content of Arabesk and the identity of its major composers, it becomes apparent that the Kemalist association of Arabesk with the reactionary periphery was not far off the mark. Many Arabesk singers were migrants from the Arabic and Kurdish-speaking regions of Southeast Anatolia and in consequence were marginalized by Turkish nationalism.34 A significant number of Arabesk performers were also transvestites and transexuals35 whose liminal identities challenged the Kemalist fantasy of a bounded monolithic identity. In an effort to express culturally suppressed elements of their minority identities, these artists sought an artistic outlet in Arabesk. This is evidenced in the lyrical content of Arabesk, which is often predicated on the master narrative of the outsider. Many Arabesk compositions address the powerlessness

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felt by many Turkish citizens at the hands of Kemalism by tracing the narrative of a peripheralized outsider who endures some form of injustice for the advancement of an ambiguous “common desire.”36 This narrative closely traced the previously unacknowledged plight of many Turks, who felt that Turkish nationalism came at the expense of their personal identities. The transcultural nature of Arabesk, in combination with its ability to speak to the concerns and subjective identities of many Turks, enabled it to quickly become one of Turkey’s most popular musical genres.37 By addressing the issue of the Kemalist marginalization of the individual, Arabesk opened up a critical space for contesting Republican notions of monolithic identity. In this way, the genre served as a point of resistance for the Turkish periphery against official cultural nationalism.

36. Stokes. "Islam, the Turkish State and Arabesk." 213-227.

37. Tekelioğlu. "The Rise of a Spontaneous Synthesis: The Historical Background of Turkish Popular Music." 194-215.

POPULAR MUSIC: TRANSCULTURATION AS A SITE OF RESISTANCE If Arabesk served as a point of resistance for the Turkish periphery against Kemalist nationalism, then Turkish popular music served as a point of resistance for more affluent Turkish urbanites.38 The removal of the Kemalist Republican People’s Party from power in 1950 following the first free elections in Turkey signified the people’s discontent with the party’s notions of modernization and led to a softening of cultural censorship.39 As a result, various new musical subgenres emerged under the umbrella category of Turkish popular music, which provided artists with more comprehensive means of expressing their identity. In general, Turkish popular music is derived from European forms of popular music and is infused with stylistic elements of traditional Eastern music. One of the most prevalent forms of Turkish popular music, Anatolian pop, created a sort of “East-West” synthesis of Turkish folk music and European pop by fusing European instruments, Western musical polyphony, and certain European musical modes with Eastern systems of makam and variations of the alaturka melody characteristic of classical Turkish art music.40 Anatolian pop, along with other genres of Turkish popular music, such as Anatolian rock, also sought to channel the socio-political unrest of the 1960s that emerged in response to popular discontent with Kemalist nationalism through their increasingly politicized lyrics.41 By resurrecting and incorporating traditional elements of Eastern and Ottoman musical styles, in addition to questioning the politics of nationalism by means of lyrical content, Turkish popular music served as a vehicle of cultural defiance and thus presented another obstacle to the successful implementation of the Kemalist identity. Another effect of the proliferation of various subgenres of Turkish popular music was the increasing popularity of Turkish gazinos, or nightclubs. These nightclubs served as a haven for emerging forms of transnational music. Through the multicultural repertoire of musical performers and genres they presented, the gazinos further challenged Kemalist nationalism by acting as powerful agents of social transculturation.42

Musical Transculturation: A Challenge to the Kemalist National Identity

38. Gabriel Skoog. "Synthesizing Identity: Gestures of Filiation and Affiliation in Turkish Popular Music." 52-71. 39. Ibid.

40. Ibid.

41. Ibid.

42. Ibid.

CONCLUSION In tracing the trajectory of Kemalist attempts to implement a national identity, it becomes apparent that the Kemalists’ main failure was their mistaken conviction that cultural authenticity and transculturation are opposing forces. In attempting to engineer an authentic, monolithic Turkish identity, Kemalists failed to realize that authentic identities are often the byproduct of interactions between varied and sometimes contradictory forces. Thus, authentic identities are often transcultural. Music, with its ability to transcend cultural boundaries vis-á-vis innately graspable elements such as rhythm, melody, and harmony, has the potential to serve as a powerful agent of transculturation and thus posed a formidable challenge to the Kemalist national identity.

43. Simpson, C. "Turkish Cinema's Resurgence: The 'Deep Nation' Unravels." Senses of Cinema. 39. (2011). 1-15.

44. Gabriel Skoog. "Synthesizing Identity: Gestures of Filiation and Affiliation in Turkish Popular Music." 52-71.

The notion of music’s potential to act as an agent of transculturation is investigated in Fatih Akın’s film, Crossing the Bridge. Presented as a travelogue, the film explores how the increasingly cosmopolitan nature of Istanbul and the complex series of interactions between the various peoples and cultures it contains have led to the proliferation of various transnational musical genres within the city. These genres range from grunge, electronica, and hip-hop to Arabesk, Sufi fusion, and traditional Turkish wedding music, among others.43 When one examines the modern repertoire of Turkish musical genres, Akın’s thesis that Turkish music is evolving to reflect the nation’s increasingly cosmopolitan identity is reinforced. In recent years, Turkish musicians have begun to abandon traditional musical markers of geographic affiliation in favor of actively incorporating international musical influences. Musicians have increasingly begun to use a wider array of non-European, non-Turkish instruments from a variety of musical traditions that range from Greek to Spanish to Arab to Hindustani. The boundaries of musical genres have begun to blur to the point that past markers of musical affiliation, such as polyphony, instrumentation, and rhythm, are no longer sufficient to denote a specific musical genre.44 Thus, in examining recent musical trends, music’s ability to facilitate transculturation becomes apparent, but so does its tendency to reflect changes in national and cultural identities. The propensity of music to mirror such identities is an important factor to consider when examining the reasons behind the failure of the Kemalist identity to gain widespread popularity. Throughout the history of the Turkish Republic, music served as a tool for the people to express and reconnect with various aspects of their identity and thus posed a significant challenge to the implementation of Kemalist nationalism. The Kemalist identity largely failed because it refused to recognize the authenticity of transcultural identities. Thus, music’s affinity to transcend cultural boundaries enabled it to become an important site of resistance. In analyzing the social and musical trends of modern Turkey, music emerges at multiple points as an articulation of the people’s identity. Due to the manner in which music and identity mutually reflect and encourage each other, the reasons behind the failed imposition of the Kemalist “West-Origin” musical synthesis can ultimately be read as a reflection for the reasons behind the failure of the Kemalist national identity to transform the identity of the Turkish population at large.

Juhood: The Journal of Middle Eastern and North African Affairs

Juhood Eileen Adams is currently a sophomore in the Duke Undergraduate class of 2014. She is pursuing majors in both Public Policy and Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, with a concentration in Arabic. Next year, she plans to study abroad in Jordan. Munty Natour majored in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies with a concentration in Arabic and graduated in 2011. He is a first generation Israeli-Palestinian connecting to his ethnicity through music, language, and hip-hop. Naomi Riemer is majoring in International Comparative Studies with a focus on the Middle East. She traveled to Turkey with Duke during the summer of 2011. Fernando Revelo La Rotta will graduate in 2013 with a double major in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, concentration in Arabic, and Cultural Anthropology and a minor in Women's Studies. He participated in the Duke Engage program in Cairo in 2010, and hopes to return to Cairo to fulfill a research project this upcoming summer. Samantha Tropper is a junior majoring in International Comparative Studies with a concentration in the Middle East and a minor in Arabic. She is interested in the Middle East because of its rich cultural and political environment. She spent last summer working with street children in Cairo, Egypt. Andi Frkovich will graduate in 2012 with a major in Asian & Middle Eastern Studies, a concentration in Arabic, and a minor in Spanish. She has spent time traveling and studying in Morocco, Jordan, Egypt, and Bahrain. After graduation, she will commission in the Navy as a Surface Warfare-Intelligence Officer.

Juhood, The Journal of Middle Eastern and North African Affairs, is a scholarly publication that aims to encourage discussion on the MENA region at Duke University. It tries to provide a diverse array of opinions on the cultures, histories and religions that constitute the region. It strives to be a space in which students can publish research on the Middle East and North Africa. It endeavors to place objectivity and erudition at the center of each contribution. 53

Call for Submissions

• Please submit contributions to juhoodjournal@gmail.com. • Essays may be print or photo, and should include a title, subtitle, author and his/her year of study. • Papers should be between 1,200 and 5,000 words. • Papers should be formatted by Chicago-Style Citation guidelines, with footnotes. Do not include in-text citations or a bibliography. • Photo essays should feature five to eight pictures. • Photo essays should include an abstract that situates your photo within a narrative. • Submissions can concern any number of disciplines, and are not limited to the Islamo-Christian tradition or a discourse on Arabs. Issues of popular culture, the arts, human rights and Mizrahim presence are just a few viable topics. • The papers should be well-researched and reflect a significant amount of academic rigor. For an electronic version of the journal, please visit www.issuu.com/juhood/docs/juhood2

Juhood: The Journal of Middle Eastern and North African Affairs