#female-muslim-singers

#female-muslim-singers

Two hundred and fifty-six Quran memorisers—Palestinians who have committed the entire holy book to memory—sat in the place while companions beside them listened attentively, following each word carefully to ensure the recitation remained flawless. The gathering, titled Safwat Al-Huffaz—The Elite of Quran Memorisers, has become a special collective way of observing Ramadan in Gaza.

My parents fell in love with the Islamic Revolution when I was a baby and welcomed life under its strict religious rules. The Ayatollah's face stared down from the walls at home, a daily reminder of what was expected and what was forbidden. This included being gay, but by my teenage years I knew I was different from my peers, and began hiding my sexuality from my parents and the world outside.

We at the Organisation for Women's Freedom in Iraq condemn in the strongest terms this cowardly terrorist crime, which we consider a direct attack on the feminist struggle and the values of freedom and equality.

"The show is about giving the pen back to the writer, giving the paintbrush back to the artist, during this time of genocide," the Ridikkuluz told Hyperallergic in an interview at the gallery. "And when there's been so much censorship, these are artists that might not have been able to do this anywhere else."

The moving story of a Tunisian man who refuses to let cancer define his mother's life and turns her treatment into a celebration of love, joy and resilience. When Tunisian TV host Hassen becomes a full-time caregiver for his mother Saliha, dying of lung cancer, their home and hospital visits become the backdrop for an intimate family love story. This observational documentary follows them through birthday celebrations, 4am medication, difficult medical consultations and quiet, emotional moments together.

Rap music has long been framed as a genre of excess: too loud, too violent, too vulgar. From its beginnings, it has been associated with anger, confrontation, and a form of hypermasculinity that leaves little room for alternative expressions. In France especially, rap has often been perceived as the voice of male youth from working-class neighborhoods, carrying narratives of struggle, rivalry, and domination.

find one another in the dark,

In early January, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, a concert benefit for Palestine and Sudan conjured all the fury of an acoustic night at the local coffee shop. Musicians played stripped-down songs on a stage decorated with rugs, floor lamps, and couches. Members of the audience, mostly 20-somethings and teens, leaned in and filmed intimate performances by their favorite cult artists.

I noticed the swelling of the double bass first, quickly followed by the fluttering of brushed cymbals. A saxophone pushing against the edges of a melody swiftly married the notes together, chords drifting haphazardly before reaching a slow, pulsing groove. The jazz quartet performed in front of a liquor cabinet lined with whisky bottles; low-hanging lights teetered overhead, throwing shapes on the monochromatic marble-tiled floor. Outside, a leafy veranda was filled with diners, the music drifting through flung-open doors and windows.

In the displacement camps of Ad-Damazin in southeastern Sudan's Blue Nile State, the war is reshaping social norms and introducing new realities that are forcing Sudanese women into manual labour to survive. Rasha is a displaced mother. She has ignored old boundaries and perceptions of what a man's work is and started working as a woodcutter to feed her children. Carpentry is hard, but the axe has become an extension of my hand, Rasha told Al Jazeera Arabic.