Årets Julklapp 2010 en Hajj

Det har gått en vecka sen Taimour Abdulwahab spräng sig i luften på Drottninggatan i Stockholm. En vecka som har visat en nytolkning i ordet ”provokativ” för mig.
Jag arbetar extra på restaurang sedan 12 år tillbaka. Och lika länge som jag arbetat på krogen har jag använt en så kallad hajj, en muslimsk huvudbonad, när jag arbetar. Den är perfekt på sommaren den svalkar och ger dessutom solskydd på huvudet eftersom jag är flintis. Huvudbonaden har även bidragit till en mängd intressanta disskutioner vid frågan: Vad är det du har på huvudet? Är du muslim? Hajjens stilfullhet har kommenterats av män över 50 på Östermalm samt hälsosam nyfikenhet över området Mellanöstern där frågor och undringar har kunnat avklarats i en avspänd atmosfär. Min hajj har varit en perfekt brobyggare och möjlighet till nyfikna frågor från den medelålders övre medelklassen på de finare etablissemangen i Stockholm.
Men denna vecka tog det en ändring. Jag jobbade på en julmiddag för ett känt företag för fritidskläder. När glöggen hade värmt upp de frusna gästerna påpekade en man, när jag kom till bordet, pekandes på mitt huvud:
-Är inte det där lite provokativt?
Jag frågade vad han menade, och han svarade:
-Jag är ju inte sån! Men ändå är det inte lite provokativt med tanke på den senaste händelsen på Drtottninggatan.
Jag svarade att skulle denna huvudbonad uppfattas som provokativ är det väl dags att vi alla börjar använda en sådan för att visa solidaritet till våra muslimska bröder och systrar, om det nu är så att vi inte är ”såna”.

A voice of its own!!!

With my work of problematizing arbitrary western; want and need, to sexually “liberate” the Arab, with what I call pink imperialism, the “One Day One Struggle” launched by the Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies, is very important. This is a true struggle, a voice of its own.

In Lebanon the organizations Meem, Helem and Nasawiya created this video campaign where different people from different part of the society talks about these issues. Listen watch and get inspired.
The campaign wesite that is called jismi "my body"
www.jismi.net

Sun City Girls 330.003 Cross Dressers

Théatre de Beyrouth is hosting the two half Lebanese brothers Alan and Richard Bishop from the legendary experimental rock group Sun City Girls. The group was founded in 1981 in Arizona. With a style that is hard to categorize, somewhere in the land of experimental rock, that borders with jazz and spoken word; they became the ultimate underground rock group.
Yesterday was the legendary night with the brothers playing old Sun City Girls repertoires and tonight is the night for the brothers to play both their solo projects.
In the same time the label Annihaya is releasing their third album Sun City Girls Gum Arabic, an album of covers of the band’s repertoire.
You can read on their homepage: “Trust NO One! Investigate for yourself. Self-motivate yourself to KNOW (Not BELIEVE). Believing is for idiots. Knowing is everything. How does one KNOW? Figure it out YOURSELF! No one else can tell you or show you how."
I just found myself two mentors Amen / A of Arabia

Articles and Molokhia

I'm almost done with my articles about Chaza Cherafeddien's exhibition "Divine Comedy" that inspired me to write about the Amrad a while ago. I had a big portion of Molokhia today and i think that was the reason my productivity went sky high.

They say that the Druze community can't eat it because of its resemblance of sperm. Hmmmmm

Kind of tolerant and kind of like San Francisco means a real hell for others.

You can read in Jerusalem Post today that Lonely Planet has ranked Tel-Aviv as the 3:rd hottest city for 2011, and describing: “ Israel's most international city as hedonistic, tolerant, cultured, and a truly diverse 21st-century hub.”

And then comes the common way to explain for us how hot and sizzling it is, by comparing it to another international (read western) city, by calling it:” "a kind of San Francisco in the Middle East."
What I love with Pink Washing, is that in all its aggression to really make us understand how liberate and sexually free Tel-Aviv is, its still this wonderful insecurity weaved into all this.
If u writes “hedonistic” and put the word “tolerant” next to it.Does it mean that Tel-Aviv is tollerant to my hedoinism or that Tel-Aviv is tollerant in general? If a city already is hedonistic isn't the tollerance obvious? I think it's fishy already there. And after that the ever so wonderful, “a kind of San Francisco”.



All this shows to me that Tel-Aviv is kind of Hedonistic and kind of like San Francisco. So in between all this, “kind of “what is lurking? What is hiding in the “kind of”?
Maybe that a few miles away the country of this “tollerant, and truly diversed” city is un-tolerantly and treating part of its diversity like animals.
I think these pictures really show that it is no pride in occupation.



Pictures from "an Israeli NGO that collects testimonies and photos of troops who have served in the occupied territories" Read more on the blog Water in Majorca.

Pink Imperialism part 2. Pink Washing in Beirut?

I was at my favorite gay bar in Beirut last night. This bar is very frequented by tourists. The music was pumping, the Halloween decoration was hanging down from the ceiling. I sat with my friend who is the owner of the bar and drank my favorite late night drink, Arraq.
All of a sudden a big and noisy man with maybe a little bit too much to drink entered the bar. He was happy and loud and wanted Arraq like me. He kept on asking if me and my friend were a couple so we started to play along. He wanted us to kiss and touch each other in front of him, and asked if all of us could have a three some. I got amused by his way of consuming me and my friend as an object for his desire, so I started to talk about Beirut and sex. The man was a chancellor from The Australian Embassy of Cairo and was at a visit in Beirut to let off some steam.
He praised Lebanon for being so more Liberal then Egypt, when it came to sex and bragged about how he went down to the Corniche of Beirut and had sex with five Syrian workers. Here in Lebanon the term “Syrian worker” means a poor man from Syria with no legal papers that is doing all the shit job for the Lebanese people. In Cairo the poor people that he had sex with had to be bought in a much discreet manner.
-It’s somehow through these gay men on the embassies that we have start to have a little liberation to be able to open bar and clubs that is oriented towards the gay crowd. My friend said.
Now, when the rainbow flag is the new black for the neo-liberals, what does gay liberation means in a neo-liberal world with demands for open markets? Now when gay is THE measuring tool for the west, to stamp a country in the global south “western approved”, what is the demands?
Israel is getting the trend and is now promoting itself as “the only safe place for gay people in the Middle East”. With this approved stamp from the west, Israel is pink washing the not only the crimes and the occupation towards the Palestinian but hides the fact that Israel is a very religious, homophobic and patriarchal society. Benjamin Peim wrote an article in The Jerusalem Post, that the hunt for the pink dollars has positioned Beirut and Tel-Aviv in a battle of becoming THE hotspot for gays in the Middle East.
If this is accurate, what happens to the people actually living here when the white man once again is demanding an open market and to have access to this region? What happens when gay life becomes a gated society for a white man to indulge himself with sex from the hot, horny and desperate Arabs? Is liberation meant for the poor Syrian worker or the Palestinian refugee kid that is working extra to let white men, on holiday, blowing their cocks at the corniche?
I’m willing to get rid of all symbols, if a rainbow flag is going from being a symbol for protection to be a symbol for a state to hide it´s crimes done to its population.

Amrad and I part 2

I discussed beauty and masculinity/androgyny with a friend. The reason was that I have been to some friends in Dahi, and many of them have these portraits that almost look like homage to Hussein, Ali’s son the cousin of the prophet Muhammed. They are all brushed with colors to highlight eyebrows and lashes and the cheeks are made rosy. I kept on thinking of the Amrad, being an object of beauty, but here the beard don’t seem to be a problem to portray a man as an object.

I fell over these pictures of talibans, that have the same postproduction like the pictures that I’ve seen in Dahi. I think they look absolutely amazing. Don’t you?

Amrad and I, or “we all share fascination over the androgynous” part 1

I’m writing an article about Chaza Cherafeddines exhibition “Divine Comedy”, that was exposed September 23rd through October 13th at the Agial Art Gallery in Beirut. The project deals with our “understanding of beauty” and look at the changes in the Islamic art from the 16th and the 18th centuries to the early 20th century . What you can see is a change, in beauty, from a more androgynies state of mind to a more fixed binary system of gender.
Chaza Cherafeddine and I have both read the book “Women With Mustaches and Men Without Beard”, by Afsaneh Najmabadi, that deals with art from the Qajar Iran (1785-1925). So we both had a lot to talk about. One part of the book deals with the changes in the perception of gender by comparing portraits of “amorous couple”, from having almost identical features in the early days to become a more binary fixed perception of gender towards the 20th century. In the early portraits the young couple where both an object of beauty and desire for the male painter, to change to be an exclusive female feature in the later images. Towards the 20th century the woman’s breast became bare to exaggerate her sexuality and the man had a beard and became a man. It seems to Najmabadi that when the modernist project came along during the 19th under pressure of the western power, the more binary and fixed became the gender.
The beardless young man pictured in these paintings are called Amrad or Ghulam, they where the object of beauty, purity and innocence. West has sometimes described this “culture” to be of pedophilia but it was more a matter of admiration then of sexuality. What west seems to forget is its own obsession of androgynous youth in arts and literature from Leonardo Davinci to Thomas Mann .

But with west’s schooling project of the Middle East, the Amrad had to go. It feels like the modernism with its urge to clean up the world there was no time for in betweens: Efficiency please! So the man had to be more a man and the women had to be more a women. But through my research the Amrad or the Ghulam never really disappeared he has been hiding to have a comeback every now and then. It has been adopted by writers and movie directors both in the east and the west, and fiercely loved by the fashion industry in the end of the 20th century. My girlfriend that is fashionista complained in the nineties that “Why do all women have to look like boys on the catwalk, I’m getting to old for this!”
I fell over these pictures when I was browsing the internet. The painting is an old painting from the Qajar Dynasty and the photo is from the Jordanese born Canadian designer Rad Hourani’s latest collection. Well two different versions of an “amorous couple”.

Leka@eka3 Athens Workshop KAZAMADA

A video of Kazamada from the workshop in Athens

Kazamada last night in Beirut at Wallimat Warde in Hamra

The super group Kazamada that collects four corners of the Middle East and creates a unique sound that is hard to explain. Twinkie electronica together with steady cardboard box beats trashed with rocky guitars and that soothes out with a caressing oud. The members; Donia Massoud (Egypt), Mahmoud Radaideh (Jordan), Zeid Hamdan (Lebanon), and Tamer Abu Ghazaleh (Palestine) launched the band in Athens the 8th of October and have paved their way through the Middle East this is the last night in Beirut so catch them while you can.
For more info go to Kazamada/eka3

Me and Mahmoud ”I need a job” part 2

The Iranian party is over. All is cool. Bilateral relationships between Lebanon and Iran is stated and we all can breathe now, and go from Iranian long cocking back to Lebanese fast food .
The drama last time about the Azzam Brigade threat of the earth to quake and my stress of not being able to listen to Dolly Parton at The SpeakEasy in Hamra got settled in a cool way. The earth didn’t quake but I wasn’t able to listen to Dolly P because the DJ didn’t want to put Cunt back into Cuntry and only played Garth Brooks (but that’s ok).
Well today is Friday and I’m back at The SpeakEasy as DJ Richard, from the DJ trio Chicago Berlin Express, is spinning the coolest cool. That man is making Fridays his Rich-ual.
Well you know where to find me, yallah come!!!!

For more info go to
SpeakEasy

Me and Mahmoud ”I need a job”

Tomorrow is the day when President “I need a job” is coming to town. I can’t pronounce his last name so I change it; I’m a student in Arabic it’s complicated as it is.
Will there be a war? Will Israel be so provoked so the bombs will fall over southern Lebanon again? Or will it be THE war that’s going to show us who’s in charge? I don’t know? Right now I don’t care. Tomorrow is another day. What I learned through living in a society like Lebanon is we don’t have time to worry about tomorrow. There will always be a risk for a war. Lebanon’s position as an intermediary roll or as the traditional saying goes “Lebanon’s strength lies in its weakness” puts this country always at risk.
Tomorrow is Wednesday and it’s Country and Western night at Speak Easy in Hamra. There is where I will celebrate Mr. President’s arrival. And while the bombs fall I hope that I have time to listen to at least one or two songs by Dolly Parton
Peace A. of Arabia and “I need a job”

Picture from LA Times

Get ure freak on Hamra is sizzeling again

The bar Speak Easy in Hamra really collects the coolest cool in Beirut. Wednesdays are country nights, and when I say country I mean real read neck country. The hipsters that are playing really puts Cunt back into Cuntry. Fridays are dedicated to Sir Mix a Lot: Beirut Chicago Express. The blend is the best of bouncy electro, ghetto tech, old school house and Michael Jackson. Get your ass down

Beirut and my intersectsexual behavior

I have spent a month now in Beirut. When I lived in Damascus, Beirut was the place to spend some decadent five days or so when the need for some western action got too much of a stronghold over me. Five days of decadence then back to Damascus and to law and order (at least on the surface). But now I live here and it opens up a whole different city. I find myself in between the intersectarian/”we don’t give a shit about what your belief is” in Hamra, central Beirut, to Dahya (the southern suburb of Beirut) with Hizbollah martyrs on the wall
I got my ticket to Dahya, or Dahi as people say here, through a one night stand with a man that I met in the city a while ago. A widower that lived in Dahi with his two sons, I didn’t found out the latter part until the morning after when I was acting like a good old friend for breakfast.
But I keep coming back to Dahi, not so much because of the sex but the stories I get told. Stories about gay life “on the side”, the 2006 July war and yeas, Hezbollah get its fair share on the balcony. I try to map what I hear with a little help from the book “History of Modern Palestine” by Fawwas Traboulsi. It’s not fucking easy but I like non easy things.

More stories to come

Jag är liten och kan inte vinna men jag kan fucka shit upp!!

Jag är inte shockad, bedrövad eller ledsen. Jag är flyförbannad och och har en kämparanda som kokar i min kropp. Nu börjar jobbet, hösten 2010 då Sverige blev aktivister. Sluta aldrig prata, synliggör diskriminering, rasism och homofobi var du än ser det. Vi kan inte göra något om vi inte synliggör det. Diskuterar vithet och heterohet som norm.

Bidrar med ett budskap från M.I.A Vi vann inte men vi kan fucka shit upp!!!!

Oriental Gay Party med Arabiskt Initiative

Kom till Slussen i kväll för en überfab fest med Arabiskt Initiative. Det blir performance med Hezy Ya Nauaem Group. Komsi Komsi.



Läs om Arabiskt Initiative här

The coolest cool from Beirut!!

Just want to share one of my favorite bands from Lebanon Mashrou' leila. Here with their song Raksit Leila. They have been playing together since 2008 and played this year on July the 9th at the Byblos International Festival together with names like the Gorrilaz.
Makes me wanna slice up my Batinjan and pour some oil on it and shoffff in the oven. Ya dig Ya dig

Who’s the terrorist #2!!!!!

I know I’m late, I got this video a long time ago but I didn’t have time to fit it in. But after my last blog post about the hero mom of five kids having a knock from the FBI because she’s a peace activist I thought this is the time. M.I.A. drops it, shows it.
Because of the unfair geographical accumulation of power and wealth, the violence towards the violent other is the violence towards the Muslim, the Dark, the unknown to the hegemonic white. But it could be in another world, the violence towards the Ginger.
We are all born free. Freedom was not invented in USA and Europe.

Who´s the terrorist!!!!

Check this video out. I got it from Twitter from the fabulous Jew4palestine .It’s the best so far to explain for us, who promotes oppression, to be a terrorist action or just a call for justice and human rights. This woman is a hero. There are many Palestinian that would like to know when an Israeli terrorist action is going to happened. For these people to know like the female agent says “to prevent violence when it occurs”. Never forget that freedom of expression and speach is; white, male and heterosexual.

7 million dollars a day is sent to Israel to fund the crimes towards the Palestinian people.
Who´s the terrorist!!!!!!!!!

I was dropping the bolistic like a poetry slammer!!!

I was invited to host a gayglamorama event this weekend in Stockholm. I was supposed to be cheerful and cool, but still raise some awareness about my thesis “Pink Imperialism”.
When I entered the location, a spotless, chic bar with sunthirsty Swedes drinking Rosé minding their own business, I knew that this was going to be my hardest gig ever. I was so close to call it a day and just walk away. People wanted alcohol and musclemarries not politics.
But I didn’t gave in and with my sidekick Nathan A.K.A. Nasty Nate spinning some pre-Aids disco following my stories from my diary, that was painting the lecture with some more sexy colors and gave it some flesh and bone, people started to pay some attention.
At the end some people came towards me and told me that this was some of the most interesting thing they ever heard. Even if all that enthusiasm is gone the day after, I think I planted some seeds of curiosity.
After this I can do anything
Peace out!!!!

Thanks Jonas, Arto, Anders and everybody at Regnbågsrummet for beliving that it would work

You can get pictures from the event here

Tack alla!!!!

Tack alla ni som deltog och lyssnade på min Slampoetry/föreläsning/störaieratrosé happening i Lördags.

Ni e grymma!!!!!

Högläsning på Mälarpaviljongen!!!!

Jag kommer att ha högläsning ur min dagbok från mina resor i Syrien och Libanon på Mälarpaviljongen på Lördag. Infotainmentet varvas med musik vald av Nathan (Serious Party samt Mellanförskapet). Vi ska ska skratta och chockas, allt kan hända. Kom !!!

Mer info kommer snart...........

Can’t get enough of David Harvey #2

I stumbled over this fantastic cartoon last night before sleeping. The cartoon is illustrating the lecture by David Harvey that I posted last night. It makes it a hell of a lot easier to get the message, if you’re economically illiterate like me.
Fight the power!!!!!

Can’t get enough of David Harvey

I found a new lover and that is the book “Spaces of Global Capitalism” by Professor David Harvey. This book is a radical new way to understand global capitalism. I quoted him in my article Pink Imperialism and he helped me to focus on the economical rights when I question the; neo liberal, pink, homogenic solution to oppression of gay people in the global south to throw them another franchised Gay Pride parade.

Here is one lecture that he did for the RSA earlier this year.

Queer tar sig in i Kultursfären i Libanon och Syrien.

I mitt förra nyhetsbrev skrev jag om förutsättningarna för kulturarbetare att arbeta i Syrien. Jag tog bland annat upp censuren där skändningen av presidenten och de olika religionerna är röda linjer man inte överträder . Nyhetsbrevet var mitt första och skrevs med en rätt så limiterad vetskap om det Syriska samhället.
I det senaste nyhetsbrevet fördjupar jag mig i ämnet censur. Med att min vistelse blev längre och att jag blev en del av samhället, har jag sett både regimkritiska pjäser och dansstycken som ifrågasätter könsroller. Med detta började jag undra vad det egentligen är som är det absolut förbjudna.
Välkommen till de politiska kritikerna och könsifrågasättarna.Nyhetsbrev #2

Image belongs too bekhsoos.com

We forgot the struggle and to act up!!

Many of us admire the normative. We wanted to become like them, act like them and mostly be loved by them. And we want to oppress like them.
The solidarity for Israel in the gay community really turns me off. You can kiss your boyfriend on the street if you’re a man in Tel-Aviv, but not if you’re a woman from Israel and you’re married to a man that is from the occupied territories. My kiss would feel bitter if my neighbor couldn’t enjoy the same.
“There is no pride in occupation” like the gays in black are chanting in Tel-Aviv. But now the Palestinian queers is acting up, and they need our solidarity…..if we’re not busy imitating the normative to oppress the subaltern.
Read this article about “The Palestinian Queers for BDS” from the bekhsoos.com a queer arab magazine.

The image comes from QuAIA " Queers Against Israeli Apartheid"

My hero Lady Bunny telling it like it is

I came to N.Y the first time in 1990. I was 17 years old, with one big bag standing all alone at the Port Authority station in the middle of the night, trying to find somewhere to call my home. My home became the club Panty Girdle with the host Lady Bunny. She dropped the bolistic every Friday night and I fell in love. Here you have a vintage performance from the N.Y drag queen festival called Wigstock.

So if someone questions your life style, whoever you are: Queer/Arab/Muslim/Tranny/Christian/Atheist……Just tell them “I live the life I love and I love the life that I live”

Pink Imperialism Stop the Hegemony

My article "Pink Imperialism" get well recived. At least a start to try to open up for alternative ways to express love and sexuality.

Read comments on the article from Zimbabwe

Pink Imperialism

Finally my first publishing on the topic”Pink Imperialism” has been published. It’s for the Pan-African web magazine Pambazuka.
Read all about it here Pink Imperialism

Queer Arab Festival in Stockholm

Finally our worlds are united- Högkvateret in Stockholm are giving us a Queer Arab Festival, with the”too cool for school” poet Amahl Khouri from Jordan and True Bloo5 from the US. It will be performances, art and get your “curiosity mingle talkative state of mind” ready for some knowledge that you don’t normally get served. This is behind the biased media, and this spells: hope, passion and fuck you. Come baby come!!!!!Info about the festival Fi Taharrok

Boycott Israel!

“This is not a videogame, violence is not a moving image on TV, it’s the daily nightmare of millions”
This quote can be read on the homepage of the Palestinian/French/Tunisian group “Checkpoint 303”. The IDF assault on the “Ship To Gaza” convoy made us in the west, for the first time, believe and feel it. As I said in an interview with the group, for the magazine Interruptions:
“I have heard this in so many demonstrations in Stockholm. But even when I scream it out, a videogame is what it was to me,”
This time this horrendous Videogame, played by one of the strongest military forces in the world, stroke us. Humanity is out of order. Compassion is not functioning. Solidarity is pushed back. And we have to bring it all back.
We have the power. If the neoliberal economy is based on the wheel of consummation, use your power. Boycott Israel. Join the BDS movement NOW!!!!

The Israeli attack on Ship To Gaza.

I woke up this morning with the horrific news. An Israeli attack on one of the ships of the peace convoy Ship To Gaza. It was said that the demonstrators where defending themselves with axes and cudgels when the IDF was entering the ship, and that was the reason to for the IDF to open fire and to kill nineteen and wound over sixty. This is nothing new IDF, a trigger-happy bunch of extreme nationalists, have a habit to kill defenders with nothing more to protect themselves then rocks.
But this time the victims is not anonymous Palestinians that we in the west sometimes feel sorrow for as a collective and as a global guilt. The victims this time are our neighbors and friends. This time we don’t have to think harder, better and brighter to feel rage. The victim can be you if you have the guts to stand against one of the world’s strongest military forces.
Act Now!!! Act Up!! Silence=Death!! to use an AIDS activist logo from the 80’s. Join the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) against Israel. Talk about it, write about it and rage about it.

Bilbränder

Jag såg Integrationsteatern och dess uppsättning "Bilbränder" i kväll. Den cirkulerade runt fyra individer i en förort, på olika nivåer i samhället, men med alienationen som gemensamma nämnare. Allt ramades in med de ständigt brinnande bilarna. I programmet står det:
" Rigmor, en ung arbetslös tjej har tappat hoppet om sin frånvarande far och om framtiden. Ibrahim, en kreativ entreprenör som han kallar sig själv, hoppas på att hans företag en dag kommer att göra honom och hans mor rika. En kväll träffas Ria och Ibbe på den punkt som sammanlänkar storstadens två segregerade områden-den höga bron. Vad de inte vet är att deras föräldrar känner varandra väl och att deras möten kommer att få livsavgörande konsekvenser."

När jag läser att "Utanförskapet har många ansikten, inte bara bilden av en bilbrännare" tänker jag på David Harvey och hans bok " Den globala kapitalismens rum". Han radar upp ett antal fundamentala strukturella motsägelser med den " Nyliberala staten"

" På den folkliga nivån kan strävan efter individens frihet alldeles för lätt gå överstyr och leda till brist på socialt sammanhang. Behovet av att bibehålla dominanta maktrelationer skapar med nödvändighet ett förtryck som motverkar utvecklingen mot individuella friheter....Till dessa motsägelser måste vi då lägga möjligheten att det börjar uppstå ett glapp mellan nyliberalismens uttalade mål-välfärd åt alla- och dess faktiska konsekvens: klassmaktens återupprättande.

Trying to find a framework for my writing

I get a lot of work now. It feels great that the issues that I'm writing about gets attention, but all is new and I'm trying to find a framework for my theses. Pink colonialism hmmm pink imperialism thats better, Well folks some words from Joseph Massad before I stop....for now at least

"The goal of the American and West European gay internationalists is to create a world in their own image. Their Leninist strategy is to be the vanguard party of the world masses who on their own cannot be trusted to bring about the institutionalization of the hetero-homo binary that would create gays and lesbians as well as straight men and women. This is why the Euro-American vanguard will lead “their” struggle to liberation."

Backpacker konstnärer de nya kolonisatörerna?

I och med att Merllanöstern blir mer och mer en region som drar till sig människor, bortom de konfliktfetishiserande förståsigpåarna, undrar man vilka intentioner som drar dessa individer dit.

Vill man lägga till ett spännande land på sin CV? Vill man verka tuff och orädd?

En del av det som diskuterades på Spiritus Mundi

A of Arabia har föreläsning i Malmö 11/5

Jag kommer att föreläsa om mitt arbete som kulturkorrespondent i Mellanöstern för Konstnärsnämden på Tisdag. Det kommer att ske på Spiritus Mundi i Malmö.

Det första brev som publiceras skrevs för ett år sen och min resa i att försöka förstå började med detta. Nu ett år senare har mycket hänt men ni kommer rullande att kunna ta del av min "utveckling" i att veja för vinklad media och godtycklig kunskapsproduktion.

Ni som är i Malmö kom kom kom!!!!!!! Konstnärsnämnden

Interruptions Noise Edition will be out by Tuesday 27th in Amman!

A of Arabia is writing a piece about the fantastic activist electronica group Checkpoint 303. Read all about it.

Noise Edition will be released at Art Lounge Beirut 1st May!

Pink money Pink capitalism Pink colonialism

After 41 years of civilization (after Stonewall)) I think It’s time to stop and think about what the LGBTQ community is doing internationally to spread its fight for “freedom”. I will off and on write about here what I call Pink Colonialism. Part of the gay community has started a liberation campaign towards the Middle East with the aim of liberate those “poor” Arabs.
With no further knowledge about the culture, except what is told to us in the biased media, do they believe that what we have done can be done in the same way in the Middle East.
Stop the pink colonialism and get some unbiased knowledge of a culture that is so rich and full of liberated sexuality at least until we came in the nineteenth century and fucked it up like so many other things.

Long Time no see

I haven’t been here for a while but I haven’t been lazy. I have working around the subject arbitrary LGBTQ colonialism. I’m back and there will be some changes in this blog. This blog will handle anything contemporary, in the moment, old, old school, too cool for school kind of subjects around the Middle East and we and them. Am I we? Who created them? How we is we? And how them is them?

See yaa

Press release about my mission!!!!!!!!!

A of Arabia wants to dismantle the power structure that is around the Middle East, where middle-aged white heterosexual men sit with their head in deep folds and want to explain the Middle East for us. He wants to challenge the colonial discourse that has put the Middle East in a hostage crisis and give people a voice.

A of Arabia is studying Arabic and was in Syria and the surrounding area last year. Meanwhile in Syria, he made including a mini documentary of P3's program "Verkligheten" in which he was called “ A of Arabia with a mission to penetrate Syria's "secret" gay society”. The program experienced instead of explaining to the listener and Apollo quickly realized that this was something that had never been done before. He not only experiences an LGBTQ community but began to question the self-image displayed by the "unfortunate" Arabs in the Swedish media.
He will kick off with this mini-documentary and his travels around the Levant (Jordan, Syria and Lebanon) among gay activists and people who do not choose to label themselves with the Western sexual labels. There he criticizes the production of knowledge that we are taught in the West. He attacked the unfortunate existence of Islamophobia in Swedish LGBTQ society and plays with the sexual Orientalism that exist around the 'Arab'.