LEBANON: Jesus, Nasrallah and Barbie raise eyebrows

Whether Shiites or Christians, the Lebanese adore icons representing their revered religious figures. Statues of Jesus Christ or posters of Hezbollah’s popular leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, are common sights on the streets of Beirut.

But playing around with religious icons, even for the sake of art, is seriously frowned upon.

Last week, some photos were abruptly removed from an exhibition by Lebanese artist and filmmaker Jocelyne Saab. One of the censored photos depict images of Nasrallah and the Christ on a crucifix along with undressed Barbie dolls in the background. 

The exhibition, “Sense, Icons and Sensibility,” held at an art gallery in downtown Beirut, tackles the change in habits and cultural characteristics of Arab societies as well as the Arab world’s vision of the West.

LEBANON: Pop art meets guerrila war

She turns the black-and-white photo of a militiaman into a glittery iconic figure combining a pinkish haze of artificial flowers, pearl necklaces and rubber dolls.   

Through her art, Zena el Khalil says that she tries to convey the complexity and diversity of her city, Beirut, where posters of fighters, religious leaders and politicians are displayed next to images of sultry pop stars or models posing for lingerie ads.

Psychedelic, evocative and occasionally erotic, the work  of  Khalil, 32,  is a reflection of her generation, which she describes as “global, superficial, consumerist, independent, with a short attention span and in search for instant gratification.”

SYRIA: Merger of music, Islam and romance

Relying on modern visual and sound effects, Syrian singer Hossam Haj’s few works display a happy marriage between romantic song clips and Islam. After taking many viewers by surprise with his song, “O, Bravo, You Got Veiled!” a few years ago, Haj is about to launch his new song clip, “Let Us Pray Together, Sweetheart.”

“I am against pornography and indecency,” he said. “When you respect your faith, everyone will respect you. There is nothing wrong in expressing your faith or talking about love.”

In his first clip, Haj played the role of a groom who celebrated his bride’s decision to wear the veil. In his new stint, he depicts a ritual that has recently become widely practiced by young Muslims before marriage. When a couple feel like getting married, they perform a specific prayer to make sure their union will mark the right match.

“Nobody sings the way I do. My songs are about love but they also show that God is there to help lovers,” said Haj, who finances his song clips from his own pocket.

LEBANON: Beirut nightlife again starts to sizzle

Beirut will be back on the world map and, this time, it will be for good reasons. That was the message behind the relaunching party of Time Out magazine’s Beirut edition, after a two-year hiatus, at the Riviera Beach Lounge along the capital's seafront.

With fireworks and champagne bottles in sparkling boxes, the party was designed to mirror the reemerging face of Beirut: a city of glitz and glamour boasting many trendy open-air rooftop nightspots, underground nightclubs and funky bars.

LEBANON: A writer with many facets

Rabih Alameddine loves to tell stories, all sorts of them. Stories about intimate sexual experiences,  about twisted family gatherings and even ancient ones about an Arabian prince who failed to have a son.

And just like his diverse and multifaceted stories, this Lebanese American fiction and essay writer juggles various identities that he hates to label.

Alameddine, 48, is an openly gay writer, but that's not how he'd like to be categorized. He quickly adds that he also happens to be a writer with a hairy chest, and that he loves to play soccer. 

Born in Jordan in an upper-middle-class Lebanese family, he was raised between Kuwait and Lebanon. He went to the United Kingdom then to the United States after the civil war broke out in 1975, shifting his career from engineering to painting and writing along the way.

Today, Alameddine lives between San Francisco and Beirut, where he was recently promoting his new novel, "The Hakawati," or "The Storyteller."

Alameddine, also wrote the novels "Koolaids," and "I, the Divine," sat down for an interview with the Los Angeles Times.

Los Angeles Times: Your new book follows an old tradition in Arabic literature. Yet, what you present is a modern vision of the Arabian nights that seems more subversive and more overt. What is the book really about?

Rabih Alameddine: I am fascinated about how families start, where they come from.... In a large measure, the book is the stories I tell myself about myself. Those include personal stories.... Some are true, others are not true. But they are also stories that I tell about my family, how I fit among my family and my friends. There are stories that I tell also about my culture whether in the U.S. or Lebanon. It is the meeting of these stories that define a person, relationships and who we are as people. And that’s what I am interested in.

IRAQ: Never mind the looted museums. The London cops got Tarik Aziz's cigar case back...

Boris Johnson admits he acquired the leather cigar case under "morally ambiguous" circumstances. Back in 2003, the now-mayor of London was a mere journalist, trolling through the smashed and looted remains of a villa belonging to Saddam Hussein's foreign minister Tarik Aziz when he spotted the bottom half of a cigar case protruding from the rubble. Johnson pocketed the case - for safe-keeping - and brought it home to the UK where he wrote about his souvenir hunting in a column for The Spectator magazine.

But now, Scotland Yard is investigating complaints that Johnson stole Iraqi cultural property. He's turned the offending case over to police, but not without taking a few swipes at those who want to make him into a war criminal.

Read Kim Murphy's story.

-- Bruce Wallace in Los Angeles

IRAQ: Recovering a ransacked heritage

 

For a few precious hours, Iraq's shuttered National Museum threw open its doors to journalists this week to celebrate the return of more than 700 looted antiquities, seized over the years by Syrian customs officials.

Clay cones inscribed with cuneiform script, one of the earliest forms of writing, ancient statues, golden necklaces and daggers were on display for the cameras. Museum officials showed off the serial numbers identifying items as part of their collection.

For now, the museum remains closed to the public. Once the journalists had gone Sunday, museum staff began boxing up the items, which will be kept under lock and key until security improves in Baghdad.

IRAN: A Muslim actor as Jesus Christ

He is an Iranian Muslim who looks so much like a Hollywood or Renaissance image of Jesus Christ that the faithful sometimes make the sign of the cross when they see him.

Ahmad Soleimani-Nia has been playing Jesus for seven years, keeping his hair long and lightly dyed, his beard knotty and vibrant.

He is the star of "Jesus, the Spirit of God," a new film from Iran that depicts the man Christians believe to be the messiah and son of God as a tormented Judean prophet heralding the coming of Muhammad, the founder of the Muslim faith. Nia's Jesus is at once serene, devout, driven and passionate.

In real life, if there is a real life after a spiritual and artistic odyssey that is still not over, Nia lives in Tehran. He was once a soldier in the Iranian army and then a welder for — the irony is interesting in this Jesus story — his nation's Atomic Energy Agency, which the Bush administration accuses of pursuing nuclear weapons.

That may unsettle some American neo-cons, but perhaps not as much as the film itself, which suggests that Jesus wasn't crucified and never rose from the dead.

Check out the rest of the story in today's Los Angeles Times. 

— Jeffrey Fleishman in Tehran

Photo: Ahmad Soleimani-Nia as Jesus. Credit: minbar.tatar.ru/rus/Messiah.htm

LEBANON: A theater that delves into Arab thinking

 

Sherif Abdel Nour, the Lebanese-Palestinian playwright and director, says he's determined to use art to highlight Arab concerns as a counterweight to Western influences.

Last week, Abdel Nour celebrated the opening of his new production, “Hanthalaza’s Journey from Slumber to Consciousness,” at Beirut's Babylon Theatre.

The satirical play mocks the apathy and submissiveness that characterize much of the Arab world.

“My objective is to bring the Arab culture closer to the people through theater,” said the 30-year-old director. “There is a tendency to stay away from issues related to the Arab identity and to perform Western plays.”   

To achieve his objective, Abdel Nour created his own theatrical troupe, grouping amateurs from different parts of the Arab world in 2001. So far he's staged 16 plays, all of them tackling Arab social and political concerns.

EGYPT: Lutes and Sufi chanters

As the rising sounds of oriental percussion and lutes resonated around him, the frail Sufi chanter struck a glass with prayer beads in fast repetitive movements. His vibrant voice sang love for the prophet Mohammed.

The man featured at a cultural center in Cairo was Sheikh Ahmad Al-Tuni, one of Egypt's emblematic figures of Sufism, a school of Islam with mystical dimensions. Al-Tuni represents an old line of performers of musical and singing traditions transmitted orally from generation to generation.

Sufis believe they can transcend into a state of altered consciousness and experience closeness to Allah, or God. This is usually achieved through a set of rituals that involve whirling the head or the body to intense rhythmic music and repetitive chanting of divine names.