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Over 1,200 years old, and after facing extreme neglect for decades, the Basatin Jewish Cemetery finally reopens.
The Basatin Jewish Cemetery – the second oldest Jewish cemetery in the world, and one of Cairo’s few remaining Jewish cemeteries – has undergone extensive renovations and opened its doors once more.
With a foundation dating to the 9th century during Egypt’s Tulunid Dynasty, the 147 acres of land designated for the cemetery at the time included separate areas for Rabbanite and Karaite Jews and extended beyond the Tulunid capital of Egypt.
In more recent times, allegedly during the reign of Mamluk Sultan Qaitbay in 1482, the cemetery was divided into separate pieces of property totaling roughly 27 acres. These plots include the Basatin graveyard’s common burial grounds, the private Mosseri family cemetery, Rav Haim Capusi’s grave, the private Moise Cattaui Pasha cemetery, and the remaining Karaite section of the original cemetery.
Over the past three years, the American Research Centre in Egypt and the United States’ Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation and Drop of Milk Foundation have been working to restore the neglected cultural and religious heritage site.
After the completion of the conservation project, members of the Karaite Jewish community – known for exclusively respecting the principles of the Torah and disowning oral traditions like the Talmud and other writings of the Rabbis – from various nations attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony, and were able to revisit their families’ graves for the first time in decades.
Saudi Arabia was first vice-chair of the executive council for 2022.
Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Tourism has announced the election of the Kingdom as chair of the executive council of the United Nations World Tourism Organization for 2023.
The announcement was made at the 117th session of the organisation’s executive council being held in Marrakesh, making the Kingdom the first Gulf country to hold the post.
“The Kingdom is honored to be elected as chair of the World Tourism Organization’s executive council and we believe in the importance of the organization’s pioneering role. We look forward to cooperating with all countries to support and develop the global tourism sector,” the Minister of Tourism Ahmed Al-Khateeb said.
He added that the Kingdom has been an active member of the organization by launching initiatives, supporting new ideas, and opening the organization’s first regional office in Saudi Arabia to promote its agenda and work in the Middle East and beyond.
“At the heart of the UNWTO is a desire to promote tourism as a catalyst of economic development, which Saudi Arabia wholeheartedly supports. We have committed $800 billion of government investment into the Saudi tourism industry by 2030.
“Our imperative is that the development we seek, both as a nation and globally, is sustainable, inclusive and resilient. That’s how we will address the fast-changing needs of businesses, communities and the planet,” Al-Khateeb said.
As chair, Saudi Arabia will set the agenda for all meetings, ensuring that it captures the most pressing issues and concerns for the tourism industry. It will facilitate and moderate meetings effectively, chair dialogue and encourage actionable outcomes.
With a strong determination to help women’s inclusion in the mining industry, Bensetti has a strong belief in women’s ability to defy norms and pursue a career in any industry.
Women in Mining UK, an NGO dedicated to supporting women in the mining sector, selected CEO of OCP subsidiary DOOC Ibtissam Bensetti to feature in the 2022 “100 Global Inspirational Women in Mining” (WIM100) in recognition of her contributions to the global mining industry.
With this nomination, Bensetti became the first OCP personnel and Moroccan national to feature in the 100 Global Inspirational Women in Mining.
The NGO’s global top 100 list celebrates women’s contribution to the mining industry at all levels. The biennial publication stresses women’s skills and expertise in the global mining industry and celebrates role models for future generations.
Women inclusion in mining
The organization selects nominees based on different criteria, including creative innovation and sustainable working.
“A WIM100 woman offers proactive advocacy to those working in the mining industry and beyond. She empowers her colleagues to ensure everyone feels heard, welcomed, and respected,” the NGO said.
Bensetti has been able to take her place in the WIM100 for her leadership in OCP as a CEO at the group’s subsidiary DOOC, which specializes in industrial operations consulting, safety, and sustainability.
Having joined OCP in 2012, Bensetti has more than a decade of experience in the mining industry at different levels, particularly in sustainability roles in mining and chemical industrial operations, as well as corporate development.
Carrying the spirit of women’s empowerment during her journey, Bensetti has been working on spreading that spirit among her team members, particularly women, through supporting OCP’s female talent as well as increasing the number of women in management.
Delighted to be part of the WIM100 list, Bensetti stressed her emphasis and belief in women’s talents.
“In my mind, there is no impenetrable fortress for women, women can defy the norms and pursue a career in any industry,” she said, conveying her encouragement and endorsement for the inclusion of women in the mining industry.
The CEO acknowledged that the industry might have been a male-dominated industry but claimed that that’s in the past thanks to global efforts seeking to ensure gender equality at different levels. Women make up between 8% and 17 % of the global mining workforce, a McKinsey report has found.
The report also identified, however, several reasons and challenges that prompt women’s exit from the industry.
“The top reasons for leaving the industry are feeling that work is no longer intellectually challenging and having the perception that there are fewer advancement opportunities than there are for their male colleagues,” the report stressed.
Appointment and education
Bensetti was appointed as CEO of DOOC in June 2021 to replace Hamid El Mahfoudi, who retired.
She joined OCP a decade ago, filling positions related to strategy, corporate development, and industrial operations.
Graduating from Telecom Paris in 2004, Bensetti amassed 18 years of experience in management consulting, industry managing, coaching, and leading teams in transformation journeys.
Bensetti is also a graduate of The World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s LEAP Program, a one-year sustainability training program that seeks to empower women and help advance their positions and careers.
Having gender equality as a center of focus during her career, Bensetti is determined to continue her battle to help empower women in the mining industry.
“Being a woman engineer in industry, I have been fighting this battle all my life,” she wrote on her LinkedIn bio.
Ohood bint Khalfan Al Roumi, Minister of State for Government Development and The Future, honoured the winners of the Women in Tech MENA Awards, during a ceremony held in partnership between the Sharjah Research, Technology and Innovation Park (SRTIP) and Women in Tech.
The award, which is one of seven regional awards covering various areas of the globe, celebrates talented women from around the world who innovate, inspire and transform the technology sector.
Held under the theme, “Women in Green”, the event was attended by Hussain Al Mahmoudi, CEO of STRIP, and several leading experts, entrepreneurs and the award’s female nominees.
The awards were introduced by Ayumi Moore Aoki, Founder and CEO of Women in Tech, who affirmed the need to increase the presence of women in technology.
The eight winners were:
-The Uplifting Syrian Women Initiative in the Most Impactful Initiative Award;
-Fatma Atawna, CEO of Siraj in the Best Ally Award;
-Aida Kandil, CEO of MyTindy in the Start-up Award;
-Wesam Sarhan, Co-Founder of Colibri Care in the ID and E Disruptor’s Award;
-Mirna Arif, Country General Manager of Microsoft in the Global Leadership Award;
-Dr. Fatmah Boothman, Associate Professor at the King AbdulAziz University in the Lifetime Achievement Award;
-Amna Usman Choudhry, Financial Economist and Strategist for Blockchain at Metaverse and Web 3.0 in the Woman in Web3 Award
– Uditi Sharma, Founder and Executive Director in the Aspiring Teen Award.
Al Roumi highlighted the key role of women in shaping the future of technology, noting that the UAE has devoted significant attention to empowering women to actively engage in shaping the future of vital sectors, especially the technology sector.
She also highlighted the UAE’s pioneering experience in empowering Emirati women in technology, as they account for 56 percent of Emirati government university graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).
Al Roumi added that the Women in Tech Award recognises women who lead the technology sector and inspires other women to actively participate in this vital sector, stressing that the partnership between the Sharjah Research, Technology and Innovation Park and Women in Tech is a leading model of global partnerships aimed at encouraging women to participate in various fields of technology.
She also congratulated the winners of the award’s eight categories and commended their achievements, which reflect the overall capacities of women and inspires other women to strive for excellence in the technology sector.
In his welcome address, Al Mahmoudi said, “Hosting the Women in Tech MENA Awards is a milestone moment for us, because it reflects our deep commitment to gender equity and women’s empowerment. We are happy to say that more than 50 percent of the SRTIP workforce are women, some holding senior positions in technology, engineering and labs. Our commitment is also evident in our scheme for women entrepreneurs at SRTIP, under which we grant them subsidies and special benefits.”
“To make the Women in Tech MENA Awards a memorable event, we have lined up high-profile speakers who will enhance the prestige of the event with their insights and shared experiences. The keynotes and panels will offer a rich harvest of ideas, which would go a long way in promoting women’s empowerment in the UAE and the region,” he added.
Panel discussions held before the presentation of the awards provided interesting insights into the role of women in technology. The panel on “Gender equity and climate change, an intersectional approach to sustainability” explored how women and other underserved groups are disproportionately impacted by the global climate crisis, and are uniquely positioned to help achieve sustainability. The panel’s participants were Nadia Mannell, General Partner at Seed South Capital; Geraldine Wessing, Chief Political Analyst at Shell; Cecelia Carlsward, Founding Partner at Violet Hill and Co, and Tatiana Abella, Founder and Managing Director of Goumbook FZE.
A second panel on “Driving inclusion through innovation” discussed how the MENA region is driving innovation while considering human diversity and building inclusive economies.
Rare first-edition copy of “Prehistoric Rock Art of Northern Saudi Arabia” was on sale at Sharjah International Book Fair
There was little or no recognition of the Kingdom’s ancient past before Majeed Khan’s book was published in 1993
In May 1976, Majeed Khan, a young graduate of the University of Sindh, Pakistan, traveled to Saudi Arabia to join the Ministry of Tourism as an archaeological consultant, advising on the development of museums and the conduct of archaeological investigations in the country.
It was to prove an inspired appointment.
Back then, with Saudi Arabia riding the wave of the first great oil boom and focused necessarily on its rapidly evolving future, archaeology in the Kingdom was in its infancy.
But in Khan the country had found a champion for one of its greatest heritage treasures — ancient rock art, thousands of examples of which are strewn across the landscape and which attest to a history of human culture that stretches back 10,000 years.
Khan, who lives in Riyadh, and at the age of 80 still works as a consultant to the Ministry of Culture’s Antiquities Department, has devoted his entire working life to a subject that continues to fascinate and surprise him to this day.
He received another surprise last month when he learned that his seminal book, “Prehistoric Rock Art of Northern Saudi Arabia,” published by the Saudi Ministry of Education’s Department of Antiquities and Museums in 1993, was now considered a collector’s item.
A first-edition copy was offered for sale for £1,250 ($1,448) by a specialist London book dealer at the UAE’s Sharjah International Book Fair, which ran from Nov. 2 to 13.
That, Khan felt, was a lot of money. But on the other hand, “it was the first research book on rock art published in any Arab country,” he said. At the time it came out, “there was no rock art taught in any Saudi university and no real rock art research in Saudi Arabia.”
Furthermore, there was little or no recognition in the wider world of Saudi Arabia’s ancient past — a past that is now being embraced enthusiastically as the backbone of major tourism projects, such as AlUla and Diriyah, designed to bring in millions of visitors a year to the Kingdom.
For example, in the supposedly comprehensive 1998 Cambridge Illustrated History of Prehistoric Art, published in 1998, there was not a single mention of Saudi Arabia — an oversight that would be dramatically exposed by Khan’s work.
To describe Khan as a pioneer in his field is to understate the impact he has had on the understanding of the extent and importance of the ancient past of the Kingdom.
Over the past four decades he has published dozens of research papers. The first, which he co-authored, was on “The Lower Miocene Fauna of Assarrar, Eastern Arabia,” published in Atlal, the Journal of Saudi Arabian Archaeology, in 1981.
His first book, which came out in 1993, shortly before his groundbreaking work on the prehistoric rock art of Saudi Arabia, was “The Origin and Evolution of Ancient Arabian Inscriptions,” also published by the Ministry of Education.
But it was to petroglyphs that he would devote the greater part of his energies, an academic commitment that in 2015 culminated in the rock art in the Hail region of Saudi Arabia being inscribed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
Along with two colleagues from the then-named Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities, Jamal Omar and vice-president Prof. Ali Al-Ghabban, it was Khan’s name that appeared on the nomination text that saw the twin sites near Jubbah and Shuwaymis in the northern province of Hail recognized by UNESCO as being of “outstanding universal value.”
As Khan told Arab News in January 2021, “it was for me the most emotional moment of my 40 years of research.”
Not that he is resting on his laurels. Hail is not the only region in Saudi Arabia where rock art can be found, and “these days I am working on the rock-art site of Hima, Najran, to see it, too, placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.”
There are more than 2,000 rock-art sites around Saudi Arabia. But the greatest concentration of Neolithic petroglyphs, or rock carvings, and the oldest known examples, dating back 10,000 years, is to be found in the north of the country at two sites 300 kilometers apart in the Hail Province.
The ancient forebears of today’s Saudis had no paper, pens, or written language with which to record their time on earth.
But with the rocks of their dramatic landscapes as their canvas, thousands of years ago the ancient peoples of the land that would become Saudi Arabia found a way to leave their mark on history, with an astonishing pictorial representation of a now forgotten world, painstakingly pecked, chiseled and engraved out of the sandstone rocks of the region.
The first of the two Hail sites is at Jabal Umm Sinman, a rocky outcrop to the west of the town of Jubbah, some 90 kilometers northwest of the city of Hail and 680 kilometers from the capital, Riyadh.
The town’s origins date back to the dawn of Arab civilization, when the hills of Umm Sinman overlooked a freshwater lake, which eventually would be lost beneath the sands of the surrounding Nefud desert some 6,000 years ago.
It was on these hills, in the words of the UNESCO nomination document co-authored by Khan, that the ancestors of today’s Saudi Arabians “left the marks of their presence, their religions, social, cultural, intellectual and philosophical perspectives of their beliefs about life and death, metaphysical and cosmological ideologies.”
The rock art of Jubbah, said Khan, “represented all phases of human presence from the Neolithic, 10,000 years before the present, until the recent past,” and reflected a time when the climate and landscape were very different from today.
Etched upon the rocks, often at mysteriously inaccessible heights, are the trappings of a lost world: A parade of dancers, long-forgotten gods and goddesses, mythological figures, half-human, half-beast, and animals including sheep, ibex, camels, horses, wolves, ostriches and — reflecting a time when prey roamed abundant on the once lush plains of Arabia — lions.
“The type of animals (pictured) suggested changes in climate and environment,” said Khan. “Large ox figures indicated a cool and humid climate, while the absence of ox figures and the appearance of camel petroglyphs represented hot and dry conditions..
“Both at Jubbah and Shuwaymis this change in fauna and flora clearly represented gradual but drastic change in society and climate in the prehistoric and pre-Islamic era.”
Importantly, he said, similarities in themes and depictions in other parts of the world, including Africa, India, Australia, Europe and America, showed that “Saudi Arabia was part of world heritage and cultural traditions.”
Like other peoples around the world, “ancient Arab artists were drawing the animals with which they were living and depicting their social activities, like dancing and religious rituals.”
The second of the twin Hail sites is at Jabal Al-Manjor and Raat, 220 kilometers southwest of Jubbah near the village of Shuwaymis. Remarkably, its treasures were discovered only 20 years ago, a remarkable story in which, naturally, Khan played a leading role.
In 2002, Aramco World, the magazine of the Saudi national oil company, reported that in March the previous year a bedouin grazing his camels had stumbled on strange marks on a remote cluster of rocks. He happened to mention his find to a teacher from the local town of Shuwaymis. He alerted the authorities and they called in Khan.
“Yes, the story is correct,” Khan said. “I met both the bedouin and Mr. Saad Rawsan, the director of archaeology in the Hail region, who took us to the sites for further investigations and research.”
Together, he discovered, the twin sites told the story of over 9,000 years of human history, from the earliest pictorial records of hunting to the development of writing, religion and the domestication of animals including cattle, horses and camels.
As the UNESCO documents record, these sites justify their inscription on the World Heritage List because they feature “large numbers of petroglyphs of exceptional quality attributed to between 6,000 and 9,000 years of human history, followed in the last 3,000 years by very early development of writing that reflects the bedouin culture, ending in Qur’anic verses.”
Furthermore, the Jubbah and Shuwaymis sites comprise “the world’s largest and most magnificent surviving corpus of Neolithic petroglyphs.”
Neolithic rock art is found at many locations across Eurasia and North Africa, “but nowhere in such dense concentration or with such consistently high visual quality” as in this remote part of northwestern Saudi Arabia.
Peter Harrington, the London specialist book dealer that brought Khan’s book to Sharjah for the book fair, described it as “a pioneering monograph … the first and sole edition of this seminal work, which addresses a hitherto neglected subject, challenges the received wisdom that influences in rock art in the region originated from Mesopotamia, the Levant, and the Nile Valley, helped to put the Kingdom’s ancient past on the map of modern knowledge, and paved the way to the listing in 2015 of the rock art of the Hail region as a UNESCO World Heritage site.”
“I am extremely surprised to see the cost of my book,” Khan said after Arab News broke the news to him of the price being asked for the out-of-print volume at the Sharjah International Book Fair, although he had some news of his own.
“The ministry is printing it again.”
That, however, is unlikely to prove a deterrent for collectors always keen to snap up rare first editions of books dealing with the region’s history — and there are few histories as fascinating as that of the rock art of Saudi Arabia, and few books as significant in the growing appreciation of the Kingdom’s past as Khan’s 30-year-old volume.
At least eight Somali American women won races in Tuesday’s U.S. midterm elections, results show.
Ilhan Omar, the most prominent Somali American politician, held on to her U.S. House of Representatives seat in Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District. This will be the third term for Omar, who was first elected in 2018.
In Minnesota state races, Zaynab Mohamed was elected to the Senate, becoming the first woman of Somali descent elected to the chamber, according to MPR News. Meanwhile, Hodan Hassan defended her seat in the state House of Representatives.
Other Somali American women running for offices in Minnesota were victorious, including Fathia Feerayarre, who won a seat on the Minneapolis Public Schools board.
In neighboring North Dakota, Hamida Dakane also made history, becoming the first woman of Somali descent elected to the state House. Born in northeastern Kenya’s Somali region, Dakane, who won Fargo’s District 10, came to the U.S. in 2011.
In Maine, Deqa Dhalac, who made history last year as the first Somali American mayor for a U.S. city, South Portland, has now been elected to the state House after handily defeating Republican opponent Michael Dougherty. Mana Abdi, who was running unopposed for a seat representing Lewiston, Maine, joins her in the House.
In Ohio, Munira Abdullahi and Ismail Mohamed, a man, won seats in the state House. Minnesota and Ohio have among the largest Somali American populations in the U.S.
Speaking to her supporters Tuesday night, Omar highlighted the significance of victories achieved by Somali American women.
“There was a time when we believed that women with a hijab could not get elected,” she said. “Tonight, Minnesota is electing three new women who are wearing hijab. That shows if you trust in yourself, if your people trust you, stand with you, everything is possible.”
Mohamed, one of the hijab-wearing Minnesota winners, expressed hope that more Somali Americans will run for office.
“I’m very happy with this victory tonight, thank God,” she told VOA Somali. “This is a victory for me, for my family and for the Somali people. God willing, a lot of men and women will follow me and will come through.”
Shukri Olow, who lost a state House seat outside Seattle, Washington, told VOA Somali that she was inspired to run by the women before her, including Omar, Hassan and Dhalac.
In an interview with VOA Somali, Dhalac confirmed that when she visited Washington in 2018, Olow asked her questions about running for office.
“She said she wanted to run for the open seats in her area or seats that will be open in the future in Washington state,” Dhalac recounted. “I encouraged her to do it. Many women say we will do this, we will do this tomorrow, we will do this next year. I said to her, if you want to compete, just do it.”
The success of Somali American female candidates in the U.S. eclipses that of female aspirants for elected office in Somalia.
Female politicians in Somalia are so disenfranchised that in 2016, Somalia’s federal and regional leaders had to start allocating a specific quota of seats in parliament. But women still were never given the opportunity to get the 30% quota promised.
In 2016, Somali women occupied 24% of the 329 seats in the two houses of parliament. In 2022, female candidates secured only 20%, well short of the 30% quota.
Fawzia Yusuf Haji Adam, the only female presidential candidate in the May 15 presidential election, got just a single vote — her own.
“I did not get the support I’m sure [Somali American women] are getting when they stand [for office], because here the culture and other factors are causing a lack of encouragement [for women],” she said.
Adam welcomed the success of Somali American women.
“This is a victory for Somali women in the diaspora,” she said. “I congratulate them, I encourage them, and we are proud of them.”
She said women in the diaspora, including those in the United States, Europe, and Canada, have opportunities that women in Somalia do not have.
“What made it possible is, first, the places they live in, where men and women are viewed equally, where they get encouragement from the schools, from the university, and from the parents, and they can see achievements by other women,” she said.
“Over there, the neighborhood they live in is going to elect them when they see the person is trustworthy, honest, working and clean. White and Black would vote for that.”
Harun Maruf contributed reporting from Washington.
source/content: voanews.com (headline edited)
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Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar speaks to supporters at an election night party after winning reelection early Wednesday morning, Nov. 9, 2022, in St. Paul, Minnesota.
With the biggest show in football 24 hours away, Arab News takes a look at the 12-year journey to make Qatar 2022 happen.
The first FIFA World Cup to take place in the Arab world will kick off Sunday in Doha when the host nation take on Ecuador in the tournament’s opening match at Al-Bayt Stadium.
The journey from winning the nomination on Dec. 2, 2010 to the big kick off on Nov. 20, 2022 has not been without challenges and controversies, but for the teams and fans who have landed in Qatar, and for millions around the world, the moment of truth has arrived.
As in Russia four years ago, there will be four Arab nations taking part in the tournament. This time around they are Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Tunisia.
Qatar and Saudi Arabia are among a record six Asian Football Confederation members taking part, along with Japan, South Korea, Iran and Australia.
Of the Arab nations, Qatar have an immediate chance to get three points on the board against Ecuador — arguably the easiest of their three matches in group A, which also includes the Netherlands and Senegal.
A win would leave the Asian champions requiring perhaps just a single point from their two other matches to become only the fourth Arab nation — after Morocco (1986), Saudi Arabia (1994), and Algeria (2014) — to reach the knockout stages of a World Cup.
Saudi Arabia have the toughest start of the Arab nations, taking on Argentina in their Group C opener, before facing Poland and Mexico in two matches that are only marginally less difficult.
A strong Morocco squad will have high hopes of causing an upset in Group F against Belgium Canada and Croatia, while Tunisia were dealt a tough hand when placed with champions France, Denmark and Canada in Group D.
While the Arab teams might struggle to progress beyond the group stages, it is a mission they should embrace. Players like Qatar’s Akram Afifi and Almoez Ali, Saudi’s Salem Al-Dawsari, and Tunisia’s Hannibal Mejbri could introduce themselves to a whole new audience.
Others, like Seville keeper Yasssine Bounou, and his Moroccan colleagues Achraf Hakimi of PSG and Hakim Ziyech of Chelsea are already familiar to audiences worldwide.
Standout matches for the Arab contingent will be Qatar’s showdown with the Netherlands on Nov. 29; Saudi’s second Group C fixture against Poland, which could provide their best chance of an upset; Tunisia’s clash with champions France; and Morocco’s final Group F match against Canada, potentially a match in which they could seal their progress to the round of 16 if they already have points on the board.
Elsewhere, there will be titanic clashes (Spain vs. Germany), international “derbies” (England vs. Wales), politically charged matches (Iran vs. USA) and revenge missions (Ghana vs. Uruguay)
Among the favorites for the trophy will be France and Brazil, both of whom have named fearsome squads, as well as Euro 2020 finalists England and South American champions Argentina.
The latter have become many people’s sentimental favorites, with a swell of emotion building behind Lionel Messi’s bid to end a glorious career with the trophy he craves the most.
Win it on Dec. 18, in what would be the Argentine maestro’s 1000th professional game, and the title of greatest footballer of all time will no longer be debated.
Messi’s rival for the title of greatest player of his generation, Cristiano Ronaldo, will also be playing in what is surely his last World Cup. And while things have not gone smoothly for the Portugal captain at Manchester United this season, his army of fans will no doubt be watching to see if he can pull one last rabbit out of the hat.
With Messi and Ronaldo walking into the sunset at the end of Qatar 2022, the position of world’s best player is up for grabs. The contender most likely to fill the void is Kylian Mbappe.
Already a world champion, the Frenchman has long been many people’s choice as the world’s “next” best player, and though he has continued to excel for club and country, the fact that he has remained at Paris Saint-Germain and, crucially, failed to land the coveted Champions League for them, means the jury is still out.
And then there is Neymar. This World Cup could well be the final chance for the Brazilian teammate of Messi and Mbappe at PSG to prove that he belongs among the greats after two World Cups plagued by injuries and underwhelming performances.
Other veterans including Ballon d’Or winner Karim Benzema, Uruguay’s Luis Suarez, Poland’s Robert Lewandowski and Croatia’s Luka Modric will also have the chance to bid their fans a fond farewell at the highest level.
Among a new generation of players to watch in Qatar are the likes of Brazil’s Vinicius Jr, Raphinha and Bruno Guimaraes; France’s Eduardo Camavinga and Aurelien Tchouameni; Uruguay’s Darwin Nunez; Germany’s Jamal Musiala; and the brilliant 19-year-old Spaniard Pedri.
The stage is set, the curtain rises on Sunday night.
source/content: arabnews.com (headline edited)
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The first FIFA World Cup to take place in the Arab world will kick off Sunday in Doha when the host nation take on Ecuador in the tournament’s opening match. (Reuters/File Photo)
Google search engine celebrated the late Hamed Gohar’s 115th birth anniversary on 15 November with a Google Doodle.
The Egyptian scientist, marine biologist and TV host, Gohar is considered the founding father of oceanography in Egypt and the Arab world.
Born on 15 November 1907, he studied medicine at Cairo University in 1925 before shifting to biology. He then received his master’s degree in oceanography from Cambridge University in 1931.
The note under the doodle adds that “Gohar discovered that dugong, a sea mammal that was thought to be extinct in the region, still existed in the Red Sea. He continued studying underwater life for 25 years at the Hurghada marine biological station.”
He worked with the Arabic Language Academy to create scientific dictionaries in Arabic and served as an adviser to the United Nations’ Secretary General and helped organize the first International Conference on Law of the Sea in Geneva.
The general public knows Gohar for his educational show called “The Sea World” which he hosted on national television for 18 years. The programme highlighted underwater scenery and natural sea life, bringing the viewers closer to marine biology.
Scout’s honour: lucky break bounced Ahmad Alhendawi into the line of dut.y
Jordanian who substituted basketball for public service now proudly puts the global scout movement’s 54 million young people first as leader of the packs.
Ahmad Alhendawi found his mission in life on the basketball court. Just not in the way he expected.
As a teenager on the brink of university, the Jordanian had set his heart on a sports scholarship. It all depended on one 90-minute trial but, fortunately, young Alhendawi was good.
Even though he was up against more than 30 contenders for one of just two coveted places, he had little doubt in his ability to prevail.
The decisive moment came as he ran back into a defensive position during a one-on-one exercise with a rival when his knee twisted beneath him.
The tears that followed were for the agony and his thwarted ambition. “I can’t remember much because the pain was just unbearable,” Mr Alhendawi tells The National.
The diagnosis was a cruciate ligament injury – and that was that as far as the basketball scholarship was concerned.
“It was literally the only time I needed basketball in my life, just to get to the school that I really wanted,” he says.
“Most of my friends were there and I already had a kind of picture of how things would play out if I went. So it was game over.”
He had little choice but to revert to plan B, one which he now believes should “always have been my plan A”, to focus on his other passion – volunteering.
The switch to public service has not worked out too badly for the man who, at the age of 32, was named as the youngest head of the world’s scouting movement.
“Volunteering is quite a remarkable thing,” he says. “It’s a magical thing. You actually think you’re giving your time and energy but all the time you are getting much more than you are giving.
“Only with time do you realise how much you have accumulated experiences and insights on things that you would never have explored if it wasn’t for volunteering.”
It is tempting to call it a meteoric rise but Mr Alhendawi’s selection as secretary general of the World Organisation of the Scout Movement followed a pattern of volunteering and championing youth causes that was set early in childhood.
The young Ahmad grew up in Zarqa, Jordan’s second largest city and a magnet for migrants from across the Middle East seeking a better life.
Attending a public school with class sizes of 45 to 50, he mixed with Iraqis, Syrians and Christian Arabs whose families had all made their way to the country’s industrial centre beside the Zarqa River.
As the youngest of 10 children from a military family, he was well versed in making himself heard.
His intellectual curiosity was fed by learning from the conversations of his older siblings and visits to the local public library. He remembers, too, aged six, being captivated by his father’s habit of reading the newspaper every day.
“It was always a surprise to me why there were so many stories in there but we were not in the paper,” Mr Alhendawi says.
“My father explained the whole thing that you have to do something to be in the paper. In a very childish way – but in a profound way when I reflect on it – I felt like I would like to be part of those sorts of things.”
Thinking that the opportunities afforded him through the formal education system would not only be conventional but limited by social class and financial background, he fixed upon the idea of expanding the realm of possibilities via extra-curricular activities.
These days, Mr Alhendawi describes it as “hustling through volunteering”. “It was my ticket to try to make it, and it worked rather well and allowed me to do a lot of things,” he says.
As a teenage scout, he was asked to help as an usher for an event where the charismatic King Hussein of Jordan gave a speech. “It was the only time I saw my father cry, when the king passed away,” Mr Alhendawi says.
He learnt the value of public service from a teacher, who in his spare time ran the school’s scout troop, and his inspirational basketball coach. His own volunteering efforts ran in parallel with his sporting passions until that devastating torn ligament.
The result of the injury was that, instead of staying in his home city and attending the Hashemite University, he went to his second-choice, Al Balqa, in Salt, 50 kilometres away.
Being separated from his family taught him independence, but the course on computer information systems failed to satisfy his growing intellectual curiosity.
Before starting classes, he travelled every week to another university to attend lectures on political economy and psychology. “My friends were laughing at me because they knew that I didn’t have passion for what I was studying,” he says.
His dedication fed into his volunteering work. Mr Alhendawi spent extra hours reading lecture notes and preparing documents while working on school councils and youth commissions.
He was delivering a presentation at a conference when he was spotted and offered a job with the Arab League to work on youth projects and develop civil society.
Mr Alhendawi has consistently maintained that young people are unexploited assets in solving the world’s problems. It is a lesson that global leaders need to learn quickly, he says, with half of the population under the age of 25 but suffering some of its most acute problems.
The dissertation for his master’s degree, achieved at the European Institute in Nice, France, looked into the workings of the Arab uprisings in Egypt. He argues that the perception of apathetic Egyptian youth was not borne out by the mass mobilisation in 2011.
He has spoken of changing the rules of political engagement so that those in the younger generation are treated as more than mere beneficiaries of charity from an older establishment. Despite too often being sidelined in this process, Mr Alhendawi says that young people cannot afford to ignore politics.
His own advancement came when he was tapped by the UN’s secretary general, Ban Ki -moon, in January 2013 to become the organisation’s first youth envoy.
Four years later, he himself was named as a secretary general, representing the diverse views of more than 170 nations in the scouting movement.
No one was more delighted than Mr Ban, who dug out a photograph of his younger self as a scout when Mr Alhendawi came to his office to break the news.
Mr Ban told his departing envoy that his appointment was a good one for the UN. While he might be losing an energetic advocate for youth, he felt that the vast scout network under Mr Alhendawi would advocate for similar goals as those of the UN.
In a sign of how the co-operation would work, the UN, with the scouting movement and the five other large global youth organisations, launched an initiative called Global Youth Mobilisation to provide an initial $2 million for young people and communities affected by Covid-19. Young people will decide where the money goes and how it is spent.
Mr Alhendawi’s mission statement in leading the scouting movement is to embrace the “mega trends that are really threatening the future of this generation, like climate change and inequality ”.
In his own scouting days, he visited parts of Jordan as a child and was immersed in different cultures that he probably would not have experienced otherwise.
“Scouting tends to be inward looking sometimes … a movement that has more than 50 million members and more than 500 million alumni cannot act as a small club in a village,” he says.
His programme of modernisation extends to updating the image of the organisation, which in some countries has lost its appeal to youngsters to the competing attractions of computer games and sports.
Mr Alhendawi has praised the process of revitalisation in the UK, where perceptions were overhauled when the adventurer and explorer Bear Grylls was named as chief scout.
His social media feeds feature many campaigning messages, whether environmental, educational, achieving gender equality, ensuring a fair global distribution of vaccines or promoting peace in South Sudan.
It is a politics founded on consensus building from his history of working for membership organisations – such as the UN and the Arab League – in which progress can be made only by bringing people together in search of a common goal.
He recalls one lunch with a diplomat at which they discussed the differences between working for a country or an organisation like the United Nations. “The way we ended the conversation was that if you were a representative of a member state you could probably promote development for the sake of politics,” he says.
“But if you worked on the UN side, you have for the most time to do the politics for the sake of maintaining development gains.”
Despite his global ambitions for change, some of Mr Alhendawi’s challenges are closer to home. Sexual abuse scandals resulted in the Boy Scouts of America, for example, filing for bankruptcy to allow it to pay compensation in hundreds of reported cases.
One of his first acts as secretary general was to build ethical standards across all the national scouting organisations. In the coming years, any that do not conform to child protection measures “will have no place in the movement”.
In his darker moments, he turns to the words of Nelson Mandela, whose letters and poems are on the wall of Mr Alhendawi’s home in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia where the world scouting movement has its headquarters.
“Just two weeks ago, I was confronted with a situation where I thought, maybe I should be angry … and gave myself two hours, read a few of the letters and it just calmed me down and helped me find the right tone,” he says.
At 37, Mr Alhendawi has reached the stage in his life when he is running out of time for “the youngest …” to be attached as a prefix to each new appointment. He was due to marry his partner, who is from Finland, last year but the coronavirus has delayed the nuptials until this summer.
The pandemic has hit young people hardest, Mr Alhendawi says. He wrote on Twitter last year that the effect of Covid-19 on youth was not just severe, it was catastrophic.
“It has resulted in a generation in waiting,” he said. He points to his own native Jordan, where youth unemployment stands at 50 per cent.
Despite the gloom, lockdown living has had some advantages. In this online interview, Mr Alhendawi occasionally tugs at his black polo shirt, sticky from the effort of throwing a few hoops on the basketball court outside.
After two decades of exercises to relieve the discomfort caused by the old sporting injury, he has at last had surgery. As he puts it, “I’ve finally fixed something that’s been broken for 20 years”.
Amid the headlines that the ‘red wave’ failed to materialize in America’s midterm elections as Trump-endorsed candidates crumbled at the ballot box and progressives like John Fetterman made surprise gains in hotly contested swing states, the election also saw historic firsts in Arab political representation. Palestinian-American Ruwa Romman who was the Democratic Party nominee for the Georgia General Assembly’s House of Representatives fought against an Islamophobic and racist campaign by her Republican challenger and won the election, becoming the deeply conservative state of Georgia’s first Palestinian American elected public official.
Achieving a whopping 58% of the vote, the 29-year-old Romman smashed her Republican opponent John Chan who allegedly ran a campaign that used Islamophobic and racist tropes to discredit Romman. While the presence of candidates from minority backgrounds has increasingly become a normal occurrence in some areas of the country, in the very conservative and Christian south of America it is rare for candidates from Arab or Muslim backgrounds to run for office, let alone be elected. As such, Romman’s victory in the deeply conservative state of Georgia is symbolic as she is from a family of Palestinian refugees and is both proudly American and Muslim. As a state representative for Georgia’s 97th district, her election marks both the first Palestinian-American to be elected to public office in Georgia as well as the first Muslim woman to be elected to public office. However, Romman was also joined by three other Muslim candidates that were similarly elected to the Georgia General Assembly. Her local supporters took to Twitter to signal how her victory over a hateful campaign by a Trump-supporting Republican sends a clear message that Georgia’s 97th district refuses to be turned against one other and stands united against an increasingly polarised and xenophobic political climate.
While the focus on the midterm elections in Georgia was mostly focused on the senate race between Democrat Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker, which has now led to a hotly contested run-off, Ruwa Romman’s election to the Georgia General Assembly has not been given the attention it deserves according to some supporters. Although having lived in and around Georgia since the age of seven, Ruwa initially grew up in Amman, like many other Palestinian refugees that reside in Jordan. After being born in Jordan and then moving to just outside Atlanta, Romman lived her entire adult life in the state of Georgia. However, although Romman now sits in the Georgia House of Representatives, she grew up facing high levels of exclusion and racism, especially against the backdrop of the US War on Terror. CNN reported how only a year after moving to the USA, she vividly remembers sitting at the back of a school bus as an eight-year-old as other children bullied her by accusing her and her family of being terrorists. Romman’s journey from a child that suffered from Islamophobia in the deeply conservative state to representing that very same state after being elected by its people is a story that many Georgia-based activists want to tell of a changing state that is slowly becoming more accepting and Democrat-leaning. However, supporters of Romman have also taken to Twitter to describe how her victory is indicative of Arab Americans slowly gaining political representation after being spoken for many years.
While the Democratic Party, much like the Republican Party, as a whole has a history of unequivocally supporting the Israeli state, a new wave of progressive Democrats that joined the party following Bernie Sander’s successive bids to run as the party nominee, has been vocal about Palestinian rights. Romman being elected to represent Georgia’s 97th district is but one of the most recent of numerous pro-Palestinian politicians who have entered office in the last few years, often from Arab or Muslim backgrounds. Romman stands alongside Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib and Minnesota’s Ilham Omar as part of a new wave of progressive Democratic representatives from minority backgrounds that often aren’t represented by the party, but seem to be slowly changing the debate around Palestine and Arab and Muslim Americans.
