Hijab-wearing singer Ghaliaa Chaker looks to inspire

Musician Ghaliaa Chaker has become a social media sensation, with 437,000 followers on Instagram and millions of views on her YouTube channel. (AFP)
Musician Ghaliaa Chaker has become a social media sensation, with 437,000 followers on Instagram and millions of views on her YouTube channel. (AFP)
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Updated 07 September 2024
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Hijab-wearing singer Ghaliaa Chaker looks to inspire

Hijab-wearing singer Ghaliaa Chaker looks to inspire
  • Chaker, a keen motorbike rider who is part of an all-hijabi biker squad in Dubai, began composing and writing lyrics at 16

DUBAI: In a Dubai recording studio, hijab-clad Ghaliaa Chaker tunes her guitar and belts out original songs as she builds a career that is turning heads for more than just her music.
The 26-year-old Syrian, raised in the UAE, has become a social media sensation, with 437,000 followers on Instagram and millions of views on her YouTube channel.
She offers not only a unique sound but also an unusual look in a region where artists who wear the hijab, the head covering characteristic of Muslim women, are few and far between.
“I hope that I have paved the way for other” hijabi singers, Chaker said at the studio.
“It is a very beautiful thing to know that you have ... given a push to a girl who has many dreams and is unable to achieve them because she has never seen another girl do the same thing.”
Chaker, a keen motorbike rider who is part of an all-hijabi biker squad in Dubai, began composing and writing lyrics at 16.
She drew inspiration from Nedaa Shrara, a veiled Jordanian singer who won “The Voice,” the Arabic version of the popular TV talent show, in 2015.
Shrara had stirred controversy among Arab fans who were not accustomed to seeing a singer wearing the head covering.
But for Chaker, who says she often receives criticism online, Shrara was a symbol of “self-confidence.”
After seeing her, “I said to myself that I can do it too,” Chaker said.
Chaker’s first song, composed in English, was picked up by Dubai radio stations in 2018, marking the start of her musical career.
She now sings mainly in Arabic, at a time when the regional music scene is witnessing the rise of young talents with innovative sounds.
The green-eyed singer said the headscarf has never been an obstacle. “There is nothing I have wanted to do and not done because I wear the veil,” Chaker said.
However, the issue of women singing has always been controversial in conservative Islamic societies.
Although the Qur’an does not explicitly prohibit singing, or ban women from performing music, some religious scholars frown upon the idea, viewing it as immodest.
Chaker said her immediate family has always supported her, but relatives in Syria were “very surprised at first,” mainly because they feared how people would react.
She said she receives a lot of “negative comments” on social media, including from family and friends.
“It bothers me of course, but I try to remember the positive comments and how much people love my music,” she said.
Chaker traces her artistic influences to her early upbringing in Al-Ain, a former desert oasis and now a city in Abu Dhabi, one of the UAE’s seven sheikhdoms.
At home, her father blasted Arab singers such as Fairouz, an iconic Lebanese singer, and Egyptian diva Umm Kalthoum. Chaker’s mother preferred Western music, including Elvis Presley.
“The music mixture in the house was always rich,” she said, influencing her sound, which she describes as a mix of R&B, hip-hop, electro-pop, indie and jazz.
A multi-instrumentalist, Chaker credits her father with her love of the drums, guitar, and piano, all of which she plays.
She said that instead of gifting her toys as a child, he would buy her new instruments.
The Middle Eastern darbuka drum is “the closest to my heart because I often played it with my father, who loves it very much, and it is the basis of oriental rhythm,” she said.
In addition to Arabic and English, Chaker sometimes sings in Turkish, Armenian, and Persian.
The singer, who performed in the Lebanese capital Beirut in August, said she wants to take her music beyond the Middle East.
“It is vital to me that my music is heard in Europe, in America, in Australia, in the whole world, maybe even in Latin America,” she said, adding that she aspires to “collaborate with many artists from different countries.”
“It is time for the Western world to know how beautiful our music is.”

 


France, Britain grant Palestinian Authority cash lifeline

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France, Britain grant Palestinian Authority cash lifeline

France, Britain grant Palestinian Authority cash lifeline
The Palestinian Authority (PA) faces “persistent challenges“
The aid will be channeled to the Palestinian Authority via an emergency fund created in 2021 by the World Bank

RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories: France and Britain granted 19.7 million dollars (18 million euros) in emergency aid to the Palestinian Authority on Thursday to help fund health and education services in the occupied West Bank, officials said.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) faces “persistent challenges” due to the war in Gaza, violence in the West Bank, and the Israeli government’s withholding of customs revenue, Palestinian Planning and International Cooperation Minister Wael Zaqout said.
“This financing is part of the emergency fund framework to guarantee the continuity of vital services in education and health,” he told a press conference in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah.
The aid will be channeled to the Palestinian Authority via an emergency fund created in 2021 by the World Bank to keep the Palestinian economy afloat.
The PA has faced a serious budget crisis in recent years that has made it unable to pay salaries in full to public sector employees.
The problems worsened after Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7 last year, which led Israel to invade the territory.
In recent months, several senior Palestinian officials including the minister of the economy have warned about the risk of the West Bank economy collapsing.
“France remains committed to help build a viable Palestinian state, able to exercise its sovereignty over all its territories, including Gaza,” France’s consul-general in Jerusalem, Nicolas Kassianides, said in a statement.
The funds would “address the most essential and urgent needs of the Palestinian people,” he added.
British Consul-General Diane Corner said that her country’s contribution aimed to “support the salaries of 8,200 doctors, nurses and other employees in the health sector.”
The financial help “comes at a critical time and advances mutual priorities,” said Stefan Emblad, World Bank director in the Palestinian territories.
He added that the aid came on top of a recent $30 million grant from the World Bank, also to the emergency fund.

Boat carrying Turkish evacuees from Lebanon lands in Turkiye

Boat carrying Turkish evacuees from Lebanon lands in Turkiye
Updated 1 min 20 sec ago
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Boat carrying Turkish evacuees from Lebanon lands in Turkiye

Boat carrying Turkish evacuees from Lebanon lands in Turkiye
  • The TCG Bayraktar, which set sail from Beirut around 8:00 am (0500 GMT), pulled into the port of Mersin around 9:00 p.m.
  • Turkish officials said around 2,000 people had signed up to leave Lebanon on navy ships in the first such evacuation by sea

MERSIN, Turkiye: The first of two naval ships evacuating Turkish citizens and their families from war-torn Lebanon landed at a port in southern Turkiye late on Thursday, an AFP correspondent at the scene said.
The TCG Bayraktar, which set sail from Beirut around 8:00 am (0500 GMT), pulled into the port of Mersin around 9:00 p.m. carrying the first batch of 966 people.
As it pulled into the port, a large group of journalists were waiting on the quayside.
A second boat carrying a similar number of passengers was set to dock around midnight, officials said.
Turkish officials said around 2,000 people had signed up to leave Lebanon on navy ships in the first such evacuation by sea.
Turkiye, which is estimated to have 14,000 citizens registered with its consulate in Lebanon, announced the move on Tuesday because of the deteriorating security situation in the country.
Speaking to AFP in Beirut ahead of the boats’ departure on Wednesday, Turkish ambassador in Lebanon Ali Baris Ulusoy told AFP the evacuation was a first and came after “a growing number of requests from our Turkish nationals living in Lebanon to be evacuated.”
He said they were allowing close relatives “who are not necessarily Turkish nationals, like spouses, children or parents” to travel too.
Israel and Lebanese militant group Hezbollah have exchanged near-daily fire on the country’s southern border since the start of the Gaza war a year ago.
But Israel has intensified its strikes against Hezbollah since September 23, killing more than 1,200 people in Lebanon and displacing more than a million from their homes.


Red Sea ship bound for Oman suffers ‘minor’ damage from Houthi attacks

Red Sea ship bound for Oman suffers ‘minor’ damage from Houthi attacks
Updated 10 October 2024
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Red Sea ship bound for Oman suffers ‘minor’ damage from Houthi attacks

Red Sea ship bound for Oman suffers ‘minor’ damage from Houthi attacks
  • UK’s Maritime Trade Operations said it received an alert from the master of a ship sailing off Hodeidah that an unidentified projectile had struck the ship
  • Critics say that the Houthis are using public outrage in Yemen over the deaths of thousands of civilians in Gaza to recruit new fighters

AL-MUKALLA: Multiple attacks by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militia caused minor damage to a commercial ship bound for Oman in the Red Sea on Thursday morning in the latest in a series of incidents.

The UK’s Maritime Trade Operations said it received an alert from the master of a ship sailing southwest of Yemen’s Red Sea port of Hodeidah that an unidentified projectile had struck the ship, causing damage but no fire or casualties.

Hours later, the UK’s marine agency sent two messages saying that the master had also reported three unidentified projectiles exploding near the ship, causing no damage.

Ambrey, another UK marine security agency, gave the same information about the incident off Yemen’s Hodeidah, identifying the attacked ship as a chemical tanker flying the Liberian flag and traveling from Saudi Arabia to Oman.

The Houthis have sunk two ships since November, seizing one with its crew, and fired hundreds of ballistic missiles, drones, and drone boats at more than 100 ships in the Red Sea and other international shipping lanes in a campaign that the Yemeni militia claims is in support of Palestinians under attack from Israel.

The Houthis say that the group is only targeting Israeli-linked ships or ships owned by companies that do business with Israeli ports, in order to put pressure on Israel to end its war in the Gaza Strip.

Critics say that the Houthis are using public outrage in Yemen over the deaths of thousands of civilians in Gaza to recruit new fighters, increase public support, and divert attention away from the militia’s failures to improve public services and pay public salaries.

The news comes a day after the Yemeni Network for Rights and Freedoms said that the number of people abducted by the Houthis for celebrating the 1962 revolution had surpassed 434, and that the Houthis had banned people from celebrating the revolution in areas under the militia’s control.

The Yemeni rights group has demanded that the Houthis stop harassing those who celebrate the event; bring operatives who abducted those people to justice; and that the UN’s Yemen envoy, the US’ Yemen envoy, and international rights organizations put pressure on the Houthis to release the abductees.

The organization said: “The network (has) urged the Houthi militias to halt their brutal attacks and immediately release all those abducted for celebrating Yemeni Revolution Day.”

The Houthis have abducted hundreds of Yemenis who were commemorating the 62nd anniversary of the 1962 revolution, as well as suppressing celebratory gatherings in Sanaa, Ibb, and other Yemeni areas.

Meanwhile, Hamid Abdullah Hussein Al-Ahmar, a Yemeni politician and businessman, has said he will challenge US sanctions against him for supporting Hamas, saying that his actions were “compatible” with Yemeni laws and international charters that supported the Palestinian people.

Al-Ahmar said: “This unjustified decision is yet another example of America’s blatant bias toward injustice and occupation, as well as an illegitimate attempt to criminalize my modest legal and humanitarian efforts in support of the Palestinian people’s just cause.”

The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control on Monday imposed sanctions on Al-Ahmar — who has been in exile since the Houthis seized power in Yemen a decade ago — as well as other individuals and businesses, accusing them of supporting Hamas.

Al-Ahmar is a Yemeni member of parliament who owns major media, banking, oil, and real estate companies in Yemen and elsewhere.


Lebanon says 11 dead, 48 injured in Israeli strikes on Beirut

A building is destroyed after being hit by an Israeli airstrike in central Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024. (AP)
A building is destroyed after being hit by an Israeli airstrike in central Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024. (AP)
Updated 44 min 47 sec ago
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Lebanon says 11 dead, 48 injured in Israeli strikes on Beirut

A building is destroyed after being hit by an Israeli airstrike in central Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024. (AP)
  • “The Israeli enemy’s attacks on the capital Beirut this evening killed, according to a preliminary toll, 11 people and injured 48 others,” the ministry said

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s health ministry said Thursday at least 11 people had been killed in Israeli strikes on Beirut — the third such attack on the capital since Israel escalated its air campaign last month.
Israel has repeatedly pounded southern Beirut suburbs, the bastion of Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, for more than two weeks but strikes have rarely targeted the city center.
“The Israeli enemy’s attacks on the capital Beirut this evening killed, according to a preliminary toll, 11 people and injured 48 others,” the ministry said in a statement.
Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) said the strikes hit the densely populated neighborhoods of Nweiri and Basta.
“The first strike in Beirut targeted the third floor of an eight-story building” in the Nweiri area, and a second strike hit “a four-story building... in Al-Basta Al-Fouqa, which completely collapsed,” the NNA said. 
An AFP photographer at the site of the strike in the Basta area said two old buildings had collapsed, while the windows of surrounding homes had been blown out with the force of the explosion.
Civil defense members and local residents were attempting to pull survivors out of the mountain of rubble, with some of them carried away on stretchers.
Firefighters were working to put out a blaze in a “residential building” hit in the Nweiri area, with residents being evacuated from the upper floors using a ladder, NNA reported.
Immediately after the raids, AFP live footage showed two plumes of smoke billowing in between densely-packed buildings.
Earlier this month, Israel carried out a deadly air raid in Beirut, hitting an emergency services rescue facility run by Hezbollah, killing seven workers, the service said.
On September 30, an Israeli drone strike on a building in Beirut’s busy Cola district killed three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the leftist armed group said.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement and its foe Israel have been exchanging near-daily cross-border fire for nearly a year in fallout from the Gaza war.
But since September 23, Israel has escalated its air strikes on targets in Lebanon, killing more than 1,200 people and forced more than one million to flee their homes, according to official figures.


Activists report spike in mass civilian deaths after Sudan’s army ups airstrikes

Activists report spike in mass civilian deaths after Sudan’s army ups airstrikes
Updated 10 October 2024
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Activists report spike in mass civilian deaths after Sudan’s army ups airstrikes

Activists report spike in mass civilian deaths after Sudan’s army ups airstrikes
  • Emergency Lawyers, a Sudanese human rights group, said hundreds of people had been killed in such strikes across the country
  • It did not state the period of time for that casualty toll but said it demonstrated “the armed forces’ indifference to protecting defenseless civilians“

CAIRO: Rights activists and local responders said scores of civilians had been killed at sites across Sudan in the past week as the army escalates air strikes nearly 18 months into its war with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
While the RSF controls almost half of the country, the army has recently deployed its superior air power to help it regain some territory in the capital Khartoum, and to pound other areas occupied by its rivals.
Sudan’s war, which erupted from a power struggle between the army and the RSF ahead of a planned transition to civilian rule and free elections, has already created the world’s largest displacement crisis and caused famine.
Emergency Lawyers, a Sudanese human rights group, said hundreds of people had been killed in such strikes across the country. It did not state the period of time for that casualty toll but said it demonstrated “the armed forces’ indifference to protecting defenseless civilians.”
In Hasaheisa, a town in El Gezira state south of Khartoum where the RSF has stationed many fighters, airstrikes killed or injured over 100 people on Monday, Emergency Lawyers said.
An activist from the area said at least 38 people were killed, mostly children. He shared video with Reuters of the aftermath of the strike appearing to show a residential area.
In the North Kordofan town of Humrat Alsheikh, west of Khartoum, an airstrike on Oct. 5 killed 30 people and injured more than 100, Emergency Lawyers said, posting a video that appeared to show a market that had been hit.
Reuters could not independently verify the footage in either video.
A day earlier, a strike that hit another market in Al-Koma in North Darfur killed 61 people, according to the local emergency response room. Those killed included 13 children, UN agency UNICEF said.
The army, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment, has accused the RSF of occupying civilian homes and launching attacks from civilian areas. The RSF denies using civilians as human shields.
FIGHTING LIKELY TO INTENSIFY
Yale Humanitarian Lab, which monitors the war in Sudan, said the army had also carried out a significant campaign of bombardment in RSF-controlled areas of Al-Fashir, a North Darfur city that the paramilitary has besieged for months.
The army’s advance in the capital, which began in late September, has also led to reported casualties. Radhouane Nouicer, Sudan expert for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, expressed alarm at reports, some of which circulated on social media, of the summary execution of 70 young men by forces allied to the army in Bahri, part of the greater capital region.
Fighting is expected to intensify with the end of rains that had halted the RSF’s advance in southeast Sudan. The RSF’s leader called on troops to report to their units and said they were prepared to fight on for years.
Overall death tolls from the war are highly uncertain due to the collapse of health and government services, and lack of access for aid workers. Both sides have received material support from external supporters.
“The uptick in fighting and reported civilian casualties and damage to infrastructure are all happening while more weapons are finding their way to the warring parties,” said Mohamed Osman of Human Rights Watch.