Week 10 & 11: Mashrou Leila

The week’s reading and the movie Jihad for Love reminded me of the controversy regarding one of my favorite music bands – Mashrou Leila, a very popular Lebanese rock/indie band. I became familiar with this band after a friend of mine recommend their music. She also added, that this band not only produces great music, but also, protests for equal rights for the gay community in Lebanon. I found a unique musical and artistic group that creates great music (even for people that do not know a lot of Arabic or even none) and memorable video clips. I was also curios about the political side of the band that my friend told me about and read about the debates surrounding the content of their songs. In its very short life (created in 2008) the band had already had its fair share of political and religious controversies in the Middle East. The first and most known one is the band’s performance in Lebanon, where the lead singer, Hamed Sinno, waved the Rainbow Flag in front of the audience. This resulted in cancelation of several shows and music festivals featuring the band in Jordan and in Lebanon. These “controversies” made the band not only famous for its music, but also for being a symbol of a progressive political voice in the Middle East. Was that what the band wanted in the first place? In an interview, Hamed Sinno claims that he feels a burden, being portrayed as the sole voice of the Middle Eastern LGBTQ community. His biggest criticism is toward western media coverage that depicts the band as exceptional in its message – “It can’t be that absurd to the western imagination that there are many liberal Arabs inclined towards gender and sexual diversity.” 

Mashrou Leila Imm el Jacket live performance:

Western treatment of homosexuals in the Middle East is also criticized by Massad. Massad’s main criticism is pointed towards some western scholars and to the idea of “the international gay struggle”. As Massad argues, “the international gay struggle” is a notion that put gay men and women in one universal group that face the same problems. “The international gay struggle” is a political effort that divides the world to people how support gay rights and people who do not. The idea of the international gay struggle stems from an orientalist point of view that some male western scholars hold. According to them, the west possesses the knowledge of the problems that gay men and women face in Muslim countries and the solution that could help liberate the repressed gay community in Muslim countries. 

The struggle for achieving more rights in Muslim countries can be seen in the movie Jihad for love. This movie sheds light on stories of different gay Muslim men and women from all around the world that try to achieve acceptance for their sexual identity together with their Muslim identity. Their struggle exhibits the many different ways of protesting against the current treatment of Muslim gay communities. Their stories bolster the claim that Mashrou Leila is not an exceptional case.        

Link to the interview with the band - https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jul/31/mashrou-leila-byblos-festival-concert-cancelled-after-pressure-from-christian-groups