Recent Stories

Lebanon Still Overshadowed by Oblivion As Port Blast Aftermath Enters Fourth Year
 
Art has played an influential role in making sense of the loss felt after the August 4 explosion. Tom Young’s “Strong Angels” and other paintings show a human dimension of the tragedy and its civilian heroes, who “join forces to lift the city’s grief,” writes Darine Houmani of Diffah Three (The New Arab). “Despite all its devastation, the August 4 explosion brought greater impetus to preserve our heritage and brought about a database of our historical buildings that hadn’t been done before,” states Mona Hallak, an architect, heritage activist, and director of the American University of Beirut’s Neighborhood Initiative, as cited in The New Arab. Several weighed in on the rebuilding efforts, including Lebanese architect Jad Tabet, who proposed “rehabilitation” rather than “reconstruction,” focusing on preserving the city’s existing social fabric and inhabitants alongside the architecture (for further reading on Jad Tabet and architectural heritage, see Al Jadid, Vol. 4, No, 25, Fall 1998; Vol. 5, No. 26, Winter 1999; and Vol. 24, No. 79, 2020). As art historian and gallery owner Andrée Sfeir-Semler says, “You need to nourish people with art and culture because that is what feeds their souls.”

Pages

Our Current Issue

From Renaissance to the Digital Age:

How Translation Can Power Arabic’s Future
By Naomi Pham
 
The Arabic language, with all its vast, rich history, has frequently been a subject of concern among intellectuals and linguists throughout recent years. The language has experienced significant development over the past century and a half and remains one of the most widely spoken languages, the official language of over 20 countries, and used by over 400 million speakers. Despite this, articles emerge every other year worrying about its development.
Essays and Features

Not a Kafer, Just a Critic:

How Ziad Rahbani Challenged Religious and Political Orthodoxy with Wit, Sorrow, and Song
By Sami Asmar
 
On 26 July 2025, the Lebanese composer, pianist, playwright, and polemicist Ziad Rahbani passed away from cirrhosis of the liver in Beirut at the age of 69. Since he started composing as a teenager, the son of the legendary Fairuz (now 90 years old) and the late Assi Rahbani of the celebrated Rahbani Brothers, the musical prodigies who defined the shape of the modern Lebanese short song, Ziad leaves us a multi-decade-long legacy that reshaped Arab music and Lebanese politics. The genius and enigmatic Ziad will be remembered by his countless fans worldwide, but likely happily forgotten by the authorities he challenged and ridiculed. 
Essays and Features

Aftermath of the Mar Elias Church Bombing:

Abeer Dagher Esber on the ‘Sectarianization of Blood’ in Syria’s Long Continuum of Collapse
By Naomi Pham
 
The recent attacks on the Church of Mar Elias in Al-Dweilaa on June 22, 2025 during Divine Liturgy left at least 25 dead and 63 injured. Perhaps Syrians have become accustomed to hearing such tragedy in the news, for every month a new story of blood, violence, and climbing death tolls appears, the massacres on the Syrian coast still a fresh wound on top of the losses suffered in Al-Dweilaa. Abeer Dagher Esber’s impassioned response to the attacks in her essay, “A Prophet of Fire… Consumed by Our Zero-Sum Conflicts,”* is an unflinching criticism of Syria’s problems. The attack on the Church of Mar Elias is a "wound to the spiritual memory of Syria and to the symbolism of the saint whose name the church bears," she writes, adding, "It is a bloody irony that the place named after the ‘one who raised the dead’ should be blown up by someone who worships death, sees the Other as heresy, and life as merely a path toward a delusional glory."
Essays and Features

In Sickness and Silence: Arab Writers and Artists Between Pain and Power

By Elie Chalala
 
I grew up in Hazmièh, a small town east of Beirut, Lebanon's capital, during the early 1960s. Our rented apartment was situated near a modest multi-unit residential building, known as the Wadih El Safi building, named after the celebrated Lebanese singer who owned it. At the time, Wadih El Safi (1921-2013) was renowned for his wealth and fame, a reputation that endured after I immigrated to and settled in the United States. Wadih El Safi's later life is notable for his declaration of bankruptcy just a year before his death. He attributes his financial troubles to a monopoly contract he signed with Rotana, a Saudi Arabian record label and the music division of the Rotana Media Group.
Essays and Features

A Syrian Surgeon and Novelist Returns to a 'Country Once Called Syria'

Khalil al-Neimi Exposes What Tyranny Has Done to His Homeland
By Elie Chalala
 
I feel an affinity with Khalil al-Neimi, the author and novelist. Like him, I left my country, Lebanon, in 1972, and often thought about what I left behind. I gradually lost the desire to return, and later, after making a short visit back, I gave up on the idea altogether after being away for 38 years. Neimi and I differ on why it took us a long time to return (for me, 38 years, and for him, 50 years). It has been 53 years now since I departed Lebanon.
Essays and Features

The Arab-Israeli Conflict: How the American Left Grabbed the Third Rail of American Politics

By 
Michael Teague

The Arab-Israeli Conflict: How the American Left Grabbed the Third Rail of American Politics

 
The Arab-Israeli conflict has long been a divisive issue in the left lane of American politics. Bitter disagreements came to the fore, especially during periods of armed conflict and subsequent occupation, such as the wars of 1967 and 1973, and Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The author of a new book on this subject claims these divisions significantly weakened and perhaps even contributed to the demise of the American Left during the ‘60s and ‘70s.
 
The landscape now, however, is noticeably different.

Once Hopeful Lebanon Faces Crises and Hopelessness as it Marks First Anniversary of its 17th October Uprising!

By 
Elie Chalala
 
Those who are looking for signs of Lebanese hopelessness need only look out over the waters of the Eastern Mediterranean sea, or to the doors of Western embassies in Beirut. The sea is where the Lebanese tragedy is really being played out, as hundreds board rickety vessels for the perilous journeys to neighboring Cyprus. We need to abandon the illusions that such deadly trips originate from countries other than Lebanon. A brief glimpse at the news, with all the stories of drowned and dead Lebanese, is more than enough to liberate us from the delusions of Lebanon’s “exceptionalism.”

Lebanon, Plundered, Blasted, Burning, ‘Celebrates’ in Irony the Centennial of Its Foundation

By 
Elie Chalala
 
The Lebanese political scene has a melancholy and desperate mood. The country suffered shock after shock, from the economic-financial meltdown to the COVID-19 pandemic, all the way to the explosion at its main port, a significant economic lifeline disabled when most needed. Most heartbreaking is watching and listening, even from afar, as Lebanon celebrates its centennial birthday while lacking the resources to extricate itself from its present predicament and being left to plead with foreign countries and economic institutions for humanitarian and economic assistance. Aside from the legitimate requests needed to address the consequences of the port explosion, Lebanon lacks the essential prerequisites of a functioning and legitimate state.

The ‘Grand Compromise’ Between Lebanon’s ‘Strong Presidency’ and Iran’s 'Rejectionists' Hastens the Demise of Lebanon’s Economy

By 
Elie Chalala

In early July, we wrote about two suicides in Lebanon while holding off on a third until we fact-checked it. Subsequently, the Beirut-based Al Modon newspaper wrote about a total of four suicides, including the two reported here. The article’s author deliberately stressed the reasons behind the suicides were not personal, but rather related to deteriorating economic conditions and the loss of dignity.

ESSAYS IN FORTHCOMING AL JADID, VOL. 24, NO. 78, 2020

How Lebanon’s ‘State within a State’ Escalated Financial Disaster: Two Beirut Landmarks – AUB, and Le Bristol Hotel – the Latest Collateral Damage
By 
Elie Chalala

It is painful to witness, even from afar, what recently befell Lebanon. This agony springs from the memories of my formative years during Lebanon’s post-independence era, when resentment of its ruling elites consolidated my belief in the necessity of change. I left the country without the reform wish fulfilled, and later watched the flames of civil war consume hopes of change – even when guns fell silent after the country’s second constitution in 1989. While the Lebanese started to come together to embark on reconstruction of the country, corruption, sectarianism, and the plundering of state’s resources soon took over.

Farah Al-Qasimi: Between Two Worlds: Arab Americans in Detroit

By 
Al Jadid Staff
 
The works of photographer Farah Al-Qasimi touch on the intricacies of life as an Arab American in Detroit, with each frame capturing both Arab and Western aesthetics. Of the 22 countries belonging to the “Arab World,” as defined by membership in the League of Arab States, seven – Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, and Yemen – are prominently represented by immigrants in Metro Detroit. The Arab American community is also diverse in its religious representation, with Islam and Christianity in their Middle East iterations represented by a variety of sects and denominations including Chaldean, Coptic, Druze, Greek Orthodox, Maronite, Melkite, Shi’a, Sunni, and Syrian Orthodox.

Pages