Qantara.de - Dialog mit der islamischen Welt

Since the 1990s, the exiled Iranian singer Mamak Khadem has been combining Persian classical music with world music. For her new album, "The Road," she has discovered unusual Eastern European soundscapes. Marian Brehmer talked to the musician and listened to her latest CDMore

CAMP describes itself as a exhibition venue ″for art discussing questions of displacement, migration, immigration and asylum.″ Changiz M. Varzi visited its latest exhibition – Deportation RegimeMore

Streams of migration are a challenge. On the move along with individual people are whole cultures, languages and habits that are sometimes not understood outside their homelands. Music, as a non-verbal phenomenon bound up with strong feelings, could operate as a medium for bridging the consequent perplexity. By Hans-Jurgen LinkeMore

Her book "Al-Bab al-Maftooh" (The Open Door), published in 1960, made Latifa al-Zayyat famous overnight. Her reputation as a feminist writer was sealed by the film version of the novel, starring the legendary actress Faten Hamama (at the time, the wife of Omar Sharif). By Sherif Abdel SamadMore

Children's book author Thomas Mac Pfeifer spent close to a year interviewing migrant children in Germany and writing up stories from their homelands. The tales in his book take the audience on a bittersweet journey to Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Burkina Faso and other conflict zones. Interview by Sertan SandersonMore

The Arab revolutions – and the Syrian revolution in particular – changed authors conception of themselves. For some, the change was so great that they find they can no longer write. This is the experience of Dima Wannous, one of Syria′s outstanding young authorsMore

Survival in Tehran is a matter of lying and bending the rules. In the Iranian theocracy, real life is conducted in secret. Nadja Schluter reports on what else we can learn from the wonderful book on Iran, "City of Lies" More

All their lives, the early Romantics and classical philologists Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829) and August Wilhelm Schlegel (1767-1845) saw the Orient as a source of literary and cultural enrichment for Europe. By Melanie Christina MohrMore

″The Age of Jihad: The Islamic State and the Great War for the Middle East″ by journalist Patrick Cockburn traces not just the rise of Islamic State and other extremist groups who are striving for power in Muslim countries, but how American and British foreign policy in this century has contributed directly to their emergence. Richard Marcus read the bookMore