Photo Essays

Camel milk, the white gold of Dubai

The United Arab Emirates is known for its oil production and extravagant architectural projects. However, many are unaware that Dubai ...More

The ancient Torajan burial ritual is also known as "Ma'nene", in which clans visit the tombs of deceased family members, clean their remains and replenish the coffins with personal belongings

Burying the dead in Toraja, Indonesia

The people in the remote Toraja region on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi are predominantly Christians, but they are sticking to the old ...More

Damascus: everyday life for whom?

With fighting around Damascus having ceased, everyday life is slowly returning to the Syrian capital. While the people there enjoy a touch ...More

A massive undertaking: the new city is being built on 170,000 acres about 28 miles east of Cairo and is nearly twice its size. Construction began in 2016, and the first of its forecast 6.5 million residents are scheduled to move there next year

Make way for Egyptʹs New Administrative Capital

A city of some 20 million people combining charm and squalor, Cairo may soon witness an exodus by well-heeled residents, state employees ...More

The Chinese touch: on the outskirts of Addis Ababa one would be forgiven for thinking an oriental palace has been misplaced. The train station marks the beginning of the new Addis Ababa to Djibouti City railway line carrying passengers since January 2018. It is a joint venture between the Ethiopian Djibouti Railway (EDR) company and the Chinese, who built and largely financed the $4 billion (€3.5 billion) endeavour

Taking the train from Addis Ababa to Djibouti

Since the start of 2018, a Chinese-run train is taking people and goods from landlocked Ethiopia to the Red Sea port in Djibouti. Reporter ...More

Turkey's Ataturk still prevalent in everyday life

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's presence can still be felt in a landscape increasingly dominated by President Tayyip Recep Erdogan. Bradley Secker ...More

A Muslim yoga boom: although seen as being at odds with several other faiths, the recognition of yoga in Saudi Arabia – the epicentre of the Islamic world – appears to have given a new impetus to Muslim yoga practitioners around the world

Saudi women discover yoga

Widely perceived as a Hindu spiritual practice, yoga was not officially permitted for decades in Saudi Arabia, the cradle of Islam where ...More

The province of Istanbul is the main destination of the approximately 3.6 million Syrians who have sought refuge in Turkey – ahead of the border provinces of Sanliurfa and Gaziantep

Syrians forge new lives in Istanbul

More than half a million refugees of Syrian origin currently live in Istanbul, carving out a niche for themselves in a new country under ...More

Bangladesh's 'death squad' security agency to scan social media

The Bangladeshi government is looking to task a controversial paramilitary force with monitoring social media as the country gears up for ...More

Uncovering head coverings: in much of the Western world today, the word headscarf is often automatically associated with those worn by women for religious reasons, especially Muslim women. Yet the idea and practice of covering one's head with cloth transcends religious, cultural and geographic categories. The show "Veiled, Unveiled! The Headscarf" at Vienna's Ethnological Museum (Weltmuseum) puts headscarf diversity on display

Unveiling the history of the headscarf

Mandaean religious rites threatened by Tigris water pollution

Every Sunday in Iraq, along a strip of embankment on the Tigris River reserved for followers of the obscure and ancient Mandaean faith, ...More

A driver opens the door to the carved wooden cab of his decorated truck

Keep on trucking: Art on the move in Pakistan

They pollute the roads and chug along at a snail's pace, but to their Pakistani owners the rickety trucks are moving pieces of art. And ...More

Mohammedʹs sketches and paintings capture the claustrophobic reality of Egypt’s prisons, where tens of thousands have been locked away, often for months or years without charge, in the heaviest crackdown on dissent in the country’s modern history

Yassin Mohammedʹs cellblock chronicle

Egyptian activist and artist Yassin Mohammed, who walked free last month from a Cairo prison after serving a two-year sentence for taking ...More

Hijab: most Islamic scholars agree that the hijab, which covers the head and neck, and comes in any number of shapes and colors, must be worn by Muslim women. American teen Hannah Schraim is seen wearing one here while playing with her brother

Burka, hijab or niqab? What is she wearing?

The way to peace: memories of World War I combined with a call for peace and tolerance – that's what media artists Detlef Hartung and Georg Trenz are all about. Their letter Illuminations will make Cologne Cathedral appear in a completely different light during the cathedral's pilgrimage days from September 27-30

Cologne Cathedral illuminated for peace

The Cologne Cathedral will be illuminated over the next few days as a stance against hatred. Messages will be projected onto the sides of ...More

Muslim fashion combats prejudice: the de Young Museum exhibtion is showing contemporary Muslim style and clothing. This design made of silk and Swarovski crystals by Malaysian luxury designer Bernard Chandran is just one of the featured items. The exhibition aims to examine a branch of fashion that is often talked about, but rarely gets a chance to present itself

Muslim fashions: modern yet modest

Style-conscious Muslim women were long ignored by the mainstream fashion industry. An exhibition at San Francisco's de Young Museum ...More

Umar is an indigenous former Protestant pastor who converted to Islam in the late 1990s and now acts as a mediator between local Christians and Muslims in San Christobal de las Casas, Chiapas. "Our religion is monotheistic," he said. "But we are not practicing a holy cult here"

The indigenous Muslims of Chiapas, Mexico

A trip to the indigenous Mayan heartland of Mexico shows how vital the Muslim community is in this predominantly Roman Catholic country. ...More

Crumbling colonial splendour in Karachi

More than 70 years after Pakistan's foundation, architectural jewels dating from the British colonial era are being torn down – especially ...More

Glowing advocate of Iranian interests: Mohammed Mossadegh was Iran's first democratically elected prime minister from 1951 – with a brief interruption – until his fall in 1953. Educated, eloquent and charismatic, he also had many admirers in the West. Daring to nationalise the British oil industry in Iran, he quickly became an icon of anti-imperialism across the Third World

1953: The CIA and Iran's stolen democracy

Almost 65 years ago, the CIA overthrew Iran's first democratically elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh. Recently the U.S. State ...More

Cancer patients – the other victims of Yemen's war

For more than three years a military alliance led by Saudi Arabia has been fighting the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Even hospitals are not ...More

Dusty, hot, narrow – and almost as big as Cologne: Rohingya began fleeing from Myanmar to Bangladesh decades ago. A refugee camp grew up next to the village of Kutupalong. As a result of the mass exodus since August 2017, the number of inhabitants there has risen sharply and further camps have been set up. A total of almost one million people now live there – a city almost the size of Cologne, but without the infrastructure

Rohingya in Bangladesh: anniversary of the exodus

A year ago, the Rohingya exodus from Myanmar began. Hundreds of thousands fled to neighbouring Bangladesh. Andrea Marshall gives her ...More

What is the Andrew Brunson row all about?

The dispute over the detention of U.S. pastor Andrew Craig Brunson has strained diplomatic ties between the US and Turkey. Who is Brunson ...More

Danish Muslims defy face veil ban

Under the new Danish law banning facial veils, police are able to instruct women to unveil or order them to leave public areas. Fines ...More

Affluent upbringing: Imran Khan was born in Lahore in 1952, the son of a civil engineer. Khan grew up with his four sisters in a relatively affluent part of the city. He received a privileged education, first in his hometown and then in Worcester, England. It was there that Khan's love and talent for the game of cricket became evident. In 1972, he enrolled at Oxford University to study politics and economics

Imran Khan, Pakistan's new prime minister

From cricket icon to hedonistic playboy and finally the leader of Pakistan — Imran Khan has enjoyed a long career in the ...More

Rufia Begum, aged 9, is among more than 700,000 Rohingya who have taken shelter in the Cox's Bazar district of Bangladesh after fleeing a military crackdown in Myanmar last year, the United Nations and human rights groups say

Wearing tradition – thanaka paste in a Rohingya camp

Thanaka, a paste that has been used for centuries to protect skin from the sun, is traditionally applied in swirls to the cheeks of ...More

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Most Recent Photo Essay

Rainbow wares: leather goods are a popular holiday souvenir from Morocco. In many of the narrow souks in the old town centres, there are alleys full of leather shops. But you can also buy the brightly coloured shoes, belts, bags and co. directly from the leather factories. There, animal skins are still processed according to traditional methods. Working conditions in the tanneries are correspondingly tough

A filthy occupation: leather-tanning in Morocco

Those looking to visit a leather factory In Morocco should visit the tanners' quarter in the town of Fez. For tourists the ancient craft may be fascinating, for the workers, however, it is extremely exhausting. By Stefanie Hoppner

Political cartoons, satire and Islam

As we have seen in recent decades, political cartoons can have explosive potential. Qantara examines the importance of humour and satire in the Islamic world.More

Jewish and Arab Israelis create a new type of grassroots activism

Members of Standing Together grassroots movement (source: Facebook)

Citizens groups are not a replacement for a political party that speaks in the name of both communities, but at the moment they may be the best Israeli society can come up with.More

Qantara dossier: European travellers in the Orient

(photo: Max Freiherr von Oppenheim-Stiftung im Hausarchiv des Bankhauses Sal. Oppenheim)

Our dossier contains a selection of interesting biographies and reports on renowned European travelers to the Orient from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.More

Hussein Agha: "The Middle East’s great divide is not sectarianism"

Iraqi Turkmen forces man a checkpoint in the northern city of Taza Khormato, 20 kms south of Kirkuk, on 21 June 2014 (photo: Karim Sahib/AFP/Getty Images)

The spectre of Sunni Shia sectarianism haunts the Middle East. It is blamed for chaos, conflict, and extremism. Yet, argues Hussein Agha, wrongly defining the struggles gripping the Middle East encourages misguided remedies.More

Goethe-Institut's Perspektiven: Generational conflict

Goethe-Institut Perspektiven logo (source: Goethe-Institut)

Egypt, Algeria, Lebanon… six young women and men from six different countries put their individual views and experience with the generational conflict into words for this dossier.More

Top 10 books about Muslims and Islam by Saadia Faruqi

Media stereotypes and misinformation about Muslims are nothing new. In post-election America, Muslims are finding more allies who often want to help but don’t know much about Islam. More and more non-Muslims have questions and are seeking answers.More

Female Kurdish singer rallies the troops

Kurdish singer Helly Luv (photo: Getty Images/Safin Hamed)

Iraqi Kurdish singer Helly Luv was in Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, filming the video to her latest hit. Luv is aiming for international fame as she releases her new English song 'Revolution', calling for action against terrorism and violence.More

Syria's Cultural Heritage in Danger

Over four millennia, Babylonian, Egyptian, Persian, Greek and Roman influences crossed paths in Syria. Today, precious cultural sites from these eras are being damaged as the Syrian civil war takes its toll on the country's cultural heritage. This week, the United Nation's cultural organization UNESCO made fresh reports about damage to Syria's historic sites.

Syria's Cultural Heritage in Danger

The civil war in Syria, which has taken the lives of thousands since 2011, is becoming increasingly brutal. Valuable cultural sites are also being destroyed in the fighting. UNESCO has now provided reports on the damage.