LAHORE: “Women in Pakistan are really, really strong. We have a voice. We just don’t have enough spaces to use that voice,” says Kanwal Ahmed, an agony aunt to some 260,000, determined to change the situation.
Her female-only online hub sees traditionally taboo topics such as sex, divorce, and domestic violence discussed freely in a conservative country where there are few avenues for women to discuss personal problems.
“I wanted it to be the kind of place where women really opened up without the fear of being attacked or harassed or judged,” Ahmed, explains of her Soul Sisters Pakistan network on Facebook.
The former make-up artist spotted the need for a safe space after spending time soothing nervous brides as they confided in her from the salon chair.
The 31-year-old says her group is somewhere women can “talk about things that they weren’t supposed to talk about in society” because they are deemed inappropriate or shameful.
In 2018, Facebook selected Ahmed as one of 115 “Community Leaders” using the social network to help others. Chosen from a pool of 6,000 applicants, she received a grant to further develop her project.
Soul Sisters Pakistan members say they can speak openly about issues — such as maternal and mental health, body image and reproductive rights — with a candour that is impossible in the real world.
One of the most discussed topics is domestic violence, which is common in the patriarchal country.
Data from the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and the Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences suggests 90 percent of women in Pakistan have experienced some form of domestic abuse.
Ahmed says many people do not take the problem seriously — even when wives confide in other family members about abuse.
“It is very common for them to be told that they are being too sensitive or to compromise. They aren’t given other options,” Ahmed explains, adding that women should not have to bear abuse for any reason.
According to the UN, Pakistan has a lack of access to affordable services in “sectors such as health, police, justice and social support” to ensure female safety and protection.
Soul Sisters offers informal help to users, ranging from legal advice to emotional support from other members, who call themselves Soulies.
A recent thread, #MyBodyIsNotASecret, underlines the changing norms of a generation that has seen the global impact of the #MeToo movement, progress in body positivity, and a backlash against traditional beauty standards and colorism.
“There is a lot of shame associated with a woman’s body, with the general bodily functions even. They are not talked about,” Ahmed says.
One member shared her struggle with the medical condition vaginismus, which helped others identify their own symptoms.
Ahmed says she lost a family friend to breast cancer after the disease went undiagnosed and untreated for too long because she was “too ashamed to talk about her body with anyone.”
“This isn’t a new story. This is something that happens to a lot of women,” Ahmed insists.
The group provides a welcome respite for its members, who frequently face online abuse when they post publicly, and encourages women to share success stories as well as problems.
But the diverse narratives have also brought a range of criticism.
Ahmed has been accused of promoting divorce and “wild” behavior, even as more progressive voices have slammed the group for allowing conservative views to be shared.
Her work is challenged from “almost every angle,” Ahmed says, pointing to an element of internalized misogyny among some members.
But she says her aim is not to “serve a small niche,” rather to shatter stereotypes and break norms.
“If people were already well aware, we wouldn’t need spaces like this. It’s exhausting, frustrating and takes every drop of my strength to keep continuing.
“But every time someone changes their mind or we get success stories — instant gratification!” she tweeted recently.
Ahmed and her team try to handle conflicts sensitively — allowing a wide range of views to foster dialogue and debate — an approach that has seen membership swell.
We “just try to tell the women to be who they are, to not be ashamed of being themselves, to speak their minds,” she says.
Splinter groups have struggled to achieve a fraction of Soul Sisters Pakistan’s success or reach — she says there are three to six million conversations on the site each month.
Ahmed used her Facebook grant to launch an online talk show in a bid to win a wider audience — with each episode getting hundreds of thousands of viewers.
The coronavirus pandemic has halted production and Ahmed recently moved to Canada so the program is on hiatus.
But she is committed to challenging a society “scared of women with a voice.”
She adds: “The lack of acknowledgement about issues women face in society is horrific.”
Pakistan’s online agony aunt tearing down taboos
https://arab.news/v352v
Pakistan’s online agony aunt tearing down taboos
- Soul Sisters Pakistan members say they can speak about issues with a candour that is impossible in the real world
- The group provides a welcome respite for its members, who frequently face online abuse when they post publicly
UK comedian Russell Brand appears in court on rape charges
- He faces two counts of rape, two of sexual assault and one of indecent assault
- Arriving for the first court hearing in the case, Brand made his way slowly through a crush of media and onlookers gathered outside the court
LONDON: British comedian and actor Russell Brand appeared in a London court on Friday to face five charges of rape and other sexual offenses and said.
Brand, 49, who became known internationally as the husband of pop star Katy Perry after forging a career in Britain with his risque comedy routines, was charged last month.
He faces two counts of rape, two of sexual assault and one of indecent assault.
Arriving for the first court hearing in the case, Brand made his way slowly through a crush of media and onlookers gathered outside the court.
The celebrity, dressed casually in a dark colored open-necked shirt and jeans, spoke only to confirm his details before being granted bail and ordered to appear in court again on May 30.
In a video response on X after he was charged, Brand denied all the alleged offenses and said he was “grateful” for the “opportunity” to defend himself.
“I was a fool before I lived in the light of the Lord. I was a drug addict, a sex addict and an imbecile, but what I never was a rapist. I’ve never engaged in non-consensual activity,” he said in the video.
The charges relate to offenses alleged to have taken place between 1999 and 2005 involving four women.
Prosecutors charged him after a police investigation into allegations following a broadcast of a Channel 4 documentary in September 2023.
London’s Metropolitan Police have said the investigation remains open and urged “anyone who has been affected by this case, or anyone who has any information” to contact officers.
Brand is charged with the rape of a woman in 1999 in the Bournemouth area on England’s south coast, as well as the abuse and sexual assault of a woman in 2004 in the Westminster area of central London.
He has also been charged with indecently assaulting a woman in 2001 and sexually assaulting another woman between 2004 and 2005 — both incidents alleged to have taken place in Westminster.
The court confirmed that he lives part of the time in the United States, but Brand also gave an address in the southern English county of Buckinghamshire.
Born in 1975 to working-class parents in Essex, east of London, Brand began his stand-up career as a teenager.
He burst onto the scene as a provocative, often lewd comedian before transforming into a Hollywood star, then an anti-establishment guru and conspiracy theorist who has millions of fans online.
He has almost seven million subscribers on YouTube, 11.3 million on X and 4.8 million on Instagram.
He presented a show on the BBC’s Radio 2 station between 2006 and 2008 but left after an on-air prank when he left a sexually explicit voicemail for “Fawlty Towers” actor Andrew Sachs about his granddaughter.
He also presented a “Big Brother” spin-off show for several years and wrote columns for the left-wing Guardian newspaper and penned two autobiographies.
Brand was married to US star Perry for 14 months between 2010 and 2012.
He is now married to the author and illustrator Laura Gallacher, with whom he has three children.
Saudi highlights from Christie’s Middle Eastern & Contemporary Art sale
- Twelve artists from the Kingdom feature in the online auction, which closes May 8
Ahmed Mater
‘Illumination X-Ray’
The latest Middle Eastern & Contemporary Art sale from the storied auction house Christie’s features works by 12 Saudi artists — highlighted in a “Saudi Now” section on the auction site, which Christie’s describes as “a carefully selected group of works by Saudi artists that trace the unique history of the Kingdom’s artistic evolution; from the development of a modernist language deeply enmeshed in the country’s cultural heritage, to innovative contemporary works that challenge perceptions of what Saudi art is and can be.”
Mater, a qualified doctor, is perhaps the most famous of the artists contributing to the latter group. His work, Nour Kelani — Christie’s managing director, Saudi Arabia — wrote in an email to Arab News, “explores history and the narratives and aesthetics of Islamic culture, and continues to receive much-deserved growing regional and international acclaim.”
The ‘Illumination’ series to which this diptych belongs, she continues “brings together traditional Islamic art and modern medicine — two subjects that are often treated as essentially separate and full of tense contradictions.”
Abdulhalim Radwi
‘Peace’
Kelani says Radwi is “one of Saudi Arabia’s most respected Modernist artists.” Indeed, he is often considered the ‘father’ of modern Saudi art. He was one of the first Saudi artists to study overseas, earning his BA in Rome in the Sixties and living for a time in Madrid in the Seventies. His work, Kelani notes, “draws references to Saudi Arabia’s desert life, folklore and traditional architecture” and although Radwi was born in Makkah, he is most strongly associated with Jeddah, where he spent much of his adult life.
This piece is one of Radwi’s later works, created in 2002, just four years before he died. It is expected to fetch between $20-30,000 at auction.
Faisal Samra
‘Performance #13’
The Saudi-Bahraini artist is “considered a pioneer of conceptual art in the Middle East,” says Kelani. “He incorporates digital photography and performance into a creative repertoire of work.” This piece comes from his “Distorted Reality” series, which features covered individuals in blurred motion. “I don’t like still water; I like it to be moving,” Samra told Arab News last year. “I’m exploring to find something different. The core of my research is man’s existence in our world, and how we react to it, and how the world reacts to him.”
Jowhara AlSaud
‘He Said, She Said’
The Saudi-born artist “manipulates her photographs with drawing and etching in a process that explores both the impressionability of her medium and the cultural landscape around her, exploring … censorship,” Kelani explains. This work, created in 2009, is a prime example — the lack of facial features and the blurred lines are all conscious depictions of acts of self-censorship on the part of the artist.
Ayman Yossri Daydban
‘Kunna Jameean Ekhwa’
Daydban is a Saudi-Palestinian artist whose work, says Kelani, “is both biographical and a commentary on the environment he grew up in.” This piece, described by Kelani as “iconic,” is from “Subtitles,” a series in which he selects stills from subtitled movies so the text — now decontextualized — is open to our own interpretations. Here, the text reads “We were brothers once.”
Moath Alofi
‘The Last Tashahud’
This work is one of a series of images in Alofi’s series of photographs that, according to Alofi’s website, “captures desolated mosques scattered along the winding roads leading to the holy city of Madinah.” These mosques, the text continues, were “built by philanthropists hoping to offer a haven for travelers, both of whom seek to reap the sacramental rewards of these structures.”
Nasser Al-Salem
‘God is Alive, He Shall Not Die’
Al-Salem, Kelani says, “is a contemporary calligrapher whose work redefines Arabic calligraphy, challenging the boundaries of the traditional Islamic art by recontextualizing it in unconventional mixed-media forms.” Forms such as this one, for example, in which the word “Allah” is presented in neon above a mirror, thus repeating.
Netflix’s ‘Havoc’ is a high-octane thrill ride, thanks to Tom Hardy
- The ‘Venom’ star goes full-on beast mode in Gareth Evans’ action thriller
LONDON: In an interview ahead of the release of “Havoc”, writer-director Gareth Evans described the film’s star Tom Hardy as being in “beast mode” during shooting.
That’s actually the perfect logline for this high-octane, hyper-violent action film from the director of “The Raid” and its equally entertaining sequel. Because while there’s definitely some kind of plot nestled underneath the spectacular fight choreography and impressive gunplay — i.e. Hardy is the slightly corrupt grizzled New York homicide detective Pat Walker, who must dodge even more corrupt New York cops as he attempts to track down the son of a mayoral candidate who is a suspect in a triad shooting — “Havoc” is, essentially, Tom Hardy blasting, punching and body slamming anyone who gets in his way.
And, for the most part, that makes for a pretty entertaining ride. As Walker’s run-ins with gangsters, hired guns and dodgy politicians get increasingly violent, Evans gives him an array of interesting and inventive ways through which to dole out his specific brand of street-level justice. Much like “The Raid,” this gives us an opportunity to marvel at a director who remains at the top of the action-movie game. Few people — if any — do high-concept fight scenes quite as well as Evans.
Where “Havoc” feels a little light is in the pauses between those breathtaking set pieces. With a cast headed by Hardy and also boasting Forest Whitaker and Timothy Olyphant, there’s some serious dramatic talent on offer, but there’s little character development beyond who’s good, who’s bad, and who’s somewhere in the middle.
There’s a host of supporting characters — Yeo Yann Yann’s gang matriarch Mother in particular — who all look like they have fascinating backstories, but all we learn about them is that most can fight really, really well, and all have plenty to scowl about. What’s more, a few heavy-handed bouts of CGI undermine the movie’s mostly gritty realism, and leave audiences desperate to skip the calmer moments and get on to the next shootout.
However, to be fair to this movie, Tom Hardy in beast mode is undeniably great — and in our virtually limitless streaming landscape, anything great deserves to be celebrated.
A story of stone: How Jabal Al-Qarah shapes the soul of Hofuf
- ‘The mountain holds everything,’ says local historian
DAMMAM: Near Hofuf, at the edge of Al-Ahsa Oasis, where the palms thin out and the desert hushes before turning to stone, Jabal Al-Qarah rises. Low and wide, its sculpted sandstone flanks have been worn into curves and fissures.
I first saw the mountain just after dawn as the road, having coiled gently through date groves and irrigation canals, veers toward the open plain. In the distance, the mountain appeared — not dramatically, but deliberately. A long, earthen body stretching across the landscape, its folds catching light like the surface of an old parchment.
“This is not a mountain in the European sense,” local historian Salman Al-Habib told me, his hand resting on the stone. “It’s not for conquest. It’s for shelter. For memory. It held the lives of our grandparents — sometimes literally.”
He was referring to the caves that run deep into the heart of Jabal Al-Qarah. Stepping inside one, you feel the temperature drop immediately. It’s very still, and the acoustics are strange. Sounds stretch and settle. “
They say Judas Iscariot wandered in and was never seen again,” Al-Habib said. “Others say a goddess lived here. The mountain listens. It holds everything.”
The caves have served a multitude of purposes: storing grain, sheltering travelers, even childbirth. The temperature, remarkably constant year-round, made the mountain a natural refuge.
“Before fans or air conditioning, this was how we survived,” said Al-Habib. “We didn’t fight the climate — we listened to the land.”
Geologist Dr. Layla Al-Shemmari echoed that sentiment. “The mountain is formed of calcareous sandstone and marl, deposited millions of years ago,” she explained. “Its structure naturally insulates, naturally ventilates. The people mirrored that in their homes — thick-walled, inward-facing, mudbrick construction pulled straight from the land.”
She ran her hand along the cave wall, where moisture clung faintly even in the dry season. “The stone taught us architecture. It taught us how to live without taking too much.”
But perhaps the most unexpected moment came just outside the caves, at dusk. A minaret stood in the shadow of the mountain, its golden tiles catching the final light. Behind it, the rock face glowed a soft amber, every crack and crevice thrown into relief, like a thousand sleeping figures stacked into one colossal wall. The call to prayer began, and something uncanny happened: the rock didn’t reflect the sound — it held it. The echo lingered, cradled by stone.
“When I was young,” Al-Habib said quietly, “I believed the mountain was repeating the prayer. That it wanted to join in.”
UNESCO’s 2018 recognition of the Al-Ahsa Oasis — of which Jabal Al-Qarah is a vital part — has brought conservation efforts and guided tours. But many locals say the real work is remembering. Not preserving the mountain like a fossil, but allowing it to continue what it has always done: listening, absorbing, reminding, providing.
“If these rocks could speak, they wouldn’t lecture,” Al-Habib said. “They’d ask us why we stopped listening.”
And maybe that’s what the mountain is doing: waiting, patiently, for silence to return, so that its stories, etched into sandstone and shade, might be heard again.
Paul Weller, Primal Scream and Annie Mac back Kneecap amid political backlash over pro-Palestine message
DUBAI: English singer Paul Weller, Scottish rock band Primal Scream and Irish host and DJ Annie Mac voiced their support this week for Irish rap group Kneecap, who recently came under fire for displaying a “Free Palestine” message during their performance at the Coachella festival in the US.
The artists joined over 40 others in signing an open letter organized by Kneecap’s record label, Heavenly Recordings, which condemns what it describes as a deliberate attempt to suppress the group’s voice and remove them from public platforms.
The backlash against Kneecap intensified after videos from past performances resurfaced — one from a November 2023 concert in London that appeared to show a member expressing support for Hamas and Hezbollah, and another in which a group member is seen shouting: “The only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP.”
British politician Kemi Badenoch, who has served as Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Conservative Party since November 2024, has since called for legal action to be taken against the group.
Meanwhile, Glastonbury Festival is facing calls to withdraw Kneecap from its upcoming lineup, and several scheduled performances, including one at the Eden Project in Cornwall, have been cancelled.
In an open letter, Kneecap’s label, Heavenly Recordings, claimed the group was facing a deliberate and coordinated effort to silence them and remove their presence from the music scene.
The letter reads: “As artists, we feel the need to register our opposition to any political repression of artistic freedom.”
“In a democracy, no political figures or political parties should have the right to dictate who does and does not play at music festivals or gigs that will be enjoyed by thousands of people.”
“Kneecap are not the story. Gaza is the story. Genocide is the story,” it says. “And the silence, acquiescence and support of those crimes against humanity by the elected British Government is the real story.”
“Solidarity with all artists with the moral courage to speak out against Israeli war crimes, and the ongoing persecution and slaughter of the Palestinian people,” the letter added.
