⌾Curio #24 - Faisal al Mutar, Paris in the 1890s & Addison Groove
Welcome back to another edition of Curio, the newsletter for curious minds seeking an escape from the noise of the news cycle, where every week I write about three things that won’t be trending on Twitter but that I still think are worth sharing.
If the daily onslaught of news is making you feel exhausted, then Curio hopes to be a five-minute virtual sunbathe on a deserted beach, with the frothy ocean lapping at your feet.
Max Dupain - Sunbaker (1937)
If you enjoy reading this newsletter, then feel free to send it to some friends you think might also like it and they can sign up below:
Have a great week :)
- Oli
Faisal al Mutar and the Power of Ideas
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking”
- Haruki Murakami
On a cold and windswept January night in Manhattan’s Financial District, I was fortunate enough to have dinner with Iraqi human rights activist, Faisal al Mutar.
Growing Up In Saddam’s “Republic of Fear”
Faisal was born in 1991 in Hillah, near the ancient city of Babylon and grew up in Baghdad under the terror of Saddam Hussein’s murderous and tyrannical authoritarian regime, best described by Iraqi author Kanan Makiya as the “Republic of Fear.” As a teenager during the Iraq War he became a secular blogger and writer. This made him a target of Islamic extremists and he was placed on the Al Qaeda in Iraq and fundamentalist Shia Mahdi Army death lists. He narrowly escaped three separate abduction attempts by Al Qaeda, who succeeded in tragically killing his brother.
After attending university in Malaysia, Faisal arrived in the US as a refugee in 2013 and moved to New York in 2014, where he spent two years working with Movements.org, a global human rights crowdsourcing platform that connects human rights advocates in repressive countries with resources and services from providers all around the world. In 2017, he founded his current project, Ideas Beyond Borders.
Ideas Beyond Borders
With first-hand experience of living in a society where education and free thought were so brutally restricted, Faisal is dedicating his life to try and change that within Middle Eastern societies.
The numbers speak for themselves. While Arabic is the fourth most spoken language among internet users, only .8 percent of online content is available in the language. And most of what is available in Arabic is paltry, largely made up of misinformation, government propaganda and religious dogmatism. As a result, Faisal believes it’s no surprise that the Arabic speaking world is riddled with so much authoritarianism, ideological extremism, human rights abuses and terrorism. It’s for this reason he decided to start Ideas Beyond Borders, a non-profit that translates and distributes banned books and articles throughout the Middle East, on topics ranging from civil rights, philosophy, science, history and reproductive health. It aims to prevent extremism by empowering people with access to new ideas and fresh perspectives.
The organization’s website states:
We encourage youth and young adults to think critically about topics ranging from human and civil rights to science and reason, making inaccessible topics accessible and sparking curiosity.
Ideas Beyond Borders is headquartered in New York and has a distinguished advisory board which includes a former Danish Minister for Education, a former Dean of Harvard Medical School and the internationally acclaimed psychologist and author, Steven Pinker. It also has over one hundred and eighty people (including many students) in the Middle East risking their safety by working for the non-profit as translators. Of these brave people, Faisal says:
“These are people who have every reason to feel hopeless – all they have known is war and destruction – yet they wake up every morning and translate stories about culture and diversity because they want to be part of a solution that makes their country a better place.”
To date, the organization has translated twelve books and more than ten thousand Wikipedia pages which have attracted over seventeen million views. One of its goals is to be the Arabic-speaking world's largest online library.
On top of being a self-described “counter-extremism practitioner”, Faisal is also a regular speaker at events and conferences around the world. Unfortunately, due to his views and the aims of his non-profit, there are many countries he cannot safely travel to anymore.
Faisal describes being a secularist in Iraq as "like being the only sober person in a car filled with drunk people, and you're not allowed to drive."
Although he’s only twenty-eight, Faisal has become one of my heroes. A summary of my interview with him is below.
On growing up in a society without access to the information
“Iraq is an interesting story, it moved from a 1984 dystopia to a fledgling, albeit flawed, democracy within my lifetime. Under Saddam there was very limited access to the internet and television. It was a crime under the regime to own a satellite TV or express criticism of the government. In 2018, I wrote a short blog post for the Aspen Ideas Festival about what growing up in Iraq taught me about propaganda, which people can read for more information. Once Saddam fell, we moved from one source of information to over one hundred, except most of it was misinformation, propaganda and sectarian language.”
On the power of ideas
“Prominent cognitive psychologist and Ideas Beyond Borders advisory board member Steven Pinker has famously said: "ideas matter, ideas change the world." And I couldn’t agree more. Ideas directly impact how people behave towards each other, so that’s why it’s so important for good ideas like democracy, political equality, human rights and freedom of speech to triumph over bad ideas such as theocracy, censorship and intolerance.
I think the most important skill people should have is critical thinking and the ability to differentiate between facts and fiction, propaganda and reason. If our audience, which is made up of hundreds of thousands of Arab speaking youth, can keep getting better at that, then this will positively impact individuals, communities and societies.”
His most cherished ideas
“Many, but the ones that are very important to me are the ideas of the Enlightenment, particularly civil liberties and the separation of powers. The latter is an idea very dear to me because I have witnessed the corruption and the damage that can happen with one-man rule with no room for checks and balances. Another is freedom of conscience, which makes sure that the person regardless of their faith, sect or lack thereof can be equal citizens under the law.”
—
If you’d like to donate to Ideas Beyond Borders, you can do so here.
Paris in the 1890s
This extraordinary and compelling video is like stepping into a time machine. It uses high quality remastered footage taken by the Lumière company in Paris from 1896 to 1900. It’s slowed down to a natural speed with sound effects added for ambiance. Footage like this is so precious as it’s about as far back as we can glimpse into the past and see real people going about their day to day lives.
Some highlights for me include:
The bearded man at 1:08 walking past the camera twice
The bicycle at 2:18 swerving around the traffic. Some things never change
The fire brigade at 3:24. I had no idea fire brigades existed before cars
The boy at 4:20 getting prodded by an umbrella to get out of the way of the camera. It made me realize that most people at the time this was filmed had probably never seen a camera before and wouldn’t know what it was
I didn’t know that the moving walkway at 4:49 was a form of transportation
The Eiffel Tower shown at 5:25 was completed in 1887, meaning it was barely ten years old at the time of this footage was shot
Many people in this video would have had grandparents who were alive in the 1700s 🤯
For those familiar with Paris, this is what you’re looking at:
0:08 - Notre-Dame Cathedral; 0:58 - Alma Bridge; 1:37 - Avenue des Champs-Élysées; 2:33 - Place de la Concorde; 3:24 - Passing of a fire brigade; 3:58 - Tuileries Garden; 4:48 - Moving walkway at the Paris Exposition; 5:24 - The Eiffel Tower from the Rives de la Seine à Paris
Addison Groove
Bristol-based producer, Antony Williams (a.k.a Addison Groove), released Changa in 2016. It’s an afrobeat inspired tune that remixes Soul Makossa by Cameroonian saxophonist and songwriter, Manu Dibango. My favorite part of this rhythmic track is the crescendo at 2:49 after a beguiling thirty-second build-up.
If you enjoyed this edition of Curio, then why not share it?
“Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form.”
- Vladimir Nabokov
Curio is an email newsletter for curious minds seeking an escape from the noise of the news cycle. It is put together by Oli Duchesne