Politics of – Entertainment

ENAR

Fairuz does not have much in common with the United Kingdom’s Olympic authorities. However, both found themselves in a similar conundrum recently, and it was not particularly pleasant. In January, Fairuz traveled to Damascus for a concert, the city having been named the Arab cultural capital for 2008. Before leaving, politicians from Lebanon’s anti-Syrian March 14 coalition urged her not to go. In an open letter, one parliamentarian, Akram Shuhayyib, wrote: “People who sing for freedom, for Jerusalem, for the Arab conscience and dignity do not sing for the tyrants of Damascus … You are our ambassador to the stars, you have painted our Lebanon as a free, independent and sovereign nation, so don’t sing for those that don’t even recognize our nation.” In February, the British Olympic Association (BOA) came under similar fire, when it admitted that athletes attending the summer Olympic Games in Beijing would have to sign