Many leading personalities in the Egyptian music industry also attended the concert. Zain’s March 2010 concert in Cairo drew fans from Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, and the United Kingdom. In a musical competition organized in January 2010 by Cairo’s Nogoom FM (the most-popular radio station in Egypt), the album’s second track, “Ya Nabi Salam Alayka,” was voted as the best religious song for 2009, beating out work by more-established singers. Released in November 2009 (little more than a year before the start of the Arab Spring) and featuring a good many songs sung in Zain’s excellent English, it was a surprise commercial success. Zain’s New York period and his work with Khayat served him well when he produced his debut album, Thank You Allah. On the album's cover, Zain is dressed as if for an R&B concert-but is seated in quiet Islamic prayer Khayat played a key role in the rapid emergence of Lady Gaga and went on to become one of America’s top music producers, working with Akon, Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson. The two men traveled to New York, where they worked in the city’s music industry with some of its brightest young stars. Born in Lebanon but raised in Sweden, Zain studied aeronautical engineering and partnered with an Arab singer/songwriter who had also migrated to Sweden, Nadir Khayat (known as “RedOne”).
The importance of a change of nizam can be seen in the chief demand of demonstrators from North Africa to the Persian Gulf: “al-sha'b yuridu isqat al-nizam,”which means, “The people want to overthrow the system.”įew artists understand the yearning for change in the Arab World better than Maher Zain.
Washington analysts have overlooked the political significance of the pop singer, who-like the Bob Dylan of the ’60s-represents a new generation of Arabs: Young people who want a new society and a new nizam (political system) in which Arabs no longer have to choose between modernity and Islam, and where neither Islam nor the West can be used to justify autocracy.
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