Muhajababes: Meet the New Middle East--Young, Sexy, and Devout »

Allegra Stratton is a producer at the BBC in London. She has worked at the foreign desk at The Times (of London) and written for The Independent, The Times, and The New Statesman. She lives in London.

Two thirds of the population in the Middle East is under 25 years old, and there's been an explosive growth of college graduates. Still, there aren't enough jobs to go round. They're having a collective quarter-life crisis. In the months before turning 25 herself, BBC producer Allegra Stratton set out to meet them.

She visits Beirut, Amman, Cairo, Dubai, Kuwait City and Damascus during a time of potentially momentous change, looking for youth culture as we know it. She sits in on auditions for the Lebanese version of American Idol and tries to get into a men-only Starbucks in Egypt. She interviews pop stars and filmmakers and djs, visits the gay community, and meets the region's most famous single mother. Along the way she discovers a massive video industry of airbrushed, heavily produced, scantily clad singers that hold the affections of young Arabs. And all of them - members of the Muslim Brotherhood and of sports clubs alike - talk of the same Islamic revival.

Yet there's a contradiction. Many of the fans of these semi-naked popstrels are also extremely devout. 'Muhajabah' means one who veils. So what to call the veiled women Stratton encounters who strive for sexiness by lavishing what's left unveiled - face and feet - with make-up, jewelry, and killer shoes? Muhajababes, and they may represent the Islamic Middle East in a refreshingly surprising way.

Publishers Weekly

Two-thirds of the Middle East-a quarter of a billion people-are 25 or younger, a demographic as large as it is unrepresented in Western media. With aplomb and scads of self-deprecating wit, journalist Stratton, herself 25 years old and a self-professed naïf about the Arab and Muslim world, plunges into youth culture in Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Kuwait. Her findings are epitomized by the book's title; the term muhajababes (coined by one of Stratton's interviewees) describe veiled young women who combine traditional piety with a secular sensibility, wearing tight jeans with their head scarves and following pop stars and religious leaders with equal devotion. "My methodology was to talk to everyone... who seemed my age," Stratton writes, including men and women, religious visionaries and artists, revolutionaries and small-business owners. In visiting pockets of the Middle East seldom seen in the Western media (a Kuwaiti student union, a Damascus newspaper), she skillfully renders the frequently downplayed differences between the countries and their shared effort to integrate centuries of history with an avalanche of modern influences. The book's lacunae are not unimportant-Stratton doesn't step beyond urban population centers or speak with any local experts who might have helped analyze the tumble of information-but her genuine and frankly affectionate engagement makes Muhajababes an entertaining addition to the shelf of anyone hoping to actually understand, rather than stereotype, Arabs and Muslims . (July 1)

Introduction 7

Requiem for Zen 15

Generation Returned 31

Wasta 41

Virgin in Beirut 51

Arab Alex 65

Hizbollah Acne 79

Palestinian Red Bull 89

Badly Drawn Girls 101

Designing the Revolution 111

'I Need a Right' 123

The Cairene Sensei 133

The New Eve 145

The Problem With Being Rewish 157

Daddy Comes Home 173

I Killed the Song 183

Gezzing 197

Fulla Pink 207

The Muslim Fight Club 219

Epilogue 237

Afterword 253

Acknowledgments 263