Feature Story: At only 30, Indya Moore is a layered archive, a sequence of capacity and multiplicity in a world that refuses to fully receive her or her message. The trans actress, advocate, and model is not here for your binaries, your systems, your violence or your silence. She never has been. She never will be.

Born in the Bronx to Dominican and Puerto Rican parents, she understands the stakes of visibility. At 14, she entered the foster care system after her parents rebuked her gender identity, although their relationship is in a different place now (deep into our chat, she shares the vulnerability of their circumstances and her desire to care for them). A year later, she dropped out of high school due to bullying, found her way into modelling, and the House of Xtravaganza, the legendary ballroom collective immortalised in the 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning.

It is around this time that she discovered the teachings of a then-influential writer, Naomi Wolf, who was behind the third-wave feminist manifesto The Beauty Myth, a text heralded for its argument that unattainable beauty standards are a form of control, designed to keep women obedient and distracted from power. Indya understands this deeply. “People tell me that I’m beautiful all the time. Cis women tell me they feel like I’m more beautiful than them,” she shares, “I actually cut my hair. And what I haven’t told people is that I’ve shaved it off multiple times so others wouldn’t feel intimidated by me.”

Then came Pose, the Golden Globe-winning ode to queer and trans life set against the height of the late 1980s Aids epidemic, in 2018. Her career-defining portrayal of Angel Evangelista, a trans sex worker who found fame, launched her onto the world stage. Indya was everywhere. Brand ambassadorships inevitably followed: Louis Vuitton in 2019, Saint Laurent in 2021, and YSL Beauty’s Push the Boundaries campaign in 2022. She also appeared in Pride campaigns for the likes of Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein before partnering on a capsule collection with Tommy Hilfiger. Courted by late-stage capitalism, Indya’s presence now signalled diversity, her trans identity commodified for corporate allyship. Using her newfound visibility to highlight the violence against trans women, she declared at the 2019 Daily Front Row Awards: “I accept this award in honour of the truth that the best award – the award we all deserve – is to be able to get home safe.”

Hers is the kind of candour that can change the world – depending on who you ask. “I think some folks don’t want to work with me because I’m risky or something, you know?” she says as a matter of fact. “All I do is say ‘Stop killing people’ and talk about love. I want to do work that engages us. And I don't know what that looks like right now.”

Indya’s most recent excursion entailed starring in Willy Chavarria’s Paris Fashion Week debut in January. Staged at the American Cathedral in Paris, his Tarantula show was a statement on Black, brown, trans, and queer communities. The scene couldn’t have been more fitting. Appearing in dark funeral attire, Indya emerged as one of the models in a stellar line-up of celebrity names including J Balvin, Paloma Elsesser and Becky G. Sporting a short bouffant reminiscent of some neorealist heroine of celluloid past (think Sophia Loren, Anna Magnani), Indya drifted the hallways, marking somewhat of a return to an industry that celebrated her for her politics – provided she wasn’t too loud.

Here, she was in the right space and among friends. “I love his work, and I support his presence within our community,” she enthuses, raving about Chavarria. “Also, like, just the way he’s actually using fashion as a platform for delivering messages is something that no brand really has. I will always support Willy for that.”

Indya’s most significant role, however, exists offscreen and far from the runway. Take one look at her Instagram account – it reads like a syllabus on decolonial theory and anti-capitalist thought. Indya does not just speak up – she calls out. She names names. On 20 October 2023, she was among the hundreds staging a sit-in at Grand Central Terminal in New York City. Organised by Jewish Voice for Peace, the protest demanded a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to US complicity in Israel’s violence. And according to Them, Indya was among those detained.

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Editor's Letter: In Love Is the Message, The Message Is Death, Arthur Jafa’s seminal 2016 film, the artist oscillates between a spectrum of viral clips, archival footage, and cultural fragments, capturing the exaltation and complexities of Black American life. Transmissions of heavyweights from Michael Jordan to Malcolm X to Serena Williams, all interpolate with frequencies of Black struggle, Black triumph, and Black joy.

Meanwhile, pop culture punctuates with everyday recordings from Jafa’s personal life: his daughter’s wedding, his mother dancing. One moment screams out, “Faaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiith!” Rap culture. Boom! Afro-futurism. Boom! A pastoral sermon that interconnects triumph with the foundational racism of the 1960s civil rights movement, the 1992 LA riots, and the Black Lives Matter movement in response to the murder of Trayvon Martin in 2012.

Throughout, the film confronts the white structures that have threatened a marginalised group of people. Since its debut, Love Is the Message, The Message Is Death has become required viewing; a singular channel charged with too much urgency to collapse into metaphor. Jafa’s film, which I had first witnessed several years ago, could not be more timely and true. It is a Guernica for modern times that echoes the shared struggles of all marginalised people around the world, with a singular message vis-a-vis a frequency of 300 GHz of life, pulsating through spaces that reject, erase, and still – somehow – resist.

That image of a scorched Earth often plays on a loop in my mind, because it’s happening in real time. Between the on-going genocide in Gaza, the glocal creep of ethno-fascism, the unchecked colonisation by tech bro overlords, and a cultural climate that has veered into McCarthyism, there’s barely time for all of us to catch our breath. We are hypervisible, surveilled, and mined for data by platforms pretending to offer connection while harvesting our alienation.

Case in point: our cover star Indya Moore, who embodies this tension entirely. In our conversation, she emerges as a necessary signifier of multiplicity. Challenging the absurdity of binaries and of what gets sanctioned as legible, Indya Moore is a disruption and a transmission—one that we very much welcome here at Dazed MENA. Having Indya on our cover was not a mere gesture to diverse communities and the advocates who speak out on the necessary issues of our time, but an urgent act. Where inclusion, identity politics, and counterculture have become commodified, she rebukes and testifies to the issues that really matter.

The notion of space became a building block for this issue, bringing us into the (in)visibility of the night as a time where most crevasses emerge. Space always finds its way – where we find each other and ourselves – particularly in the shadows, whether it’s gamer girls in Iraq, tarab players in Yemen, or Palestinian nightwatchers protecting villages from the malevolence that is Israel’s ethnic cleansing.

In Khaled A’s piece, which explores nonheteronormative communities, he explores the radical act of not being seen. Because, contrary to Western liberal dogma, visibility is not always the goal. Safety is.

Meanwhile, in “Between Two Ribs”, performance becomes undone by Kiss Facility. Made up of Salvador Navarrete (aka Sega Bodega) and Mayah Alkhateri, the musical duo speak to deputy editor Sarra Alayyan about the refusal of definitions, and how a heavy dose of nocturnal energy is how we should understand them.

Elsewhere, for our main fashion story “A Love Supreme”, dancers channel the Sufi rituals of Ali Pirzadeh’s ancestry, offering a raw study in movement and spiritual release. Along those lines, Dexter Navy returns to his ancestral landscape of Egypt, exploring the body as vehicle and metaphor in “Ceremony”.

Carrying this thread of movement, albeit tinged with gasoline, Kwabena Sekyi Appiah-nti centres the vibrant biker culture that exists across West Africa in “Heavy Metal”. This story struck a chord, bringing me back to when I lived in Sierra Leone, where I often found myself riding on the back of an okada at night.

Last but not least, there is Lebanon. No place threads this issue’s theme – nightlife, ritual, and performance – together quite like it. For this issue, we went there, in three parts: Beirut’s club culture (a sanctuary for so many), the celebratory chaos of weddings with emphasis on the South (naturally…as my team often imitates my favourite saying, “ana min janoob!” and there, weddings take up an entire world of their own) and, of course, Sporting Club (the ultimate in kitsch-meets-communion).

Through the lens of the city’s ardent female photographers – Myriam Boulos, Lara Chahine, and Yasmina Hilal – Lebanon is over the top. It’s the regional grande dame that pillars through its most symbolic icons of past and present: Fairuz, Sabah, Nancy, Haifa. It’s where age is irrelevant, but the tenet of sakhab reigns supreme.

Nightlife, Performance, Rituals centres around the boundless possibilities of what happens in the ‘dark’ and what comes to light the morning after. It’s where we transform into our true selves. From dance floors to sacred spaces, the night is where we are without judgment. It’s when the invisible becomes visible, the shadow becomes shelter, and where we can find each other.

We hope you see yourself in this issue, too

Editors's Letter: “I’ve seen footage.

What’s that? Can’t tell…

I stay noided, stimulation overload account for it

Desensitised by the mass amounts of shit.”

[Death Grips, The Money Store, 2012]

Is it just me, or are we all trapped in a collective brain-rot? Doomscrolling through the uncanny valley of what-the-actual-f*ck, vibrating between existential dread and endless Ocean Spray hope-core, we’ve become prisoners of our own content-fuelled making. The word ‘era’ no longer marks a historical moment—it’s a branding tool for our ego-driven transformations. As people online declare they’ve entered their “villain era” – an attempt to reclaim agency as an actual villain rage-baits the rest of us with an AI-generated spectacle to remodel Gaza – no caption deemed necessary.

In today’s grand theatre of image-making, who controls how we see ourselves in a society transcending beyond the screen? Social movements become commodified for the masses in the same way that subgenres of music once became mainstream. Critical thinking has become distilled into a slogan tee that can be bought at non-profits. Want to be real? You can now pay to be via a verification subscription service being offered by Meta. Is rebellion the only antidote, even when it is at risk of becoming another aesthetic? As the fake becomes disturbingly real, and the real feels like a distant truth, do the images we surround ourselves with ultimately reflect our (-core) selves?

The human condition drives us to seek meaning in everything. Maybe that’s why astrology has exploded into a multi-billion-dollar industry. I’ve had more conversations in recent years about the influence of a new blood moon on our psyche as much as the actual politics shaping our realities. Mercury in retrograde has become shorthand for explaining the chaos we refuse to name. The symbols we once believed in are now in crisis. If meaning is in collapse, what truths can emerge from the mayhem?

The iconography I consumed growing up, mostly from this fantasy world I understood as America, felt like an alternate reality at that time, archived on my VCR and ripped out of the magazines I would read to the music I would blast. As those mythologies fade, what exists behind the curtain?

Before we even began Issue 00, I already knew what Issue 01 would be about: an attempt to canonise and question the meaning we give in today’s sociocultural, pop-driven landscape. From there, it made sense to bring together a specific round-up of esteemed artists: Mohamed Bourouissa, Bilal El-Kadhi, Ilyes Griyeb, Pegah Farahmand, Daniel Arnold, Chndy, Abdulhamid Kircher and more. Taken together, their body of work, in many ways, observes and questions how we perceive the world around us.

It’s also why we explore the grand narrative and most iconographic protagonist of all– Egypt – through the lens of artist Pegah Farahmand and Fashion Director Omaima Salem. Clad in a Duran Lantink dress reminiscent of taxi-seat covers across North Africa, Nora Attal becomes a living vitrine, echoing the sculptural language of Adam Henein—canonised in Fady Nageeb’s “Eternally Vanishing”. Elsewhere, you’ll see how flags, the ultimate symbols of ideology, now carry conflicted meanings—from the de facto Syrian flag (which doesn’t even have an emoji in real-time) to the Star-Spangled Banner, once a symbol of ‘freedom’, now resistant to change. And how, under global surveillance, the Sudanese and Palestinian flags hold more power for those who need liberation the most. Our future understanding of the world is shaped by those who have preserved its past.

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Take Akram Zaatari, whose practice interrogates the authority of who gets to define collective history. “There is no differentiation between a photograph, picture, and image; they are all the same word, sūrah,” he tells Taous Dahmani. That same instinct drives the making of Robin Nazari, one half of Biji. Shot in Sweden by Abdulhamid Kircher – whose recent book, Rotting from Within, is an ode to observation and intimacy – this duo reclaim the ancient culture of Kurdistan through hip-hop. Images here are ultimately about love as much as they are about power.

Elsewhere, a cultural figure who has much ruptured the status quo, embodying our time, graces one of our several covers. Willy Chavarria is one such figure. On 25 January, he staged his first Paris Fashion Week show, setting the internet ablaze. In the lead-up, cryptic teasers dubbed ‘Tarantula’ flooded across social media. Two days later, he was in a studio, coiled by a python, Paloma Elsesser at his side, photographed by Illyes Griyeb for the cover of this very magazine. Like those before him, the designer uses fashion as a mirror for the upending and falling stars of Americana. Against the powers of the global North erasing immigration and identity, his rise feels urgent. Necessary.

No one feels more urgent, more necessary, than Mohammed El-Kurd. The Palestinian poet and writer doesn’t just reflect the zeitgeist. He is the zeitgeist. I remember the first time we met at an Italian spot in Hell’s Kitchen two years ago. Nothing, and no one, is more punk than El-Kurd. An instigator and real-life Neo whose body of work, in one way or the other, has been about dismantling the spectacle and resurrecting truth.

This is ultimately an issue about and for those who refuse to accept the world at face value, and it was created by a team and contributors who question history as we are living through it and what we ultimately choose to believe in. To echo El-Kurd: “There will always be injustice, you know?If I don’t believe in that, then what’s the point?”

Editor's Letter: We all long for connection in this world, and in these deeply painful times, that desire has never felt more urgent. I believe empathy is the highest form of courage; evidence of this is around us and in the stories you see take shape as we launch Dazed MENA into the world.

Throughout this process, the Dazed MENA team united to redefine what creativity means in a world designed to silence and limit our potential. The stories that we share reexamine creativity (a term often overused and oversimplified) in the modern age, and for those of us, across the global majority. Whether you are a young woman in Kabul standing in your power wearing your favourite dress at home or a nine-year-old Syrian boy in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley tending to your ancestral lands, or a parkourist in Gaza enduring the shattering violence yet resisting through movement – everywhere, imagination becomes a form of liberation and the endurance that allows us to preserve.

When I look back at our inaugural issue, which finds stories from Addis Ababa to Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka and beyond, I don’t just see the stories of the people we have featured but also the team and our global network of contributors who make them happen.

This launch reflects the truth of the world we live in and the possibilities of the one we imagine. These pages, photographs, and stills – print or digital – have been crafted to remind us that when faith in systems falters, systems designed to silence and limit our potential, our communities find strength in each other. These pages are a dedicated snapshot of creativity; people who might be divided by borders and language are united by the understanding that imagination is a form of liberation.

As Dazed MENA launches, I reflect on the journey that brought me here and on my adolescence in Beirut, Aleppo, Freetown, and London. The dreams I had then have now become my reality. I am thankful to the incredible team here at Dazed MENA, Sarra, Chndy, Omaima, Fady, Daoud and Fatima, who have made this all happen. For I know in the corners of the world where they grew up, they were all dreaming the same dream too.

In August of last year; a UN-released memo stated: "The lack of coverage of Sudan in the global media could be mistaken that the situation was improving". Three months earlier; on April 15, 2023, war had broken out in Sudan between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSI), resulting in a catastrophe that has endured for more than a year.'

To date, the conflict has displaced over eight million people, with more than 16,000 reportedly killed. According to a UNHCR report, even these figures are underrepresented due to a lack of reporting.Sudan's suffering began long before the events of April 15, 2023 of course, yet media coverage remains desperately low. This led us here at GQ Middle East to question our own responsibility, and complicity, in what we could do to bring light to Sudan. How could we, as people, remain silent during one of the world's biggest tragedies?

The idea behind the issue came as they often do—through conversation and a strong personal feeling. One year ago, GQ Middle last commissioned a story for its April 2023 issue. It was in Khartoum with the iconic King of Sudanese Jazz, Sharhabil Ahmed. By the time it was on the shelves, Sudan was in a fully-fledged war.

Much of my understanding of the situation came from various conversations with my dear friend, my brother, Ahmed Yousif Shareef, the creative director, co-founder and designer of contemporary brand SN3; along with GQ Middle Fast team member Ali Farouk Ali Ammar. Both are from Sudan and shepherded us in the making of this issue, inviting us into their community. For that, I am forever grateful.

The kinship Shareef and I share is rooted in a very special bond.Although we are from very different places, we share a common understanding of what it means to be Arab, Muslim and African-him from Sudan, myself from Lebanon and Sierra Leone. He reminds me of that.

The lack of coverage and care [we see about these places| could be rooted in understanding how global and regional racism, anti-Blackness, and anti-African sentiment is... a thinking that death and horror are par for the course, and the idea that conflict is to be expected across the African continent.

I am thankful to the legendary photographer Liz Johnson Artur for taking part in shooting our cover story, which features more than 20 members of Sudan's diasporic community (based or now relocated in Cairo). These images show the power of unity, hope and love. I am thankful to all members of Sudan's global community who have taken part and invited us in to create this very special but urgent issue. From writers to artists and the profiles featured. Everyone, in multiple ways, helped us shape all that you see in these pages. This edition is for you.

I am reminded of the words of Dinan Al Assad, who features in this issue: "Listen to our music, study our art, learn about our traditions. The urgency to save Sudan will come much more naturally when you understand the history that is at risk of being lost, and just how precious and beautiful our existence has been."

We hope this issue acts as a catalyst to bring Sudan to the forefront of people's minds. As a tool for understanding the war, and the beauty of Sudan's rich cultural heritage and its contemporary voices. The history of human civilisation has been said to be traced back to what is now known as modern Sudan. To save Sudan is to save ourselves.

I first met Ruba Abu-Nimah over a decade ago, back when I first stepped into the fashion industry and was interning at the now-defunct Garage magazine in London. She has since become a friend, a confidante, and a personal hero of mine and many young Arabs working in the global creative industry. She is a symbol of admiration, persistence, and legacy. And she presents the possibility to be in spaces where we are seldom seen, and in places very few of us actually occupy.

What I also love about her is that she is the definition of a badass!

If you're unfamiliar, here is a quick rundown: a graphic designer by trade, Ruba is one of the fashion industry's most sought-after creative directors and widely known through her Instagram handle @Ruba. Admittedly, the title of 'creative director' tends to be perfunctory, but for Ruba she is of that practice. She served as the first female creative director at Elle US and Global Creative Director of Shiseido in Tokyo prior to working as Global Creative Director of Revlon. Her extensive experience in luxury includes La Mer, Pat McGrath, and Bobbi Brown. More recently, she served as creative director of Tiffany & Co. and continues to collaborate on a consulting and special projects basis with brands like Nike, Balenciaga, Phillip Lim, and BMW to name a few.

She's also the Guest Editor of this issue, reuniting with her longtime friend and collaborator, photographer Mario Sorrenti, to create a powerful emblem of Arab pride starring Egyptian-Moroccan supermodel Imaan Hammam, who fronts her very first cover of GQ! There's also roster of cultural and creative professionals from across the region: acclaimed photographer Sharif Hamza (Egyptian-Filipino), fashion director Malina Joseph Gilchrist (Palestinian), Ruba Katrib (Syrian), Sahel All liyari (Jordanian), Patrick Gemayel (Lebanese), Mike Amiri (Iranian), Haifaa al-Mansour (Saudi Arabian), Carpet Company (Egyptian), D.J Habibeats, Maen Hammad, Jumana Manna, and frequent contributor Dean Majd (Palestinian). You'll also find an extensive portfolio of faces who are challenging the notion of what it means to be an Arab in the West as well as a powerful piece on the parallels between rap and politics, written by Fady Nageeb.

Ruba and I have long discussed joining forces, and the timing of this happening couldn't have been more kismet to reflect the paradigm shift we are living in. The rise of Islamophobia in America and Europe amidst the unspeakable horrors we are witnessing in Palestine (where Ruba is from) gave us an impetus to approach our collaboration with more gusto, seriousness, and emotion than we might have months prior. In fact, Ali AbuNimah (Ruba's brother and co-founder of The Electronic Intifada) closes this issue with a heartfelt epilogue.

So, here it is, a very special issue with one very important message: the power of unification for Arabs everywhere. To connect, to unite, and to create - even in times of strife. We are tougher together!

I am grateful to Ruba for her time, her dedication, and most of all her friendship. Ruba, thank you for accepting the invitation to create this issue with us. And thank you to everyone involved in the making of every GQ Middle Fast issue this year - 2023 has been a great run.

May the new year bring us all respite.

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When did the truth become a problem? After all, isn't it our actual job to be truthful? I don't mean myself as an editor but just as a person, as someone who exists in this world and is part of this fabric that we call society. Wasn't truth a supposed virtue? Once held so sacred and so dear, no matter what identity, base, or creed we are a part of? I believe that many of us would agree that truth is vital. When did the idea of speaking the truth become a problem? Wasn't truth meant to free us, not make us an anomaly?

When did knowing, seeing, and caring about the truth feel like it is a lie?

Challenging the status quo brings together every one of our recipients for this edition of GQ Middle Easts Men of the Year. Be it through overcoming the harsh realities they've endured to place a sense of goodness, dismantling the long-held stereotypes placed upon them, or harnessing power through the various vocations that our recipients possess. To be an enabler for change, a transformer for the divine, a purpose for good.

'Take, for example, Serbest Salih, the Kurdish photography student who, after fleeing his hometown, launched a mobile photography program for children across border towns in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. "I came to Turkey as a refugee, and I couldn't speak the language; I couldn't communicate.

But photography really helped me.." Serbest says. What makes Serbest and his initiative remarkable is how he lends his skills to youth from underrepresented parts of our region. Sarah Hermez, the Lebanese-Armenian entrepreneur who returned to Lebanon after years of living in the diaspora to set up a tuition-free fashion school: Creative Space Beirut.

An alternative institution that supports creativity with an exciting roster of alums to back it up. The heartbeat of Palestine's skate scene, Aram Sabbah, is celebrated in this issue, too; having built a cult following through his work with UK-based nonprofit SkatePal, Sabbah shares a heartfelt letter as part of his story for those besieged with the escalating violence in neighboring Gaza. For photographer Maen Hammad who captured Sabbah, skateboarding "is a radical form of resistance to a headspace of violence." Storytellers. Bunyamin Aydin, founder and creative director of Les Benjamins, is the embodiment of furthering cultural exchange, pushing our communities forward through the prism of his brand; pop star Elyanna, a symbol of resilience and young womanhood embarks on a journey of self-discovery in conversation with photographer Myriam Boulos, to Saint Levant, the enigmatic act who has catapulted into stardom over the past year. When we catch up with him, it is weeks after the recent crisis began, and in Leen El Saadi's in-depth profile, she captures a young man who cares deeply about the place where he is from, Palestine. Changemakers.

Saudi Filmmaker Ali Kalthami, whose feature film Mandoob premiered at TIFF earlier this year ("The machine you create has to work without you'), to Emirati-Bahraini film curator and founder of the Gulf's first arthouse cinema, Butheina Kazim ("you have to understand the limitations and still want to do it anyway") to Italian-born Tunisian rapper Ghali, who became a leading advocate for migrant rights in recent months.

A shared profession also marks two people here. Truth Seeking.

British-born Sudanese journalist Yousra Elbagir ("...the problem is when you don't have access to a conflict, media organizations just move on.

We need to have the voices and be able to verify everything") she says.

Elbagir has been a leading voice on the oppositions that don't catch global attention, particularly that of her homeland of Sudan, one in which she has been reporting on ever since war broke out carlier this year. Several prominent voices in the world of digital activism, including Ahmed-Shihab Eldin, Radio Alllara co-founder Elias Anastas, Khaled Beydoun, Mona Chalabi, and more, come together to share personal testaments for our remaining MOTY recipient, a truth-seeker who's unshakeable faith and honest commitment to his craft has won the world over, Palestinian photojournalist Motaz Azaiza.

Speak truth to power. It will always be essential to do so.