Anam shares her love of baking & her new cake business, The Artisan, with Aimen Khan
How did your love for baking start? Have you been baking since a young age?
I actually haven’t been baking since a young age. I started very recently. I’ve always been a big foodie. I’ve watched MasterChef Australia my whole life. You watch such TV shows and you wonder how to do these things. I was actually working at the LUMS Suleman School of Business for two years. My supervisor, Dr. Mohsin Bashir, told me now that you’ve been working here, you have to start your own business, because you can’t keep doing this forever. So I thought and I thought and I thought, what kind of business am I going to start? And then I decided. I love food, I’m obsessed with food. I research and write more about food than I do about boring academic stuff. I got into the kitchen and my knowledge really helped me. I created my own recipes. I started experimenting, I started to see what chefs were doing around the world and lo and behold, before I knew it I had a business!
When did you start?
Honestly, the first time I got into the kitchen was 6 months ago. Before that, I couldn’t even boil an egg!
What kind of dessert did you make when you were starting out?
At first, I was very confused. I knew I wanted to be a baker. I love desserts. I love plating. I love making things beautiful and although you can do that with savoury foods, desserts always attracted me more since I have a huge sweet tooth. So I started making desserts but I didn’t really know where to start. I made a lot of different things but when I started doing my cakes, I realised there is so much you can do with a cake. I focused in on that and that’s where it all started.
I have the Specialty Artisan Cakes that are rich, decadent creations. The idea is that you cut into a cake and get different layers and elements of textures, flavours and crunch. They’re very interesting. The Signature Surprise-Inside Cakes are more fun, whimsical and flirty in nature. I bake an edible surprise into the cake, like a heart or a daisy
What would you say is your biggest influence as a baker?
MasterChef! I watch all kinds of MasterChef. Apart from that, there’s a bakery in Australia called Burch & Purchese and they make the most beautiful cakes. These cakes aren’t covered in fondant. They don’t make minions out of cakes. They don’t make designs. They don’t do topsy turvy cakes. They make beautiful, simple cakes and the idea is when you cut open a cake, there are different elements and layers and flavours inside it. I started looking at all this stuff that they were doing and I thought, I need to do this. I need to create my own cakes where people will cut into it and they will get different flavours. They’ll get a mousse, maybe they’ll get a cheesecake. I took inspiration from that and started creating my desserts.
What is your favourite flavour?
I love Nutella! That is why my Nutella cake is all over my instagram as well. It’s the one I’m most proud of. The cool thing about Nutella is that Nutella itself has a very strong taste but when mixed with cream or in a sponge or something else, it develops a very subtle chocolate flavour. That to me is just amazing. I like my cakes and my flavours to be deep. I don’t like them to be too sweet or sugary. With Nutella, you don’t need to add sugar so it’s like an original flavour.
What is the hardest thing about being a baker?
The hardest thing is that people assume that since I’m working from home, she’s probably in her pyjamas all day, probably watching Hell’s Kitchen or Top Chef and eating a lot while making her orders. But it’s not like that at all. It’s very difficult because you are on call 24/7. You could be in the middle of a dinner with your friends and suddenly, you realise that somebody has called you for an order. You need to leave and you need to abandon what you’re doing so you can make the cake! The business always comes first. It’s like being a doctor. You don’t get a break from it so you must be ready for that.
Are you going to branch out into giving baking classes or opening your own bakery?
I’m definitely not going to branch out into giving baking classes. I do want my own little bakery though. I want a shop somewhere in Lahore where people can come and enjoy the most delicious treats, try different goodies and get unexpected surprises along the way since the whole idea of The Artisan is the element of surprise.
Have you had any formal training?
Absolutely not. All my recipes are original and not taken from the internet, which is something I’m very proud of because it saves you from replication. I don’t take other people’s intellectual property. I make my own recipes. I tweak them. I experiment with them so what you get is totally original.
What is your working process?
I turn on some music. I set out all my ingredients and I just go. There are many different processes to baking. A lot of my cakes have five recipes to make the cake. Each recipe has another recipe, so it’s like a recipe inside a recipe. I have to be very organised and do a lot of things beforehand. The idea is to organise yourself, to have everything laid out, know what step to take next and go from there.
How do you come up with the ideas for different desserts?Â
It’s all about experimentation. If you’re sitting down and you get an idea, say you decide you want to bring together coconut, mango and vanilla, the only way you’re going to be able to do that is by trying different things. Try to make a mousse, try to make a cheesecake, put everything together. It’s a lot of investment of time, resources and energy.
What’s your biggest pet peeve in the kitchen?Â
My biggest pet peeve is power outages, which is the biggest issue of living in Pakistan. I hate it when I’m in the middle of baking a cake and the power goes off. Having to wait for the generator to turn on just kills the mood for me. If the cake is in the oven and the power goes off, the oven resets even if it’s just by ten seconds. That is why it’s important to be very precise with timing your cakes.
What ingredient are you obsessed with?
Sugar. Sugar for decoration. I love doing sugar work. You can do so much with sugar. You can bake it and make shards of glass. You can melt it and make caramel. You can set it. I love playing with sugar because you can do so many things with it.
most memorable meal
At Mount Holyoke College, we had a day called Dessert Dilemma where all the dining halls would serve dessert for dinner. They had this creation where they took fried dough, put a cookie on top of it, put a brownie on top of that, covered it in sauce and put it in the oven. It would come out to be this decadent mess of gooey flavours which was topped off with ice cream. I would wait for months and months and months for Dessert Dilemma. I’d mark it on my calendar. It was probably 5000 calories but the yummiest thing in the world. So delicious, so gooey, so scrumptious!
What are some essential baking tips?
Everything should be room temperature. You should be organised and you should plan ahead. Try to have fun with it. Even if something goes wrong, keep trying and experimenting. Sometimes the best recipes are the ones made out of mistakes. Don’t lose heart and just be creative. Yes, baking is kind of like a science, so you must follow orders but when it comes to adding on to your cake or changing your recipe, don’t be scared to do it. It will be different than what the recipe is but it might just be better.
What do you think the most important things are for home baking success?
Be prepared. It’s not easy. It’s not 9 to 5, it’s 9 to 9. It’s 24/7. Be true to yourself. Don’t be scared and don’t compromise on the quality of your ingredients. People in Lahore really appreciate quality and flavour. This is a very educated city when it comes to food. They’ll know when it’s not up to par. All my ingredients are imported. I use only the best chocolate. Right now, I don’t have a milk chocolate recipe because I haven’t found the perfect chocolate. From the cocoa to the butter to the chocolates, everything is the best. I taste everything and I make sure I choose the flavour I want to add to my cake.
What are your favourite desserts?
I love fortune cookies, lemon tarts and anything with Nutella in it! I love rainbow cookies too. Rainbow cookies are an Italian dessert with a minty flavour. It’s a cookie but it looks like a cake. It’s to die for. I also love kheer and this cake from the Lahore Social called the Napolean Cake.
Tell us about the two lines of your cakes.
First of all, I have the Specialty Artisan Cakes that are rich, decadent creations. The idea is that you cut into a cake and get different layers and elements of textures, flavours and crunch. They’re very interesting. These are available in different sizes, the smallest being two pounds. We currently have five Artisan cakes on the menu. The Signature Surprise-Inside Cakes are more fun, whimsical and flirty in nature. I bake an edible surprise into the cake, like a heart or a daisy. These are all 6 pounds. They can’t be bigger or smaller because making them is a very complicated process. The Artisan Cakes are for people who like flavour. They’re beautiful. I like to decorate all my cakes like planets. There’s a mirror glaze so you can see your face in it and it catches the light, but there’s no surprise inside and there’s no fondant on them. It’s all about the flavour.
How did you find the patience to experiment and find the perfect recipe? How did you not give up?
There were many days when I almost did give up. I would pull my hair out. I would cry because when you’re doing something constantly and it’s not working, it’s very frustrating. The only thing to do in such a situation is to take a break from it. You recuperate, you let yourself relax and then you go back to it and when you do, chances are you’re doing to be able to do a better job. You get stuck in the loop because with baking, everything is so temperamental. Everything has to be refrigerated because of the weather in Pakistan, but when it comes to baking, everything has to be room temperate. You spend hours and hours just watching eggs get to room temperature! It’s a lot about loving what you do. When you go through a lot of mistakes and you finally hit the mark, it’s the best feeling in the world.
Sara Haider broke onto the scene with her debut performance in Nida Butt’s musical adaption of Grease playing Marty Maraschino. Featured most recently alongside Ali Zafar singing Saleem Raza’s Ae Dil and as the youngest participating musician on Coke Studio, Sara has, at a young age, garnered a formidable fan following and is taking swift strides forward as a much beloved indie musician
How did this all start for you?
I started singing as a hobby. I was a painfully shy kid who would reluctantly get up and sing when asked to at social gatherings. I got over my stage fright when I was much older. However, I loved to sing, so I worked really hard because I wanted to excel. I was putting a lot more heart and soul into my music than I was putting into my degree in economics or anything else that I was doing at the time. In college, I was in a band called Teeen, probably best known in the indie music industry for the song Barishon Main and I did jingles alongside to help pay for the production of our songs.
At this point, I was doing almost anything I was offered whether it was a jingle or jamming with a band or performing at a corporate show. All this work in the initial phase of my career really helped introduce me to some great people and institutions, like T2F (formerly known as The Second Floor), NAPA (National Academy of Performing Arts in Karachi) and Ahsan Bari (established musician and teacher of music theory at NAPA) that are still the invaluable associations that I have and I’m thankful for these.
Then, I got an audition call for Coke Studio where I auditioned and got in. Again that was to help pay the bills since I was still at college. it enabled me to produce more work and record more songs and be able to buy equipment. I was singing back up on Coke Studio and got a little bit of attention. Then, this year, they decided to feature me as a female vocalist for a cover song. People started listening to my original songs and I started to get offers to write songs for films.
How was the experience of being featured on Coke Studio?
My work with Coke Studio really exposed me to what’s behind all the glamour in the industry. It was very educational seeing how much work goes into it and what it means to be a part of such a huge platform where all the biggest artists in the industry are being flown in from all over the world to come perform and the stakes are really high. At 22 years old and doing my dissertation for my economics degree simultaneously, what really inspired me was the idea that I could contribute in some way even by composing harmonies and singing back up vocals. That even somebody like me with very little experience compared to everybody else has a voice and a say in what is transpiring gave me a lot of confidence.
Tell us about the musical play Grease that you debuted in?
Grease was amazing and was especially good for disciplining me. It was a 4 month rehearsal process for 12 hours a day. For someone like me, who was trying to do 10,000 things at one time, it taught me how to be completely focused in doing one thing at a time. It was also the first time that I had been in front of a live audience with all the big shiny names in the industry showing up to watch us. It was packed every night and it was brilliant and a bit unnerving to be featured alongside superstars, such as Ayesha Omer and Sanam Saeed.
Have you always been inclined towards acting?
Appearing in Grease was my first experience of performing where I was doing more than singing, writing or composing. I had told Nida Butt, the director initially that I could sing but not act. Sanam (Saeed) was so helpful and used to sit me down and step by step go over every single line of mine with me and teach me how to act. This experience made me realise that acting is not far removed from singing. If you’re singing, especially a song that somebody else has written, for those three odd minutes, you have to put yourself in the writers’ shoes. It’s a pure emotion and you have to really connect with the sentiment of Reshma Jee, Nazia Hassan, Ella Fitzgerald or whoever’s song it is that you’re singing. In this way, acting wasn’t too far removed from what I had already been doing and it sort of came naturally to me.
What are you doing currently and where are you looking to go from here?
I sang backup for Ahsan Bari at NAPA for over four and a half years, which I still do sometimes. Coke Studio and Grease taught me how big I can be in this game, while performing in India, studying with Ahsan Bari and working with NAPA taught me how small I am as a musician and how much further there is to go. I think that having a sense of balance is important.
I’m currently training, learning how to read sheet music, training with my ustad (teacher), listening to folk music and really discovering music for the first time in my life. So for me at this point to say where I will end up is too much of a long shot since anything is possible. Previously, the only songs that I had thought that I could ever do were pop songs and I didn’t even ever think that blues or jazz was something that I could do but now, I mean, who knows?
If you were to put together a band of your favourite musicians from any time and any place, who would be in it?
From those that I’ve heard live, it would be all round musician Mekaal Hassan and drummer Gumbi. From those I have heard recorded, Derek Trucks and Susan Tedesch and definitely George Harrison, Ravi Shankar and Anushka Shankar would be playing in my dream band.
What’s currently on your iPod?
I have 6 different versions of Dekha Day Rang Apna, one is on the metronome, another has no backing vocals in it and a third has half a snare and so on. It’s part of my working process. My phone is filled with just half complete songs. Apart from these, I currently have Laila O Laila by Rostam Mirlashari, Sarak Sarak by the Mai Dhai Band and Awaargi by Ghulam Hussain to name a few. The last one I’m trying to learn, so it makes sense to listen to it as much as possible and especially since I’m trying to sing authentically in Punjabi and Siraiki and other different regional Pakistani languages.
As a female music artist, how do you feel about the state of women in your industry?
People will say so many different things about you, especially if you’re a woman. They point fingers and speculate about your married life and say things like, “Oh, but how is she going to make time for the kids?†All the women that I know in fashion, music or show business are really tough. They all do very different things from each other but they’re all in their own rights extremely tough women.
What I really like about the song Dekha Day Rang Apna and its video is it’s treatment. It doesn’t just represent a girl in the music industry, it’s about any person. It’s not about that poor girl in a boy’s club; it’s about someone trying to figure out their way in going about what it is that they want to do.
You’ve done one short play and Grease; are you interested in taking up more work acting?
Yeah definitely, I would love to act. Music was something that I worked at and was something that I really chased but acting was just something that found me. The recent Levi’s commercial I did with Jami featuring my song Dekha Day Rang Apna has me acting in it. Music is really a visual medium. Singers have to act in their videos and on stage. I’d love to do a movie; I think it’d be really fun. Music is just really about interacting with your audience whatever your style. It’s always somehow an act because no matter what you’re feeling when you go up on stage, you have to be the person everyone expects to see.
—By Saba Ahmed
By Mahlia Lone
The Hashemite royal dynasty of Jordan can trace back its ancestry to Hashim ibn ‘Abd Manaf in the sixth century, Prophet Muhammad’s (PBUH) great-grandfather. From the 10th century to 1924 when the House of Saud gained power over Saudi Arabia, the Hashemites ruled Mecca with one from the tribe being selected as the Sharif (religious leader) and Emir of Mecca. When the Ottoman Empire was at its zenith, the Sultan started making the selection of the Emir from amongst the Hashemite tribe. thus, Sharif Hussein ibn Ali was appointed as Sharif and Emir of Mecca by Sultan Abdul Hamid II in 1908 just before World War I. With the waning of the Ottoman Empire’s power and influence, the Emir saw a chance to secure his family’s position as hereditary Emirs; hence, he led the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire, urged on by the British. As a reward, his two sons were made Kings in 1921 by the British. Abdullah was made King of Jordan, while Faisal, who was earlier briefly King of Syria, was compensated with the throne of Iraq. His grandson King Faisal II was subsequently overthrown and murdered in a coup in 1958 when the Baathists took over Iraq, but the Jordanian royal family proved to be more progressive and resilient and have held on to their throne
It is to this family that Prince Hassan bin Talal was born on 20 March 1947 in Amman, the younger son of King Talal and Queen Zein al-Sharaf. His elder brother Hussein was destined for the throne, but Prince Hassan was for 33 years his chosen Crown Prince after the constitution was especially amended for this in 1965. During King Hussein’s absences from the country, Hassan would fill his shoes as Regent. But in a surprising turn of events, the King replaced him with his eldest son just days before he died in January 1999. There was much speculation in the media about this. One theory was that his Pakistani wife Princess Sarvath, considering the royal palace hers a bit prematurely while King Hussein was in the U.S. fighting for his life in a battle against cancer, ordered redecoration of the palace apartments to her liking. The King heard of her maneuverings and scrambling to establish control and finding her haste distasteful, chose to pass on the crown to his son instead. The Princess famously also didn’t get along with American born Queen Noor, King Hussein’s fourth wife who of course wanted her young son Prince Hamzah to inherit the throne. Not capitulating to pressure from external elements, the King wisely chose his eldest son (from his second wife) to replace him. Moderate King Abdullah II and his beautiful, charming and intelligent Palestinian origin wife Queen Rania have proven to be exceptionally popular monarchs. Approximately half of Jordanian citizens have Palestinian roots.
Let’s meet the Prince and Princess, who in this way, were sidestepped by history.
After early schooling in Amman, Prince Hassan attended English public schools, Summer Fields and Harrow. He graduated from Christ Church College at Oxford University with a BA and an MA. He speaks Arabic, English, French, German, Turkish, Spanish and even Hebrew. Known as the thoughtful ‘Philosopher Prince’, he has been awarded an impressive 25 honorary degrees from universities all over the world, including USA, UK, Brazil, Sweden, Hungary, Russia, Indonesia, Germany, Turkey and Pakistan. Additionally, he has worked for world and Middle East peace, which he refers to as “Muddle East†in an interview. Prince Hassan has served as the President Emeritus of the World Conference of Religions for Peace and has defended pluralism, human rights and promotes tolerance and understanding through dialogue between Muslims, Christians and Jews.
King Hussein replaced Crown Prince Hassan with his eldest son Abdullah just days before he died in January 1999. There was much speculation in the media about this. One theory was that his Pakistani wife Princess Sarvath, considering the royal palace hers a bit prematurely while King Hussein was in the U.S. fighting for his life in a battle against cancer, ordered redecoration of the palace apartments to her liking. King Hussein heard of her maneuverings and scrambling to establish control and finding her haste distasteful, chose to pass on the crown to his eldest son instead
One interviewer writes, “The Prince’s efforts to promote understanding between the Islamic and Western Worlds are crucial at a time when we seem to be drifting apart, with perceived differences appearing to overwhelm the many things we have in common, both culturally and religiously.â€
In recognition of his efforts, he was awarded the 2008 Abraham Geiger Award and the Four Freedoms Award for Freedom of Worship in 2014. He has received 33 awards and prizes in total, including Knight Grand Crosses, Medals, Medallions, and Grand Decoration of Honour with Sash (Austria). He has also served on 15 committees, mostly educational boards or related to academics and is the author of seven books and numerous articles in different languages. On 10 June 2013, he was also appointed as the Chairman of the Advisory Board on Water and sanitation (UNSGAB) by the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon.
Princess Sarvath (nee Ikramullah) was born in pre-Partition Calcutta just three months after Hassan. Her Bhopali father Mohammed Ikramullah, was a senior Civil Servant and a member of Muslim League’s Partition Committee. After Pakistan gained independence, he became the country’s first Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and later Ambassador to Canada, France, Portugal and the UK. His last post was as Chairman of the Commonwealth Economic Committee. Sarvath’s mother, Begum Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah, was a Bengali writer, one of Pakistan’s first two female MNAs, Ambassador to Morocco and a delegate to the UN. Her uncles also held high offices in the Subcontinental governments; her paternal uncle Mohammad Hidayatullah was Vice-President of India and her maternal uncle Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy was the Prime Minister of Bengal during the British Raj and later the fifth Prime Minister of Pakistan. Her mother’s paternal family traces their lineage back to the 14th-century Persian Sufi philosopher Shaikh Shabuddin Suhrawardy. Sarvath doesn’t belong to a royal, but a respected and educated family. Princess Sarvath has three siblings, including the late Bangladeshi barrister Salma Sobhan and the British-Canadian filmmaker Naz Ikramullah.
Though they are said to have met as eleven year olds in London in 1958, Hassan and Sarvath fell in love while studying at Oxford University and got married in Karachi on 28th August 1968. She was not a traditional choice for him. She was neither Jordanian, royal, nor beautiful, but they must have forged a strong connection. The Princess appears to be tenacious and has held on to her position as wife. King Hussein married four times, but Prince Hassan has had only one wife. They live in a lovely historic house in Amman and have four children together. Princess Rahma was born in 1969, Princess Sumaya in 1971, Princess Badiya followed in 1974 and the youngest a son Prince Rashid was born in 1979.
Princess Sarvath has served on many charitable organizations in Jordan, but she has also led a glamorous life accompanying Prince Hassan to royal events around the world, such as the wedding of Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden in 2010 and the inauguration of King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands in 2013. In a 2013 appearance at Royal Ascot, she rode in pride of place with Queen Elizabeth II in her royal carriage. In fact at Prince Rashid’s wedding, it was observed that there was a greater number of European Royalty present than any other group. At most of these international events, Princess Sarvath chooses to wear silk saris in keeping with her Bengali heritage.
Hassan and Sarvath fell in love while studying at Oxford University and got married in Karachi on 28th August 1968. She was not a traditional choice for him. She was neither Jordanian, royal, nor beautiful, but they must have forged a strong connection. The Princess appears to be tenacious and has held on to her position as wife. King Hussein married four times, but Prince Hassan has had only one wife
Princess Sarvath is sporty and enjoys skiing holidays, is the honorary President of the Jordanian Badminton Federation and was Jordan’s first female black belt in Taekwondo. She has kept up her connection to Pakistan with periodic visits, ordering outfits from fashion designers here, inviting Rizwan Beyg and others to hold fashion shows in Amman and commissioning interior designer Mian Ahad to do up her palace in Amman. She was also involved with charity fundraising for the Kashmir earthquake along with her son Prince Rashid who, as the President of the Hashemite Charity Organization, made visits here personally to oversee reconstruction of dwellings and rehabilitation of affectees. Princess Sarwat also contacted her friends, the royal families of Belgium, Denmark, England, Luxembourg, Spain, Sweden and Norway and Baden Aid (HRH The Margave of Baden in Germany) to raise funds after the devastating quake.
Hassan and Sarvath’s daughters grew up to be strong and accomplished modern day princesses. Their eldest daughter Princess Rahma received BA and MA degrees from Cambridge University after attending Sherborne School for Girls in Dorset, like her sisters who followed her there. In 2007, she married Alaa Batayneh, former Senator Arif El Batayneh’s son. Alaa is the country’s current Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources. The couple has two children together, Aysha who was born in 2002 and Arif, born in 2006.
Second daughter Sumaya graduated from the Courtauld Institute of Art at the University of London and married Nasser Judeh, former Cabinet Minister Sami Judeh’s son. Nasser also served as Jordan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. The couple has four children: Tariq, Zein, Ali and Sukayna, but they divorced subsequently in 2007. Princess Sumaya University for Technology, founded in 1991, is named after her. In 2006 she was appointed President of the Royal Scientific Society, Jordan’s leading applied research institute, by Prince Hassan. She also sits as Deputy-Chair of the Higher Council for Science and Technology, advising the State on public policy issues relating to science and technology. In addition, Sumaya founded the El Hassan Science City, inaugurated by King Abdullah II in 2007.
Princess Badiya attended Christ Church at Oxford, and then got a law diploma from The College of Law in London (where she met her future husband). She qualified as a barrister in 1998, being called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn, the first member of the Jordanian Royal Family to become a lawyer. Next, she got her LLM in International Law from the London School of Economics. In 2005, she married Britisher Khaled Edward Blair in Amman and they have one son together named Ali. Khaled works as an investment banker in London. Speaking of her husband’s conversion to Islam, she said in an interview, “He became a Muslim before we married, but I was adamant that Ed’s conversion should be out of genuine religious conviction and not because of me. Would Ed have become a Muslim if he had never met me? Maybe not, it may not have occurred to him to look into it. As it was, he studied Islam and found that it was what he believed in already.â€
Part of their wedding festivities in Amman was a Pakistani style mehndi (henna) ceremony at which she dressed up as a traditional Pakistani bride, complete with jhoomar (head ornament) and lehnga (long embroidered bridal skirt). Princess Badiya has been photographed in Pakistani embroidered shalwar kameez on many occasions. In the UK, she works at promoting interfaith and cross-cultural understanding, human rights and the rights of asylum seekers and refugees through the Muslim-led charity Mosaic, a mentoring programme for youth founded by Prince Charles, of which she is the Chairperson.
Prince Rashid attended Port Regis and Harrow schools, the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and got his BA from Cambridge University. He joined the Jordanian Armed Forces as Captain and is currently serving as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Gendarmerie. In 2011, Prince Rashid had a grand royal wedding to Zeina Shaban at Amman’s Basman Palace. Zeina, a statuesque beauty and national table tennis champion, represented Jordan at the 2004 and 2008 Summer Olympics. The national flag bearer in Beijing, she had the whole country’s eyes on her. The Prince, himself a sporting enthusiast, looked jubilant at his wedding to the sporting star. The couple has a son Hassan, 2013. Prince Rashid has been head of the Jordan Amateur Boxing Association, and is the Captain of the Jordanian Polo Team and President of the Jordan Taekwondo Federation.
An enlightened thinker that wants to see the Muslim world progress, Prince Rashid wisely said in an interview, “If wealthy Arab nations would develop a communication strategy for public diplomacy whereby such wealth – $1 trillion in bank deposits – actually is seen to be doing something to improve the Muslim world’s lot via empowerment and concern for the poor, then you’d see an evolution. Our concern then would become super-national, whereby the issue wouldn’t be to try to beautify our image in the eyes of others, i.e. the West, rather to promote ourselves not by words but by deeds. But unfortunately at the present time, nobody is taking the initiative toward this super-national thinking. For example, I don’t see why there isn’t an international fund for zakat (alms), even until now.â€
Let’s hope other Arab leaders follow his progressive thinking.
