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“The universal is always achieved at the expense of the native.”
— Edward Said, Criticism, Culture and Performance
In an interview with Egyptian actor Omar El-Sherif, he was asked about his success in the West and in Hollywood. El-Sherif responded with regret, saying he wished he had continued his career in Egypt instead of pursuing success in America. In the same interview, he added that as Arabs, we tend to equate glory with globality, yet the word “global” itself means nothing. Omar El-Sherif remains, without question, the most internationally successful Egyptian and Arab actor in history, making his perspective a striking paradox. His disillusionment with “globality” is deeply significant, especially today, as our cultural sphere becomes increasingly obsessed with international validation.
This obsession has only grown in recent years, amplified by social media, cultural interconnectedness, and shifting global and regional politics, particularly following the events of October 7. In the current climate under the weight of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the masks of the West have fallen. The very nations that long preached human rights and freedom of expression have exposed the fragility and hypocrisy of those ideals. Yet, paradoxically, we are witnessing an intensified pursuit of “globality” within Arab cultural circles—in literature, cinema, and most visibly in music.
The term “global” has recently begun appearing everywhere, so frequently and uncritically that it now invites suspicion. It compels us to ask what the word truly means and what this blind chase for Western validation reveals about us. On the surface, an Arab artist achieving regional or international recognition seems like cause for celebration. But underneath, it exposes the remnants of a colonial mindset still shaping Arab cultural production and self-perception.
The colonial system long established Western art as inherently superior and “universal.” This is a deeply rooted colonial notion, analysed and criticised by many postcolonial thinkers across different contexts. When we, as Arabs, celebrate mere presence on Western stages as the pinnacle of success, we unconsciously reaffirm this colonial hierarchy. Take, for instance, the public reaction to Mohamed Ramadan’s appearance on the Coachella stage, as if it were the highest achievement an Arab musician could attain simply because it occurred on Western soil.
Even if we were to consider Ramadan a representative of Arab music (which he isn’t), the celebration surrounding his performance reflects a collective sense of insecurity toward our own identity. Our measure of success has become tethered to Western acknowledgement—a gaze that often exoticises Arab art, stripping it of its context and local fabric, or at best, labels it as “futuristic” or “experimental.”
Throughout history, the artists who achieved true global resonance were those deeply rooted in their local realities, artists who never sought to make art for a “global audience” or to cater to an open and borderless market. Take Naguib Mahfouz, arguably Egypt’s most important novelist, winner of the Nobel Prize, and an author whose works have been translated into dozens of languages. Mahfouz’s writing was profoundly local; his novels unfolded in the alleyways of Cairo, the streets of Gamaliya, and his characters were unmistakably Egyptian in every detail. And here lies another paradox: this extreme rootedness in locality is precisely what paved the way for genuine, uncompromising regional and eventually global success. It was Mahfouz’s unwavering attachment to his context that invited the world’s curiosity and encouraged readers to engage with Egyptian literature sincerely, not as something exotic or strange.
In music, too, Arab artists have historically achieved wide regional recognition. Musicians such as Amr Diab, Elissa, and Hakim in the early 2000s reached international audiences, winning global awards and collaborating with major Western artists. Yet there was never an obsession with “globality” as the ultimate marker of success. It was not a deliberate pursuit or a strategic goal but simply something that happened organically, through work that remained true to its roots rather than being tailored to Western tastes or expectations.
What has changed in recent years is the rise of a new wave of Arab diaspora artists who often attempt to bridge the gap between their Arab heritage and their Western environment. The result is frequently a hybrid form: a third, fragile product that, while reflecting their experience of displacement, often feels uncertain in its identity and authenticity. It becomes less a synthesis and more a symptom, a manifestation of a deeper identity crisis.
This dynamic is not the fault of individual artists but the structures surrounding them: the festivals, labels, and media platforms that amplify certain kinds of “Arab” representation, those that flatter Western liberal sensibilities, emphasise difference in digestible ways, and fit comfortably within the global cultural marketplace. What emerges then is art that is praised for being “authentically Arab,” yet is produced and circulated within frameworks that decide what Arab authenticity should look like. This echoes Edward Said’s warning: the West’s desire to define and contain the “Orient” persists, only now under the banner of diversity and inclusion.
These are often the very works celebrated as having “gone global.” Yet such a celebration is hollow and devoid of any real meaning or genuine appreciation. The obsession with labelling art as global drains local artistic forms of their historical and social contexts. When major media outlets and cultural platforms proclaim that Egyptian Mahraganat, for instance, has “reached global recognition,” what they are really doing is chasing a mirage—an empty and shapeless ideal that holds no real critical or artistic value. The focus shifts away from the work itself toward a superficial sense of achievement defined entirely by external Western validation.
The same goes for the recent buzz around a handful of Arab artists being ‘considered’ for the 2026 Grammys—a process that, in reality, holds little weight or genuine recognition, since virtually anyone can submit. Yet such moments are PR-packaged into grand triumphs and treated by the public as such.
In fact, this kind of celebration harms the very cultures it claims to uplift. When genres like Mahraganat, Shaabi, Raï, Dabke, or other Arab local forms are framed as “finally went global,” it pressures artists within those scenes to replicate that trajectory and to pursue globality as the highest form of success. As a result, what emerges is a process I call reverse engineering in creativity: instead of creating art organically for its own sake, artists begin crafting their work to fit the standards and aesthetics that might grant them “global” acceptance. This often means softening edges, sanding away cultural specificity, and making the work more palatable, less raw, more digestible, until it gradually loses its local context altogether. And in that loss, we see once again the persistence of a deeply rooted colonial mindset, one that still dictates how we as Arabs view artistic legitimacy and value.
This obsession with globality and the creative reverse-engineering it produces has profound consequences for our cultural ecosystem. The more artists tailor their work toward a hypothetical Western audience, the more they risk severing their connection to the communities that first gave their art meaning. Art becomes a tailored product rather than an expression, a spectacle of recognition rather than a mirror of lived experience. What’s most dangerous here is not merely aesthetic dilution, but the gradual reprogramming of creative intent. Instead of drawing from local realities, histories, and emotions, artistic production begins to orbit around visibility and being seen and accepted by a Western gaze that still functions as arbiter of legitimacy.
This phenomenon echoes what several postcolonial thinkers have described as the persistence of cultural dependency: the internalised belief that Western validation is the final measure of worth. Stuart Hall’s notion of “cultural identity in flux” helps explain how, under the pressures of globalisation, identity becomes fragmented and redefined through the lens of external expectation rather than self-determination. These frameworks remind us that art is never neutral. It either reinforces or resists the structures that shape it. And when Arab art becomes calibrated toward the Western gaze, it risks reproducing the very hierarchies it should be challenging.
Edward Said’s Orientalism still offers the most enduring lens through which to understand this dynamic. Said argued that the West has long constructed the “Orient” as its opposite: romanticised, exotic, and inferior, so that the West could define itself as rational, modern, and superior. This system of representation wasn’t merely academic; it was a political tool that shaped how the West viewed and controlled the East.
In the context of contemporary Arab cultural production, this framework remains alarmingly relevant. The Western gaze continues to seek in Arab art either the familiar exotic or a sanitised cosmopolitanism that proves our ability to “transcend” our context. Both are forms of containment. Both deny the Arab artist the right to self-definition. When Arab creators consciously or subconsciously adapt their work to fit these expectations, they participate, however unwillingly, in the logic of Orientalism. They reproduce the colonial binary of centre and margin. The tragedy is that many of these works are then celebrated within Arab societies themselves as proof of having “made it.”
To truly decolonise Arab art, we must reject the idea of “global”. The lesson from Said is not isolationism but reclamation. To produce art that speaks from within, not for the sake of being understood from without. Globality, if it comes, must be the byproduct of authenticity, not its substitute.
