The music video self-consciously toys with the intersection of gender with race by celebrating and championing a coalition of Arab and Muslim women, styled to over-articulate their ethnic background, in a manner more typically employed by Western media to victimise them.
The video purposefully attempts to revert the position of the (male) musicians as the heroes of the narrative, not only by subjecting them to the (female) gaze of the director, but also by representing them as individuals who (literally) take the backseat as the coalition moves forward.
So, while the lyrics of the verses discuss betrayal, struggle, and conflict, the video revolves around the lyrical pivot in the chorus: ‘aleihum (charge!).
The music video treats oppression and stereotyping from the West, not as a source of victimhood, but as the fertile ground from where resistance can be forged, through music.
Execution
Working with an emerging Arab woman director, the all-male members of the band (singer and lyricist Hamed Sinno, violinist Haig Papazian, keyboardist and guitarist Firas Abou Fakher, bassist Ibrahim Badr on bass and Carl Gerges on drums) take a back seat — quite literally — to a group of women.
The women in the video are styled to over-articulate their ethnic background, in a manner more typically employed by Western media to victimize them. This seeks to disturb the dominant global narrative of hyper-secularized (white) feminism, which increasingly positions itself as incompatible with Islam and the Arab world, celebrating the various modalities of Middle Eastern feminism.
The women are dressed in an array of figure-hiding Middle Eastern clothing like caftans, abayas, and with many wearing various kinds of veils, from headscarves to the face-covering niqab.
The thrust of the video is one word from the song's refrain: 'Aleihum — "Charge!"