Ahlam (singer)

Ahlam bint Ali bin Hazeem Al Shamsi was born in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, to an Emirati father and a Bahraini mother. Her father is an Emirati folk singer, Ali Al Shamsi. Ahlam was raised as a child in Bahrain. She is married to the famous Qatari rally champion, Mubarak Al-Hajiri, with whom she has three children.

She participated in many festivals around the Arab region and Western region, particularly the "Layali Dubai" festival. She has also been honored at several festivals across the Arab region and in the USA in Dolby Theatre. She was crowned queen of the Arab art in the Doha-Qatar festival in 2003.[4]

She performed at the Unisco Festival and Ledo Festival in France where she was the first Arab singer that sang twice. She also had the honour of performing at the Washington Festival in the US, the Albert Hall Festival in the UK and many other Festivals in London.[4]

In 2011, Ahlam joined MBC's Arab Idol judging panel alongside Lebanese singers Wael Kfoury and Nancy Ajram and Egyptian composer Hassan El Shafei.[3]

In March 2016, after the first episode of her show The Queen was broadcast on Dubai TV, a trending Twitter hashtag was launched by viewers and other people demanding that the program gets stopped for multiple reasons such as the "lack of manners, degrading acts, returning us to the age of slaves" and various other claims made by the Arab world and the people of UAE.[5]

Several other journalists and known personalities such as Nidal Al Ahmadieh and Adel Karam and a few others; took the opportunity to further trend the hashtag and even insult Ahlam, and Ahlam used her Twitter to insult them back first by retweeting a poem written by one of her fans which accuses Lebanon of being "falafill peddlers" and then Ahlam tweeted said: "I'm telling the beggars so they won't keep on talking about their mistress and queen. Let them prove they love their country and pick up the rubbish from their streets" which majority of people considered to be a disrespectful generalization to the people of Lebanon.[6] Nidal launched a hashtag on Twitter which became a popular trend easily in Lebanon and other Arab countries called "#منع_أحلام_من_دخول_لبنان" (English: #Ban_Ahlam_from_entering_Lebanon).[6]

She was rewarded by the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the United Arab Emirates by his Highness Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed at the "Lamst Wafa" honouring Event. On July 21, 2011, it was announced that Ahlam would be on the judging panel of "Arab Idol", the Arabic version of the American Idol. Based on online statistics, Ahlam is first in terms of social media followers in the Middle East, one of the most active people online and her name has been one of the most searched keywords in the Google search engine.[4]

• Official website