With a seemingly endless amount of beauty and fitness trends, as well as food content, TikTok is the gift that keeps on giving. This Ramadan is no exception given the breadth of iftar and suhoor ideas on the platform.
Professional and self-taught chefs have been swapping cookbooks for engaging TikTok accounts as they connect with Gen Zs, who spend an average of 12.4 hours a week on the platform, according to research by Measure Protocol, a data aggregating firm, released last year.
Here are a few accounts on TikTok you can check out for recipe ideas.
Abir El Saghir (@abir.sag)
The Lebanese food creator is known for her videos in which she dons a traditional outfit while preparing a dish to music associated with the featured country.
Her cooking videos are a visual treat, produced to a level that is choreographed and rhythmic. She cooks regional dishes, from Iraqi dolma (vegetables stuffed with meat and rice), to rose osmalieh (baked vermicelli pastry with cream) topped with Arabic candy floss.
El Saghir is one of the most popular regional cooks on TikTok, with more than 21.6 million followers.
The blog's name is a play on the Arab creator's Moroccan and Libyan heritage. Larbah started blogging when she was a first-year student at the University of California, Berkeley where she pursued nutrition and dietetics.
In 2020, during the height of the pandemic, she quit her job and worked full-time on her TikTok account, where she now has 4.4 million followers. She often posts cooking videos, and her style of cooking is heavily influenced by North African cuisine.
This Ramadan, she started a recipe series where she shares a dish for every day of the holy month, from chicken and cheese rolls to hummus with lamb.
Yasmine Daura (@thechefmine)
Daura, who lives in London, started a Ramadan recipe series for her more than 240,000 followers. Her passion is developing “approachable and aesthetically pleasing” recipes, as well as sharing food and kitchen hacks.
The dishes in her Ramadan series include lamb arayes, peri peri chicken and shakshuka.
Eman Ibrahiim (@eman.ibrahiim)
Ibrahiim posts recipes in Arabic, but her videos can easily be followed even by non-Arabic speakers. Aside from TikTok, where she has more than seven million followers, the chef also has a YouTube account for longer videos.
Her international dishes include everything from baked cannelloni pasta and chicken fajitas to sweet katayef dumplings. Other creative desserts feature chocolates such as Kinder and Ferrero Rocher as key ingredients.
Ahmad Alzahabi (@thegoldenbalance)
The Syrian-American cook, who lives in Michigan, produces instructional videos for dishes such as maqluba and Korean-style short ribs.
Alzahabi is also known for being vocal about his Muslim identity and he uses the platform to shed light on his religion and important cultural practices, including fasting during Ramadan. He has 6.2 million followers.
Zaynah (@zaynahsbakes)
The food creator from London posts videos of her “desi-fied cooking”, heavily influenced by her South Asian heritage.
She has a Ramadan recipe series, which features dishes such as crispy aloo pakoras, paneer butter masala and chicken tikka sliders, which she shares with her 272,000 followers.
Kitchen by Noonzay (@amnaarman90)
The food creator, who also has a Ramadan special segment, has a growing community of more than 150,000 followers. She shares videos that show her preparing easy-to-cook dishes such as beef samosa, chicken fried rice and masala fries.
Majida Sofi (@mywanderinghome)
The food content creator loves hosting dinners and having people around.
“The satisfaction you get from feeding others and seeing the joy it brings to their face when eating good food is unmatched,” Sofi, 24, tells The National.
Her TikTok page has close to 87,000 followers. She is a self-taught cook who posts videos of dishes she's either eaten and taken inspiration from or those she has "thrown together" with whatever she can find at home, turning them into family staples.
MATCH INFO
Uefa Champions League semi-finals, first leg
Liverpool v Roma
When: April 24, 10.45pm kick-off (UAE)
Where: Anfield, Liverpool
Live: BeIN Sports HD
Second leg: May 2, Stadio Olimpico, Rome
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Ten tax points to be aware of in 2026
1. Domestic VAT refund amendments: request your refund within five years
If a business does not apply for the refund on time, they lose their credit.
2. E-invoicing in the UAE
Businesses should continue preparing for the implementation of e-invoicing in the UAE, with 2026 a preparation and transition period ahead of phased mandatory adoption.
3. More tax audits
Tax authorities are increasingly using data already available across multiple filings to identify audit risks.
4. More beneficial VAT and excise tax penalty regime
Tax disputes are expected to become more frequent and more structured, with clearer administrative objection and appeal processes. The UAE has adopted a new penalty regime for VAT and excise disputes, which now mirrors the penalty regime for corporate tax.
5. Greater emphasis on statutory audit
There is a greater need for the accuracy of financial statements. The International Financial Reporting Standards standards need to be strictly adhered to and, as a result, the quality of the audits will need to increase.
6. Further transfer pricing enforcement
Transfer pricing enforcement, which refers to the practice of establishing prices for internal transactions between related entities, is expected to broaden in scope. The UAE will shortly open the possibility to negotiate advance pricing agreements, or essentially rulings for transfer pricing purposes.
7. Limited time periods for audits
Recent amendments also introduce a default five-year limitation period for tax audits and assessments, subject to specific statutory exceptions. While the standard audit and assessment period is five years, this may be extended to up to 15 years in cases involving fraud or tax evasion.
8. Pillar 2 implementation
Many multinational groups will begin to feel the practical effect of the Domestic Minimum Top-Up Tax (DMTT), the UAE's implementation of the OECD’s global minimum tax under Pillar 2. While the rules apply for financial years starting on or after January 1, 2025, it is 2026 that marks the transition to an operational phase.
9. Reduced compliance obligations for imported goods and services
Businesses that apply the reverse-charge mechanism for VAT purposes in the UAE may benefit from reduced compliance obligations.
10. Substance and CbC reporting focus
Tax authorities are expected to continue strengthening the enforcement of economic substance and Country-by-Country (CbC) reporting frameworks. In the UAE, these regimes are increasingly being used as risk-assessment tools, providing tax authorities with a comprehensive view of multinational groups’ global footprints and enabling them to assess whether profits are aligned with real economic activity.
Contributed by Thomas Vanhee and Hend Rashwan, Aurifer
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Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts
Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.
The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.
Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.
More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.
The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.
Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:
November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.
May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.
April 2017: Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.
February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.
December 2016: A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.
July 2016: Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.
May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.
New Year's Eve 2011: A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.
How to wear a kandura
Dos
- Wear the right fabric for the right season and occasion
- Always ask for the dress code if you don’t know
- Wear a white kandura, white ghutra / shemagh (headwear) and black shoes for work
- Wear 100 per cent cotton under the kandura as most fabrics are polyester
Don’ts
- Wear hamdania for work, always wear a ghutra and agal
- Buy a kandura only based on how it feels; ask questions about the fabric and understand what you are buying
