Natacha Atlas - Personal Life

Personal Life

In 1999, Atlas married Syrian kanun player Abdullah Chhadeh. The couple divorced in 2005. Atlas is now in a relationship with British Egyptian violinist Samy Bishai. The couple divide their time between London and France.

Atlas has said in the past that she is "technically Muslim" and that she identifies with Sufism, but says that "these days I prefer to say that I'm Anglo-Middle Eastern and leave the religion out of it." She is, however, open to other forms of spirituality because "it's important to be tolerant".

In 2001, she was appointed by Mary Robinson as a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Conference Against Racism. Robinson chose Atlas because "she embodies the message that there is a strength in diversity. That our differences – be they ethnic, racial or religious – are a source of riches to be embraced rather than feared".

Atlas is a proponent of The Zeitgeist Movement. She included clips from Zeitgeist: Addendum in her 2010 album Mounqaliba.

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