In the Arab world, a blog can mean prison

In democratic countries, personal Web sites known as Weblogs have grown exponentially over the past few years. In the United States, for example, there are literally millions of "blogs."

Not yet in the Middle East, even though there are many parallels in the region with what has made the phenomenon explode in the United States. For example, blogging technology is available to anyone with access to the Internet, it is cheap, indeed free, and content can easily be created in Arabic, Hebrew, Persian and other languages. While home-computer ownership is still embryonic, the deep suspicion of government-owned mainstream media has almost certainly helped spur the growth in the region's Weblogs.

But there is at least one critical difference. In most of the countries of the Middle East, using a personal Weblog to express political dissent can land someone in jail as easily as taking part in an unauthorized political protest in a public square. For example, recently in Iran - one of the worst anti-blogger offenders - a blogger was jailed for 14 years for "spying and aiding foreign counterrevolutionaries," after using his site to criticize the arrest of other online journalists. Despite the risks, an estimated 75,000 Iranians among the country's five million Internet users maintain online blogs. Especially among middle class youth, they have become an important way of expressing dissatisfaction.

Mona al-Tahawy, a columnist at the London-based Saudi daily Ash-Sharq al-Awsat, writes that bloggers in Iran and Iraq "have inspired others in the Arab world." She also adds: "Despite working in an elite medium, requiring a computer and literacy, bloggers are the voice of the true Arab Street, especially the young."

Like Iran, most countries of the region impose varying degrees of restriction on Weblogs. Saudi Arabia, where authorities block some 400,000 Web sites, is among the most restrictive. It is unclear how many blogsites there are in the kingdom, but those that are accessible focus largely on political dissent.

"What reforms? There aren't any reforms! The government promised to set up a higher commission on women's affairs, guaranteed women participation in the recent National Dialogue Forum and in the National Human Rights Commission." It adds: "The National Dialogue Forum agreed to change nothing, the 'team photo' had no women in it, anyone with any sense left in tears."

In Iraq today, there are hundreds of blogsites, most of them run by Iraqis, but also some by American and other coalition soldiers. There are communist, monarchist, Kurdish, Assyrian, Islamist, Shiite, Sunni, nationalist and secularist blogs. Their political positions range from full support for the U.S. invasion and occupation to rabid calls for a jihad against the Americans.

For example, on the one-year commemoration of the start of the Iraq war, a 24-year-old female computer programmer wrote in her "Baghdad Burning" blog: "Occupation Day, April 9, 2003: The day we sensed that the struggle in Baghdad was over and the fear of war was nothing compared to the new fear we were currently facing. It was the day I saw my first American tank roll grotesquely down the streets of Baghdad - through a residential neighborhood. And that was April 9 for me and millions of others." She added: "The current Governing Council wants us to remember April 9 fondly and hail it as our 'National Day,' a day of victory." But, she asks, "whose victory?"

In Egypt, authorities have tightened their control of the country's 600,000 Web users. For example, the Web master of the English-language Al-Ahram Weekly was sentenced to a year in prison for posting a sexually explicit poem, and a 19-year-old student was sentenced to a month in jail for "putting out false information" after reporting that a serial killer was on the loose in Cairo.

In Syria, one blogger asked others to sign an online petition addressed to "The White House" and "The ElysŽes" [sic], the French presidential palace. "With the killing of [former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in Lebanon," the site said, "Syrian Baathists are out of control. Who's next? Syria is inciting civil war in Lebanon." Another Syrian, calling himself "Kafka," wrote that a recent speech to the Syrian Parliament by President Bashar Assad "made the Syrian people forget that [he] never cared to give a damn about us since he came to power."

In Tunisia, President Zine al-Abidin ben Ali has been determined to stamp out all cyber-dissidence. The death just over a week ago of prominent cyber-dissident Zouhair Yahyaoui, who was sent to jail in 2002-03 for publishing an open letter by his uncle, a prominent magistrate, asking for an independent judiciary, provided a reminder of how harshly the regime had treated the young editor of Tunisia's most popular TuneZine Web site. But Yahyaoui was not alone. Recently, a well-known lawyer was arrested merely for posting an article online.

In Bahrain, two online-forum moderators were recently arrested. Nonetheless, a Bahraini blog called "Sabbah's Blog" was busy organizing a "Middle East Bloggers Meetup." Dozens of enthusiastic comments were posted by readers. Even in poverty-stricken Afghanistan, blogging is beginning to catch on. One Afghan blog reports: "During the Taliban we didn't have the Internet, but now there are about 25 net cafes in Kabul, and also some in Herat, Kandahar, and Balkh provinces. People are really interested to use the Internet but it's too expensive." It adds: "Only rich people can afford it."

There may well be an inverse relationship between the suppression of free expression and the proliferation of blogs in the Middle East. Maybe the lesson for heads of state in the region is this: It's far better to increase freedom of speech and reduce the challenge and expense of having to deal with this cyber uproar.

William Fisher has managed economic development programs in the Middle East for the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

But there is at least one critical difference. In most of the countries of the Middle East, using a personal Weblog to express political dissent can land someone in jail as easily as taking part in an unauthorized political protest in a public square.

The Religious Policeman
A Saudi man's diary of life in the "Magic Kingdom", where the Religious Police ensure that everything remains as it was in the Middle Ages
http://muttawa.blogspot.com/2004_05_01_muttawa_archive.html

Friday, May 28, 2004More on Saudi Censorship
You may recall that a few weeks ago, I talked about Saudi censorship of the printed media. Well it doesn't stop there; our censors have the entire Web to worry about! When the internet first emerged, our authorities just ignored it. Then they started to realize that they couldn't ignore it while attempting to join civilized countries in bodies like the World Trade Organization. Meanwhile, leading edge citizens were connecting to it, at great expense, thru phone links to other Gulf countries. So in 1999 they finally allowed access. However, the "catch" was that all Saudi ISP's have to connect thru a bank of servers in the King AbdulAziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) in Riyadh, a "Technology Park" situated between the Sheraton Hotel and Ikea.

One advantage of this arrangement to the government is that it can track and listen into all the the conversations in and out of the Kingdom. A second benefit is that it can prevent its citizens from seeing forbidden sites. And usually a site is forbidden because:
- it is pornographic
- it carries a political message unacceptable to the government
- it carries a religious message unacceptable to the clerical elite. However this applies mostly to non-Wahabbi-Sunni variants of Islam, rather than the other major world religions.
- someone in KACST decides he doesn't like a site for some totally arbitrary reason.
- a site is added because of "finger trouble".

Whenever we try and access such a site thru a Saudi ISP, this is what we see:-

Attractive, isn't it? Islam is renowned for the richness of its ornamental art and its exquisite calligraphy. Therefore, KACST has scoured the country for the most talented web designers in order to come up with this page. And they have also taken some perfectly good Arabic "Access to this page...." and turned it into the ugly English techno-babble "Access to the requested URL...". Are those of us without a Computer Science degree supposed to know what that means? However I digress...

As a citizen, we can report any site that ought to be blocked - have fun, put in www.microsoft.com. You will also note that this page allows us to report a site when it is blocked for no good reason; we are invited to fill out a form and report it. This form is then transmitted to KACST's Customer Care Department, so named because it acts as an outlet for customers who care. However do not assume that the staff of this department care likewise; in fact they do not give the proverbial "tinker's cuss". Chosen for their complete lack of motivation and work ethic, and in between chatting with friends on mobile phones, smoking, drinking coffee, eating donuts, scratching their private parts and snoozing, they convey the message to some huge electronic trashcan, secure in the knowledge that the customer has achieved some cathartic release, but is not naive enough to expect a reply, let alone any action.

It will come as no surprise that the Religious Policeman blog is blocked. However, I don't take it personally, because every Blogspot blog, and there must be thousands of them, are similarly blocked. So whether it's this one, or some others, or a combination, we'll never know. Unless you want to send a message to KACST Customer Care and ask....

I do notice, however, that many of my fellow-countrymen are reading this blog. There are ways of bypassing the blocking mechanism that are fairly obvious to any observant internet user. I won't speculate any further, to avoid giving KACST any clues, and ask that you likewise refrain in any responses.

KACST, being civil servants, are obviously clueless when it comes to making the most of this page. They could, for example, make it artistic, as I have done below, using Michelangelo's "Last Judgement" to depict the fate in Hell that would otherwise follow a visit to the site in question, had it not been blocked for the sake of their immortal soul.

It has also escaped their notice that this must be, by a long way, the single most frequently accessed page in Saudi Arabia. As internet Real Estate, it's as valuable as it gets. If I had the rights to sell advertising on it, I could retire next month as a very rich man. So why it doesn't have Pepsi or Kudu (a chain of hamburger joints) as a background, I have no idea.

As you can see, I'm not very good with Photoshop. However if the talented artists out there would like to submit alternative designs, I'd be glad to publish them. I'll even make sure they're mailed to KACST (but not to Customer Care)!

Posted by: Alhamedi

Monday, April 26, 2004
The Religious Policeman FAQ
1. Who are you?
I am a Saudi, living in Riyadh. I am married (to my one and only ever wife), have a family, a Filipino maid, and a driver (her husband). Beyond that, I am not prepared to disclose.

2. Is that your photo?
No, it's a little joke of mine, but you'd have to live here to appreciate it. And he's not a Religious Policeman, although he looks like one.

3. Why The Religious Policeman?
Because, in my opinion, the Religious Police epitomize what is wrong with my country at present. They combine religious fanaticism and intolerance with the apparatus of a police state. They are recruited from the dregs of society, yet they presume to tell other God-fearing people how to conduct their religious lives. They killed innocent young lives in Makkah, yet they were never held to account.

4. Why are you publishing a Blog?
I'm a great believer in the Internet, and in the power of information to cast a light into the darker corners of our world. I'm addressing an English-speaking audience, in the hope that they will recognize that on the whole we are good folk, just like anyone else, but caught between an ultra-conservative Royal dictatorship on one side, and terrorists on the other. I am hopeful that this will inform their opinions of us. I would also like to encourage my fellow-countrymen to become fellow-bloggers as well.

5. Is it dangerous to do this?
The ruling elite would not look kindly upon my efforts. If found out, I would certainly lose my job, as already happens to those who publish critical letters in the press. I might also become a guest of Prince Nayif, until I "got my mind right". However I'm not a super-hero; if I suspect that a net is closing, then I will cease blogging.

6. How do you avoid being intercepted?
All Saudi ISP's are connected to the outside world thru a bank of servers in the KACST (King AbdulAziz City of Science and Technology), where no doubt much listening goes on. However, like many Saudis, I illegally use a satellite link for my connexion. This materializes who-knows-where in the wider Internet. Maybe there is also some form of relay involved. Who knows?

7. Where did you learn to speak such good English?
Thank you, very kind of you to say so. I was educated both in the UK and the USA. God also gave me the gift of being a linguist; indeed, I would go so far as to say that I am a language "geek". I could make myself sound like most Arabs speaking in English, simply by missing out "the", "a" and "an" all the time, but that would offend my sense of perfection. I suppose I am also a bit of a mimic. In addition, learning English exposed me to a whole world of literature, from Shakespeare thru Tolstoy (in translation) to Garrison Keillor and all points between, not to mention all those movies, not to mention the trashiest bits of 21st century popular culture.

8. What did you study abroad?
That would be a giveaway! However in the UK I learnt to speak correctly, to be polite, and never to smile when making a joke. In the USA I learnt to misspell ;-), to question and challenge, and that people only get the respect they deserve.

9. Are you really a Saudi and a Muslim?
Well, perhaps I am like that dog in the cartoon. Perhaps you all are, as well. Perhaps all the humans are doing what they should do, not being on the internet, but spending time with their families. Saudis are in the best position to judge from my writings, whether I am genuine or not. However one did write to me, but was obviously ambivalent. He said that I was a disgrace to my Country and my Tribe, but that I wasn't a Saudi at all!
I am a Muslim. I am also deeply religious, in that I feel the presence of God all around. However I would feel more comfortable as a Muslim in other countries where they have a more relaxed, but no less holy, approach to their religious life. I also believe that whatever we call Him, we all worship the same God, and he requires us to love one another. I am not going to kill you because you read from a different book.

10. Will you reply to emails?
As I was taught at school, I will aim to reply to every letter I get. I will even answer simple questions if they are not too taxing. However I will not answer detailed lists of questions, but may address them in subsequent posts, as the opportunity arises. And I will not enter into an exchange of correspondence, so that I do not reveal any further personal information.

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