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Oman's efforts to increase literacy rates have further strengthened the use of Arabic as the language of education. Other mother tongues were not included in the curricula, even as secondary languages, in the regions where they were widely used. It hastened the decline of local languages, as their use became limited to the family and local community. As the number of public schools has grown steadily from one in 1951 to more than 1,100 in 2017, Al Jahdhami reports an "intense exposure to Arabic" among the youth and a shift toward the language.

the young generations simply ask, “What would I learn this for?” because outside of the home, Arabic is the predominant means of communication

Across Oman's Dhofar mountain range, between 25,000 and 50,000 people who belong to different tribes and clans speak Jabbali (or Shehri), which literally means "the language of the mountain." However, although the youth are proud of having a language of their own, with its colorful vocabulary for nature and the mountains, their language proficiency is much lower than that of the older generations. This is partly because the young generation, educated in Arabic, employs a mixture of Jabbali and Arabic. Furthermore, the internet and TV — whose content is predominantly if not exclusively in Arabic — are aggravating the loss of linguistic skills among young Omanis. 

In the north, the tribal community in the village of Kumzar tries to hold on to its language, Kumzari. At 5,000 speakers, UNESCO considers Kumzari severely endangered. It is a Southwestern Iranian language that is heavily influenced by Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Hindi and English.

To save ancestral traditions and reach out to Kanim’s tech-savvy generation, a Dhofar-born singer has chosen to broadcast his Jabbali music on YouTube.

a project led by the Ministry of Heritage and Culture is researching the languages ​​spoken in the sultanate and another, by the Department of Culture at Oman’s Royal Court, is working on Oman's dead languages — ones that no longer have any speakers

Local and international academics are working to document those languages before their remains disappear entirely, mainly in Dhofar and in the mountainous peninsula of Musandam, which overlooks the Strait of Hormuz.

They don't shy away from the problems women face in everyday life, such as forced marriage, sexual molestation, the lack of female education, and domestic violence - matters this society is not accustomed to discussing openly.

It is hardly surprising that women, who for the first time see their own experiences reflected in the public domain, form a significant part of Kannywood's audience. They also play a considerable role in the industry itself. According to the Motion Pictures Practitioners Association of Nigeria, 75 percent of the Hausa movie actors are female, as is the case for two-thirds of the association's members - from singers and producers to actors and make-up artists.

the Kano-based film industry is providing jobs and business to the city, something that went a long way towards improving public opinion of the profession.

not more than 10 years ago, a moralistic backlash triggered by a sex scandal almost destroyed the local film industry. As is often the case in public fights about morality, the female body was the battleground.

The Censorship Board came into existence before the scandal in 2001, and is a combined initiative of the local film industry and the state government. It was a response to the adoption of Islamic law in Kano a year earlier. Under the law, filmmaking was under threat of being abolished altogether. In order to avoid that, Kannywood voluntarily subjected itself to stricter censorship.

stricter guidelines, such as the banning of married women from acting, while also requiring all women in the industry to have a male guardian who would be legally responsible if their ward broke the rules

The overly zealous KSCB executive lost his moral authority when the police caught him in a compromising situation with a young girl in his car, and Kannywood celebrated when, in 2011, the newly elected governor appointed a new head of the Censorship Board.

He describes the task of the board as "preserving Hausa culture".

"We don't like to see body contact between men and women. No handshaking, let alone kissing," he says. "And no nudity or transparent dresses." The general secretary explains how things such as prostitution, lesbianism and adultery may be portrayed, as long as it is clear to the audience that they are unacceptable. Song and dance are permissible, as long as there is no physical contact between the sexes.

"Filmmakers themselves understand they have a task to educate people and cannot go against society,"

Kannywood movies do transmit empowering messages to a female audience

"It's the masses who watch Kannywood movies, not the elite. The general public is more ready for social change than political and religious leaders."

female producers are rare, let alone female directors

most female producers work with a male assistant to get things done on the ground

Tunisia could be the most "laique" eligible country , more than many other arab and some european countries. Women emancipation and civil family laws are an example. Education rate is very high, and the gdp per capita is good.What's missing : transparency, freedom and real democraty.Please don't think that the regime of Ben Ali is the bastion againt extremists .. the unique bastion against all extremists are education , freedom , respect and well being. Fighting extremists by guns , fire and jail is a complete failure. Please note that the modern governments in maghreb countries have destroyed the islamic in-country traditional institutions known by their moderation and their knowledge of the religion whick maked the influence of "eastern islamic schools" like wahabism from saudi be predominant on the new era of staellite channels .. which is not very good news for all of us ..

he condemned the Sousse massacre and a terrorist attack in March, 2015, at Tunisia’s national museum, the Bardo, where three gunmen killed two dozen people. The victims were innocents, he said. Kamal still entertained a fantasy of joining a reformed police force. His knowledge of Islam was crude, and his allegiance to isis seemed confused and provisional—an expression of rage, not of ideology. But in Douar Hicher anger was often enough to send young people off to fight

“Maybe it’s the Tunisian nature—we like risk,” a former jihadi told me. A million Tunisians live and work in Europe. “A lot of drug dealers are Tunisian; many smugglers of goods between Turkey and Greece are Tunisian; a lot of human traffickers in Belgrade are Tunisian. Online hackers—be careful of the Tunisians, there’s a whole network of them.”

“The radical narrative tells you that whatever you’ve learned about Islam is wrong, you have to discard it—we have the new stuff. The old, traditional, moderate Islam doesn’t offer you the adventure of the isis narrative. It doesn’t offer you the temptation to enjoy, maybe, your inner savagery. isis offers a false heaven for sick minds.”

Democracy didn’t turn Tunisian youths into jihadis, but it gave them the freedom to act on their unhappiness. By raising and then frustrating expectations, the revolution created conditions for radicalization to thrive. New liberties clashed with the old habits of a police state—young Tunisians were suddenly permitted to join civic and political groups, but the cops harassed them for expressing dissent. Educated Tunisians are twice as likely to be unemployed as uneducated ones, because the economy creates so few professional jobs. A third of recent college graduates can’t find work. Frustration led young people to take to the streets in 2011; a similar desperate impulse is now driving other young people toward jihad.

the factors that drive young men and women to adopt Salafi jihadism are diverse and hard to parse: militants reach an overwhelmingly reductive idea by complex and twisted paths. A son of Riyadh grows up hearing Salafi preaching in a state-sanctioned mosque and goes to Syria with the financial aid of a Saudi businessman. A young Sunni in Falluja joins his neighbors in fighting American occupation and “Persian”—Shiite—domination. A Muslim teen-ager in a Paris banlieue finds an antidote to her sense of exclusion and spiritual emptiness in a jihadi online community. Part of the success of isis consists in its ability to attract a wide array of people and make them all look, sound, and think alike.

Souli wasn’t sure what should be done with returned jihadis, but, like nearly everyone I met, he spoke of the need for a program of rehabilitation for those who come back. No such program exists

In its eagerness to modernize, the Ben Ali regime encouraged widespread access to satellite television and the Internet. The sermons of Islamist firebrands from the Gulf, such as the Egyptian-born cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, entered the homes of Tunisians who felt smothered by official secularism. Oussama Romdhani, who was a senior official under Ben Ali—he was referred to as the “propaganda minister”—told me, “Radicals were able to use these tools of communication to recruit and disseminate the narrative, and they did it quite efficiently.”

Around 2000, the Tunisian Combat Group, an Al Qaeda affiliate, emerged in Afghanistan, dedicating itself to the overthrow of the Tunisian government. One of its founders, Tarek Maaroufi, provided false passports to two Tunisians who, allegedly on instructions from Osama bin Laden, travelled to northern Afghanistan posing as television journalists and assassinated Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Afghan mujahideen commander, on September 9, 2001. The Combat Group’s other leader, known as Abu Iyadh al-Tunisi, was an Al Qaeda commander; when the Americans overthrew the Taliban, in late 2001, he escaped from Tora Bora with bin Laden, only to be arrested in Turkey, in 2003, and extradited to Tunisia. (Sentenced to forty-three years in prison, he seized the chance to radicalize his fellow-prisoners.)

Why can’t the police do their job and stop the terrorists but let the smugglers go with a bribe?

revolution opened up a space that Salafis rushed to fill. There were a lot more of them than anyone had realized—eventually, tens of thousands. In February, 2011, Tunisia’s interim government declared an amnesty and freed thousands of prisoners, including many jihadis. Among them was Abu Iyadh al-Tunisi, the co-founder of the Tunisian Combat Group. Within two months, he had started Ansar al-Sharia.

Walid was vague about his reasons for returning to Tunisia. He mentioned a traumatic incident in which he had seen scores of comrades mowed down by regime soldiers outside Aleppo. He also pointed to the creation of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, in April, 2013, which soon engaged in bitter infighting with the Nusra Front. Walid spoke of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the caliph of the Islamic State, with the personal hatred that Trotskyists once expressed for Stalin. He accused isis of destroying the Syrian resistance and helping the Assad regime. He believed that isis was created by Western powers to undermine Al Qaeda and other true jihadi groups.

these aged men from the two Tunisias—Essebsi a haughty remnant of the Francophile élite, Ghannouchi the son of a devout farmer from the provinces—began a series of largely secret conversations, and set Tunisia on a new path. In January, 2014, Ennahdha voluntarily handed over the government to a regime of technocrats. Ghannouchi had put his party’s long-term interests ahead of immediate power. A peaceful compromise like this had never happened in the region. Both old men had to talk their followers back from the brink of confrontation, and some Ennahdha activists regarded Ghannouchi’s strategy as a betrayal.

To many Tunisians, Nidaa Tounes feels like the return of the old regime: some of the same politicians, the same business cronies, the same police practices. The Interior Ministry is a hideous seven-story concrete structure that squats in the middle of downtown Tunis, its roof bristling with antennas and satellite dishes, coils of barbed wire barring access from the street. The ministry employs eighty thousand people. There is much talk of reforming Tunisia’s security sector, with the help of Western money and training. (The U.S., seeing a glimmer of hope in a dark region, recently doubled its aid to Tunisia.) But the old habits of a police state persist—during my time in Tunis, I was watched at my hotel, and my interpreter was interrogated on the street.

The inhabitants of Kasserine, however neglected by the state, were passionate advocates for their own rights. They had played a central role in the overthrow of the dictatorship, staging some of the earliest protests after Bouazizi’s self-immolation. In every coffee shop, I was told, half the conversations were about politics. Although Kasserine is a recruiting area for jihadis, Tunisia’s wealthy areas are so remote that the town felt less alienated than Douar Hicher and Ben Gardane.

“You feel no interest from the post-revolutionary governments in us here. People feel that the coastal areas, with twenty per cent of the people, are still getting eighty per cent of the wealth. That brings a lot of psychological pressure, to feel that you’re left alone, that there’s no horizon, no hope.”

The old methods of surveillance are returning. In the center of Kasserine, I met an imam named Mahfoud Ben Deraa behind the counter of the hardware store he owns. He had just come back from afternoon prayers, but he was dressed like a man who sold paint. “I might get kicked out of the mosque, because last Friday’s sermon was something the government might not like,” the imam told me. He had preached that, since the government had closed mosques after terror attacks, “why, after an alcoholic killed two people, didn’t they close all the bars?” To some, this sounded like a call for Sharia, and after informers reported him to the police the governor’s office sent him a warning: “In the course of monitoring the religious activities and the religious institutions of the region, I hereby inform you that several violations have been reported.” The imam was ordered to open the mosque only during hours of prayer and to change the locks on the main doors to prevent unsupervised use. The warning seemed like overreach on the part of the state—the twitching of an old impulse from the Ben Ali years.

“I never thought I would repeat the same demands as five years ago. The old regime has robbed our dreams.”

According to the Tunisian Interior Ministry, a hundred thousand Tunisians—one per cent of the population—were arrested in the first half of 2015. Jihadi groups intend their atrocities to provoke an overreaction, and very few governments can resist falling into the trap.

New democracies in Latin America and Eastern Europe and Asia have had to struggle with fragile institutions, corruption, and social inequity. Tunisia has all this, plus terrorism and a failed state next door.

Ahmed told himself, “If I pray and ask for divine intervention, maybe things will get better.” Praying did not lead him to the moderate democratic Islam of Ennahdha. His thoughts turned more and more extreme, and he became a Salafi. He quit smoking marijuana and grew his beard long and adopted the ankle-length robe called a qamis. He un-friended all his female friends on Facebook, stopped listening to music, and thought about jihad. On Internet forums, he met jihadis who had been in Iraq and gave him suggestions for reading. Ahmed downloaded a book with instructions for making bombs. In the period of lax security under Ennahdha, he fell in with a radical mosque in Tunis. He was corresponding with so many friends who’d gone to Syria that Facebook deactivated his account. Some of them became leaders in the Islamic State, and they wrote of making thirty-five thousand dollars a year and having a gorgeous European wife or two. Ahmed couldn’t get a girlfriend or buy a pack of cigarettes.

“Dude, don’t go!” Walid said when they met on the street. “It’s just a trap for young people to die.” To Walid, Ahmed was exactly the type of young person isis exploited—naïve, lost, looking for the shortest path to Heaven. Al Qaeda had comparatively higher standards: some of its recruits had to fill out lengthy application forms in which they were asked to name their favorite Islamic scholars. Walid could answer such questions, but they would stump Ahmed and most other Tunisian jihadis.

“We need to reform our country and learn how to make it civilized,” he said. “In Tunisia, when you finish your pack of cigarettes, you’ll throw it on the ground. What we need is an intellectual revolution, a revolution of minds, and that will take not one, not two, but three generations.”

existing efforts "focus on the interpretive responsibilities of the individual,"

"if bad actors intentionally dump disinformation online with an aim to distract and overwhelm, is it possible to safeguard against media manipulation?"

A 2012 meta-analysis by academic researchers found that media literacy efforts could help boost students' critical awareness of messaging, bias, and representation in the media they consumed. There have been small studies suggesting that media-literacy efforts can change students' behaviors—for example, by making them less likely to seek out violent media for their own consumption. And more recently, a pair of researchers found that media-literacy training was more important than prior political knowledge when it comes to adopting a critical stance to partisan media content.

the roles of institutions, technology companies, and governments