Miri Regev, the divisive and conservative minister of culture and sport, who wants to deny state money to institutions that do not express “loyalty” to the state, including those that show disrespect for the flag, incite racism or violence, or subvert Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.
7More
shared by Ed Webb on 30 Jan 16
- No Cached
Israel, Mired in Ideological Battles, Fights on Cultural Fronts - The New York Times - 2 views
www.nytimes.com/...fights-on-cultural-fronts.html
Israel culture identity identities ideology politics Zionism censorship propaganda education media
![](/images/link.gif)
-
For one well-known poet, Meir Wieseltier, the law “brings us closer to the rise of fascism and exposes its true face.” But Isi Leibler argued in The Jerusalem Post that the government is “not obliged to subsidize the demonization of the nation” and should instead support “the inculcation of love of Israel.”
-
such conflicts, over what cultural works the state should promote for schoolchildren to read or for citizens to see and hear, is part of a political drama in which the politicians of a new generation are jockeying for position as leader of the so-called nationalist camp
- ...4 more annotations...
-
The Israel they represent is more religious and less beholden to the values and inheritances of the old, Europeanized elite and its dwindling left
-
This month, the left-leaning daily Haaretz highlighted internal discussions in the ministry about what artistic works might be considered “politically undesirable” for high-school students. Among the criteria, the newspaper said, were whether artists would perform in West Bank settlements and declare loyalty to the state and to the national anthem, something that is particularly problematic for Israel’s Arab citizens.Internal discussions are not policy, but even this report drew stinging responses, with Oded Kotler, a prominent Israeli actor and director, comparing Israel to the Soviet Union and telling Israel Radio, “There’s a real culture war underway here, but the war from that side of the political map is a harbinger of zealotry, darkness and coercion.”Mr. Kotler infuriated the government and the political right last summer when he compared its supporters to “cud-chewing cattle.” That was in response to Ms. Regev’s effort to freeze state funding for an Arab theater in Haifa because of a play about a Palestinian prisoner who murders an Israeli soldier. The production, “Parallel Time,” had enraged the right and Mr. Bennett banned school trips to see it.
-
Mr. Bennett, for his part, overruled ministry experts to ban from high-school reading lists a novel about a romance between an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man, apparently out of fear that it promotes assimilation. The romance takes place abroad; the pair splits up when they return home, to Israel and the West Bank. Mr. Bennett said the novel, “Borderlife,” by Dorit Rabinyan, disparaged the Israeli military, and the head of his ministerial committee said it “could incite hatred and cause emotional storms” in classrooms.The debate about the book actually increased its sales, something Ms. Rabinyan credited in an interview to “the strength of Israeli democracy.”
-
The novel begins with the Israeli woman, who is Sephardic, coming under suspicion of terrorism in New York over her “Arab” appearance and because she writes from right to left. “This is the bond that connects her to the Palestinian,” Ms. Rabinyan explained. “I don’t consider my Israeliness to be hegemonic.”
Lebanon bans 'Fetih 1453' from theaters | Culture , Film | THE DAILY STAR - 1 views
www.dailystar.com.lb/...-fetih-1453-from-theaters.ashx
Lebanon Turkey film censorship religion history memory civilizations
![](/images/link.gif)
Dissident Turkish actor dismissed from City Theater - STAGE - 0 views
2More
The price of mocking "Sultan" Bouteflika. Algerian activist fined over Facebook post - 0 views
-
The picture above advertises a popular Turkish soap opera – Harim Soltan (the Sultan's harem). But there is also a satirical version (below) in which the Sultan's face has been replaced with that of Algeria's president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Besides "Sultan" Bouteflika himself, it shows a few members of the president's "harem", including his brother Said, prime minister Abdelmalek Sellal and Amar Saidani, secretary general of Algeria's ruling party, the FLN ...
-
On October 4 last year, Algerian activist Zoulikha Belarbi posted the Photoshopped picture on Facebook with a comment saying: "I don't know when the Bouteflika soap opera will end and he will wake up from his false dream which has become a nightmare threatening the future of Algeria and her people." On October 20, police raided her family home in Tlemcen, arrested her and seized her computer, mobile phone and SIM card. She was held for 24 hours before being released under judicial supervision. "I was treated like a terrorist," she said later. Her case finally came to court last weekend, and she was fined 100,000 dinars ($905) for "undermining the president of the republic".
2More
Tahrir Monologues: Storytelling the highs and lows of revolution - Street Smart - Folk ... - 0 views
-
The performance displayed the fear, the doubt, and the waning of faith that materialised in the months that followed the stepping down of former president Hosni Mubarak. “Stories of unity and diversity seem like a ridiculous memory now,”
-
This performance at Left Bank featured memories from the battle in Mohamed Mahmoud Street last November, the December clashes at the cabinet sit in, and the February football match massacre in Port Said.
Davos to Detention: Why I Hate Coming Home to America | Ahmed Shihab-Eldin - 0 views
www.huffingtonpost.com/...-coming-home-to_b_4676404.html
US USA security theater islamophobia profiling journalist
![](/images/link.gif)
Timeline Photos - الصفحة الرسمية لوزارة الداخلية | Facebook - 0 views
7More
Building an Internet Culture - 0 views
-
ten conclusions that might guide a country's development of a culturally appropriate Internet policy
-
Do not spend vast sums of money to buy machinery that you are going to set down on top of existing dysfunctional institutions. The Internet, for example, will not fix your schools. Perhaps the Internet can be part of a much larger and more complicated plan for fixing your schools, but simply installing an Internet connection will almost surely be a waste of money.
-
Learning how to use the Internet is primarily a matter of institutional arrangements, not technical skills
- ...4 more annotations...
-
Build Internet civil society. Find those people in every sector of society that want to use the Internet for positive social purposes, introduce them to one another, and connect them to their counterparts in other countries around the world. Numerous organizations in other countries can help with this.
-
Conduct extensive, structured analysis of the technical and cultural environment. Include the people whose work will actually be affected. A shared analytical process will help envision how the technology will fit into the whole way of life around it, and the technology will have a greater chance of actually being used.
-
For children, practical experience in organizing complicated social events, for example theater productions, is more important than computer skills. The Internet can be a powerful tool for education if it is integrated into a coherent pedagogy. But someone who has experience with the social skills of organizing will immediately comprehend the purpose of the Internet, and will readily acquire the technical skills when the time comes
-
Machinery does not reform society, repair institutions, build social networks, or produce a democratic culture. People must do those things, and the Internet is simply one tool among many. Find talented people and give them the tools they need. When they do great things, contribute to your society's Internet culture by publicizing their ideas.
Oscar Wilde takes on Jersey Shore, hilarity ensues | TV | Great Job, Internet! | The A.... - 1 views
3More
A Song Contest Becomes a Hot Spot in Feud Between Countries - NYTimes.com - 0 views
-
The simmering conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan has entered a new theater: the Eurovision Song Contest.
-
some Azerbaijanis who took impartiality to impressive lengths, voting for the Armenian entry in the 2009 final in May, reportedly were called in to the Azerbaijani National Security Ministry
-
Previously, the Armenians had raised tensions by slipping images of a memorial in Nagorno-Karabakh, the enclave at the center of the dispute between the countries, into the video presentation that introduced their representative in a preliminary round.
13More
Enough About You - Features - Utne Reader - 0 views
-
Economic man . . . has given way to the psychological man of our times—the final product of bourgeois individualism. The new narcissist is haunted not by guilt but by anxiety. His sexual attitudes are permissive rather than puritanical, even though his emancipation from ancient taboos brings him no sexual peace. He extols cooperation and teamwork while harboring deeply antisocial impulses. He praises respect for rules and regulations in the secret belief that they do not apply to himself. Acquisitive in the sense that his cravings have no limits, he does not accumulate goods and provisions against the future, in the manner of the acquisitive individualist of 19th-century political economy, but demands immediate gratification and lives in a state of restless, perpetually unsatisfied desire.
-
The contemporary climate is therapeutic, not religious. People today hunger not for personal salvation, let alone for the restoration of an earlier golden age, but for the feeling, the momentary illusion, of personal well-being, health, and psychic security.
-
Today Americans are overcome not by the sense of endless possibility but by the banality of the social order they have erected against it. People nowadays complain of an inability to feel. They cultivate more vivid experiences, seek to beat sluggish flesh to life, attempt to revive jaded appetites. Outwardly bland, submissive, and sociable, they seethe with an inner anger for which a dense, overpopulated bureaucratic society can devise few legitimate outlets.
- ...10 more annotations...
-
The mass media, with their cult of celebrity and their attempt to surround it with glamour and excitement, have made America a nation of fans and moviegoers. The media give substance to and thus intensify narcissistic dreams of fame and glory, encourage common people to identify themselves with the stars and to hate the “herd,” and make it more and more difficult for them to accept the banality of everyday existence.
-
The modern propaganda of commodities and the good life has sanctioned impulse gratification and made it unnecessary for the id to apologize for its wishes or disguise their grandiose proportions. But this same propaganda has made failure and loss unsupportable.
-
The proliferation of recorded images undermines our sense of reality. We distrust our perceptions until the camera verifies them. Photographic images provide us with the proof of our existence, without which we would find it difficult even to reconstruct a personal history.
-
On the one hand, the degradation of work makes skill and competence increasingly irrelevant to material success and thus encourages the presentation of the self as a commodity; on the other hand, it discourages commitment to the job and drives people, as the only alternative to boredom and despair, to view work with self-critical detachment.
-
The ideology of personal growth, superficially optimistic, radiates a profound despair and resignation. It is the faith of those without faith.
-
The modern prince does not much care that “there’s a job to be done”—the slogan of American capitalism at an earlier and more enterprising stage of its development; what interests him is that “relevant audiences,” in the language of the Pentagon Papers, have to be cajoled, won over, seduced.
-
At the same time that public life and even private life take on the qualities of spectacle, a countermovement seeks to model spectacle, theater, all forms of life, on reality—to obliterate the very distinction between art and life. Both developments popularize a sense of the absurd, that hallmark of the contemporary sensibility. Overexposure to manufactured illusions soon destroys their representational power. The illusion of reality dissolves, not in a heightened sense of reality as we might expect, but in a remarkable indifference to reality.
-
To the performing self, the only reality is the identity he can construct out of materials furnished by advertising and mass culture, themes of popular film and fiction, and fragments torn from a vast range of cultural traditions. In order to polish and perfect the part he has devised for himself, the new Narcissus gazes at his own reflection, not so much in admiration as in unremitting search of flaws, signs of fatigue, decay.
-
Our over-organized society, in which large-scale organizations predominate but have lost the capacity to command allegiance, in some respects more nearly approximates a condition of universal animosity than did the primitive capitalism on which Hobbes modeled his state of nature.
-
Excerpted from The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations, by Christopher Lasch. Copyright © 1979 by Christopher Lasch. Used by permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
6More
'Diamond Dust,' a poisonous pleasure for Egyptian moviegoers - 0 views
-
Tearing down pillars of modern Egyptian history can be lethal, as author and screenwriter Ahmed Mourad and director Marwan Hamed recently discovered with “Diamond Dust,” a political thriller dealing with the Free Officers Movement and the coup that dethroned King Farouk on July 23, 1952
-
“Diamond Dust” the book, published six months before the 2011 revolution, became a best-seller that year, but was not a source of controversy. Its adaptation for the stage in 2016 premiered without event. This August, however, when the film adaptation by Hamed, known for the daring drama “The Yacoubian Building” (2006), arrived in Egyptian cinemas, it created a stir.
-
“Diamond Dust” is the first Egyptian movie to describe the 1952 change in government as a coup, rather than a revolution, as the state officially recognizes the event. In fact, the film is unapologetically critical of the whole movement. Egyptian cinematic works have criticized the politics of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, one of the leaders of the Free Officers, and of his successors' regimes, but the Free Officers Movement itself had apparently been off-limits.
- ...3 more annotations...
-
“Many viewers saw this vision as biased, as it addressed only Abdel Nasser’s flaws and neglected his virtues, while glorifying Mohammad Naguib with no reliable proof,” Shennawi told Al-Monitor. “Egyptian cinema suffered a lot in the era of Abdel Nasser, who exploited cinema to promote the ideas of the July 23 revolution and gradually root out any opposing ideas. Egyptian cinema started breaking free from those restrictions with the film ‘Al-Karnak’ [1975], which criticized Abdel Nasser’s era, and ‘Ahl al-Qima’ [People on the Top, 1981], against [President Anwar] Sadat’s Egypt.”
-
many Nasserists and supporters of the 1952 revolution have harshly criticized the film. Last month, Magdy Eltayeb, film critic for the newspaper Al-Qahira, posted on his personal Facebook page, “Diamond dust is poisonous. … [The film] adopted a stance against the 1952 revolution. … It showed excessive sympathy with the Jews to the extent that this has undermined this work’s aesthetic value as a film noir.”
-
A hit, “Diamond Dust” has so far earned 27.6 million Egyptian pounds ($1.5 million) at the box office.
Egypt detains 6 over play seen as insult to security forces - 0 views
26More
Where Countries Are Tinderboxes and Facebook Is a Match - The New York Times - 0 views
-
they had shared and could recite the viral Facebook memes constructing an alternate reality of nefarious Muslim plots. Mr. Lal called them “the embers beneath the ashes” of Sinhalese anger
-
the forces of social disruption that have followed Facebook’s rapid expansion in the developing world, whose markets represent the company’s financial future. For months, we had been tracking riots and lynchings around the world linked to misinformation and hate speech on Facebook, which pushes whatever content keeps users on the site longest — a potentially damaging practice in countries with weak institutions.
-
Time and again, communal hatreds overrun the newsfeed — the primary portal for news and information for many users — unchecked as local media are displaced by Facebook and governments find themselves with little leverage over the company. Some users, energized by hate speech and misinformation, plot real-world attacks.
- ...23 more annotations...
-
Facebook officials, they say, ignored repeated warnings of the potential for violence, resisting pressure to hire moderators or establish emergency points of contact
-
the imagined Ampara, which exists in rumors and memes on Sinhalese-speaking Facebook, is the shadowy epicenter of a Muslim plot to sterilize and destroy Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese majority
-
As Facebook pushes into developing countries, it tends to be initially received as a force for good.In Sri Lanka, it keeps families in touch even as many work abroad. It provides for unprecedented open expression and access to information. Government officials say it was essential for the democratic transition that swept them into office in 2015.But where institutions are weak or undeveloped, Facebook’s newsfeed can inadvertently amplify dangerous tendencies. Designed to maximize user time on site, it promotes whatever wins the most attention. Posts that tap into negative, primal emotions like anger or fear, studies have found, produce the highest engagement, and so proliferate
-
in developing countries, Facebook is often perceived as synonymous with the internet and reputable sources are scarce, allowing emotionally charged rumors to run rampant
-
Last year, in rural Indonesia, rumors spread on Facebook and WhatsApp, a Facebook-owned messaging tool, that gangs were kidnapping local children and selling their organs. Some messages included photos of dismembered bodies or fake police fliers. Almost immediately, locals in nine villages lynched outsiders they suspected of coming for their children.
-
Near-identical social media rumors have also led to attacks in India and Mexico. Lynchings are increasingly filmed and posted back to Facebook, where they go viral as grisly tutorials
-
Before Facebook, he said, officials facing communal violence “could ask media heads to be sensible, they could have their own media strategy.”
-
officials rushed out statements debunking the sterilization rumors but could not match Facebook’s influence
-
Facebook still appears to employ few Sinhalese moderators. A call to a third-party employment service revealed that around 25 Sinhalese moderator openings, first listed last June, remain unfilled. The jobs are based in India, which has few Sinhalese speakers.
-
Its gamelike interface rewards engagement, delivering a dopamine boost when users accrue likes and responses, training users to indulge behaviors that win affirmation.
-
the greatest rush comes by attacking outsiders: The other sports team. The other political party. The ethnic minority.
-
Mass media has long been used to mobilize mass violence. Facebook, by democratizing communication tools, gives anyone with a smartphone the ability to broadcast hate.
-
Mr. Weerasinghe posted a video that showed him walking the shops of a town called Digana, warning that too many were owned by Muslims, urging Sinhalese to take the town back. The researchers in Colombo reported his video to Facebook, along with his earlier posts, but all remained online.
-
the government temporarily blocked most social media. Only then did Facebook representatives get in touch with Sri Lankan officials, they say. Mr. Weerasinghe’s page was closed the same day.
-
Desperate, the researchers flagged the video and subsequent posts using Facebook’s on-site reporting tool.Though they and government officials had repeatedly asked Facebook to establish direct lines, the company had insisted this tool would be sufficient, they said. But nearly every report got the same response: the content did not violate Facebook’s standards. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “You report to Facebook, they do nothing,” one of the researchers, Amalini De Sayrah, said. “There’s incitements to violence against entire communities and Facebook says it doesn’t violate community standards.”
-
Despite criticism and concerns from civil society groups, the company has done little to change its strategy of pushing into developing societies with weak institutions and histories of social instability, opening up information spaces where anger and fear often can dominate
-
From October to March, Facebook presented users in six countries, including Sri Lanka, with a separate newsfeed prioritizing content from friends and family. Posts by professional media were hidden away on another tab.“While this experiment lasted, many of us missed out on the bigger picture, on more credible news,” said Nalaka Gunawardene, a Sri Lankan media analyst. “It’s possible that this experiment inadvertently spread hate views in these six countries.”
-
government officials said, they face the same problem as before. Facebook wields enormous influence over their society, but they have little over Facebook.
-
Facebook had turned him into a national villain. It helped destroy his business, sending his family deeply into debt. And it had nearly gotten him killed.But he refused to abandon the platform. With long, empty days in hiding, he said, “I have more time and I look at Facebook much more.”“It’s not that I have more faith that social media is accurate, but you have to spend time and money to go to the market to get a newspaper,” he said. “I can just open my phone and get the news instead.”“Whether it’s wrong or right, it’s what I read.”
14More
shared by Ed Webb on 25 Jun 19
-
Cached
Why is the Egyptian state monopolizing the entertainment industry? | openDemocracy - 0 views
www.opendemocracy.net/...olizing-entertainment-industry
Egypt cinema movies film media censorship military
![](/images/link.gif)
![](/images/uploaded-cache.png)
-
Egyptian television series that aired during the peak Ramadan season this year dramatically decreased by half from previous production volumes. Production restrictions and censorship in the most populous Arab country are on the rise, tough circumstances for the entertainment industry, exacerbated by a military-linked production company’s recent monopoly of soap operas. The move also raises concerns about whether a similar fate might be in the works for the film industry.
-
In late 2018, a memo circulated to industry professionals by state affiliate Egyptian Media Company (EMC) laid out a set of regulations making it virtually impossible for almost any production company asides from EMC sub arm Synergy Production to produce soap operas in the 2019 Ramadan season
-
“We have to understand why Synergy is gaining this much control…it’s also very clear that some series [this year] have an almost didactic direction, promoting particular ideas such as improving the image of police officers. Mandating which themes are to be discussed and which won’t be is not censorship, its indoctrination,” Aly Mourad, the CEO of Al Shorouk for Media Productions, tells Open Democracy. “I don’t think we’ve heard of this level of censorship since the time of [Former President] Nasser; it’s like we are going back 60 years in time.”
- ...11 more annotations...
-
“What I fear is that this pool of currently unemployed talent will switch careers, which will come at the longtime expense of the industry since these are trained professionals. I do not believe that the military [Synergy] sees this; they simply have one clear goal: to control the industry. The government has effectively, through the institutions it runs, carried out the first monopolization process in the history of neoliberalism.”
-
In June 2018, the authorities banned a film examining a love affair between a Muslim man and a Christian woman before it hit the cinemas, although director Khaled Youssef said he obtained the necessary licenses. The decision was later revoked, but was alarming to many given rising censorship levels
-
While over fifty shows typically aired during the peak Ramadan season, even during economically turbulent years as in 2017 and 2018, only twenty-four shows aired last Ramadan, and over two-thirds of them are produced by Synergy. Production powerhouses like El Adl Group and Beelink Productions were notably absent this season from their regular Ramadan run, while regionally acclaimed megastars like Yossra, Adel Imam and Laila Elwy uncharacteristically did not star in any shows during the peak season either, likely due to the dramatic, forced budget cuts which make casting an A-lister virtually impossible. Compensation levels for many of these lead faces could often be as high as EGP 50 million (~USD 3 million), the currently imposed budget cap for aggregate production costs of a Ramadan soap opera’s full season
-
“For a producer, the direct client of drama series is television channels, and several factors have negatively impacted their purchasing power. The GCC-owned channels are struggling in light of the economic difficulties there, primarily due to the war in Yemen, so the main overseas market for selling television series is not that great. Add to this that privately owned channels in Egypt were never highly profitable, and media budgets generally were slashed with Egypt’s high inflation levels [during the past couple of years], and you have a situation where many production companies are struggling to stay afloat.”
-
Over the course of the past year, EMC CEO Tamer Morsy also gradually gained majority ownership of key television networks such as CBC, ONTV, DMC and Al-Hayat, a move facilitated through the recent launch of EMC affiliate United Group for Media Services. Moreover, state-owned entities effectively gained control of both the production and purchasing sides of the business as these unprecedented levels of regulation and government ownership were put in place.
-
in early May United Group for Media Services launched paid streaming app WatchiT and prohibited the longtime convention of shows airing online on YouTube for those who couldn’t catch them on satellite television channels. Widely accessed streaming app EgyBest, among other free online streaming services, were also blocked to allegedly mitigate “piracy”, granting government intelligence-affiliated WatchiT a monopoly over streaming services. Since digital finance and financial inclusion levels are low in the most populous Arab country, the decision came to the dismay of throes of viewers regardless of political affiliations or regulation concerns. For those following television series on satellite channels, short broadcast announcements interrupt episodes to denounce a May 28 Human Rights Watch report on enforced disappearances, killings and torture in North Sinai. Other broadcasts order audiences to pay heed to “threats to terrorism and national security.”
-
“Because these people [Synergy and EMC] are military men, their mentality is to cut off what doesn’t work, with little concern for the consequences. The military don’t understand or love the arts; they see it as just another industry they can profit off by minimizing losses.”
-
“It’s understandable that they [the military] would be more concerned with penetrating television production as opposed to the cinema industry, because viewership numbers are higher for television series in comparison to films. Not everyone can afford a cinema ticket, but most Egyptians, be they rich or poor, have access to a television set. There’s nothing to stop them from gaining as much control of the film industry as they have with television, but I believe they’re not investing in it [as much] because it isn’t as lucrative,”
-
Saudi Arabia is once again opening cinema theaters following a 35-year ban, creating a significant potential box office market for Egyptian films, particularly since plans for the inauguration of 2,000 theatres in the kingdom before 2020 are in the works
-
There was a time when everyone in the Arab world recognized Umm Kalthoum and Ismail Yassin, even more so than [our own president] Nasser. We need to work towards reestablishing that, and understanding how entertainment can be used as a tool for soft power
8More
shared by Ed Webb on 28 Sep 17
- No Cached
Tunisia's Dying Jazz | Foreign Policy - 0 views
foreignpolicy.com/...ng-jazz-stambeli-chedli-bidali
Tunisia politics transition religion music art censorship Salafism
![](/images/link.gif)
-
Bidali is one of the last living practitioners of stambeli, a uniquely Tunisian hybrid of musical genre, healing practice, and religious ceremony. It’s deeply rooted in the history of a specific community: the descendants of slaves brought to the region from sub-Saharan Africa during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It also has close links to Sufism, an ancient form of Islamic mysticism that uses music, dance, and rhythm to induce trance-like states that are supposed to bring listeners closer to the essence of the divine
-
President Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia’s first postcolonial leader, gave state support to many forms of art, but stambeli wasn’t among them; it didn’t fit the modern image of the country he was trying to shape
-
while subsequent police crackdowns have landed Salafists of all stripes in jail, some of the trends they promoted, such as moral self-policing and austere interpretations of Islamic cultural heritage, have taken root in society. With its unorthodox religious associations, stambeli has found itself in the firing line
- ...5 more annotations...
-
because of the rising influence of orthodox interpretations of the faith, stambeli artists are careful to stress the monotheistic, Islamic essence of their practice
-
The origins of stambeli music resemble those of American jazz (even though the two genres don’t sound alike). In both cases, the musical traditions of former slaves combined with the diverse cultural influences of their new environments to create something radically new. Whereas slaves arriving in Louisiana mixed their music and practices with European, Caribbean, and American ingredients, slaves arriving in Tunis during the same period fused their animist practices with North African versions of mystical Sufism and orthodox Islam. Mounir Argui, a theater director and music producer who works with Bidali, says that the metal castanets that play such a prominent role in stambeli performances evoke “the sounds of chains and shackles” that the slaves once wore, while the chanting recalls the “moaning.”
-
the Tunisian state never prioritized the preservation of stambeli, focusing instead on the art and culture it considered highbrow
-
Many Tunisians see stambeli as an alien phenomenon associated with blacks, who are already widely viewed as not quite Tunisian. In post-revolutionary Tunisia, where asserting the Islamic character of the country has become an important political symbol for some, the pagan origins of stambeli also cause suspicion
-
As long as some Tunisians continue to see freedom of religion and freedom of art as mutually exclusive, the rare traditions like stambeli that manage to straddle both will find little space
5More
Egypt's War on Books - The Atlantic - 0 views
-
nothing seems to disturb Egypt’s ruling cadres more than the written word. The recent litany of bans and shutdowns, including blocking hundreds of web pages online, illustrates what Cambridge University’s Khaled Fahmy, a prolific historian of the Middle East, called “an alarmist moment of crisis,” one in which Egypt’s authoritarian state of emergency laws have turned something as simple as reading into a dangerous act. “Free press and freedom of information … are essential ingredients of any democratic system. The regime and many segments of society do not see it this way—they see the exact opposite. They see at times of crises we have to have absolute unity,”
-
sentenced to five years in jail under a counter-terrorism law for possessing a copy of Karl Marx’s Value, Price and Profit
-
Sisi prefers conservative Islamists who he can control over secular dissidents—chiefly writers—who threaten his rule.
- ...2 more annotations...
-
Within Sisi’s approach to Islam, censorship remains key. In addition to going after the Muslim Brotherhood, he has locked up thousands of youth and other perceived dissidents. His brutal crackdown has ensnared over 40,000 prisoners of different political stripes. In the security-first mindset of the Sisi regime, writers and other dissidents pose a considerable threat: They have the ability to make the larger population question his policies
-
Fahmy is optimistic that the current repressive period is already creating burgeoning subversive spaces of critical resistance. “Within the readership there actually is a more healthy and critical reception of books and engagement with them [than before]. The reading public hasn’t expanded but deepened.”
8More
Why Iran's grand ayatollahs are fighting over Rumi - 0 views
-
Plans to make a movie about Rumi, a 13th-century Persian Sufi poet, have once again revived an old quarrel between two currents among Iranian clerics — one that celebrates him as a great mystic and another that opposes his teachings as deviation and heresy.
-
nearly 750 years after Rumi's death, award-winning Iranian director Hassan Fathi, known in Iran for the hit series “Shahrzad,” announced Sept. 22 that he would produce a movie titled “Drunk on Love” about the much-speculated relationship between Rumi and Shams.
- ...5 more annotations...
-
two powerful ayatollahs in Iran would like to see the project nipped in the bud, saying Sufism is a deviation from Shiite Islam and any attempt to promote or spread it with a movie would be "haram"
-
Part of the opposition to the film is based on the fact that it is a co-production with Turkey. A group of experts and journalists stated their opposition to the Rumi and Shams movie owing to the presence of a Turkish producer behind the film, implying that the two countries — both of which claim the heritage of Rumi — have different interpretations on the life and works of the mystic poet.
-
Members of the hadith current have issued fatwas against mystics repeatedly. For example, a summit in Qom in 2007 declared Rumi a heretic.
-
The country’s culture minister, Abbas Salehi, a cleric who doesn’t wear a turban, told reporters after the Sept. 25 Cabinet meeting that while the opinions of marjas — the highest Shiite authorities — should be respected, “the country has its own laws.” This was taken to mean that the making of the film would not be prohibited because of the objections. So far, there are no indications that the movie is being obstructed by Tehran.
-
“Drunk on Love” is not the only controversy in Iran over films that deal with religious figures. In September, member of parliament Ali Motahari called on authorities to permit the movie “Hussein Who Said No” to be screened in cinema and theaters across the country. The movie, which has been banned for seven years, narrates the story of battle of Karbala in the year 680, where the third imam of the Shiites, Hussein ibn Ali, and 72 male companions were killed by Caliph Yazid ibn Muawiya’s army. “The main obstacle [in the way] of receiving the screening permit has been the portrayal of the face of ‘Abbas’ that I believe has no religious problem,” Motahari wrote on his Instagram page Sept. 23. Motahari said Abbas ibn Ali — the half-brother of Hussein — is not one of the sacred Shiite imams, which means the portrayal of his face should not be prohibited.
17More
shared by Ed Webb on 23 Oct 19
- No Cached
How Twitter is gagging Arabic users and acting as morality police | openDemocracy - 0 views
www.opendemocracy.net/...ers-and-acting-morality-police
twitter socialmedia ArabWorld MENA Arabic censorship
![](/images/link.gif)
-
Today, Twitter has a different story, and it is not one of speaking truth to power. Twitter is no longer empowering its users. Its platform cannot be considered neutral. Twitter’s actions suggest it is systematically suppressing voices in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
-
What started out as an investigation into the mass suspension of accounts of Egyptian dissidents, uncovered a mass censorship algorithm that targeted users who use Arabic flagging their text as hateful conduct. This story is still unfolding. As you read this, mass and unjustified systemic locking and suspension of Twitter Arabic accounts continues. Users are angry and bewildered.
-
draconian yet lazy algorithms have systematically shut down voices of dissent – and pulled unsuspecting social media users down with them
- ...14 more annotations...
-
The effects of these suspensions was not just hiding a set of tweets critical of the government, but completely disabling the influence network of Egypt’s dissidents. This is potentially the first documented politically motivated mass shutdown of twitter accounts at a time when online interaction was high and translated to possible action on the ground
-
accusations are not limited to Egypt but the entire region who have a sense that being critical of their governments was met with punitive measures by Twitter against them
-
I interviewed @OfficialAmro1, a user affected by mass suspensions with over 265K followers and 115K tweets. He was suspended without cause and added, “I don’t even curse.”To which I foolishly replied, “Cursing would not suspend your account, particularly if directed against a public figure. Incitement will.”“No, now it does,” he replied. He also added that if you criticize a figure loyal to the Arab regimes, you can get your account locked or suspended.
-
suspensions seemed to have happened around late September and lasted from one day to a few days. In many cases Twitter had responded that they had suspended the accounts by mistake. The accounts affected varied from having a few followers to hundreds of thousands
-
a trending anti-Sisi hashtag disappeared suddenly in July 2018, and then later on in 2019. It didn’t help either to find that an officer in the British Army information warfare unit was head of editorial in Twitter for the MENA region.
-
The 'hateful conduct' policy as defined by Twitter states: You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.Analyzing the message contents that were flagged for hateful conduct I saw that most did not violate Twitter’s rules. Soon I began to discover that what @OfficialAmro1 had told me was true. The content I was seeing contained profanity. But that wasn’t the whole story.Arabic curse words are used often. I sampled around a little under 50 claims, with over 30 screenshots that contain Twitter’s email identifying the violating tweet. It was clear that profanity alone was not causing the suspensions.
-
Tragically funnier still are those who were joking around with their friends using their usual language that has profanities @ism3lawy_ ended up cursing Egypt’s Zamalek football club and for that his account was suspended permanently along with that of one of his friends. In a separate conversation, his friend @EHAB_M0 was also joking around with his friends and eventually got a permanent suspension.
-
Within seconds of my post, the algorithm identified the curse words and locked my account for 12 hours. It was my first violation ever. The irony of documenting this as a reply to the platform’s account is probably lost on them.
-
the most dangerous and disconcerting of my findings is that the appeal system in Twitter for MENA is broken.
-
There is an element of guardianship that is present in despotic Arab regimes, and that moral guardianship is reflected in the algorithm by Twitter as was shown through the numerous examples above.
-
With my limited access to Twitter’s data, I have found nearly 20 accounts probably wrongfully and permanently suspended. I imagine hundreds or even thousands more have been kicked off the platform.