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Ed Webb

Iran bans pro-reform daily over 'false' reporting | Middle East Eye - 1 views

www.middleeasteye.net/...orm-daily-over-false-reporting

Iran censorship newspapers media

shared by Ed Webb on 08 May 14 - No Cached
  • The reformist Iranian newspaper Ghanoon daily did not appear on newsstands in Tehran on Thursday after the judiciary accused it publishing false reports and shut it down. Ghanoon, meaning "law" in Persian, is the latest victim of ever-increasing bans being slapped on the media despite President Hassan Rouhani vowing to ease such restrictions when he took office last August.
  • the daily's coverage of the arrest of Mohammad Royanian, a former police and government official, was deemed inappropriate
  • Royanian has been arrested on charges of financial fraud related to his tenure as head of Iran's Fuel and Transport Management Organisation
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  • The judiciary permanently banned two reformist papers as well as serving temporary bans on pro-reform and conservative newspapers. Here is a time line: Ebtekar (April 2014): ISNA reported that it was banned for a headline story about the replacement of the country's prison chiefs over reports of violence against political prisoners. The ban was lifted less than a week later. Aseman (February 2014): The judiciary banned the newly launched newspaper and arrested its managing director, later freed on bail, over an article deemed insulting to Islamic law.  Bahar (October 2013): Closed for publishing an article seen by critics as questioning the beliefs of Shiite Islam.
Ed Webb

Qatar: land of the free? "Positive practices" that lead to jail - 0 views

www.al-bab.com/...qatar-free-speech.htm

Qatar rights freedoms media press journalists blasphemy religion politics

shared by Ed Webb on 11 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • “in 2015, authorities detained two groups of foreign journalists attempting to report on the treatment of migrant workers in the country.”
  • Two other German journalists were detained in 2013 after filming the working conditions of migrant labourers.
  • All the newspapers printed in Qatar are owned by members of the ruling family or others closely connected with the government.
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  • Journalists and publishers continued to self-censor due to political and economic pressures when reporting on government policies or material deemed hostile to Islam, the ruling family, and relations with neighboring states.
  • The Qatar Media Corporation, the Ministry of Culture, and customs officials censored material … The government reviewed, censored, or banned foreign newspapers, magazines, films, and books for objectionable sexual, religious, and political content...
  • a new “cybercrime” law which Amnesty International denounced as a major setback for freedom of expression in Qatar. Besides criminalising dissemination of “false news” on the internet, it gave the authorities power to ban websites that they considered threatening to the “safety” of the country and to punish anyone posting or sharing online content that “undermines” Qatar’s “social values” or “general order”.
  • a prison sentence of up to seven years for defaming, desecrating, or committing blasphemy against Islam, Christianity, or Judaism (though the law appears not to be enforced where Judaism is concerned)
  • The government regulates publication, importation, and distribution of all religious books and materials, but permits individuals and religious institutions to import holy books and other religious items for personal or congregational use.
  • Christian congregations are not allowed to advertise religious services or use religious symbols visible to the public, such as outdoor crosses.
Ed Webb

Picking up the pieces - 0 views

www.synaps.network/picking-up-the-pieces

Syria society identities war civil_war

shared by Ed Webb on 28 Apr 19 - No Cached
  • Syrians have shown relentless ingenuity in adapting to every stage of a horrendous conflict, salvaging remnants of dignity, solidarity and vitality amid nightmarish circumstances
  • The decimation of Syria’s male population represents, arguably, the most fundamental shift in the country’s social fabric. As a generation of men has been pared down by death, disability, forced displacement and disappearance, those who remain have largely been sucked into a violent and corrupting system centered around armed factions
  • 80 of the village’s men have been killed and 130 wounded—amounting to a third of the male population aged 18-50. The remaining two-thirds have overwhelmingly been absorbed into the army or militias
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  • “If you want to protect yourself and your family, you join a militia,” remarked a middle-aged man in the Jazmati neighborhood. “The area is infested with crime associated with the National Defense militias. Each group has control over a certain quarter, and they sometimes fight each other over the distribution of spoils. Shop owners must pay these militias protection. One owner refused, and they torched his store.”
  • Another resident of the same area explained that he and his family could scrape by thanks to his two sons’ positioning in the Iran-backed Baqir Brigade—which provides not only monthly salaries, but also opportunities to procure household items through looting.
  • Most who can afford to leave the country do so; others benefit from an exemption afforded to university students, while another subset enjoys a reprieve due to their status as the sole male of their generation in their nuclear family. Others may pay exorbitant bribes to skirt the draft, or confine themselves within their homes to avoid being detected—making them invisible both to the army and to broader society. Some endure multiple such ordeals, only to remain in an indefinite state of limbo due to the contingent and precarious nature of these solutions
  • I returned to my apartment just to retrieve official documents and some hidden pieces of gold. I did so, and then destroyed my own furniture and appliances because I don’t want these people making money at my expense. I was ready to burn down my own apartment, but my wife stopped me—she didn’t want me to cause harm to other apartments in the building.
  • Although virtually every problem that sparked Syria’s 2011 uprising has been exacerbated, society has been beaten down to the point of almost ensuring that no broad-based reformist movement will be able to coalesce for a generation to come
  • the unraveling of Syria’s productive economy, and its replacement by an economy of systematic cannibalization in which impoverished segments of Syrian society increasingly survive by preying upon one another
  • a new term—taafeesh—to describe a practice that goes far beyond stealing furniture to include extremes such as stripping houses, streets and factories of plumbing and electrical wiring
  • “I watched uniformed soldiers using a Syrian army tank to rip out electrical cables from six meters underground,” remarked a fighter with a loyalist Palestinian faction, who was scrambling to retrieve belongings from his apartment before it could be pillaged. “I saw soldiers from elite units looting private hospitals and government offices. This isn’t just looting—it’s sabotage of essential infrastructure.”
  • An industrialist in Aleppo put it simply: “I talk with factory owners and they say they want to reopen their factories, but they can’t find male workers. When they do find them, security services or militiamen come and arrest those workers and extort money from the owners for having hired them in the first place.” With no large scale returns on the horizon for local industries, this economic impasse will take years to resolve.
  • Multiplying forms of predation have accelerated the outflow of Syria’s financial and human capital, leaving behind a country largely populated by an underclass that can aspire to little more than subsistence
  • Syrians also dip into precious resources to pay officials for information, for instance on disappeared relatives or their own status on Syria’s sprawling lists of “wanted” individuals. For those wishing to confirm that they won’t be detained upon crossing the border to Lebanon, the going rate is about 10 dollars—most often paid to an employee in the Department of Migration and Passports.
  • This cannibalistic economy, which encompasses all those who have come to rely on extortion for their own livelihoods, extends to the cohort of lawyers, security officials and civil servants who have positioned themselves as “brokers” in the market for official documents such as birth, marriage and death certificates
  • Today, even the most senior lawyers in our practice are working as document brokers. A well-connected broker makes 30 to 40,000 pounds [60 to 80 dollars] per day; this roughly equals the monthly salary of a university-educated civil servant. As a result, many government employees resign and work as brokers to make more money.And this truly is a business, not a charity: Every broker takes money, even from his own brothers and sisters. Last week a colleague brought me his brother-in-law. I asked him why he needed me, when he could make all the papers himself. He explained that he can’t take money from his own brother-in-law, but I can do so and then give him half.
  • micro-economies in their own right—from the recycling of rubble to the proliferation of taafeesh markets, where people buy second-hand goods stolen from fellow Syrians. Many have no choice but to use these markets in order to replace their own stolen belongings
  • Syria’s predatory wartime economy is slowly but surely turning into a predatory economy of peace
  • As some Syrians put it, Damascus has been particularly effective in reconstructing one thing amidst the immeasurable destruction: the “wall of fear” which characterized the regime before 2011 and which momentarily broke down at the outset of the uprising
  • active surveillance, intimidation and repression are not the only contributors to this leaden atmosphere. A pervasive exhaustion has settled over Syrians ground down and immiserated by war, disillusioned with all those who purport to lead or protect them, and largely reduced to striving for day-to-day subsistence
  • At one level, the war has wrenched open social and economic fractures that existed long before the conflict. The city of Homs stands as perhaps the starkest microcosm of this trend. A Sunni majority city with sizable Christian and Alawi minorities, Homs was the first major urban center to rise up and the first to devolve into bitter sectarian bloodletting
  • While vast swathes of Syria’s Sunni population feel silenced and brutalized, Alawi communities often carry their own narrative of victimhood, which blends legitimate grievances with vindictive impulses vis-à-vis Sunnis whom they regard as having betrayed the country
  • crude divisions based on sect or class fail to describe a complex and fluid landscape. Some fault lines are less dramatic, all but imperceptible except to those who experience them first-hand. Neighbors, colleagues, friends and kin may have come down on opposing sides, despite having every social marker in common. Each part of the country has its own web of tragic events to untangle.
  • Many Islamic State fighters swapped clothes and joined the [Kurdish-led] Syrian Democratic Forces to protect themselves and their families. But they haven’t changed; those people are bad, and will always be bad. There will be vengeance. Not now, while everyone is busy putting their lives together. But eventually, everyone who suffered under ISIS, whose brother was killed by ISIS, will take revenge.
  • A native of a Damascus suburb remarked: “Charities typically want to help those who fled from elsewhere. So, when I go to a charity, I say I’m displaced.”
  • The divide between conservative and more secular Sunnis has calcified, manifesting itself even in differential treatment at checkpoints. “I have an easier time driving around because I don’t wear the hijab,” remarked a woman from the Damascus suburbs. “If you veil, security assumes you’re with the opposition.”
  • While dialogue is sorely needed, some Syrians warn against emphasising dialogue for its own sake—even at the cost of burying the most substantive issues at stake. A businessman from Damascus described his own abortive experience with talks proposing to link disparate elements of Syria’s private sector: “There’s this whole industry around ‘mediation,’ including between sides that don’t actually disagree on anything. Meanwhile, all the problems that caused the uprising have gotten worse.”
  • Just as Syrians are forced to be more self-reliant, they have also come to depend evermore on vital social support structures. Indeed, extreme circumstances have created a paradox: Even as society has splintered in countless ways, the scale of deprivation arguably renders Syrians more closely interdependent than ever before.
  • remittances from relatives who live abroad
  • The country’s middle and upper classes have long extended vital forms of solidarity to their needier compatriots, with Syria’s merchant and religious networks playing a leading role. What is unique, today, is the scale of hardship across the country, which is so vast as to have changed the way that Syrians conceptualize the act of receiving charity. A businessman from central Syria noted the extent to which dependency, which once demanded some degree of discretion, has become a straightforward fact of life. “People used to hide it when they were reliant on charity. Not anymore. Today you might hear workers in a factory wondering, ‘Where is the manager?’ And someone will say that he’s out waiting for his food basket. The whole country is living on handouts.”
  • People still do charity the Islamic way, based on the premise that you must assist those closest to you. If there’s someone you should help—say, a neighbor—but you’re unable, then it’s your responsibility to find someone else who can. These circles remain very much intact, and the entire society lives on this. Seven years of war didn’t destroy that aspect of Syrian culture, and that’s something Syrians are proud of.
  • There will be no nationwide recovery, no serious reform, no meaningful reconciliation for the foreseeable future.
Ed Webb

Medieval robots: How al-Jazari's mechanical marvels have been resurrected in Istanbul | Middle East Eye - 0 views

www.middleeasteye.net/...ht-mechanical-marvels-istanbul

Turkey Islamic engineering robots history

shared by Ed Webb on 02 Mar 19 - No Cached
  • the history of automation goes back some 900 years, when Ismail al-Jazari, a Muslim scholar, invented the first robotics, water clocks and other mechanical devices.
  • his outstanding machines have now been recreated for The Magnificent Machines of al-Jazari, an exhibition at the UNIQ Expo in Istanbul
  • “The impact of al-Jazari's inventions is still felt in modern contemporary mechanical engineering,” wrote 20th-century English engineer and historian Donald Hill in his book Studies in Medieval Islamic Technology.
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  • In his book, al-Jazari explained the construction of his devices and automatons, from water-raising machines to fountains, complete with illustrations and instructions that gave engineers the opportunity to reuse them. 
  • his masterwork, The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices,
  • The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices,  was the most important work of engineering written before the Renaissance centuries later. 
  • “The idea of having robots to do humans work - or simply automation - was developed by al-Jazari 250 years before Leonardo Da Vinci, with some excellent examples."
  • in the 21st century Muslim countries see relatively less scientific activity. According to the World Bank, in 2016 the United States and the European Union respectively published 426,165 and 613,774 articles in scientific and technical journals. That compares to 40,974 in Iran and 33,902 in Turkey, although the number of articles is rising.
Ed Webb

Secret Alliance: Israel Carries Out Airstrikes in Egypt, With Cairo's O.K. - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...el-airstrikes-sinai-egypt.html

Egypt Israel military ISIS militants Sinai terrorism drones

shared by Ed Webb on 03 Feb 18 - No Cached
  • For more than two years, unmarked Israeli drones, helicopters and jets have carried out a covert air campaign, conducting more than 100 airstrikes inside Egypt, frequently more than once a week — and all with the approval of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.The remarkable cooperation marks a new stage in the evolution of their singularly fraught relationship. Once enemies in three wars, then antagonists in an uneasy peace, Egypt and Israel are now secret allies in a covert war against a common foe.
  • Their collaboration in the North Sinai is the most dramatic evidence yet of a quiet reconfiguration of the politics of the region. Shared enemies like ISIS, Iran and political Islam have quietly brought the leaders of several Arab states into growing alignment with Israel — even as their officials and news media continue to vilify the Jewish state in public.
  • Both neighbors have sought to conceal Israel’s role in the airstrikes for fear of a backlash inside Egypt, where government officials and the state-controlled media continue to discuss Israel as a nemesis and pledge fidelity to the Palestinian cause.
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  • Israeli drones are unmarked, and the Israeli jets and helicopters cover up their markings. Some fly circuitous routes to create the impression that they are based in the Egyptian mainland
  • In Israel, military censors restrict public reports of the airstrikes
  • They moved into hitting softer targets like Christians in Sinai, churches in the Nile Valley or other Muslims they view as heretics. In November 2017, the militants killed 311 worshipers at a Sufi mosque in the North Sinai.
  • Mr. Sisi, then the defense minister, ousted Mr. Morsi in a military takeover. Israel welcomed the change in government, and urged Washington to accept it. That solidified the partnership between the generals on both sides of the border
  • In November, 2014, Ansar Beit al Maqdis formally declared itself the Sinai Province branch of the Islamic State. On July 1, 2015, the militants briefly captured control of a North Sinai town, Sheikh Zuwaid, and retreated only after Egyptian jets and helicopters struck the town, state news agencies said. Then, at the end of October, the militants brought down the Russian charter jet, killing all 224 people on board. Advertisement Continue reading the main story It was around the time of those ominous milestones, in late 2015, that Israel began its wave of airstrikes, the American officials said, which they credit with killing a long roster of militant leaders.
  • The Egyptian government has declared the North Sinai a closed military zone, barring journalists from gathering information there
  • Zack Gold, a researcher specializing in the North Sinai who has worked in Israel, compared the airstrikes to Israel’s nuclear weapons program — also an open secret.“The Israeli strikes inside of Egypt are almost at the same level, he said. “Every time anyone says anything about the nuclear program, they have to jokingly add ‘according to the foreign press.’ Israel’s main strategic interest in Egypt is stability, and they believe that open disclosure would threaten that stability.”
Ed Webb

Women's Testimonies of the Tunisian Uprising (2011-2015) - 0 views

muftah.org/he-tunisian-uprising-2011-2015

Tunisia uprising politics women gender history Bourguiba UGTT bloggers activists books

shared by Ed Webb on 22 Sep 17 - Cached
  • Testimonial narratives are an essential feature of intellectual life in post-totalitarian societies. Post-Soviet Eastern Europe, post-dictatorial Latin America, and post-Apartheid South Africa all witnessed a proliferation of autobiographical accounts by victims of the ancien régime, seeking to reclaim their public voice. Currently, post-Ben Ali Tunisia is witnessing the same phenomenon. More and more activists and intellectuals have begun reflecting on the past, in order to forge the country’s future. What is remarkable about this wave is the increasing number of women, including both activists and intellectuals, who have written autobiographical accounts of the uprising and its aftermath
  • For Tunisian activists and intellectuals, the urgency of remembering the past, in order to make sense of it, has been driven by the realization that authoritarianism can easily return in a different form
  • As violence was increasing on the religious right, politicians on the secular left were encumbered by internal disagreements and unable to muster an appropriate response. As a result, the “old left’s” weakness and concomitant rise of the Islamist right have figured prominently in the testimonies of Tunisian women activists and intellectuals. Indeed, the testimonies published so far have mostly been triggered by a fear of an Islamist takeover of Tunisia’s newly-liberated public sphere
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  • Published in the first few months after the 2011 uprising, Ben Mhenni’s book is the most euphoric of the four testimonies. Much of the narrative is a celebration of the power of cyber dissidence, which Ben Mhenni defines as a combination of citizen journalism (blogging and filming events) and on-the-ground activism
  • While acknowledging how her parents’ history of resistance as members of the UGTT prepared her for a life of activism, Ben Mhenni attributes much of her political development to the “real-world” friendships she established with cyber dissidents in the Tunisian blogosphere.
  • This testimony is more chronological and personal than Ben Mhenni’s. It constructs the author’s life teleologically as a journey from bourgeois indifference in suburbia to grassroots activism in the country’s downtrodden interior. It also documents Ben Mbarek’s co-founding of the civil rights network, Dostourna, which marked her renewed faith in “the power of citizens.”
  • Like Ben Mhenni, Ben Mbarek celebrates the politicizing power of social media, crediting Facebook for encouraging the rise of citizen journalism, which sparked her political (re)awakening. As she argues, it was thanks to citizen journalists from besieged cities that she finally felt connected to the leftist cause long championed by her father.
  • Convinced that the stultifying bureaucracy of political parties made them incapable of meeting the demands of the leaderless Arab Spring revolt, Ben Mbarek sought to create autonomous regional cells of civil rights activists throughout the country. Their job would be to address each region’s specific political needs
  • As a professor of philosophy, Belhaj Yahia champions the values of the Enlightenment and believes in the vital importance of dialogue. Accordingly, her text probes the origins of the discord between Islamists and secularists, in order to understand the tensions marking the post-Ben Ali period
  • she analyzes the “schizophrenic” discourses of her diasporic family members and the “narcissistic wounds” of old dissidents, who are now mimicking Ben Ali’s authoritarianism. She also critiques the regional and class disparities perpetrated by the old regime
  • Belhaj Yahia believes she is the product of a moderate and worldly national education, which is currently under threat in Tunisia. She locates this threat in the state’s gradual abandonment of public education and the resurgence of conservative ideologies
  • Her book ends with a call for other Tunisians to publish their own self-reflections, in the belief that writing and reading autobiographical accounts can pave the way for more understanding between the different factions comprising Tunisian society.
  • Fakhfakh’s book is a fictionalized diary written between January 14, 2011, the day of Ben Ali’s ouster, and May 18, 2015
  • Each diary entry is comprised of two parts. The first part is a summary of national and regional events with a brief commentary from the author; the second part is a biography of a pioneering Tunisian woman
  • As the author notes throughout the book, state attempts to propagate an institutional-form of feminism have devalued women’s history
  • The author worries that women’s achievements are constantly erased, in order to accommodate the ego of male leaders, like Bourguiba. She is also concerned that the rise of political Islam may eventually obscure Tunisian women’s “legacy of freedom” even further
  • Fakhfakh embraces the narrative of “Tunisian exceptionalism,” in which Tunisian women are presented as the most progressive in the Arab and Islamic world. This nationalist mythology about Tunisian women is common, even among Tunisian intellectuals, and is used as a means of differentiating and elevating Tunisian women above Arab and Muslim women more broadly. The inherent divisiveness of this narrative is problematic, and is left unexamined in Fakhfakh’s book
Ed Webb

IRGC media producers open new front against Rouhani - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...ducers-landscape-avant-tv.html

Iran politics media propaganda IRGC

shared by Ed Webb on 05 Jan 18 - Cached
  • The Avant TV video, released on social media five days after protests erupted in Iran, which have thus far spread to dozens of cities and almost every province, carefully stitches together an emotional array of interviews of people unhappy with the economic situation and President Hassan Rouhani’s policies. With scarce public information available about Avant TV, and with the great pains its producers have taken to present it as an independent station, the video is intended to appear to be transparent, a true representation of the will of the Iranian people. Glaringly absent from the video are any criticism of the political establishment as a whole, which has been one of the main themes of the current demonstrations. Avant TV is in fact not independent at all. Al-Monitor has not been able to contact it, but two pro-regime media producers confirmed that it is only the latest example of a new media outlet backed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) seeking to reinforce the narrative of the supreme leader above the politics of Iran.
  • Avant TV stems from the media wars at the heart of political factionalism both inside and outside Iran
  • The tactic that producers developed was to move away from content solely made for state television — which potential audiences almost automatically consider regime propaganda — to creating small production studios that develop content not easily identifiable as pro-regime. These ad hoc production studios receive funding from the IRGC and the government's cultural budget, but they remain small and unidentifiable on purpose.
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  • In revealing new details of his budget bill, Rouhani named, for the first time, the variety of state institutions, including cultural centers, that have received enormous funds and unconditional support from the regime. He attributed the move to a desire for transparency and an attempt to curtail corrupt use of state funds. The reaction on Iranian social media and in the local press was quick and harsh. People began attacking conservative and hard-line centers and clerics for taking so much from government coffers. “We couldn’t allow him to cut off our lifeline,” a producer at the regime production studios said after Rouhani revealed his new budget. “He and his supporters want to silence us by taking away our funding. But we will not be silenced. We will show him that people don’t agree with him.”
  • The protests that began on Dec. 28 in Mashhad were a response to Rouhani from hard-liners for his remarks on the budget as well as his other attempts to curtail hard-line forces. Much of the analysis on the reasons behind the sudden outpouring of protests points to its origin in hard-liners' attempts to organize anti-Rouhani rallies in the lead-up to the annual pro-regime 9 Dey rally, established by the supreme leader in 2009 to celebrate the suppression of the Green Movement. Indeed, Mashhad is notably home to two of Rouhani’s main rivals in the 2017 presidential elections, Ebrahim Raisi and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. The intent was for the protests to culminate in a large 9 Dey rally, but despite the hard-liners’ intentions, once people went into the streets, they eventually began to chant slogans against the supreme leader and the regime as a whole.
  • Regime production studios have thus begun to create videos that highlight economic anxieties and attack Rouhani’s handling of the government. These slick new productions are meant to look critical, but in the end, they reinforce a belief in the virtues and the leadership of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Avant TV is only the latest example of the ways in which factionalism within the Islamic Republic and opposition to the regime play out in the media landscape.
Ed Webb

Close encounters of the Arab kind - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-middle-east-24403002

MENA Arabs Arabic sci-fi sciencefiction literature colonialism culture

shared by Ed Webb on 27 May 21 - No Cached
  • Rarely has mainstream sci-fi attempted to grapple with the complexities of the Arab world. As Lebanese Canadian sci-fi writer Amal el-Mohtar explained, the mainstream sci-fi she grew up with was "very, very white... except for the aliens, of course." Though it might at times have featured characters from ethnic minorities, rarely did it seek to positively engage with other cultures beyond exoticisation or fear-mongering.
  • It might come as a surprise that one of the first sci-fi novels written was not, in fact, Shelley's Frankenstein or HG Wells' The Time Machine, but the work of 13th Century Baghdad-based writer and physician, Zakariya al-Qazwini.
  • Awaj bin Anfaq is the story of a curious alien who arrives on planet Earth to observe human behaviour and finds himself perplexed by the oddities of this apparently sophisticated species. Neither is Mr Qazwini's work a regional anomaly. There are numerous examples of early Islamic sci-fi or fantasy fiction from the Arab world, not least of course, the fabulous Arabian Nights, replete with flying carpets, mystical jinn and even a little intergalactic travel.
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  • Arabic sci-fi is an opportunity to respond to the damaging stereotyping of the "Arab Other" in mainstream sci-fi, as well as a space to explore the complex challenges facing Middle East today."The problems of contemporary Islamic society - the problem of gender, the problems with authoritarianism - all of these are explored very thoroughly in Arab sci-fi. But most importantly of all, it is Arabs reflecting on themselves,"
Ed Webb

Arabpop: Metamorphosing Italian anti-Arabism into a creative media marvel - 0 views

english.alaraby.co.uk/...hallenging-italys-anti-arabism

Italy Africa MENA Arabs culture media translation art literature Islam mediterranean

shared by Ed Webb on 08 Nov 21 - No Cached
  • Arabpop the magazine found a home in the Neapolitan indie publishing house Tamu — the Italian South has always been more ready to embrace its Arab culture, often being mocked by right-wing Italian politicians and their supporters, who openly dream about dividing Italy into North and South and often refer to the South as ‘Africa’, ‘Morocco’ or something along those lines.
  • While the team of editors is fully Italian, some contributing journalists are Italians with an Arab background while most of the writers are Arabs.
  • while there is a wealth of academic texts to be found, little is written about Arab culture that is suitable for the general public
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  • By curating and translating the work of contemporary Arab poets, writers, visual artists and journalists based around a specific theme, Arabpop aims to fill a gap in accessibility to Arab stories specifically catering to people who are interested in what goes on in the Arab world beyond the daily headlines.
  • While it’s merely a coincidence that Arabpop came out almost exactly 20 years after 9/11, Comito does refer to the extreme rise in anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment that manifested itself since then, both in politics and society. “I say this at every presentation: a large part of the problem is the media, which in the last 20 years since the attack on the Twin Towers have unleashed a terrifying anti-Islam and anti-Arab country propaganda.”
  • Other highlights include an excerpt from the 2016 book Paolo by celebrated Egyptian writer Youssef Rakha, which is so thoughtfully translated that you wish everyone could read Arabic translated into Italian – the cadence, the poetry of the mundane, the flow of the story shows how perfectly the two languages sway together when approached with a passion for language and culture and attention for detail.
Ed Webb

IRGC warns Saudi Arabia it must 'control' media 'provoking our youth' | Amwaj.media - 0 views

amwaj.media/...trol-media-provoking-our-youth

Iran Saudi KSA UK Britain media protests IRGC television networks

shared by Ed Webb on 19 Oct 22 - Cached
  • The commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has warned the Saudi royal family that it will “pay the price” unless it reins in the media outlets it allegedly funds. The warning comes as Tehran accuses foreign-based Persian-language networks—and especially the TV channel Iran International—of spreading fake news and inciting unrest.
  • the IRGC-linked Tasnim News Agency reported hours after his speech that the main target was Iran International. Tasnim maintained that there is "no doubt" that London-based Iran International "is linked to the crown prince," referring to Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (MbS). Tasnim also named Dubai-based Al-Arabiya and Al-Hadath as other news networks funded by the Kingdom and targeted by Salami in his speech.
  • MP Mohammad Ali Naqdali—the secretary of the parliament’s legal and judicial commission—urged Iranian authorities on Oct. 8 to file a complaint against Iran International with the UK media regulator, Ofcom. The lawmaker called on the foreign ministry and judiciary to complain about Iran International over its alleged role in "encouraging further protests” in Iran. Naqdali also criticized other Persian-language outlets based in the UK, describing them as "lie-producing factories."
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  • Tehran has previously lodged a complaint against Iran International over its programming, but Ofcom ruled that the London-based television network had not broken any rules.
  • British newspaper The Guardian reported in Oct. 2018 that Iran International had financial ties to MbS. The Guardian charged that the TV network was "being funded through a secretive offshore entity and a company whose director is a Saudi Arabian businessman with close links to the Saudi crown prince." A month later, Iran International issued a statement denying any links to any governments, including Saudi Arabia, and insisted that it "does not advocate any movement or party or government." Some of Iran International's high-profile staff have stirred controversy for often expressing opinions on social media that may be in contravention of the outlet's editorial guidelines.
  • Iranian authorities have long taken issued with foreign-based Persian-language news networks, accusing them of being tasked with attacking the Islamic Republic. Salami's warning to the Saudi royal family comes as Tehran and Riyadh are working toward mending relations and re-establishing diplomatic ties. The IRGC commander's apparent criticism of Saudi media indicates that it will be brought up in the anticipated next round of talks between the two sides in Iraq.
Ed Webb

'Three Thousand Years' and the History of Middle East Tales - New Lines Magazine - 0 views

newlinesmag.com/...e-history-of-middle-east-tales

film media Turkey MiddleEast MENA review orientalism

shared by Ed Webb on 30 Aug 22 - Cached
  • a film based on “The 1,001 Arabian Nights” is a risky venture. On the one hand, Hollywood Golden Age standards like “The Thief of Baghdad” (1924) and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” (1944) get applause even from someone like Jack Shaheen, who in his book “Reel Bad Arabs” tries very hard to sniff out anti-Arab sentiment. On the other hand, Disney rolled the dice in 1992 and wound up with “Aladdin,” one of the most scandalous films ever made. This was thanks to an ill-advised song lyric about the Middle East: “Where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face.” (The 1993 VHS version tossed out this carbuncle but kept the phrase “It’s barbaric, but hey it’s home.”) The 2019 Will Smith reboot of the same name, one of that year’s highest-grossing films, didn’t do much in the eyes of critics to update Orientalist caricatures. Teachers still use the 1992 version to show what not to say about Arabs and Islam. Another Disney production, 2010’s “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time,” which was based on the Persian national epic “Shahnameh,” got panned for casting Jake Gyllenhaal, a white actor, to play a Persian character. And the list goes on.
  • both Byatt and Miller get much of the folklore right. Viewers learn that djinn come in many varieties, including those who fear God, like Alithea’s djinn insists he does, and those who don’t. Djinn are made of “smokeless fire” while humans are made from dust, based on the Quran’s chapter 55, “The Merciful.” Djinn can live for thousands of years, change size and shape, make love, eat and sleep (the djinn in the movie says his kind don’t do the latter). All this and more, drawn from Islamic folklore through Byatt’s story, makes Robin Williams’ blue meanie from the 1992 “Aladdin” look like the cardboard cutout he is
  • at a time of heightened sensitivity to who gets to tell stories, can Hollywood still celebrate the Middle East?
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  • these tales don’t come from fantasies like “The 1,001 Arabian Nights” but instead Middle Eastern history, especially Ottoman history. Anyone familiar with the region’s culture and storytelling will be struck by how thoughtful the film is, despite its kooky, over-the-top vaudeville
  • Miller’s location, cast and music celebrate rather than lampoon the Middle East, above all the wonders of Turkey. Shot on location in Istanbul, the film pans over Topkapi Palace, the Hagia Sophia and other iconic hotspots. Turkish actors fill most of the minor roles and speak Turkish throughout (Elba gives it his best college try). “Chesm-i bulbul,” or “the nightingale’s eye,” the name for the djinn’s bottle and hence of Byatt’s story, is in fact a beloved style of glasswork. The film credits roll to a Turkish love song.
  • “Three Thousand Years,” billed as “Aladdin for adults” and based on the 1994 short story “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye” by A.S. Byatt for The Paris Review
  • he adds a scene that’s unjustified by the plot and which mainly serves the demands of cultural sensitivity, in deference to viewers who don’t know enough about the Middle East to see how much care Miller has taken. Back in London and close to the finale, Alithea greets two neighbor ladies who ask why Alithea wastes time with “ethnics.” She fires back that she can’t abide people — like them — with knee-jerk reactions against anyone different. “Fuckface,” one of them spits at Alithea, who ducks back into her house.
  • This scene’s welcome jab at xenophobia is not what annoys; it is rather the non sequitur. It’s the one and only time we meet these neighbors, though they later stand aghast while Alithea explains her enormous ebony djinn will be staying for a while. It’s the one time we hear their views. Their struggle to grasp the Middle East has not shaped us in any way, nor does the script humanize them beyond political caricature. “OK, boomer,” says the movie with a sneer. Miller could have stood on his thoughtfulness toward the Middle East without pandering, but in fairness, he’s less to blame than a culture industry that makes directors like him think that pandering is the price of keeping their skin.
  • Byatt’s story is nothing if not highly sexed, and Miller’s retelling can’t do it justice.
  • That both the djinn and Alithea are trapped by their own gigantic emotions produces one of the film’s loveliest sentiments, spoken by Alithea as part of her wish for the djinn’s affections: “I want our solitudes to be together.”
Ed Webb

Is Iran on the Verge of Another Revolution? | Journal of Democracy - 0 views

www.journalofdemocracy.org/he-verge-of-another-revolution

Iran protests revolution analysis uprising

shared by Ed Webb on 10 Mar 23 - No Cached
  • the most severe and sustained political upheaval ever faced by the Islamist regime in Iran. Waves of protests, led mostly by women, broke out immediately, sending some two-million people into the streets of 160 cities and small towns, inspiring extraordinary international support. The Twitter hashtag #MahsaAmini broke the world record of 284 million tweets, and the UN Human Rights Commission voted on November 24 to investigate the regime’s deadly repression, which has claimed five-hundred lives and put thousands of people under arrest and eleven hundred on trial.
  • This is neither a “feminist revolution” per se, nor simply the revolt of generation Z, nor merely a protest against the mandatory hijab. This is a movement to reclaim life, a struggle to liberate free and dignified existence from an internal colonization. As the primary objects of this colonization, women have become the major protagonists of the liberation movement.
  • Since its establishment in 1979, the Islamic Republic has been a battlefield between hard-line Islamists who wished to enforce theocracy in the form of clerical rule (velayat-e faqih), and those who believed in popular will and emphasized the republican tenets of the constitution.
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  • Only popular resistance from below and the reformists’ electoral victories could curb the hard-liners’ drive for total subjugation of the state, society, and culture.
  • The Green revolt and the subsequent nationwide uprisings in 2017 and 2019 against socioeconomic ills and authoritarian rule profoundly challenged the Islamist regime but failed to alter it. The uprisings caused not a revolution but the fear of revolution—a fear that was compounded by the revolutionary uprisings against the allied regimes in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, which Iran helped to quell.
  • once they took over the presidency in 2021 and the parliament in 2022 through rigged elections—specifically, through the arbitrary vetoing of credible rival candidates—the hard-liners moved to subjugate a defiant people once again. Extending the “morality police” into the streets and institutions to enforce the “proper hijab” has been only one measure—but it was the one that unleashed a nationwide uprising in which women came to occupy a central place.
  • the culmination of years of steady struggles against a systemic misogyny that the postrevolution regime established
  • With the emergence of the “people,” a super-collective in which differences of class, gender, ethnicity, and religion temporarily disappear in favor of a greater good, the uprising has assumed a revolutionary character. The abolition of the morality police and the mandatory hijab will no longer suffice. For the first time, a nationwide protest movement has called for a regime change and structural socioeconomic transformation.
  • Over the years, headscarves gradually inched back further and further until finally they fell to the shoulders. Officials felt, time and again, paralyzed by this steady spread of bad-hijabi among millions of women who had to endure daily humiliation and punishment. With the initial jail penalty between ten days and two months, showing inches of hair had ignited decades of daily street battles between defiant women and multiple morality enforcers such as Sarallah (wrath of Allah), Amre beh Ma’ruf va Nahye az Monker (command good and forbid wrong), and EdarehAmaken (management of public places). According to a police report during the crackdown on bad-hijabis in 2013, some 3.6 million women were stopped and humiliated in the streets and issued formal citations. Of these, 180,000 were detained.
  • This is the story of women’s “non-movement”—the collective and connective actions of non-collective actors who pursue not a politics of protest but of redress, through direct actions.
  • the uprising is no longer limited to the mandatory hijab and women’s rights. It has grown to include wider concerns and constituencies—young people, students and teachers, middle-class families and workers, residents of some rural and poor communities, and those religious and ethnic minorities (Kurds, Arabs, Azeris, and Baluchis) who, like women, feel like second-class citizens and seem to identify with “Woman, Life, Freedom.”
  • The thousands of tweets describing why people are protesting point time and again to the longing for a humble normal life denied to them by a regime of clerical and military patriarchs. For these dissenters, the regime appears like a colonial entity—with its alien thinking, feeling, and ruling—that has little to do with the lives and worldviews of the majority.
  • The feminism of the movement, rather, is antisystem; it challenges the systemic control of everyday life and the women at its core. It is precisely this antisystemic feminism that promises to liberate not only women but also the oppressed men—the marginalized, the minorities, and those who are demeaned and emasculated by their failure to provide for their families due to economic misfortune.
  • A segment of Muslim women did support the Islamic state, but others fought back. They took to the streets to protest the mandatory hijab, organized collective campaigns, and lobbied “liberal clerics” to secure a women-centered reinterpretation of religious texts. But when the regime extended its repression, women resorted to the “art of presence”—by which I mean the ability to assert collective will in spite of all odds, by circumventing constraints, utilizing what exists, and discovering new spaces within which to make themselves heard, seen, felt, and realized. Simply, women refused to exit public life, not through collective protests but through such ordinary things as pursuing higher education, working outside the home, engaging in the arts, music, and filmmaking, or practicing sports.
  • At this point in time, Iran is far from a “revolutionary situation,” meaning a condition of “dual power” where an organized revolutionary force backed by millions would come to confront a crumbling government and divided security forces. What we are witnessing today, however, is the rise of a revolutionary movement—with its own protest repertoires, language, and identity—that may open Iranian society to a “revolutionary course.”
  • The disproportionate presence of the young—women and men, university and high school students—in the streets of the uprising has led some to interpret it as the revolt of generation-Z against a regime that is woefully out of touch. But this view overlooks the dissidence of older generations, the parents and families that have raised, if not politicized, these children and mostly share their sentiments. A leaked government survey from November 2022 found that 84 percent of Iranians expressed a positive view of the uprising. If the regime allowed peaceful public protests, we would likely see more older people on the streets.
  • Although some workers have joined the protests through demonstrations and labor strikes, a widespread labor showdown has yet to materialize. This may not be easy, because the neoliberal restructuring of the 2000s has fragmented the working class, undermined workers’ job security (including the oil sector), and diminished much of their collective power. In their place, teachers have emerged as a potentially powerful dissenting force with a good degree of organization and protest experience.
  • Shopkeepers and bazaar merchants have also joined the opposition. In fact, they surprised the authorities when at least 70 percent of them, according to a leaked official report, went on strike in Tehran and 21 provinces on 15 November 2022 to mark the 2019 uprising. Not surprisingly, security forces have increasingly been threatening to shut down their businesses.
  • Protesters in the Arab Spring fully utilized existing cultural resources, such as religious rituals and funeral processions, to sustain mass protests. Most critical were the Friday prayers, with their fixed times and places, from which the largest rallies and demonstrations originated. But Friday prayer is not part of the current culture of Iran’s Shia Muslims (unlike the Sunni Baluchies). Most Iranian Muslims rarely even pray at noon, whether on Fridays or any day. In Iran, the Friday prayer sermons are the invented ritual of the Islamist regime and thus the theater of the regime’s power. Consequently, protesters would have to turn to other cultural and religious spaces such as funerals and mourning ceremonies or the Shia rituals of Moharram and Ramadan.
  • During the Green revolt of 2009, the ruling hard-liners banned funerals and prevented families from holding mourning ceremonies for their loved ones
  • the hard-line parliament passed an emergency bill on 9 October 2022 “adjusting” the salaries of civil servants, including 700,000 pensioners who in late 2017 had turned out in force during a wave of protests. Newly employed teachers were to receive more secure contracts, sugarcane workers their unpaid wages, and poor families a 50 percent increase in the basic-needs subsidy.
  • beating, killing, mass detention, torture, execution, drone surveillance, and marking the businesses and homes of dissenters. The regime’s clampdown has reportedly left 525 dead, including 71 minors, 1,100 on trial, and some 30,000 detained. The security forces and Basij militia have lost 68 members in the unrest.
  • The regime’s suppression and the protesters’ pause are likely to diminish the protests. But this does not mean the end of the movement. It means the end of a cycle of protest before a trigger ignites a new one. We have seen these cycles at least since 2017. What is distinct about this time is that it has set Iranian society on a “revolutionary course,” meaning that a large part of society continues to think, imagine, talk, and act in terms of a different future. Here, people’s judgment about public matters is often shaped by a lingering echo of “revolution” and a brewing belief that “they [the regime] will go.” So, any trouble or crisis—for instance, a water shortage— is considered a failure of the regime, and any show of discontent—say, over delayed wages—a revolutionary act. In such a mindset, the status quo is temporary and change only a matter of time.
  • There are, of course, local leaders and ad hoc collectives that communicate ideas and coordinate actions in the neighborhoods, workplaces, and universities. Thanks to their horizontal, networked, and fluid character, their operations are less prone to police repression than a conventional movement organization would be. This kind of decentralized networked activism is also more versatile, allows for multiple voices and ideas, and can use digital media to mobilize larger crowds in less time. But networked movements can also suffer from weaker commitment, unruly decisionmaking, and tenuous structure and sustainability. For instance, who will address a wrongdoing, such as violence, committed in the name of the movement? As a result, movements tend to deploy a hybrid structure by linking the decentralized and fluid activism to a central body. The “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement has yet to take up this consideration.
  • a leadership organization—in the vein of Polish Solidarity, South Africa’s ANC, or Sudan’s Forces of Freedom and Change—is not just about articulating a strategic vision and coordinating actions. It also signals responsibility, representation, popular trust, and tactical unity.
  • if the revolutionary movement is unwilling or unable to pick up the power, others will. This, in fact, is the story of most of the Arab Spring uprisings—Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen, for instance. In these experiences, the protagonists, those who had initiated and carried the uprisings forward, remained mostly marginal to the process of critical decisionmaking while the free-riders, counterrevolutionaries, and custodians of the status quo moved to the center.
  • Things are unlikely to go back to where they were before the uprising. A paradigm shift has occurred in the Iranian subjectivity, expressed most vividly in the recognition of women as transformative actors and the “woman question” as a strategic focus of struggle.
  • Those who expect quick results will likely be dispirited. But the country seems to be on a new course.
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