Media in Middle East & North Africa

In this issue, we consider three democracies and their relationship to Muslim minority communities. Martha C. Nussbaum examines how the stereotype of the “Muslim terrorist” is further marginalizing Muslim liberals in India John R. Bowen probes how the emergence of sharia tribunals serving a Muslim minority will affect English law and women David Mikhail on what the experience of Shakir Baloch, a Muslim moderate detained after 9/11, means for the relationship between the United States and the Muslim world

What makes me wonder is that why the president has to interfere in such stuff , in fact why the GPS is considered a matter of national security and why the army objects the use of GPS despite all its bases are spotted by the satellites !!??

the protests had been "small and quite specific". "The protesters suspicions are that Obama has come here with a secret agenda, to pressurise the Turkish government to put combat troops into Afghanistan in an effort to help control the situation there," she said.

While Turkey has been long regarded as a close US ally in the Muslim world, some analysts believe there has been a cooling of ties during the former US administration of George Bush. Washington and Ankara had been sharply at odds in recent years over such issues as how to deal with Iran's nuclear programme, the rise to power of Hamas in the Palestinian territory of Gaza, and political developments in Sudan.

approximately 128 individuals have been arrested and sentenced to death for nothing more than being LGBT. And according to Iraqi-LGBT, executions are scheduled this week to start in "batches of 20."

Since the U.S. invasion, the death penalty in Iraq has soared to levels that not even Texas approaches.

If the Iraq government hopes to become part of the family of nations, it must respect the rights of all segements of its population, including all homosexual persons (who do not choose their sexual orientation).  To merit international respect, the government must behave justly and refrain from persecuting LGBT persons.   The world is watching Iraq as it develops into a true democracy that respects human rights. Posted by Stephen Harris

بواسطة عبدالمنعم عبدالعظيم -- الاقصر, on 02-04-2009 15:25 بلد وعايزيين تولوعوها هناك قواعد ثابته فى القانون اسمها النظام العام والاداب العامة من يحيد عنها يحاكم ودولتنا بنص الدستور اسلامية تسمح بالتسامح مع الاديان السماوية لانها جزء من ايمان المسلم بالله وملائكته ورسله اما الديانات التى هناك تاكيد انها من صنع الصهيونية والماسونية والاستعمار فهى مرفوضة صبفا لقواعد النظام العام فليس من الحرية ان اخرج الى الشارع عاريا وليس من الحرية ايضا ان افسح لديانة مشبوهة الفرصة للاحتفال ةالدعوة والتبشير فالمفروض ان يكون هناك حد بين الحرية والفوضى

Many such dissenters have, indeed, made great use of the Web. In Ukraine young activists relied on new–media technologies to mobilize supporters during the Orange Revolution. Colombian protesters used Facebook to organize massive rallies against FARC, the leftist guerrillas. The shocking and powerful pictures that surfaced from Burma during the 2007 anti–government protests—many of them shot by local bloggers with cell phones—quickly traveled around the globe. Democratic activists in Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe used the Web to track vote rigging in last year’s elections and used mobile phones to take photos of election results that were temporarily displayed outside the voting booths (later, a useful proof of the irregularities). Plenty of other examples—from Iran, Egypt, Russia, Belarus, and, above all, China—attest to the growing importance of technology in facilitating dissent.

But drawing conclusions about the democratizing nature of the Internet may still be premature. The major challenge in understanding the relationship between democracy and the Internet— aside from developing good measures of democratic improvement—has been to distinguish cause and effect. That is always hard, but it is especially difficult in this case because the grandiose promise of technological determinism—the idealistic belief in the Internet’s transformative power—has often blinded even the most sober analysts.

investing in new media infrastructure might also embolden the conservatives, nationalists, and extremists, posing an even greater challenge to democratization. A brief look at the emerging cyber–nationalism in Russia and China provides a taste of things to come.