Media in Middle East & North Africa

they said that young people are tired of trawling the Internet for news and would pay for the personalised, tailored service that niiu would offer

people prefer to read from paper

very targeted advertising

to take the notion that whistling, stringed instruments, or female stage presence are all somehow interruptions in our connection with God and turn them so completely around that they become the very channel through which we access God, is where things get interesting.

What struck me most about ‘Taqwacore’ was not that the bands lived in contradiction, praying and swearing, mediating between mosques, mosh pits, and the media… that’s all old news. Every Muslim/immigrant/kid that turned out different than their parents has already figured out that life is complicated and no one lives one-dimensionally. Nor was it really the music — I’m not a huge punk fan, and when I first heard about Taqwacore years before it was in Rolling Stone, I thought it was a cool idea but could never really get into the music. What surprised me most about the movie, then, was that I liked it that much. That I felt this raw reaction, that made my heart come up into my throat and tugged on some emotional organ somewhere in my core. And it seemed that in some way, here was art that was not preachy, not quiet, not apologetic, not commercialized or sanitized or boring, and yet was still an acknowledgment of a world other than that of our own making. That as Jehangir puts it, praised without asking permission. That dared to say what you’re not really allowed to, and originated out of the sweat of matam. And ask any Shi’a the world over: when it comes to intensely sacred outpours, you really can’t top that.

it seems appropriate to take punk, music born out of an anti-establishment ethic and a rejection of the mainstream, and make it a matter of God-consciousness. Perhaps even something, as all sorts of bombs rain down, to find shelter in.

the use of targets that appeared to be gunmen with traditional Arab head scarves.

"That's our right," said Napolitano, president of the Southeast Broward Republican Club. "If we want to shoot at targets that look like that, we're going to go ahead and do that."

Many of the targets were basic silhouettes, though others were figures wearing traditional Arab head scarves, called kaffiyeh, and holding rocket-propelled grenades. Napolitano said the faces of those figures appeared to be white, though he understood why they would be assumed to be Arabs

Police believe they had been in contact over the internet with people linked to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and had been planning attacks in France.

the researcher, whom it did not identify, was working for an outside institute and had no contact with anything that could have been used for terrorism.

What the country needs is an interpretation of Islam that embraces freedom and human rights instead of violence and tribal oppression. Everything else is a Band-Aid.

All forms of censorship within "self" and "society" have to be removed because they are obstacles on the path to realization. This means that no individual or group can legitimately dominate another, and that challenging all forms of domination in oneself and others is an ethical responsibility. This Islam is a religion of freedom.

the enormity of the task should not prevent Afghans from undertaking it, as it is impossible to imagine a democratic and developing Afghanistan if the status of women is not confronted. It requires a frontal jihad – a political, intellectual, and spiritual struggle to liberate Muslims and Islamic societies from the addiction to force. This can only be successful when grounded in a freedom-oriented Islam, rather than Western models that seem increasingly alien to many Afghans.

Kuwait’s Ministry of Information is studying an amendment to the nation’s media law that would penalise content that could prompt sectarian strife

The segment in question has been posted on the video-sharing site YouTube since its initial broadcast last month, and has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.

Turks intolerant of religious diversity, says poll A survey conducted by a private research company has shown that a great majority of the public does not want atheists, Jews or Christians for neighbors and also disapproves of their employment at top state institutions, the Radikal daily reported yesterday.

Fifty-seven percent of 1,108 people surveyed in the poll said they did not want to have atheist neighbors, while 42 percent said they did not want Jewish neighbors and 35 percent of respondents were reluctant to have Christian neighbors

When participants were asked whether they have close friends who are Alevi, Kurd, atheist, Greek, Armenian or Jewish, 64 percent stated that they had a Kurdish friend, while 53 percent said they had a friend from the Alevi community.

Me and My Basij Friend

the actual result is mixed. Such high schools give rise to two kinds of graduates. On one hand, there are the ones who take the message to heart and become members of the student Basij. Then there are those like me, who rebel against this constant pressure of religion and state. So my high school friends became either ultra-hard-line Islamists, or they became leftists, anarchists and liberals.