Category Media

Hadeel Prize

Ever since blogger Hadeel al-Hodaif passed away earlier this year, friends and fellow bloggers have been thinking about different initiatives to honor and commemorate the young women who defended free speech and believed in a new era of citizen journalism. One of the first ideas that came to the minds of her friends is to establish a prize in her name to recognize the increasing efforts in the Arab world to start a freer media on the web.

This idea has finally materialized as fellow blogger Sami Omar announced today the launch of Hadeel International Prize for New Media (HIPNM), an international award that aims at discovering, encouraging and highlighting Arab talents in the new media arena. The prize will kick off next year in five categories: blogging, specialized blogging, personal blogging, podcasting and videoblogging. For more information, please contact Mohammed al-Saleh: media@hadeelprize.org / +966504877334

International Knowledge Forum in Madinah

Knowledge Economic City (KEC) in Madinah is one of many megaproject launched by the government in recent years to diversify the country’s economy and decrease dependence on oil.

The Economic Cities concept include five other projects, three of them have been launched in Rabigh, Hail and Jazan, and two more are expected to be launched later this year in Tabuk and the Eastern Province. It is still not known where exactly in the EP they plan to build the economic city, but I hope they choose either Qatif or Ahssa as both regions has not received the development they deserve in the past.

Building huge projects like these is a big challenge, and making them work efficiently is a bigger challenge. SAGIA, the government’s arm that oversees these projects, have a vision for the economic cities contribute between a quarter and a third of the aspired national growth rate, to create over a million jobs, and to become home to 4-5 million residents by 2020.

KEC, with a total investment worth US$ 7bn, is particularly interesting because it will focus on knowledge based industries, tourism and services. As part of their effort to raise awareness and create excitement around the project, SAGIA are organizing the first ever Islamic Conference for Science & Knowledge (Noor). The event will take place later this month in Madinah.

I hope that some bloggers from the Western region would register to attend the event as it will tackle some topics of importance to them such as healthcare and information communications technology. I would like to attend but I won’t be done with my finals until the 23rd, and on the 25th I will leave the Kingdom to attend the GV Summit 08 in Budapest, Hungary.

It’s Good to Talk

Women’s driving and the mahram (male guardianship) have been two of the most pressing and controversial issues in the country during the past few years. However, serious debate regarding these issues has been almost absent from the local media in the past few weeks.

I slightly noticed the absence, but I thought it could be that people simply got sick of endlessly discussing these issues without seeing any visible progress. But I was wrong. According to Dr. Abdul-Rahman Al-Enad, member of Shoura Council, the Ministry of (dis)Information have secretly ordered the newspapers to ban any article on these two issues. He didn’t explain why MOI have taken such measures, but the message is clear: they don’t want anyone to talk about this.

Dr. Al-Enad, who is also a founding member of NSHR, revealed this secret and other juicy bits during a lecture on human rights and freedom of expression that he gave to a group of journalism students and teachers at KSU last Saturday.

Truth be told, I was a bit hesitant to attend the lecture because my recent experiences with Shoura Council members were not particularly encouraging. I’m glad to report this wasn’t the case this time. Dr. Al-Enad was frank, blunt and refreshingly as cool as a Shoura member can be.

He started his talk with a brief introduction on the principles of human rights and the international laws, then quickly moved to focus on the importance of free speech as a fundamental and indispensable right for the citizens any developing nation.

Dr. Al-Enad said that although the Press and Publications Law states that “freedom of press is protected in line with laws and Sharia,” such statement has no basis in The Basic Law, which serves as a constitution, where Article 39 states: “Mass media and all other vehicles of expression shall employ civil and polite language, contribute towards the education of the nation and strengthen unity. It is prohibited to commit acts leading to disorder and division, affecting the security of the state and its public relations, or undermining human dignity and rights. Details shall be specified in the Law.”

The devil is in the details. The Basic Law refers you to the Press and Publications Law, which in turn doesn’t offers much details. All what the latter has to offer is the vague sentence “in line with laws and Sharia.” What laws and what interpretation of Sharia, no one exactly knows.

As I previously said here, The Basic Law should be amended to enumerate the rights and duties of citizens, and one of these rights is freedom of expression. Dr. Al-Enad agrees, but says the problem is that the Shoura Council has no right to amend The Basic Law. Actually, the Council doesn’t even have the right to modify its own rules. Only the King has the power to do that.

However, the Council has the authority to review and approve lower laws. One of these laws is the E-Crimes Act, which has been passed in March 2007. I am concerned because the act contained some articles that are very stretchy and non-specific, and they can be easily used to target freedom of expression online.

I went to ask Dr. Al-Enad about this law after he finished his lecture. He told me he does not remember the details of the law, and asked if he can contact me later to talk about this. I gave him my card, and I’m still waiting to hear from him. Can I trust the Shoura Council to act positively to protect human rights and free speech, at least on this particular case? For now, I’m reserving my judgment until the esteemed member and I get a chance to talk. Because, you know, it’s always good to talk.

NY Times on Saudi Youth

I am often asked what does it mean to be a young man living in Saudi Arabia, and my answer has always been that this is a tough question to which I have no clear answer. So when reporters from the New York Times came to Riyadh last year to explore the question, I sarcastically told them, “good luck with that.”

They spent a few weeks in the Kingdom trying to find some answers, and today they published their first piece on Saudi youth on a special blog they set up in order to collect reactions from readers. The piece is the second installment of an ongoing series on Arab youth published by the Times. They started with Egypt, and now Saudi Arabia. A second piece from Saudi Arabia will be published shortly and will focus on young women.

NYTimes

The interesting story, somehow unconventional and unusual for stories from the Kingdom, features two cousins, Enad and Nader, aged 20 and 22, respectively. Nader is also engaged to Enad’s 17-year-old sister, Sarah.

I believe the story portrays to a good degree the kind of identity crisis that many Saudi youth go through. They found themselves born in a time when their country is changing, and they are having a hard time trying to define themselves in the midst of changes. That leads to the huge amount of fear and uncertainty I see when I look at the mirror or talk to my friends.

In particular, the piece nicely captures the contradictions — or dare I say the hypocrisy — that govern the the lives of our youth. Nader, the guy we see at the beginning of the story trying to hook up with the girl at the front desk of a dental clinic despite the fact that he is engaged to Enad’s sister, shares his disgust at the woman they saw at a restaurant because they thought she was not accompanied by a man, and when a man, apparently her husband, joins her they keep making gestures at them until the couple moves to another table.

Now the important questions is, how much these two young men are representative of the male youth in the country? That’s a whole different story. In a country as large and as diverse as the Kingdom, it’s really difficult to make a general assumption based on an article like this one. True, Nader and Enad are not the kind of people I would usually hang out with, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. How many of them out there, though, is an open-ended question.

One more thing: the NY Times are doing some sort of an experiment with this series. They are posting the stories on their Arabic blog in order to get feedback from Arab readers, and they will try to include some of the readers’ comments when the piece is published in the newspaper later this week. So if you can read Arabic go there and let them know what you think.

Top Ten Saudis I Want to Meet

Five days before Fouad al-Farhan was detained, he posted a list of ten least favourite Saudis that he does not wish to meet. At the end of that post, he wrote: “Coming soon: top ten Saudis that I love and wish to meet.” As a tribute to Fouad, I decided to give it a shot.

I thought it would be a piece of cake; and oh boy I was wrong! I was unpleasantly surprised that I could easily come up with 3, 4 or 5 lists like Fouad’s, but I could not find 10 Saudis that I really would like to meet. It did not help that I’ve already met some people who would otherwise have been on my list.

After borrowing the brains of few friends and several attempts to write and rewrite this list, I present you with my list of the ten Saudi personalities that I would like to meet in person:

1. King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz
Although I’m pretty sure that his majesty’s schedule for the coming four years is totally full, I would really like if I get a chance to meet him, and if I ever get this chance, it would be one of the rare occasions where I’m looking forward to meet someone in order to talk to him more than listening.

2. Abdul-Rahman Al Lahim
A fellow blogger once called the human rights lawyer an “angel,” and I think that her description is not far from truth. Despite all the hardships that he has had to go through, including jail and travel ban not to mention being severely attacked by some ignorant idiots, he stood firm to defend the defenseless.

3. Khalid Al Dakhil
I’ve been a fan for the sociopolitics professor for a long time. When he was having a chat with Washington Post readers I was lucky to get to ask him a question, and I even have had a chance to talk with him on the phone last year, but I’m still waiting for the right time to have the pleasure of meeting him in person.

4. Sheikh Hasan Al Saffar
After spending some time as a dissent in exile in the 80’s, he returned home in the early 90’s and emerged as one of the most prominent Shia leaders in the country. Today, he represents one of the few voices here calling publicly for tolerance, moderation and a greater role for civil society.

5. Ghazi Al Gosaibi
You can say whatever you want about his performance in his different ministerial positions, but my admiration of Al Gosaibi has more to do with his writings as a novelist and a poet than his work for the government.

6. Maram Meccawy
Our newspapers are filled with aging editors and writers, the kind of people Fouad used to call “dinosaurs.” This is not the case with this young columnist and, I’m glad to say, fellow blogger who represents a breath of fresh air and gives the rest of us hope that the future of this nation may not be completely dark after all.

7. Buthaina Al Nassr
After being the first Saudi female news anchor to welcome viewers on Al Ekhbariya, she left the deteriorating channel and now works with Al Hurra. We spoke on the phone a couple of times and because she know that I’m constantly consuming junk food in Riyadh she was nice enough to invite me to try her cooking; something I’m looking forward to as she is also known for being a good cook :-)

8. Samia Al Amoudi
A brave, courageous woman who fought breast cancer and then made it her mission to raise awareness about this disease that kills hundreds of women in a society where talking about such issue is usually surrounded with shame.

9. Ebtihal Mubarak
The Arab News reporter has been described by CNN as “fearless” and her work on many stories during the past few years is simply groundbreaking. Ebtihal comes from a conservative background but that did not stop her from becoming one of the leading female journalists in Saudi Arabia.

10. Abdullah Al Hamed, Matruk Al Faleh and Ali Al Dumaini
The three reformists who were jailed for demanding a constitutional monarchy and later pardoned by King Abdullah soon after he ascended the throne are some of the most courageous political activists in the country. Al Hamed, and his brother Eisa, are now jailed in the aftermath of the women’s demonstrations in Qassim last summer, while Al Faleh and Al Domaini continue their efforts to promote human rights in the country.

Honorable Mentions: Turky Al Hamad, Badria Al Bisher, Wajiha Al Huwaider, Dima Al Azem, Othman Al Omair, Sami Al Jaber and Hatoon Al Fassi.

How about you people? Who’s on your list?

Schism

Schism, fellow blogger Raed al-Saeed’s response to Geert Wilders’s Fitna has been making the rounds online with more than 130,000 views on YouTube and more than 1500 comments. I think I agree with Prometheus that the idea is good but the execution leaves much to be desired. Nevertheless, kudos to Raed for demonstrating how you can be positive and react rationally to opposing views instead of using violence and threats.

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UPDATE: Al-Watan daily came out yesterday with a ridiculous front page thing about the short film describing it as “provoking to Christians, rejected by Muslim.” They say any response to attacks on Islam should come from the so-called specialists: Sharia scholars blah blah blah. Obviously, terms like citizen journalism or user-generated content are so alien to the dead tree folks. They kept referring to Raed as “someone who claims to be Saudi” and none of those idiots bothered to check his blog or contact him despite the fact that his blog URL is clearly shown in the film, which means that they probably didn’t even watch the film in the first place. There are more stupidity in the article but I don’t have time for this crap.