Category Saudi Arabia

Wrong Side

News websites in Saudi Arabia have problems. But the answer to their problems is not regulation by the government, and the Ministry of Culture and Information’s idea to codify an internet law is dumb. I don’t see why anyone thinking of starting a website would want to ask for a license, or wait for the ministry to approve their editors. I guess the fact that the owners of these news websites have agreed to be under the supervision of the ministry says something about their understanding of press freedom and the so-called “professional integrity.” At a time when people go to the internet to seek more freedom and free themselves of old red lines and censorship, news websites in my country are running backwards. What’s next? Are they going to ask bloggers to register their blogs with the ministry?

Three words: not gonna happen.

Mohammed bin Nayef Escapes Assassination Attempt

Saudi Arabia was rudely awaken to some very disturbing news last night. A wanted terrorist blew himself up in an attempt to assassinate Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the assistant interior minister who has been spearheading the country’s war on terror. The Prince escaped with minor injuries, and was treated in a hospital, where he was visited later by King Abdullah. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, claimed the assassination attempt.

This is the first known assassination attempt against a senior member of the royal family since 1975, when King Faisal was killed, and it could be a pivotal point in Saudi Arabia’s antiterrorism efforts. I’m truly glad that Prince was not hurt. I just hope that this incident won’t be used as a fuel to the already raging debate battle between conservatives and liberals in the country. This is a time for solidarity and national unity, let us not ruin it.

Intrusiveness

Riyadh Police have arrested more than 800 men over the course of the past month, a spokesman told al-Hayat daily yesterday. They were arrested, he said, because they violated the ministry of interior’s instructions regarding clothes and appearance. The ministry have instructed the police force to follow and arrest men who do not conform to the conventional dress code. The main target of those arrests are young men who wear low waist jeans and afro hairstyle aka kadash.

Something to be proud of, huh?

Don’t Be a Victim

Yes, we have a discrimination problem. Racism, regionalism, tribalism, sectarianism, etc. You name it. We have it. Discrimination in many different forms and on many different levels. It is good that we are finally acknowledging this problem. But acknowledging it is not enough. We have to confront it. We have to work on it.

Ali al-Mousa wrote about this in al-Watan last week. He admitted that we have this problem, which is great. But then he followed this with another admission, one that was rather shocking and disturbing to me. “I’m the first to practice discrimination in marriage and tribe, for instance, and I will inherit this to my kids, as a will and a way of life.”

Some might read that and think: what a brave admission. But is it, really? I understand that we all have our prejudices, but simply admitting that they exist will not take us anywhere, it will not move us forward. What is the difference between those who deny the discrimination and practice it, and those who admit it’s there but also practice it? It is good to know our prejudices, it is great to talk about them, but it is fighting and not acting on them that truly counts.

I find it scary that an intellectual like al-Mousa feels comfortable about justifying discrimination for himself (and probably his readers as well) simply because he thinks we are all “victims of a long legacy of social hierarchy and the weight of tribe.” I refuse to be a victim. We should all reject this twisted logic. I wonder, if people like him, supposedly leaders in our country, do not push for change and start with themselves, how can we hope for anything to ever change?

Saudi Unflagger and Blocking Twitter

Public demonstrations are banned in Saudi Arabia. We don’t have codified laws, so you will not find any official text that explicitly says it, but everybody knows it. What do we do when we want to protest publicly? We go to the internet and start a campaign online. Back in 2006 I wrote, ”Online campaigning is appealing to many people because most of the time it doesn’t take much resources.” Most of the time it takes little more than starting a freely hosted blog, design a few banners, maybe add a mailing list, and viola! you have a campaign.

This year alone, we have seen a plethora of campaigns that goes from the useful to the useless, and everything in between. We had the Khalooha… series, which covered topics like greed of car dealerships, women’s rights, and marriage expenses among other things. Most recently we had two confusing, similar but apparently opposing campaigns on the issue of male guardianship. But what I want to talk about today is a campaign called SaudiFlager (sic).

SaudiFlager’s goal is to clean up YouTube of videos offending to Saudi Arabia by flagging them. In addition to the unfortunate misspelled name, I believe this campaign has two main problems. First, what is an offending video? What are the criteria for such thing? I mean, what is offending to you can be quite harmless to me, right? So who gets to decide which videos are offending? Second, YouTube is already heavily censored by CITC. Do we need another layer of censorship?

twitter_cageI’m all for free speech, so don’t get me wrong. If you feel strongly offended by a video on the website, go ahead and flag it. Knock yourself out, I’m not going to stop you. Actually, I can’t stop you. But I think that organizing a campaign for such purpose is a just a waste of time and effort. What is worse, it is enforcing yet another form of censorship and that is the last thing we need. CITC is already doing a great job at it that I find myself occasionally amazed by how dedicated they are to this job.

This dedication is shown clearly in their latest blocking spree, which included Twitter profiles like those of @Mashi97 and @abualkhair. Blocking @Mashi97 was particularly strange because it came after he tweeted about having fried eggs for breakfast, which made him think that maybe someone at CITC does not like eggs. Also, what CITC don’t seem to realize is that blocking profile pages on Twitter does not prevent the users from updating. Go figure.

Which brings me back to online campaigns: should we start one to unblock these guys? I think we should, but currently I’m busy with another campaign of mine: Saudi Unflagger. Who is in?

Cute T-shirts from Nada e-Shop

There are more female bloggers in Saudi Arabia than any other Arab country. We can probably argue over the reasons, but one of the reasons imho is that in the time that real life in the country poses many restrictions on women, the internet is offering an outlet for them where they can express themselves and show their colors to the world but also maintain a certain level of privacy and protection. Girls are not only using blogs to speak their minds, but also to showcase their talents, and even use these talents to make money. I have previously posted about iNouf’s laptop sleeves, and last week I came across another interesting example.

Welcome to Nada e-Shop, where brush + colors + t-shirt = drawn by hand, not printed artwork turned into business. Nada al-Mughaidi has graduated from the College of Education in Jubail, but her dream as a child was to become a cartoonist. She started drawing on t-shirts for her family and friends, who encouraged her to start a custom t-shirt business. In May 2008, Nada launched her blog and started taking orders. The blog also includes pages for rules, FAQs, and prices. She is based in Dammam, east of the country, but she shipping is available to any place inside and outside the Kingdom. What I really like is that every design is only produced once, so you will get a t-shirt like no other. The blog is in Arabic, but you can check out samples from Nada’s designs on her Flickr page.

Killjoy

Add this to their list of achievements: interrupting a nasheed concert for kids in Dahran Mall. Just look at how the policeman stole the mike from the performer’s hand. Impressive.

UPDATE: For those who asked about context, here is a story from yesterday’s al-Watan. The Commission spokesman said they interrupted the concert because the families area was very crowded. The concert was later continued. Does that change how you feel about the incident?