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Turkish prime minister disses Arab world: Muslim leaders’ response to Gaza suffering ‘pitiful.’
He made the remarks when asked to compare the attitude of other Muslim countries to Turkey’s vehement outbursts against Israel over its devastating war on Gaza last year and its ongoing blockade of the impoverished enclave.
“The governments have failed to display the reactions that the world’s Muslims expected from them. And this has been a pitiful aspect of the matter,” Erdogan told reporters.
Arab environmental activism gets going in Copenhagen.
A nice feature article that profiles several Arab activists participating in the protests.
Three days before the U.N. climate talks kicked off in Copenhagen, Tarak Tayara was told he was accepted as an official observer at the negotiations. The 28-year-old hopped on the next flight out of Lebanon and landed the next day in Denmark, ready for two weeks of protesting climate change as world leaders attempt to reach a global climate treaty. While thousands of youth have gained official status by the U.N. to watch the negotiations at the Bella Center in Copenhagen, only a tiny fraction of these young activists, like Tayara, hail from Arab countries.
….Tayara is in Copenhagen with a group called IndyAct, short for the League for Independent Activists. The group formed in Lebanon after one of the worst environmental disasters in Lebanese history. In 2006, more than 10,000 tons of fuel spilled in the Mediterranean as a result of fighting between Hezbollah and Israel. Based in Beirut, the IndyAct head office attracts activists from across the Arab world.
Tayara is wearing a shirt with the words, “Arabs against oil,” a message intended to challenge stereotypes about Arabs.
Human Rights in the Arab world has worsened in 2009.
The Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) has concluded that the state of human rights in the countries reviewed in the present report has worsened compared to 2008. The following is a summary of the most significant features of this decline.
The source of all problems in the Arab world: Regimes or people?
Bloggers who cover the Arab world – both Arabs and non-Arabs – are talking about UK reporter Brian Whittaker’s new book, “What’s Really Wrong With the Middle East.” The provocative thesis of his book, writes The Arabist blogger, “is that there is too much focus on how bad the Arab regimes are not enough of Arab societies’ problems: patriarchy, intolerance, misogyny, etc.”
Whittaker writes about his book:
My purpose in writing the book was to present an alternative view of the “Arab problem”. One that would challenge the neocons’ preoccupation with “regime change” and their tendency to equate freedom with free elections (but little else). And one that would also challenge the popular Arab notion that all the region’s problems are the fault of foreign powers.
It is on this latter point that the book steps into what, for many Arabs, is very sensitive territory. Blame foreigners, even the regimes if you like, but the people are – and must remain – blameless.
Rob (formerly of The Arab Shack, now with a new blog) says it boils down to society’s relation to the individual:
…in societies where there is overwhelming pressure to conform and stay inside the box, the individual’s creative capabilities are wasted. When you take away the creative dimension, you get stagnation.
The Angry Arab (As’ad AbuKhalil) accuses him of racism. Whittaker responds,:
There is nothing racist or illegitimate about pointing to the flaws in a society and discussing how they might be addressed, as I do in the book. That is very different from presenting them as an immutable part of the national character, hard-wired into people’s genes.
A different emphasis in this news story about the UN report on education in the Arab world than the one I linked earlier.
Arab states could face political and social instability if they under invest in the education of their young, expanding populations, a regional education report said on Wednesday.
A lack of political will rather than insufficient resources are at the root of the region’s inadequate education systems, with governments spending on security rather than education in a bid to control their people.
….The correlation between education and economic growth in the Arab world is weak, the report said. Abdullatif said money was not the issue but rather a fear of the possible results of any educational reforms.
UN: Arab world rife with illiteracy and lacks innovation.
U.N. report finds one third of Arabs illiterate and only $10 per person spent on scientific research.
The level of education, research and innovation in the Arab world is appalling, a new United Nations report has claimed.
The report, produced as part of a partnership between the United Nations Development Program and the United Arab Emirates-based Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation, found that despite the efforts of scientists and researchers throughout the region, the Arab world makes up only 1.1% of global scientific publishing and the low level of investment into research has led to relatively low levels of innovation throughout the Arab world.
Examining a number of aspects of “the current Arab knowledge landscape,” the report expressed “grave concerns over the state of education in the Arab world,” with over one third of the adult population unable to read or write and major educational discrepancies between males and females.
The report found that despite 20% of national budgets in the Arab world being spent on education over the past 40 years, the average Arab individual reads very little compared to other societies and around 60 million Arabs are illiterate, two thirds of them women.
Arabisk: The first-ever competition to select the best Arab blog. By Arab, they mean blogs written in the Arab region and in the Arabic language.
The contest is being organized by Kalima Press and its owner Mohammad El Sahli, who desceibes himself as the first Arab full-time blogger.
The competition focuses in its first year on specialized blogs, that is, blogs that focus on a certain subject or related subjects. And hence there will be prizes for the specialized blogs and one prize for the best general or personal blog.
The competition has two main rules. The first one is that the content has to be authentic and not copied or extracted from somewhere else even if the blog owner is licensed to use it. The second rule is that the content has to be compliant with the Islamic rules and the society’s traditions.
The rest of the linked story is mostly the many, many complaints that have been posted about the contest, everything from blogs nominated that explicitly reject “customs and traditions” to complaints that there were no Egyptian blogs selected, even though one-third of the Arab blogosphere is Egyptian.
Palestinian-Israeli conflict could get much worse if tolerated.
If he [Obama] allows Israel to continue to stall and to demonstrate that it will make no end to the West Bank occupation, he will disappoint the highest hopes that have existed among both Jews and Arabs since 1967 that a positive outcome is possible between Israel and the Palestinians.
In that case, there may be still another, and more violent, intifada, and more regional violence and terrorism. Or perhaps nothing will happen. An apartheid Israel will survive, and the Palestine population will grow, whether within or without the legal frontiers of Israel.
The Palestinian leaders, their people, the Hezbollah and Hamas leadership, and the Palestinians’ external Arab supporters, as well as the Israelis themselves, will decide that, and will have to accept the consequences.
But there will be other consequences. The present condition of low-level but generalized war, or state of terrorism, or institutionalized hostility by Muslims against the United States and against Americans, will continue and undoubtedly widen.
Americans convinced that America must dominate the Middle East will grow in influence; there will, in some sense, be a restoration of the national leadership and outlook that existed under George W. Bush.
The governments and public opinion of the European Union will disengage from U.S. pro-Israeli policies. There will be sanctions on Israel of various kinds, and no doubt measures of intellectual, cultural, sportive and other boycotts of Israel, of the kind already envisaged in some Western circles.
Emigration from Israel of the young, the talented, the morally alienated—also a reality today—will increase. But further speculation is undoubtedly unprofitable.
There are ‘no real journalists in the Arab world’ according to Micah Halpern.
Zionist Hasbara activists are marketing the production of the first all Israeli/all Jewish porno film. Why?
Richard Silverstein tells all:
Make no mistake, this is not a one-off promotion by an odd-ball Jewish gay pornographer. This is part of an orchestrated hasbara campaign spearheaded by groups like Stand With Us, who promoted Israel during the latter’s Gay Pride Festival as a natural ally of gays around the world. The angle for SWU (and there always IS an angle with groups like this) is to trumpet the alleged homophobia of Palestinian/Arab society compared to the alleged freedom and tolerance of “western” Israel towards a gay lifestyle. Never mind that Israel is less tolerant of gays than the average western country. That matters little for the hasbaraniks of SWU.
UN report: Arab world lacking ‘human security.’
The Arab world is suffering from a lack of “human security”, a new report by more than 100 independent Arab intellectuals and scholars has said.
According to the Arab Human Development Report 2009, which was released on Tuesday, the Arab world misses “the kind of material and moral foundation that secures lives, livelihoods and an acceptable quality of life for the majority”.
“Human security is a prerequisite for human development, and its widespread absence in Arab countries has held back their progress,” the report said.
“In the Arab region, human insecurity – pervasive, often intense and with consequences affecting large numbers of people – inhibits human development.”
One of the problems cited, a “lack of representative government.” Sounds familiar.
Mr. Asali cautioned that it is bound to irk Palestinian and Arab leaders who interpret U.S. willingness to resettle Palestinians — which comes with full rights such as citizenship down the road — as “a conspiracy to liquidate the Palestinian refugee issue.” With the exception of Jordan, no country in the Middle East has granted citizenship to Palestinian refugees. Many Arab countries believe that fully integrating large numbers of Palestinian refugees would undercut their demand for an independent state.
At least one pro-Israel group in the U.S. deems it a mistake to absorb the Palestinian Iraqis, who were welcomed by Saddam Hussein and regarded as loyal supporters of his regime. “We don’t think that Washington should be bringing in a group of people who we know were publicly and consistently hostile to the United States and its closest ally, Israel,” said Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America.
Ealier, Aziz asked why we care so much more about Iranian protesters than Egyptian protesters. Here are few more articles exploring around that topic.
Arab [Egyptian] activists watch Iran with wonder, awe.
But watching tens of thousands of Iranians take to the streets of Tehran this month, the 27-year-old pro-democracy activist has grown disillusioned. In 10 days, he said, the Iranians have achieved far more than his movement has ever accomplished in Egypt.
Arab world: The sounds of silence on Iran.
This must be especially difficult for political Islamic organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which congratulated Ahmadinejad on his “victory” and yet whose generational disagreements and divisions mirror those in Iran: A young generation of Muslim brothers and sisters has over the past few years challenged the Brotherhood’s aging leadership on issues such as prohibiting female and Christian leaders.
That aging leadership gave the young Muslims the very undemocratic choice of shutting up or leaving.
One of the values of all of the stories coming out of the Gulf Arab states right now about sex therapy and sex issues are just the examples of the range of struggle that people live with that may make others feel less isolated in their misery and seek help/improvement:
In Saudi Arabia and other countries where the genders are rigorously separated, many men have their first sexual experiences with other men, which affects their attitudes toward sex in marriage, Ms. Lootah said.
“Many men who had anal sex with men before marriage want the same thing with their wives, because they don’t know anything else,” Ms. Lootah said. “This is one reason we need sex education in our schools.”….
She reels off stories from her practice in rapid fire: the Emirati military officer whose wife had an affair because he was away from home too much; the woman who thought fellatio was against Islam (not true at all, Ms. Lootah notes); the wife who discovered her husband dressing up as a woman and going out to gay bars. She seems bent on showing that there is a whole world of sexual confusion that would benefit from open discussion.
Al Azhar, regarded as Sunnism’s leading scholarly and religious institution, has condemned a documentary by Iranian filmmakers on Anwar Sadat. Al Azhar has said the film should be burnt.
As the FaithWorld blogger, Aziz El-Kaissouni, notes, this is a good example how Muslim states enlist “Islamic scholars into echoing the government’s grievances with an added Islamic flavour”. No Orientalism here, I am afraid. The more uncomfortable truth may be that a major Muslim institution is acting in the service of an autocratic regime (with the added phenomenon that it is ‘nationalising’ itself further).
Iran has responded by saying the film does no represent the official view of the state and has been made by a “private organisation”. On this point, El-Kaissouni notes:
[Iran's official stance regarding the documentary] is one of the cultural issues that pops up every time something like this happens. During the Danish cartoons controversy, various figures in the religious or political establishments of Muslim countries demanded the offending paper and artists be prosecuted. They seemed to operate on the assumption that all states can control media output in their countries, as many Muslim and Arab governments do.
I don’t know if this response by Arab religious and political establishment figures can be necessarily called a ‘cultural issue’. I suggest it is more likely these establishment figures are interested in shoring up their political power. I do agree, however, that culture may play a part in what can or cannot be subjected to media scrutiny and intensity in different countries.