WEB | Wishing death upon the ‘Safavids’, Sunni bashing, Nancy Ajram pictures and scenes of ‘rape and slaughter’. Ahmad Humeid on a quick tour of the Arab web.
If you want to get a sense of how the internet is taking root in Arab societies, just check out a few Arab online discussion forums or count the comments on articles on the web sites of Aljazeera or Alarabiyya. The conventional wisdom says “Arabs don’t read”. Well, whoever is filling up those discussion forums and comment boxes is not only reading but writing as well.
Technology is giving more and more Arabs a public voice. As net connections move from being a luxury for a chosen few, to a mainstream phenomenon, the Arab web is reflecting the Arab reality more and more. Being uncontrolled by editors or political leaders, the content being put online by people (and sometimes organizations) expresses people’s true opinions more than mainstream media. The cloak of anonymity often encourages the outpouring of more audacious, controversial or radical opinions than those found on TV networks or in newspapers.
So is this openness promoting a civil dialogue or stoking a virtual civil war within Arab culture?
While there is undoubtedly a civil dialogue going on, there are many indicators that the dangerous rifts in Arab society are being reflected online in a more ‘violent’ manner.
The Arab web also exposes an alarming degree of cultural schizophrenia among Arab youth as well as a widespread, pathological demand for violent content of all sorts.
It is also well known that the internet is being effectively used by radical organizations to spread their content. Videos of beheadings in Iraq never make it to TV. But many people have them on their computers or on their mobile phones.
For an example of the cultural civil war taking place on the Arab web, take for example the Sunni-Shia rift. You don’t have to wander into the allies of ‘Jihadist’ sites to find users glorifying Osama bin Laden and bashing Shias. On a recent visit to the discussion forums of a Jordan-based mainstream internet portal, I found countless posts describing Shia Muslims as ‘infidels’ and calling them the ugliest of names. Some users, especially from Saudi Arabia, go into lengthy ‘theological’ quotations to ‘prove’ that Shias are heretics.
One user wrote: Oh Allah, grant Bin Laden victory over the Americans, the Jews and the Safavids. Huh? The Safavids? Yes, because, as Wikipedia tells us, “The Safavids were a native Iranian dynasty from Iranian Azarbaijan that ruled from 1501 to 1736, and which established Shi’a Islam as Iran’s official religion.” So Safavid is, for users like that, just another word for Shia.
Although Shia-bashers have the clear upper hand in this forum, one can find, here and there, a Sunni bashing posts by an Iraqi Shia user, who is out to ‘expose’ the Sunni’s “tradition of oppression” and who ends his post with a signature that says: “No to Terror. Yes for the New Iraq. Death and Destruction to the Criminal Baathists, Salafi-Takfirists and Wahabist Terrorists”.
The Shia-Sunni rift is not the only one dividing the fronts on Arab discussion forums. There’s also the Islamist vs Secularist battle. Despite the overwhelming flood of Islamist-leaning voices on the Arab web, which range from moderate to extremely radical, one can find discussions that flare up between the odd secular user, who ridicules the Islamists, and a mass of users who vehemently argue against secularism, attributing to it all the ills of the Muslim ummah.
Ugly, spiteful and angry online discussions are a global phenomena. But what makes the discussions on the Arab web even more toxic is that they reflect the almost total lack of democratic understanding and tolerance among those who engage in online discussions. Accusations of treason, treachery as well as extremely ugly name-calling indicate that the interlocutors are there to silence their opponents and not to engage with them in civilized dialogue.
Once you spend a few hours reading such forums, which are heavily visited, you come away with a feeling that Arab societies are just on the verge of dividing up into camps that are out to destroy each other.
A sense of normalcy only sets in when, beside a post that has a picture of Bin Laden adorned with glorifying slogans, an advertising banner appears promoting Riz Khan’s book about Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal, or a joke site!
Butterflies and slaughter
Many Arab sites, which are created by enthusiasts rather than companies, have a disturbing mix of pink butterflies and flowers alongside banners promising the user a show of “violence, slaughter, rape, killing”. A banner promoting Nancy Ajram pictures can easily end up side by side with a banner that says “In defense of the Prophet” of the type that became popular as the Danish cartoon crisis raged earlier this year.
On websites that carry downloadable ‘bluetooth’ movies, a very common category of videos, apparently originating from some Gulf countries, concerns itself with scenes of violence against animals or foreign workers and other acts of cruelty. Such content can sit side by side with “Islamic sayings” or “over 18 only content”.
If anything, a quick tour through the Arab web reveals confused societies in transition. The lack of democratic traditions and the weakness of an enlightened stream of thought makes the internet a fertile ground for the madness of societies in search of their identity.
Comments
22 responses to “Arabs online: civilized dialogue or civil war?”
Well written snapshot of what is going on online in the Arab world.
A ray of light can be sensed by the idea of that for the first time in history, Arabs can discuss their differences online. Sure some only want to transmit without receiving anything in return, but people are getting to know each other better with this kind of open communication.
Nice commentray Ahmad. But from my visits to other bloggers in various geographic areas I find the same colorful content, not more and not less confused, including American, Indian, Australian bloggers, for example.
You will easly come across liberal vs. conservative bashing sesions in the US. It’s all over, in case you have missed it. The abusive language, the anger, it’s all there. Also, race relations discussions. Some of the posts are pure hateful. How about abortion discussions. Too hot to touch. The list is long and it’s hard to miss those blogs.
Second, “democratic traditions” as you call them do not guatantee peaceful and tolerant outcomes. US and Israel are clear examples. I would use a term such as liberal traditions instead of democratic traditions.
So I am not alarmed by this phenomena you point to. It’s part of the evolution. We have expectations of ourselvs sometimes that are not realistic. Of course we have somewhat a different style in the Arab world, because we are not in the Western world.
You want Arabs to behave in a manner that is utopian. You will not find this anywhere.
so no “cultural schizophrenia” or “civil cultural wars” just old fashioned cyber chatter.
Thanks for the comment Sinan.
I agree with a lot of what you say. But I still believe things are more hot in the Arab world. The racist/sectarian violent stuff is very very mainstream. The violence stuff coming from Saudi is sickening. On the ‘western internet’ you have to dig more to find such contnet.
From a visual design standpoint, the cultural/visual schizophrenia can be demonstrated by what I call the attack of pink web sites: look here for example: http://www.sa-girl.com/
Racism and sectarian voices exsist everywhere. But in the west you have louder voices against them. In Arabia, a lot of racist is just accepted as normal talk.
The topic of religious affiliation is also hotter in Arabia. You would to look really hard on German discussion forums to find someone who is advocating the restart of the religious wars of the middle ages.. In Arabia, just go a mainstream, corporate sponsored forum and you’ll find a lot of incitement.
Yes it’s part of evolution.. But it’s alarming too.
Open ended dialogue is a healthy sign provided that it doesn’t become violent. Unfortunately, Endless ongoing heated debates in the Arab world are prone to end up being violent. This stems from the strong traditionalist Arab partisanship, referred to in the Arabic language as Assabya Arabia. I hope that as time go by more and more people will learn how to embrace and apply the concept of tolerance and abandon the much reviled & egregious insolent attitudes.Very good piece Ahamad, I like your anecdotal non-pedantic style of writing.
Ahmad, I agree. Completely. Unless I am missing the worst sites in the West. Even JP has begun to scare me. I used to encourage other Western folks to visit JP as proof there are moderate voices of reason among Muslim thinkers and communicators. Now I’m not so sure.
Hatem, what do you mean by saying Arab bloggers’ debates turn violent? you mean people fist fight or just get nasty with words? if you mean arguments get nasty, then I fail to see how this is exclusivly an arab bloggers phenomena. I see this everywhere. And as I said to Ahmad, of course there will be unique aspects to how Arabs or Chinese communicate, but nothing out of the ordinary.
Again, be careful not to use two yardsticks, one for arabs and one for whites.
this double-standrad is very troubling, more troubling than the nasty arguments. the funny thing is that many of those Arabs who lament the absence of tolerance tend to be intolerant in their assesments. it suggests an immature understading of liberalism.
Hatem, you for example have this very unique understading of limits of freedom of speech for Arabs where you consider angry reactions to the pope’s nasty comments to be outsied the norm of free speech even though the liberal west tolerates protests of this sort.
Remember anti-globalisation protests and how pretty angry and vocal the protestors tend to get? how about Green Peace protests? Flag burning, effigy burning, shouting, yelling, this is all protected speech in the overwhelming majority of liberal democracies. yet even when some of those protests turn violent and public and private property is damaged, there is still a measure of public sympathie for the protestors.
This HARSH and unfair criticism may have negative consequences and we have started to see the impact in some western reactions to the anti-pope’s comments protests.
I could not belive my ears when I heard an EU official on Al-Jazeera chastise Muslim protestros describing them as violent. When in my opnion they are mild by anti-globalisation protestors’ standards. But I think what feeds this racism (white man can get angry but muslims are extremists when they get angry) is the lack of an Arab intellegnstia that is sincerely working for the betterment of their own socities. Instead, they are quick to denounce the rest of us , lending credence to accusations such as those chanrged by the EU official on Al-Jazeera.
Of course there are problems in the arab world, but would be nice to use one yardstick for all.
“I used to encourage other Western folks to visit JP as proof there are moderate voices of reason among Muslim thinkers and communicators. Now I’m not so sure.”
Kinzi, so if a Mulsim ask for justice and equality he becomes an extremist and no longer a moderate Muslim.
Thank God I am not a “moderate” by American and Israeli standards.
Here is my Will and Testament:
When the day comes and I am called a moderte by Israel, will someone please put me out of my misery.
every where a person can find such sites with very aggresive posts and dialgues, not talking about the same cause or prasing the same person but almost on the same level,
but on the arab side the topics we debate about is on a more global level, dragging more attention to it than other sites.
Also some arabs builds thier ideology and mentality on weak bases leading to a bad presentation.
as you said it is very alarming and sad to what level of stupidity we reached to in some cases, well actually from what i see in many cases….
i have recieved an email take a look at it n see how wierd it is becoming
I get frustrated by such comments in Arabic forums which are really anti-rational to say the least. But maybe this is just an evolutionary step towards more civilized dialogue. You kknow Arabs have always been suppressed by governments and religious and social trends so there will be some chaos in every outlet of open expression including blogs and forum. What I hope for is that a “natural selection” process will guide this evolution the same way nature does!
“I get frustrated by such comments in Arabic forums which are really anti-rational”
This is stange Batir. Since we are being self-critical, I have some notes of my own about your blogs. I have noticed in your blog posts the follwing logical weaknesses being repeated with great frequency:
appeal to authority
argumentum ad hominem
begging the question
circular reasoning
equivocation
fallacy of false alternatives
fallacies of interrogation
flamboyance
hasty generalization
if-then fallacies
non sequitur
paralogism
performative contradiction
poisoning the wells
post hoc ergo propter hoc
red herring
straw man fallacy
That’s all. nothing serious
Hi to all!
@Sinan K:
I think the double-standards question is somehow a matter on both sides. Otherwise, how can you explain the total upset (actually worldwide) when an Arab dies by Israeli gunfire/rockets/bombs and the total passivity when 200.000 ppl die in Sudan (just take any other conflict on the African continent)? Or the fact that there’s “anger” when it came out that the US have Abhu Ghraib, though I think emprisonment is not much better in most Arab countries? I do not want to defend the US in any way, they did enough “bad things” throughout the world. But I miss some Arab self criticism and deplore the way it seems rather common to me that many ppl in Arab countries always consider the Arabs as the victims.
Sure, in the West, we are far from being a perfect society. We do have double standards. We fail in communicating internationally, in solving conflicts without violence. And many ppl here are dumbed by mainstream media. But it’s a problem of us all. Though, in the West, ppl. usually don’t assault foreign embassies when protestating. You don’t have tons of murdering threats. And the main thing: the protests are used to political issues, only allowed when they serve the rulers. Or tell me one Arab country where you could have protests against the rulers, criticizing the system, the society, whatever? In Europe for example, people considered as insane by a huge majority (Neonazis for example) are protected by armed policemen to be able to express their opinion as it is a constitutional right.
Some written content in blogs is bad anywhere in the world, because ppl can hide between the web’s anonimity and write without thinking, so I think we will never be able to expect a high average level in web-discussions. But I really don’t like this double-standard issue as it blocks any criticism.
schoenerleben, it’s interesting to have Israelis remind us of double standards.
Let me tell you something about Darfour.
– Of all the genocides in the history of humanity, Darfour is one strange “blood-less” genocide. Where are the mass graves? Everyone I talked to asks this simple question. In Bosnia and Kosova, Rawanda, Palestibe we saw the proof. There were dead people everywhere, bombs, combat, …. The media was recording it all the time live. Where is that in Darfur? I would be the first to rally against genocide when I see proof of it. The Darfur campiagn is a campaign similar to the anti-Iran and anti-Hizbouallah & Hamas campaign and Saddam Iraq. It’s ideological and stinks to high heavens.
We saw what hapepened in Sabra & Shatila, we saw the photos of Abou Gharieb and Rawanda, show me the genocide in Darfour. I mean, NO ONE can hide genocide. Even a BBC documentary a couple of years ago failed to show evidence of genocide. The Sudan regime is a cruel and inhumane regiem, but genocide is not the term. PROOF! and for all the documentaries I saw about Darfour, because I really wanted to belive, I saw no evidence of genocide. There is massive suffering and displacement, but genocide is not what it is. If you call Darfut genocide, then you must call the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians genocide.
– The Palestinians have been subjected to cruel and inhumane treatement for over half a century, where is the threat of sanctions against Israel by the West. Or does the west want us to rally behind it against Arabs, but when Arabs are being slaughtered (palestine, lebanon, iraq) no one lifts a finger, but to the contrarty the west seems to provide the needed political cover for the butchers and just content itself with patching up the Arab victims so they can go get killed eventually. Lebanon is the latest example. not one word about a threat of sanctions against Israel.
– Darfur is civil war. Civil wars are nasty and cruel. There was as civil war in Algeria where tens of thousands of Arabs were bing slaughtered. We saw the brutality on TV. How come the US and UN did not do anything? Why in Darfur civil war? or just because the victims in Algeria were islamists Arabs the west contended itself with symbolic action against the Algerian government. And just because Iran, Sudan, Hamas, and Hiabozullah’s politics the West does not like, the West puts its liberal values aside and acts in a colonial manner.
– But the gist of your argument is that you are reeling from the anti-zionist criticism so you want to shame anti-israeli critics by accusing them of double stanrads. I say they are decent peopel who at least care. You on the other hand do not care for anyone but Israel.
“Though, in the West, ppl. usually don’t assault foreign embassies when protestating.”
Yet another example of how you pick and chose what is good violence and what is bad violence.
So burning cars and shops in anti-globalisation protests is OK, but attacking embassies is NOT. Why? Says who? You? who makes you the authority on what buldings can be attacked in protests? Show me the laws?
What makes one act of property destruction civilized while another uncivilized? you are always looking for dumb excuses to rationalize your violenc as civilized and others’ as uncivilized. you will never get over being a racist.
Over half a million Iraqis were killed in Western-imposed sanctions. 90% were children and infants. because of no clean water and no basic medecine. That to you is civilized murder. Israel slaughters over 4000 palestinians just in this uprising alone, almost all of them murdered in their homes or in their towns, not on a battle front. 4000 friggin thousand butchered by Israel, and where is the West’s threat of sanctions? No threats of sanctions on Israel. Nothing. Then lebanon. The lebanese kill and capture a handful of Israeli soldiers, Israel with Western cover slaughters hundreds of Lebanese women and children and destroyes much of Lebanon’s civilian infrstructure. Not a problem for you. Good murder.
Typical, it just had to turn to one of those “yeah we got problems but the west isnt any better!” arguments. iffffffff…gimme a break…
“In religion and politics, people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination.”
“A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.”
Mark Twain
“Typical, it just had to turn to one of those “yeah we got problems but the west isnt any better!” arguments.”
Your dismissive comment reflects the traditional cliche-ridden mentality of some self-proclaimed Arab “progressives” who have a list of 2 or 3 rcanned esponses as a substitute for a real counter argument. Why don’t you take the time to point to us which sentence supports your argument.
let me help summarize my arguments:
“if you wish to judge Arabs, use the same standards to judge the whites.”
Meaning, don’t tell us to shutup just because we are Arabs as if free speech is a white right only.
Now Phree this is different from saying:
“the west makes mistakes, I want to make same mistakes.”
Try to read instead of trying to assume what the commentators are sying. You know what they say about assumptions. It’s not polite to put words in people’s mouths.
What you just did is another logic fallacy and it’s called “the straw man fallacy” . You attribute an argument of your own making to your opponent than you refute it. Nice show of intellectual prowess.
Are you sure you are not Batir
Sinan K, I think you got me somehow wrong. I think I did not call the conflict in Sudan a genocide.
I did not drop a single word about Israel. I am no Israeli, nor am I an Zionist.
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2005/03/14/Darfur_050314.html (English)
http://www.un.org/french/newscentre/pdf/2006/11092006Fr.pdf (French)
If you don’t trust UN sources, have fun in building your anti-Arab conspiracy… But no problem for you in finding sources you can trust, huh?
Second, if YOU use the word genocide, try to distinguish it from war. Showing bodies splatterd by bombs is no proof of a genocide. Would you accept the picture of an Israeli cafe after a sucide bombing as proof for genocide? Sure no… Neither would I. I only have my experience I can rely on concerning the trust I offer to different medias. But the fact they come from one culture or from another says nothing.
It’s fun to see the way you answer me, assuming I am an Isreli. And exactly this shows the problem: the Arab people (by this I mean the persons whose oppinions are spread most often by media, as you would say the Israelis or the Western ppl) try to compare the “evil deeds”, the mistakes and the failures of the past. Instead, try to understand the others fears and motivation and try to look at the future. The spirit of revenge or the sentiment of being the eternal victim will not bring you any benefits.
As for the protests, there’S quite some difference in protests turned towards the own system and protests against other nation’s property.
The thing you did not get is that in most Arab systems you are only allowed to protest against the vicious US-Zionist-Euro-Christian crusader’s conspiracy. So, to me, it seems that some frustrated people overreact lacking a possibilty to expressing critics on their societies. And self-criticism is definetly one thing the West has in common (but it’s still improveable).
Sinan,
If burning the churches in the WestBank, killing an Italian nun in Somalia, and threatning the life of the Pope with death threat isn’t violent then I don’t know what is violent. Sorry Sinan but there is no symmetry between the anti golbalization protests and the protests against the Pope’s quotation. You are an intelligent person and when we try to do a comparison we must compare apple to apple not apple to oranges. Despite what your good self is suggesting, we are still lacking self crticism in the Arab world, we need to have more courageous people standing up and saying no to violence and wanton and yes to dialogue.
Sinan..
I understand your arguments. Double standards no doubt exist and there is indeed an asymmetry of morality in the world. But your responses also have in them some traces of Arab denial of internal problems and refusal to accept self criticism (by stressing and stressing on how horrible the world has been to Arabs/muslims).
So, I have to agree with some of the responses of Hatem and Shoenerleben.
Abu Hatem you say “If burning the churches in the WestBank, killing an Italian nun in Somalia, and threatning the life of the Pope with death threat isn’t violent then I don’t know what is violent.”
you make the west bank sound like pre civil rights mississipi. you need to take 2 Proportion pills and call me in the mourning.
how is that ground for generalization of 1.2 billion muslims and 300 million arabs? jews killed 4000 palestinains in palestine not in Israel and yet that never seems to bother you as i noted in your many posts. You are a troubled person Abu Hatem.
White chiristians killed thousands of arabs and muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan and you don’t see that as grounds for generalizations about the violent culture of whites. Do you know Kamal Nawash? Are you a member of his group?
—————-
Israeli you say “If you don’t trust UN sources, have fun in building your anti-Arab conspiracy… ”
Then you share with the Abu Hatem the same canned responses: arabs are evil, arabs are conspiricay theorists.
As if the slaughter of Arabs in lebanon, palestine, iraq and the silence of the UN and the complicity of Europe is conspirisy. DUUHH! IT’S IN OUR FACE
! DON’T YOU WATCH THE NEWS.
A FRIGGIN DUHHHHHHH! this is like tellling a man dying from bleeding wound that he is hypochondriac.
Besides, your accusations of Arabs being conspiricy theorists and irrational also adds credence to my argument about your racism.
Here is the US which butchered tens of thousands of Iraqis over some paranoid accusation of WMD and Alqaeda only to find it as all just sick paranioa. But the US is not conspiricty theorist, it’s self defense.
Then Jews who see anti-semitic threats lurking around every corner that must be crushed and in the process committed some of the most horrific crimes against humanity…long before there was Hamas or PLO…But that’s self-defense..right?
But Arabs who have been colonized, repsressed, their naturaul resources looted, their civilians butchered if not by whites and jews, then by bloody dictarots supported by the same powers. And that you call conspiricy theory.
What a racist, insensative freaks. And after you offend us you complain about why we get nasty on our blogs.
If you use the same manners on other ethnic blogs you will be treated with the same desdain, which you deserve.
Sinan K,
first of all thank you for proving my statements somehow right. I never qualified all Arabs of anything. If so, you misunderstood it. I just meant that YOU are building up YOUR conspiracy theory. I never said that this issue was a specific Arab one. If you think that by building up a conspiracy therory you are evil, it’s your logic not mine. By the way I did not want to offend you; I was just stating my opinion, which has the same worth as yours. Not more, but no less. So don’t be personal. It’s poor. Do you think you insult me by qualifying me with the nationality of a country I have never been to? Call me anything if this can satisfy your mind. Just to let you know: I have tons of friends in Jordan. I really love Jordan. So it’s unfair to call me a racist I think. But as you know nothing of me, I guess it was just your way to say “shut up” as you seem to run out of arguments…
But man, get the facts. Each sigle human life on this planet is just worth the same as any other. It’s normal that you focus on the deaths of your people, but it will not help you.
“Then Jews who see anti-semitic threats lurking around every corner that must be crushed and in the process committed some of the most horrific crimes against humanity”
Hmm. Do you mean the expulsion and persecution of Palistinians? It’s horrific, I agree. But it’s not even close to the worst crimes comitted by humans. Germany with the Nazis, Spanish with the “reconquista”, British with the native Americans (btw how did the Arabs get to spain? Flower-power happenings?)… I named mainly Western cultures to show you I am not like “we are the super whitey freaks”, but you can find other cultures as well. Human is a living form, closer to animals in more behaviours as we might be proud of. So history was full of fights, persecutions and expulsions, anywhere, anytime. You can criticize the West as much as you like. But many people have done it before you, even from the middle of our societies.
Arab countries are not the only ones having suffered a lot throughout history. You don’t have a monopoly for it. Europe has produced the bloodiest wars among mankind, with more deaths and sufferings than you can imagine. This makes us not perfect or anything, but I think that for our societies, we dealt quite ok by accepting our past. An other thing is the relation to other cultures, but this is not a specific European or Arab or Asian problem. Each country or culture has problems in handling relations to others. Plz don’t say Arabs haven’t. They do. And so do we. It’s poor, but it’s human.
One last thing: if you get personally insulting in real life when you meet a different point of view, try to reconsider your behaviour. It helps a lot keeping cool headed. Difficult situations are handled more easily.
Salam anyway
Sinan K
Are you kidding me? my argument is that you had to bring the west into it, the whole article is about what its like in the arab world, its not a comparison between us and the west.
You said ur argument was “if you wish to judge Arabs, use the same standards to judge the whites.” You’re MISSING the whole point! we’re not discussing the “whites” (btw what does that make us ? blacks? ) that’s what I’m saying. And you’re telling me that I “attribute an argument of your own making to your opponent than you refute it” ? hmph…
And stop using all those fancy words you’re not impressing anyone
with Your “intellectual prowess”…
oh forgot this too
“Besides, your accusations of Arabs being conspiricy theorists and irrational also adds credence to my argument about your racism.”
so you’re calling him a racist? you? who’ve been babbling about “whites” and “christian whites” all day? you have the nerve to call someone racist?
You make as much sense as a black gay jewish member of KKK does…