Category Archives: Middle East

Middle East Violence Tests Internet Freedom & Dissent

Leave a reply

Google’s refusal to comply with a White House request to review its policy of keeping up the controversial trailer for the film Innocence of Muslims has put a spotlight on the possible limits of online speech.  It all started when filmmaker Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, an Egyptian-American Coptic Christian, posted the trailer to his film on YouTube in July.  Apparently, someone in Egypt saw the trailer and it was then broadcast on Egyptian television a few days ago, which instigated the subsequent global violence and the death of four American diplomats allegedly at the hands of Al Qaeda.

It is interesting that the same social media that was used to support the victories of the Arab Spring last year is now being blamed by some of the same people in that movement for supporting anti-Muslim sentiments.  Ed Husain, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, says that many Muslim countries are still having a hard time grasping free speech and dissent.

…These are people who were born and raised in dictatorships. They are accustomed to thinking that a government controls its citizens — that a film or documentary cannot be produced without government approval. For decades, this has been the reality of their lives, and they strongly believe that the Western world and its citizens have a similarly controlling relationship between individuals and government.

In light of this assumption, they hold the U.S. government responsible for the tacky and distasteful film produced by a right-wing Muslimphobe.

Little wonder, then, that Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy has called for the prosecution by the U.S government of the filmmakers, and Egypt’s top cleric, Mufti Ali Goma, has called on the United Nations to forbid denigration of faiths. Morsy studied in the United States and Ali Goma regularly visits the West on the interfaith circuit, yet both men don’t yet grasp that religious freedom and the freedom of expression are inextricably linked in America.

It is hard for younger Arabs not born into freedom to understand how individual liberty works in real life…

While we find the content of the trailer to be extremely offensive, Global Wire Associates supports Google’s decision to not take down the video.  We strongly believe in freedom of speech and the right to dissent, no matter how offensive that speech may be.

Rachel Whetstone, senior vice president for communications and public policy at Google, wrote this in 2007 about its censorship policy.

…At Google we have a bias in favor of people’s right to free expression in everything we do. But we also recognize that freedom of expression can’t be — and shouldn’t be — without some limits. The difficulty is in deciding where those boundaries are drawn. For a company like Google with services in more than 100 countries — all with different national laws and cultural norms — it’s a challenge we face many times every day…

…One type of content, while legal everywhere, may be almost universally unacceptable in one region yet viewed as perfectly fine in another. We are passionate about our users so we try to take into account local cultures and needs — which vary dramatically around the world — when developing and implementing our global product policies.

Dealing with controversial content is one of the biggest challenges we face as a company. We don’t pretend to have all the right answers or necessarily to get every judgment right. But we do try hard to think things through from first principles, to be as transparent as possible about how we make decisions, and to keep reviewing and debating our policies. After all, the right to disagree is a sign of a healthy society.

So it came as a bit of a surprise – and disappointment – that instead of expressing their outrage with the trailer on social media, many people used their anger through violent attacks.  Luckily there have been many Arab bloggers who have come out against the violence going on in their respective countries, and called for a more civilized way of dissenting.

Nonetheless, with freedom comes responsibility and sometimes consequences, and Nakoula could be held accountable for the violence that has ensued.  As it stands right now, there are technically no legal grounds to prosecute Nakoula.  However, in 2010 Nakoula was sent to federal prison for 21 months for bank fraud using stolen identities and Social Security numbers, including one belonging to a 6-year-old child.  Upon his release in June 2011, he was ordered not to use computers or the Internet for five years without approval from his probation officer.  Nakoula began filmming Innocence of Muslims only a few weeks after being released from a halfway house.  Based on this information, there is a good chance Nakoula could be going back to jail for violating the terms of his probation by simply posting the trailer on YouTube using the fake name Sam Bacile.

Emphas.is Project Challenges Stereotypes About Arab Men

Leave a reply

The Trayvon Martin case has put the problem of racial profiling into the spotlight again.  Black males are generally portrayed in Western media as criminal, due largely to clothing perceived to be associated with “urban culture” like hoodies.  Just like black males, Arab (and some South Asian) males with beards and turbans are also judged negatively as having associations with terrorism, especially since the September 11 attacks.

Iraqi photojournalist Tamara Abdul Hadi has taken on the challenge to break this terrorist stereotype.  She created Picture an Arab Man, a photo slide show that really takes a look at the unexplored viewpoints of stereotypes in general.

The slide show uses Emphas.is, an online platform that allows photojournalists to submit projects for crowdfunding by viewers.  Crowdfunding is the hot thing to do in the business world these days, especially among tech entrepreneurs who are looking at nontraditional ways to fund their projects.  President Barack Obama recently signed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act into law, which makes it easier for start-ups to raise money.  There are a growing number of crowdfunding platforms for creative professionals, including Emphas.is, which is the first such platform designed for photojournalists.

Abdul Hadi started her project in 2009 to collect photos of Arab men for an upcoming book.  She turned to Emphas.is for crowdfunding when she was ready to publish her work.  In an interview with IJNet, She said that there was not a more important time than now to get her work out.

Arab men have been stereotyped in Western media for a very long time through films, literature, theater etc.  They are branded as hyper-masculine, violent and dangerous. The word “terrorist” is used a lot, especially in Western media…  Arab women are definitely also misrepresented in Western media, but in a very different way than Arab men. While men are seen as oppressive and violent, women are seen as oppressed and powerless. There is a big disconnect when it comes to media representation. I decided to tackle the subject of Arab men first.

The men in her photos are from many countries throughout the Arab world.  She said her subjects are shot semi nude “because my portraits focus mainly on the face and having no distinguishing clothing/jewelry and accessories helps keep the focus on that.”  Much of the online buzz for this project is really promising, and it looks like Abdul Hadi is both on her way to raising her money, as well as raising awareness.

“I strive to do what I can to redefine the image of the Arab man for an audience so accustomed to one-dimensional stereotypes,” Abdul Hadi said.  “Most importantly, I hope to properly represent my subjects as diverse and candid men whose only thing in common is their rich Middle Eastern heritage.”

Women, Mobile Technology & the End of the Digital Caste System

1 Reply

While many attendees at the Mobile World Congress have focused mainly on all the latest and greatest mobile tools, a discussion that has gone largely under the radar is the so-called “digital caste system.”  Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt said in his keynote before MWC12 that for the “aspiring majority” of five out of seven billion global citizens, “the web is still a scarce resource.”

“For most people the digital revolution has not arrived yet. Every revolution begins with a small group of people. Imagine how much better it would be with another five billion people online,” he said.  “Smartphones are part of the solution, but having a smartphone is not enough to get you online.”

The International Telecommunication Union — the U.N.’s specialized agency for information and communication technologies (ICT) — launched the Broadband Commission for Digital Development to help evaluate how to not only make mobile broadband more accessible worldwide, but also how to better incorporate such policies into the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.

Here is what they came up with:

Target 1: Making broadband policy universal. By 2015, all countries should have a national broadband plan or strategy or include broadband in their universal access/service definitions.

Target 2: Making broadband affordable. By 2015, entry-level broadband services should cost less than 5% of average monthly income.

Target 3: Connecting homes to broadband. By 2015, 40% of households in developing countries should have internet access.

Target 4: Getting people online. By 2015, internet user penetration should reach 60% worldwide, 50% in developing countries and 15% in least-developed countries.

The digital gap is particularly wider for rural women who face the barriers of poverty, illiteracy and language.  The UN General Assembly Resolution 58/146 of 2004 recognized the need to provide rural women with better ICT, which has led to the growth of UN-supported ICT programs in rural communities.

There is significant evidence of how this resolution has improved the lives of many women, particularly in Latin America.  According to Martin Hilbert, researcher at the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, the programs help women become leaders in their communities, by allowing them to search for jobs, access education through online trainings and software, and increase their income.  “ICTs are a tool to fight discrimination against women in a holistic way,” he said.

Women accessing mobile technology can also become citizen journalists in their communities.  Mobile journalism played a large role in the Arab Spring.  Yemen’s Nadia Abdullah became an unlikely reporter covering events in her country.

“I didn’t imagine that my father, brother or the family would accept that I go out and do an interview on camera” Abdullah said to Voice of America. “This was almost impossible to do because of the norms and traditions. They are closed and conservative traditions. It is not proper for a woman to appear in public.”

Eventually with the approval of her family, Abdullah used an amateur video camera to document events throughout Sanaa, ranging from crackdowns by government troops to a man cradling the dead body of a loved one.  She not only helped to topple Yemen’s long time ruler, but she is now also seriously pursuing a journalism career.

“With a camera and a picture,” she said, “you can silence anyone.”

TechGirls Seeks to Empower Arab-Speaking Women

Leave a reply

The recent Middle East uprising has had U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton thinking about innovation and the future of women’s rights in the region.  In order to capture the technological momentum the Arab Spring has set, this summer the State Department will bring 25 tech-savvy teen girls from the Middle East and North Africa to Silicon Valley for intensive training with their American counterparts.

The program – TechGirls – will include meetings with movers and shakers in American tech innovation, as well as working on designing new products and training in cloud computing, Web design, mobile communications and social networking.

TechGirls is an offspring of TechWomen, a similar program for adult technologists from the Middle East who come to the United States for professional development.  This is part of Mrs. Clinton’s “smart power diplomacy” initiative to use foreign policy to empower women worldwide through technology.

The idea here is to build relationships with female innovators who could likely one day be influential back in their home countries.  As popular as technology is in the Arab-speaking world, female representation in tech firms is even lower than in the United States and Western Europe.  In turn the State Department hopes to build future connections that can benefit American tech companies by branching out to emerging markets in the Middle East and North Africa.

“Technology can be a great facilitator. […] It can also be used by governments and others to prevent people from being able to communicate,” Clinton said in July 2011. “So we have to stay a step ahead so that people are never deprived of their opportunity, as we saw how important that was in both Tunisia and Egypt over the last months. We’re seeing it in many other settings as well.”