january 2005
FRENCH GOVT. THREATS HAVE BEEN CARRIED OUT AND
AL-MANAR IS BANNED
A news reader in the Lebanese
satellite TV station, Al-Manar, which is one of 
the most
popular Arab TV station. Because of its affiliation with
Hizbullah, Al-Manar is to be knocked off the air by the
French government, which controls the carrying satellite,
apparently succumbing to Israeli pressures (Alquds
Alarabi, 12/4/04....).
WASHINGTON, December 18
(IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Al-Manar
television was denounced Saturday, December 18, as
“intellectual terror” ; the US decision to
designate it as a terrorist organization.
“The US State Department's
decision is quite simply intellectual terrorism as it
censors a media that believes its mission is to defend a
point of view and a cause ... that of Arabs and
Muslims,” the station said in a statement carried by
Agence France-Presse (AFP). “Al-Manar is a member of
the Union of Arab Audiovisual Media. It obeys rules laid
out by the Arab League and broadcasts thanks to Lebanese
legal authorization. We are neither a party nor a
political organization,” it said.The missive warned
that the American measure “is only the beginning of
a new era. That of reducing to silence, in the name of
the fight against terrorism, any voice or media that
dares to criticize Israel and defend the Palestinian
cause.” The TV channel said it was “not
terrorized” by the decision and that it would
“fight it by all legal means.”
Washington on Friday placed the
satellite channel, which is associated with the Lebanese
resistance movement and political party Hezbollah, on the
Terrorist Exclusion List, prompting an end to its
transmission across the country.State Department
spokesman Richard Boucher said the decision was taken
“because of its incitement of terrorist
activity.”
The designation further means
that foreigners providing support to or associated with
the channel may be prevented from entering the United
States or may be deported. “For example, an alien
would be found inadmissible ... if the alien is a member
of Al-Manar, if a person solicits funds or other things
of value for Al-Manar, if he provides material support to
Al-Manar or solicits any individual for membership in
Al-Manar,” Boucher said.
The United States already
considers Hezbollah, a political party which has a
considerable representation in the Lebanese parliament, a
“foreign terrorist organization.”
Bias
Lebanon's Ambassador to
Washington, Farid Abboud, said his country strongly
disagreed with the new biased designation, reported
Reuters. “If you want simply to demonize or
eliminate one side, you're not going to advance the
issue,” he said.
Boucher, however, argued
otherwise.
Last Monday, December 13, a
French court ordered the French-based Eutelsat company to
shut down Al-Manar broadcasts.
The French ruling sparks
ire in Lebanon.
Lebanese Prime Minister Omar
Karameh threatened to punish French media in response to
the ban on Al-Manar.
In August, the channel scored a legal win when the State Council, France's highest administrative tribunal, decided to grant it a two-month respite to prove its non anti-Semitic attitude.
Universal Censorship
by Gamal El Ghetany (Egypt) - AUTODAFE n°3-4
In the last couple of weeks, two separate events
occurred, which gave rise to discussion. On 20 September
last, readers of al-Ahram, Egypt’s oldest
newspaper, were unexpectedly confronted with an article
by the American ambassador David Walsh, which was
published in Arabic, in itself a rare occurrence, and
whose title was “Dotting the Is.” In the
article, which was aimed at writers, intellectuals and
newspaper editors in the country, the ambassador
described how those writers who didn't agree with the
American viewpoint were damaging the pursuit of truth and
accuracy in writing, by depending on sources of
information which were “flawed and false.”
He concluded the article by requesting that editors of
Egyptian newspapers carefully check the material they
published to ensure it represented the truth; the truth
of course as the American ambassador saw and understood
it.
The article annoyed me for two reasons. First, it
requested, or to put it more precisely, sought to impose
a form of censorship on us. Our country is no stranger to
different forms of censorship, some of which are overt
and others covert, but the call this time came from the
ambassador of the world’s only superpower, which
puts responsibility for the tragic events of September
11, on the East in general and Muslims in particular.
It has brought different kinds of pressure to bear on
regimes in the Arab region. Its armed forces have been
mobilised, ground-to-air and sea-to air-missiles
installed, and planes, such as the Stealth fighter and
the giant strategic B52 bombers, with their destructive
payloads, fly unchecked in our skies. At the same time,
there have been more covert forms of pressure, such as
requests for changes in educational curricula, or demands
that certain paragraphs be removed from books on reading
lists, authorised by education ministries.
As far as I know, some Arab countries have complied with
these American demands.
We are now confronted with a form of censorship, which,
because it stems from the only superpower on our planet,
is universal. I am angry not only at the influence of
American power, particularly on ruling bodies, but also
because the censorship it practices in a variety of ways
contradicts the values and articles of the American
constitution itself. This inconsistency between American
policy and the principles of the American constitution
marks a reversal for freedom and for humanity. Television
has brought particular events to our attention which
underline this development. For example, what is
happening at Guantanamo Base in Cuba, at the hands of the
Americans, is a clear violation of human rights, and far
removed from the principles of American justice. In a
recent incident in Yemen, a number of people were
assassinated when missiles were fired from an unpiloted
American plane.
It doesn’t actually matter whether the plane was
piloted or directed from the ground; people were put to
death without being tried through superpower dominance.
This new policy, which disregards the fundamental
principles of law, was first demonstrated in the attacks
launched by Apaches and F16s on individual flats and
houses in heavily populated areas of Palestine.
Palestinians, who were living under Israeli occupation,
were executed without being charged or brought to trial.
They claimed such attacks were excusable in the war
against terrorism; that is they used state terrorism to
confront group terrorism, which means terrorism was
employed by both sides. They have adopted
counter-terrorism as their slogan, and use it to justify
the committing of acts of aggression against a weaker
side without first determining who is innocent or guilty.
It’s a tragic mess.
I was annoyed at the American ambassador’s article
for a second, more personal reason. I am editor of the
arts weekly, Akhbar al-Adab, and since this is a
publication which deals with intellectual issues and
employs mainly intellectuals, the remarks of the American
ambassador concerned me directly, although I have never
met him face to face. But before I explain my stand on
this point, let me approach it as a novelist. Imagine
what would happen were the Egyptian ambassador in
Washington to write a similar article in the Washington
Post and New York Times. What reaction would he
encounter? Let’s think about it.
Of course human rights organizations would denounce the
article, as would those organizations representing
journalists and civic communities. The matter would not
stop there; it would be raised on Capitol Hill and in the
Council for Foreign Accreditation, and the nearby
Pentagon; studies would be carried out on how best to
answer the Egyptian threats and their attempts to curtail
the freedom of the American press. In the end the Central
Command would be called upon, and General Tommy Franks, a
regular visitor to the Middle East and rumoured to be
among those people with most influence over the destiny
of the region, would make an appearance. Of course the
matter would be discussed in the White House and Mrs
Condoleezza Rice would deliver a sharply worded statement
on attempts by Egypt to interfere with the freedom of the
American press and threaten to cut off aid to the
country.
The reaction in Cairo was limited; the Union of Egyptian
Journalists denounced the article and a number of leading
Egyptian intellectuals signed a statement, which rejected
this new form of censorship, particularly as our history
contains many instances of resistance to censorship in
its many different guises. I wrote a polite article
because I didn't want to provoke the leaders in the
Pentagon, who have been on tenterhooks since September
11. I tried to explain the dangers of a doctrine of
deterrence and force and reminded him of the steps we had
taken after September 11, because we recognised the long
term dangers arising out of the incident, by which I
meant the gulf that has opened up between East and West,
between western powers and Islam or those who believe in
Islam, or the Islamic world. It is vital for all of us to
understand what is happening on the other side; we must
be aware of what they are writing about and saying.
To that end, we translated various articles and studies
which expressed a wide range of opinions. Some articles
were objective; others attacked Islam both as a religion
and for its sacred beliefs. Our aim was and still is that
we must be aware of what is being said and written about
by the other side. Knowledge is the first step to
understanding the other’s point of view; it enables
us to throw light on the situation, bridge the divide and
diagnose the ills. In the absence of knowledge, ignorance
prevails, making it difficult for a reasonable person to
know where to tread. Strangely, these attempts at
enforcing censorship or demanding the removal of
paragraphs from articles come at a time when modern
methods of communication are bringing countries closer
together and doing away with frontiers altogether.
Ironically, the superpower which has spearheaded the
development of modern communications is the same one
which is openly or covertly imposing censorship on a
global level. Of course we can understand the underlying
reasons for this, some of which date from the events of
September 11 and others, such as the attempt to impose
one ideology and culture across the globe, which precede
it.
Here I should make clear a couple of points:
Firstly, I do not believe in a clear-cut divide between
the West on the one hand and the East on the other. There
is no such thing as a West or an East. When the sun sets,
it does not set at the same point on the horizon the
whole year round, nor does it rise at the same point, as
our ancestors the ancient Egyptians observed thousands of
years ago. In the West, there are reasonable people who
realize that the richness of humanity comes from the
interaction between the various cultures and the way they
complement each other, rather than from the domination of
one culture by another and the destruction of difference.
In the East, there have been notable exponents of this
view in the past. Mawlana Jamal al Din Rumi was a Moslem
and Sufi mystic who was born in Afghanistan, died in
Konya in Turkey and wrote in Persian; in his
distinguished work al Mathnawi (couplets), he
wrote:
I was eastern when the sun set and western when it rose
Mawlana Sheikh Mohiddine Bin Arabi is another fine
example of such a viewpoint. He lived in Andalusia and
travelled all over the world till he died in Damascus. In
one of his poems, he wrote,
My heart took on different shapes,
A pasture for the deer, and a monastery for priests;
A temple for idols, and the Kaaba around which the pilgrims turn
Parchment from the Torah and pages from the Qur’an.
I believe in such a humanitarian view of the world.
The richness of humanity lies in its diversity and the
way its various elements interact with each other, rather
than being hostile to each other. The West has drawn on
the East for its spirituality and we in the East have
looked to the West for much of the advancements of the
modern age. At the end of the nineteenth century, Imam
Mohammed Abduh, a leading thinker from al-Azhar
university and also a courageous modernist, visited
France. When he returned he said that the west had Islam
without Moslems while the east had Moslems without Islam.
There is extremism everywhere; each religion has its
fundamentalists. Many of the religious extremists from
whom the world is currently suffering have emerged from
closed societies, controlled by isolated factions whose
influence was limited to small desert areas. The sudden
acquisition by their leaders of huge material wealth has
provided certain of these factions with the power to
force their beliefs on others. I am referring to the
founders of the Wahhabite sect in Saudi Arabia, who I
believe are more dangerous to Islam and its adherents
than any other power because they reject anyone,
including other Moslems, who do not share their beliefs.
In recent years, the actions of such extremists have had
grave and alarming consequences for Islam. But the
situation is not helped by the extension of global
censorship to include changes to education curricula and
the omission of certain paragraphs as a result of
directives from Washington think-tanks.
History teaches us that censorship results in oppression
and oppression gives rises to subjugation and subjugation
incites hatred; this modern form of censorship, which
takes the shape of covert or overt pressure on weak and
trembling regimes whose leaders are more interested in
maintaining their own position and fortune, will not lead
to anything but more censorship and extremism. We should
note that the United States was, and still is, the main
supporter of such regimes, with whom it shares a common
interest. I believe that the responsibility for
challenging extremism lies with the people of the culture
in which extremism appears, be it in the East or West,
not by attempting to enforce a sort of censorship from
the outside.
Secondly, using such axioms as “the axis of
evil” or “war on terrorism” can only lead
to more misunderstanding. Particular regimes and powers
will take advantage of such phrases to achieve their own
objectives, which go far beyond the concepts of such
phrases. The danger of using slogans such as these is
that they open the door to possibly endless conflict.
This is particularly so if one side insists it has a
monopoly on the truth and tries to impose it on others,
while the other side, genuinely or in response, also
regards itself as having access to the absolute truth.
I now move on to the second incident, which took place
after the publication of the ambassador’s letter in
al-Ahram. The newspaper published details about a
television series, which was being produced by a private
satellite station, under the title Cavalier without a
Horse. Stories appeared in several newspapers and
included speculation that the producer had based the
series on the book, the Protocols of Zion. Before
going into details, I should emphasize that this book has
a notorious reputation among Egyptian intellectuals and
has never been taken seriously by serious researchers.
The leading academic, Dr Abdul Wahab al-Masiri, who has
specialized in the study of the Zionism Movement, has
described it as immoral and explained its origins in
Tsarist Russia and the bogus sources on which it is
based. Akhbar al-Adab has warned its readers about the
spurious nature of the book and its notoriety, and
pointed out that it should not be used against people who
believe in Judaism. I would like to stress, again,
something that I have repeatedly emphasized and defended
as a principle and that is my total opposition to the use
of religion or race as a means of attack on another
person; it is an ugly and barbaric custom and it’s
time that the human race rid itself of such behaviour.
That is my position.
People in Egypt were therefore surprised by the political
and media campaign focusing on the series, which was
mounted in the United States and Israel and elsewhere in
the western world, which accused the Egyptian media of
anti-Semitism. Hundreds of people demonstrated in front
of the Egyptian embassy in Washington, and I saw some of
them holding up banners with “Stop The
Killing,” written on them.
As the series hadn’t yet been shown, those who were
attacking and demonstrating against it couldn’t know
what it was about. Many people were astonished to see
such a fierce campaign being mounted to call for the
banning of an artwork before it had even been screened.
There was another element which also struck us as
strange, since we are Semites as well, and that was the
charge of anti-Semitism. Here I should point out that
charges of anti-Semitism are not infrequently directed at
the wrong target; the term has broadened to include any
criticism levelled at the right-wing politics of Israel.
Because of this element, the new global censorship
established and propagated by the United States has a
deeper significance. Curiously, the series began showing
in the first days of Ramadan.
As far as we could see, it was not a screen adaptation of
the Protocols of Zion, as had previously been said, nor
did it have anything to do with the book. In fact it was
about an Egyptian adventurer who had lived at the end of
the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth
century. It was screened on several television channels,
but did not appear in many Arab countries, which had been
subjected to direct or indirect pressure not to show it;
it was actually banned in seven Arab countries. This
clearly demonstrates the contradictory principles at
work. The pressure had largely been applied by the United
States at a time when we were reading of its
determination to spread the principles of western
democracy in Arab countries which were ruled by
reactionary and dictatorial regimes. In my opinion,
banning such a series only leads to more dictatorship and
repression; attempts from outside to impose ideas and
customs do not lead to changes in an already bad
situation, which relies on censorship and methods of
oppression which are widespread in the Arab world as well
as elsewhere, including the United States.
Recent American policy towards the East and the Arab
world in particular won’t lead to more democracy but
will intensify this global censorship; intellectuals and
creative thinkers have a duty to point out its dangers
and to challenge it, as we have challenged local
censorship in the past and 
present,
both direct and indirect. Let us erect bridges of
understanding and knowledge rather than strengthening the
barriers between us through increased censorship and
organized suppression. Let us be wary of what is meant by
such axioms as the war against terrorism, when the term
terrorist has come to refer not only to those who
practise terrorism, but also to those who are struggling
to liberate their land or who practise armed resistance
against unjust armed aggression, together with their
beliefs and ideas. But more than that, the term has
started to encompass language and culture. I don’t
exaggerate when I say that I can imagine the day when we
will have to account for what we mean by words, gestures
and natural movements. On that day, those who are not in
sympathy with what the people who run the American
administration call the war on terrorism, will no longer
find the planet a suitable and fit place to live in.
Actual terrorism will have come to include all aspects of
life.
Autumn, 2002
Gamal El-Ghitani is the editor of the literature
magazine Akhbar Al-Adab and one of Egypt's most renowned
novelists.