Those wishing to portray the Muslim-Arab world as a monolithic block in which there is no room for dissent must instead come to terms with a far more complex reality. The current series of attacks and threats against the western world, coming from “deviant elements of Islam” simply cloud the issue, making the problem even more difficult to understand. These attacks are often only superficially representative of Islam, instead nearly always have a specific political, strategic or territorial objective. Western public opinion seems unable to perceive the gap between the immobility and backwardness of government policies in some Muslim-Arab states and the extraordinary and dynamic characteristics of their respective civil societies. Often some of these countries embody a vision of Islam (or of the relationship between religion and political life) that is the result of an old and post-colonial logic that is obsolete in today’s world.
The masses of young Muslims who have access to the internet, to blogs and information not controlled by governments, have a vision of Islam, of themselves and of the rest of the world, that is totally different to the one their respective governments are trying to impose on them by force. In the third millennium, although preserving the historical memory of a difficult past and present, these societies wish to join and project themselves towards a future of freedom, reconciling the values of Islamic tradition with the West’s democratic and technological conquests. Change does not only concern customs or habits, but also the manner in which communication takes place and information is provided to the great Arab-speaking public. This does not mean only the traditional media, but often the less formal world of forums or blogs. Blogs in particular seem to be the best way of avoiding the oppressive control of governments or IT systems in the various areas of this region. One example is Egypt, where bloggers recently created an observatory for the respect of human rights with the specific task of following the destinies of bloggers arrested and to prevent security services from restricting freedom of expression.
The Observatory consists of experts in law, information and human rights, appointed to organise action for defending the e-press and the bloggers, and to organise solidarity campaigns. One of the first initiatives planned is the review of all laws on freedom of press, in particular those establishing prison sentences for press crimes committed by journalists. Forms of dissent are aimed at broadcasting a specific “internal” message, hence addressed at local communities (to inform them on what is going on in their own country) but also an “external” one addressing the rest of the world. Often the objective is also to cause a public debate on delicate issues. In Turkey for example, a group of intellectuals lead by the journalist Ali Bayramoglu, launched an online petition asking for an official apology to be made to the victims of the 1915 Armenian genocide, challenging a strongpoint in Turkish national politics. The Turkish leaders have already described this initiative as “unjustified” and stated that this will damage the country. Throughout the media, leader writers, politicians and intellectuals have reacted, either in favour or against. But Ali Bayramoglu’s objective to open a public debate on the Armenian genocide, a taboo subject for the Turks, has been achieved.
Dissent is also expressed in the more traditional artistic forms such as the cinema and the theatre. For example, the young Turkish film director Ozcan Alper’s film ‘Sonbahar’ denounced the detention in his country of over eight thousand people accused of thought crimes. ‘Sonbahar’ is a film that also denounces all the physical and psychological violence, that, in spite of preparing for European membership, Turkey seems unable to discard. Intellectuals are also moving to change their societies also in other Muslim-Arab countries. In the Lebanon a group of 290 intellectuals, politicians, media leaders and social activists have signed a petition for "peaceful civil resistance” against the interdenominational war started by Hezbollah against Sunnis and Druzes. All the newspapers in Beirut published this appeal denouncing Hezbollah’s interdenominational war for achieving total authority and “placing the Lebanon within the Gaza-Damascus-Teheran axis, destroying Lebanese society." Also in the Lebanon, protests by intellectuals and civil society resulted in the revocation of the censoring of Persepolis – a cartoon by the French-Iranian director Marjane Satrapil – portraying the life of an eight year old Iranian girl with the repression imposed by the Shah’s pro-western regime as a backdrop. This film was labelled as “islamophobic" and "anti-Iranian" by authorities in Teheran.
The Director of General Security, Wafiq Jizzini, seen as close to the Lebanese-Shiite pro-Iran movement Hezbollah, had initially decided to forbid the film in the Lebanon as advised by a number of religious Shiite authorities. However, the campaign launched by the media and the intellectuals against this provision encouraged Jizzini to step back. In Jordan, thanks to a theatre performance, director Lina Tall managed to break the wall of silence surrounding the burning issue of crimes committed to vindicate honour. In Jordan, every year between 15 and 20 women are murdered in the name of “honour”, and their assassins are often only punished with a few months in prison. With the play entitled ‘Code of Honour’, the problem was addressed publicly for the first time. On June 6th hundreds of people gathered in the streets of Redeyef, (Tunisia), demanding jobs, especially in the phosphate mines that are so numerous in this region. The police opened fire to disperse the crowds and in doing so killed a 25-year-old man and wounded 18 others. The journalist Fahem Boukadous managed to film and then broadcast these clashes with the police on the satellite channel Al-Hiwar Attounsi. Now Fahem Boukadous is wanted by the police and accused of spreading information against public order and has been obliged to abandon his job and family. His report, however, was seen in France and a delegation of trade-unionists and members of parliament travelled to Tunisia to meet the families of those arrested.
In Algeria the author Yasmina Kadra continues to write about colonial Algeria as well as about the coexistence between the French and the Algerians, the friendship between the Pieds-Noir, the Muslims and the Jews before the war of independence. Yasmina Khadra is not just any author. His real name is Mohammed Moulessehoul, and he is a former officer in the Algerian Army. He fought against the armed extremists in his country before taking refuge in France, where he now runs the French Cultural Centre. The pseudonym he has chosen is made up of his wife’s first two names. All these examples and forms of dissent lead us back to the famous theory presented by the demographer Youssef Courbage and the historian and anthropologist Emmanuel Todd in the famous essay Le Rendez-Vous des Civilisations, and allow us to integrate this with other significant data. It is true, as these two authors state, that the Muslim world is entering a sort of demographic, cultural and mental revolution, like the one that in the recent past allowed the West to change from a basically agricultural and patriarchal civilisation into a modern and industrialised society. In Iran and in Tunisia the birth rate is practically the same as in France, an unmistakeable sign of a reversal of authority relations, family organisation, ideological and social references and, slowly, of the political system too.
It is also true that, although governed by theocratic and/or dictatorial regimes, Muslim-Arab societies appear to be evolving in their own ways that tends to bring them increasingly closer to western societies. There is however another aspect one should take into account; the development of technologies and the impact of the internet and its blogs, which, especially in recent years, have accelerated the transformation process of civil societies in these countries. As stated by Jihad Al Khazan in the pan-Arab daily newspaper Al Hayat, the Middle East of today is writing a new chapter thanks to the internet and to blogs, since these open the way to greater freedom of expression. Thanks to the power of these means, today an army of bloggers, intellectuals, artists, political refugees, using various forms of dissent, are demolishing the political immobility of governments and causing profound transformations in their societies. Everything that happens inside a country can be filmed and published online for everyone to see. A blog easily manages to avoid a regime’s censorship and report the facts. Power relations between political regimes and civil societies, once balanced in favour of the regimes, are slowly achieving a new equilibrium.
Translated by Francesca Simmons