In recent years, the spread of Internet piracy of books in Arab countries has reached impressive levels. It is easy to download books just published in Egypt or Morocco for free in minutes. This situation has alarmed the Arab Publishers’ Union, one of the largest unions in the culture sector. A year ago, Mohammad Rashad, Arab Publishers’ Union president, requested and obtained a fatwa from the religious authorities of Azhar, the most important Islamic University in the Muslim world, to prohibit piracy of books on the Internet.
This fatwa has provoked criticism and concern. Many intellectuals do not look favorably on the invasion of religion into the cultural and political spheres; others argue that Internet piracy is the only way to distribute books and, consequently, to promote culture in the Arab world.
In many Arab countries, the percentage of readers is very low. The reasons for this are threefold: The high rate of illiteracy, the preponderance of television (especially after the proliferation of satellite channels), and the high cost of books. The lack of Arabic translations also contributes to this situation. Two European countries, Greece and Finland, translate within a year more than all the Arab countries put together! There are also few projects or initiatives to promote reading.
The distribution of books in the Arab world is part of the crisis in the cultural and commercial sectors in general. For example, there are no chain bookstores as exist in Western countries, but instead very often it is the editors who bring their books to bookstores. This raises concerns in the book trade, a sector already in deep crisis. A multitude of bookstores have closed in recent years. Therefore, except for in the big cities, it is often hard to find a bookstore.
Today, book fairs are the main meeting place between publishers and readers. In fact, a new trend spreading among readers is to buy wholesale books; these are the only occasions to find cheaper books, because everything is managed directly by the publisher. Publishers also have difficulty moving books from one Arab country to another, in the face of bureaucracy and censorship, but during book fairs, publishers enjoy a freedom of movement–albeit limited.
The proliferation of totalitarian regimes in the Arab world has certainly not helped the publishing industry. Perhaps the Arab spring, with the emergence of more democratic political systems, will help overcome censorship. However, the reemergence of the book, being not only a cultural but also a commercial product, will also depend on the fate of the markets.