Yahoo purchased Maktoob.com today. Yahoo expects Maktoob, which began as the first Arabic-language email provider, to permit it access to the Arab market. It hasn’t had terribly good luck expanding into that sector thus far, and acquiring a locally developed business may be a more effective way to do so. Very exciting for Maktoob … check out Fadi Ghandour (@fadig) on Twitter for one example of the enthusiasm this merger has generated.

Egyptian female bloggers use the internet as a forum to voice their frustrations with both politics and men. Not just their boyfriends … the patriarchy more broadly. As well as their boyfriends. This way, they can discuss taboo subjects without running afoul of government censors or offending anyone’s sensibilities.

At least Islamists and the government can agree that they think women need limits.

Joking aside, I think it’s curious how censorship in the Middle East is conflated into one larger communication problem: conservatives won’t let important issues about women’s lives be discussed, and the governments won’t let politics be discussed.

The author of The Yacoubian Building writes in a Times op-ed that until the new President calls Israel to account for its incursion into Gaza, his words about listening to the Muslim world and initiating a dialogue will fall on deaf ears.

… broadcast on Al Arabiya, the Saudi-owned news channel. He promises to listen and approach Middle East policy in a manner reflective of “mutual respect“. Marc Lynch is very excited; thankfully for those of us following this story from our desks, he has begun and will continue to track Arab responses to the interview. Read the transcript (English) here.

… due, not to politicized censorship, but outstanding unpaid debts. Hopefully it will soon be revived. I would be on the lookout for a facebook group soliciting donations.

… and that's just one part of the Carnegie Endowment's mini-anthology of commentary from its scholars and affiliates on the election. An excerpt from al-Ghitany's piece:

It took me many years to realize that human civilization from all corners of the world is essential for mankind and its existence. It also took me time to realize that the crucial factors influencing my judgment are my life experiences and the characteristics of the milieu to which I belong and that I should not prematurely reject or embrace preconceived positions. The recent U.S. election opened our eyes to the merits of American democracy in particular and Western democracy in general. What I have come to realize‚ thanks to modern information technology‚ is that the only perfect political form available for humanity is democracy as known by the West for centuries.

Casualties since the ground offensive are up to 765 Palestinians and 14 Israelis, so the UN has drafted a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire, after intense lobbying by Arab states.

The Los Angeles Times has two articles, each carefully including one Jewish-sounding name and one Muslim-sounding name in the bylines, on the media coverage of the conflict in Arabic/Arab countries’ and Hebrew/Israeli media respectively. Marc Lynch, at his old blog Abu Aardvark, looked a bit closer at Arabic media framing of the issue last week, pointing out that one gets very different narratives depending on whether the issue is framed as an assault on Gaza or an assault on Hamas. (Abu Aardvark, for those who are interested, is now purely an archive site; read Lynch's new stuff at Foreign Policy's Marc Lynch blog). The LAT articles each seem to suggest that maybe, uh, the coverage isn't that neutral. The article on Israeli news, though, reads a little more like news than the one on Arab coverage, which is more column asserting that Arabic media plays a role in consolidating the idea of Palestine as a symbol for Islam than reporting on the specific nature of the coverage. Of course, it's always a fine line on topics like this, and it isn't shocking to hear that the linguistic community representing the 14 casualties to date has maintained a more ‘objective’ stance than the linguistic community representing 765 casualties.

The Carnegie Endowment had an event last week (on New Year's Eve, actually - do you think they served champagne?) where Paul Salem, Marina Ottoway, Nathan Brown and Amr Hamzawy sounded off on the conflict. Here is the summary page for the event; link to PDF of the event transcript is at the bottom of the page. They predicted that Hamas would emerge from the conflict weaker, and that Lebanon/Hezbollah would avoid the conflict entirely. That was a week ago; they appear to have been somewhat correct regarding Hezbollah, at least so far. I am not sure what foreign policy professionals mean when they say that Hamas will not experience any enhancement in their influence as a result of this conflict. I find this assertion, frankly, very confusing. I understand the logic in Hamzawy's assertion on p. 4 of the event transcript (sorry, I can't c/p from the PDF - in sum, that Hamas’ military resistance to Israel seems to be pretty disastrous for Palestine and that disastrousness should nudge Palestinian public opinion toward supporting other avenues of action), but I think it assumes an eventual outcome that Palestinians would find somewhat upsetting. More specifically, to say that continuous failed military action against Israel on the part of any Palestinian group will discourage support for any military action among Palestinians as a collective implies that sustained, aggressive and decisive military action on the part of Israel will eventually yeild a nonviolent neighboring state in Palestine. This smacks of domination, for one, and doesn't seem to have worked so far. (Let's remember that this is 2009 and we are still discussing a return to 1967 borders). Of course, Anne Applebaum did advocate this week for simply calling a spade a spade and using plain old “war” instead of the euphemistic “peace process”; in that nomenclature, Hamzawy's argument makes a lot more sense.

In sum, the situation remains upsetting. Those with the financial means and the will to donate to UNRWA can do so at their website. We should all hope or pray or whatever spiritual initiative you think appropriate that the organization will be able to get their goods and supplies to the people of Gaza.

Two articles on religious programming in Arabic on Islam are out this week:

The New York Times profiles Saudi moderate host Ahmad al Shugairi

and

the Los Angeles Times profiles Egyptian moderate Mostafa Hosni.

Both pieces are concerned with a. highlighting a trend within the Arab world toward using television as a religious outreach tool, which, as a highly demand-driven medium, has produced some programming oriented toward making Islam appealing and cool and b. contesting the idea of a Muslim religious figure preaching hatred for the West and jihad (and all of those negative stereotypes about leaders within Islam) as the only type of Muslim religious leader.

Neither article really addresses questions of content. Though the so-called satellite sheikhs clearly address their audiences in a non-traditional manner, how non-traditional (or how Western) are the answers they offer to resolving the questions that inevitably arise when one attempts to live his or her life as a devout Muslim? And, furthermore, though this certainly isn't a question to be resolved in an 800 word newspaper article, does it matter? Does presenting an imperative such as all women should veil in an angry way constitute something more problematic from a foreign policy standpoint than does presenting the same idea in a softer, more sympathetic, relatable style? Does it prompt different attitudes among viewers? It's an interesting question, to me at least.

Regardless, these two articles certainly complement one another and underline the visibility of this trend in the region.

Columbia University, in partnership with the Department of State and some other organizations, including Google and AT&T, is convening a conference from 12/3-12/5 called “the Alliance of Youth Movement” to discuss the ways that Facebook and other social networking websites can provide a launching pad of sorts for nonviolent political resistance. DoS invited 17 organizations from around the world to go and discuss the different ways this kind of work happens and can be effective; one of the groups is Egyptian, one is Lebanese, one is Turkish…. the Middle East is well represented. Observers from countries where the online civil society movement is nascent - for example, Iraq and Afghanistan - will be able to listen and learn from those representing places where the Internet is a more pervasive social force. Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs James Glassman articulates the State Department's dominant interest in this field:

You know, during my confirmation hearings back in January, I made the comment that al-Qaida was eating our lunch on the internet. I actually think that that has changed and that the violent extremist groups that use the internet are using it in the old-fashioned way. They're using it to instruct, to exhort, basically tell people what to do.

We feel that around the world, young people are using the internet to push back against violence in a new way, using social networking, convening large groups to have conversations, basically, to share information. And this is something that al-Qaida and the violent extremist groups cannot stand. They cannot stand criticism. You know, sometimes they'll post videos on YouTube until YouTube takes them down, and they get tremendous amounts of critical comments. They don't want that. Their whole philosophy is based on trying to isolate potential members and keep them away from critical comment, from discussion. So we want to take exactly the opposite tack, and we think that the technology that exists today is on our side; it's not on the extremists' side.
This may be wishful thinking on the part of the State Department, but they certainly are not the only people making the argument that as the internet democratizes ideas, the way that young people expect to participate in movements and organizations has changed. Just this week (or maybe last week …) the Economist reviewed a book called Grown Up Digital by Don Tapscott who makes a similar assertion about digital youth, purely outside the framework of terrorism/extremism/etc. Here's a brief summary:

Mr Tapscott identifies eight norms that define Net Geners, which he believes everyone should take on board to avoid being swept away by the sort of generational tsunami that helped Barack Obama beat John McCain. Net Geners value freedom and choice in everything they do. They love to customise and personalise. They scrutinise everything. They demand integrity and openness, including when deciding what to buy and where to work. They want entertainment and play in their work and education, as well as their social life. They love to collaborate. They expect everything to happen fast. And they expect constant innovation.

However, this doesn't mean that al Qaeda will be pushed off the internet. One would be hard pressed to find evidence that the State Department has outsmarted Islamic fundamentalists with respect to internet usage - the bureaucrats need to update their methods at least as much as would any terrorist organization. The fact that they are attempting to do so is a good sign, at least.

What's a little more curious, though, is the fact that while, when I read this, I think democracy of ideas - democracy as a political system. Glassman, when he announced this, followed the intellectual trajectory democracy of ideas - fight terrorists. Of course he made no comment excluding the possibility of using this sort of effort for more governance-oriented efforts, but I think it's noteworthy that he made that connection immediately. Hopefully the benefit of this networking initiative will extend beyond the war on terror. Here's a promising sign from Glassman that that will be the case:

I will say this, absolutely, that what we are doing in social networking, we in Public Diplomacy — and I don't want to speak for Sean, but I think this is also true in Public Affairs , involves more risk than the conventional approach which is isn't the United States wonderful, here's what we're doing, listen to us. And our feeling is in Public Diplomacy that that is an approach that has limited application in today's world. People want to talk, people want to debate. And we think ultimately that's a comparative advantage that we have over the bad guys. So we want them to talk, we want them to debate. And we are fully aware that the trail that they go down, while I don't think it's going to be violent, may be not exactly what we want to see as far as our policy is concerned. But we think that is well worth the risk.

Mona Makram Ebeid, former member of Parliament and now distinguished lecturer at the American University of Cairo, describes her experience at the Democratic National Convention in Al Ahram. In sum:

To conclude, the convention, as much as I enjoyed being there, was more about a sensation — euphoria — than a speech tackling the country's actual problems that meet with inattention because they pose disagreeable choices in this intensely polarised election atmosphere.

She essentially endorses Obama anyway.