Category Archives: Journalism and Media

The Killing of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki

Journalism and Media, Obama Administration, Terrorism Issue, Yemen, YouTube Watch


For a brief introduction to a report on the killing of the 16-year old son of Anwar al-Awlaki, check out this brief Youtube video. Here are the details on the video:

Watch the full 50-minute interview with Jeremy Scahill at http://owl.li/klnWN. Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was a 16-year-old boy, born in Colorado, who liked listening to hip-hop and posed as a rapper in pictures posted on Facebook. He was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen two weeks after the Obama administration assassinated his father, the U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, in a separate strike. Abdulrahman’s death is a central part of Jeremy Scahill’s new book, “Dirty Wars: The World Is A Battlefield.” While the Obama administration has defended the killing of Anwar, it has never publicly explained why his son was targeted. Scahill reveals CIA Director John Brennan, Obama’s former senior adviser on counterterrorism and homeland security, suspected that the teenager had been killed “intentionally.” “I understand from a former senior official of the administration who worked on this program at the time, that when it became clear that Abdulrahman al-Awlaki had been killed, that President Obama was furious, and that John Brennan, who at the time was … the guy running all of these operations, that Brennan believed or suspected that it was an intentional hit … against this 16-year-old kid,” Scahill says.

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Tom Friedman (not Tom Sawyer) Abroad in Yemen

"Arab Spring", Development, Environment, Journalism and Media, Terrorism Issue, Yemen, Zaydi


Background image is Daniel Beard illustration for the 1899 edition of Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer Abroad

The well traveled journalist Thomas Friedman has popped up in Yemen, but apparently he has yet to find out that no one in Yemen drives a Lexus and Yemenis do not grow olive trees. Friedman has won many awards for his hot-air balloon reporting of events in the Middle East. He reminds me of Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer Abroad, where the American boy hero gets a birds-eye view of Egypt and Palestine without ever escaping being mere “innocents abroad.”

Still, a postcard from Yemen via the New York Times op-ed page, by such a renowned journalist deserves a reading. As usual the journalist himself is one of the main attractions, including starting the very first sentence with an “I” to his own presence. I am not a fan of Friedman’s reportage, even when he claims some kind of inside knowledge about a place in the Middle East, but I do appreciate that two very important points are highlighted in his article: Yemen’s water crisis is a greater threat to instability than any political act and Yemen is poised to “have the best chance to start over – now – if they seize it.” I would only add this: if Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and the U.S. do not keep the Yemenis from seizing and sustaining control of their own future.

Like Friedman, I have long known that Yemen is “a country of breathtaking beauty, with wonderful people” and, yes, it has become a “human development disaster.” But I would not explain this disaster away as simply due to “political mismanagement” by a string of military dictators. The United Nations, the World Bank, the United States, Britain, France, The Netherlands, Japan, China and a rather long list of foreign aid donors have pumped millions upon millions of dollars into a system without achieving any sustainable results. Saudi money has bankrolled the Ministry of Education, introducing a conservative Salafi brand of Islam that is overtly political. Yemeni workers have been treated like slum bums by the Saudis and Gulfies who hire and fire them at will. While Friedman is right to stress that the environmental and economic crisis created by the critical shortage of water, especially for domestic use in cities, is the major problem being faced, it is not “just about water” by any means. The heavens and fountains of the deep could open tomorrow and the mix of old and new ideologies (most coming from outside Yemen) would blossom like spring flowers after a desert rain. Continue reading Tom Friedman (not Tom Sawyer) Abroad in Yemen →

Harun’s Harem Prime Time

Film and Video, Gender and Sexuality, Journalism and Media, Turkey


From left, the women of Turkey’s Building Bridges: Ebru, Ece, Aysegul (who occasionally joins the four hosts on their show), Aylin, and Ceylan; Courtesy of A9 TV

[Webshaykh’s Note: I previously posted a blog commentary on the media beauties of Harun Yahya. A recent article in Slate is on the same group, and I post the start of the article below.]

The Versace Harem
A group of Muslim women with tight shirts, bright lipstick, a feminist mission, and total devotion to a creationist guru.

By Jenna Krajeski. Slate, Thursday, May 2, 2013

I first agreed to meet Ece, Ceylan, Aylin, and Ebru because I didn’t really believe they existed. They host the Turkish talk show Building Bridges and had recently gotten some attention, but not for the interviews. The women look astonishing. They are mostly bottle blonds, save for Ece, who has raven hair. Neon lipstick gives their lips a whole extra dimension. They coordinate outfits. At one of our meetings, they wore brightly colored satin pantsuits and T-shirts with designer brand names that stretched over their chests. What they talk about on Building Bridges—interfaith dialogue, women and Islam, the greatness of Turkey—isn’t particularly sexy, but their outfits are designed to make up for that. They are also devout Muslims—conservative, even—a supposed contradiction that is also the show’s allure.

Guests often appear—usually by Skype—with their eyebrows arched in the manner of a serious person certain he is the victim of a practical joke. But they proceed. The women sweetly dare the guests to suggest the hosts are anything but what they claim to be—activists, political commentators, Muslims—because of how they dress. During one interview, which I observed in the studio, Ceylan right away asked a German diplomat if a “true religious education” could “combat bigotry.” Continue reading Harun’s Harem Prime Time →

Al-Masry al-Youm wa-la-bukra

"Arab Spring", Egypt, Journalism and Media

Goodbye, Al-Masry Al-Youm
by Sarah Carr, Egypt Independent, April 26, 2013

In 2010, Abdel Moneim Saeed, then the chairperson of state mouthpiece Al-Ahram, oversaw an outrageous bit of Photoshopping on the newspaper’s front cover, when US President Barack Obama was replaced with Hosni Mubarak at the head of a group of leaders striding out of a meeting in Washington.

This Photoshop-gate inspired the inevitable deluge of derision on social media. As well as being breathtaking and hilarious in its own right, it was a bit of light relief from the tense and strange months leading up to the revolution and, in particular, another photo that went viral in 2010 thanks to social media — that of the mutilated corpse of Khaled Saeed.

Al-Ahram’s big cheeses remained belligerent in the face of the ridicule. Its editor-in-chief, Osama Saraya, described it as an “expressionist” photograph that gave a “brief, live and true expression of the prominent stance of President Mubarak in the Palestinian issue.”

In a 2010 interview with Al-Ahram Weekly, Abdel Moneim Saeed, meanwhile, insisted that the paper did nothing wrong, condemning the “herd mentality” that dominated the response to the picture and pointed out that the Economist “often employs graphics, pictures and illustrations to make its point.”

According to the weekly, Saeed was particularly piqued by the fact that nobody had bothered to read the report below the Photoshopping, penned by him.

He also lamented that “some in this profession mix opinion with news, thus becoming the jury and the judge. We have a long way to go on the road to advanced journalism.”

Coming from the man who ran Al-Ahram for almost four years, this statement is extraordinary. It is like a mosquito complaining about buzzing noises. Al-Ahram, like virtually all state press in Egypt, has wildly — shall we say, “expressionist” — content. It gives itself the license to report the news as it appears in the daydreams of whoever is Egypt’s most influential player on any given day, and the public purse funds this. Continue reading Al-Masry al-Youm wa-la-bukra →

Damned to be Devout

Central Asia, Islam in America, Journalism and Media, Terrorism Issue

Source

In much of the Western world Sunday is traditionally the day devoted to religion (and picnics and sports and going to the beach when the sun shines, etc.). Even those who are not devoted to a particular religion find something to devote themselves to. So today I would like to devote my comments to the very idea of what it means to be “devout.” The tragedy orchestrated two weeks ago by the Boston Bombers adds yet another milestone to those who see Islam as a religion that promotes violence. Yet the two brothers who senselessly took several lives and forever altered the lives of many others appear to have almost no real knowledge of their religion. I am struck by the widespread use in the media of the term “devout” to describe the older brother Tamerlane. I am not at all surprised that an Islamophobe like Pamela Geller writes that “Again and again we see that Muslims who commit jihad violence are pious and devout.” Geller was commenting on an AP report that Tamerlane’s aunt had said he was a “devout Muslim” who prayed five times a day. The phrase went viral in the news media in part due to this sound bite but also because it reflected a common stereotype.

It seems that all it takes to be labeled “devout” as a Muslim is to pray five times a day, believe that 72 virgins are waiting anxiously to serve you in Paradise and be hooked on Internet terrorist sites. I don’t remember anyone saying that Terry Jones, the lunatic preacher who says he has a divine mission to burn Qurans, is a “devout” Christian. The Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik is usually labeled a “right-wing extremist” yet his writings show a profound regard for Christendom über alles. A person can be “devoted” to anything, including evil, but if I think of a “devout” Christian, Jew or Hindu, I think of someone who has internalized the devotional aspects of their religion due to an insight into the theology. Continue reading Damned to be Devout →

“It sure would be nice to have a drone up there”

Anthropology/Sociology, Journalism and Media, Terrorism Issue

If George Orwell had lived to see how 1984 plays out in 2013, he would no doubt shake his head, marveling at how a novel he wrote in 1949 could come so close to reality. Senator Lindsay Graham, a South Carolina Republican (who may not gulp down Tea Party rhetoric but surely likes to sip some of its poison), was interviewed yesterday in the Washington Post before the second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing was caught. His intent, as reported in the article, seemed more to downgrade the libertarian Rand Paul than to offer any kind of constructive comment on the unfolding tragedy of the bombing.

In his senate filibuster, Senator Paul had argued that America is not a battlefield, so Graham used his senatorial perch to argue “It’s a battlefield because the terrorists think it is.” Really? When exactly did a terrorist act, not an attack from another country or an armed insurrection from within, define what a “battlefield” is? Yorktown was a battlefield in 1781; Gettysburg in 1863; Normandy in 1944. If the sadistic setting of bombs targeted at civilians proves that America is a battlefield, then what about Waco in 1993 or Oklahoma City in 1995 or even the hijackings that led to the destruction of the Twin Towers in 2001? When a battle is fought in war there are battlefields stained with the blood of combatants and often civilians as well; when a terrorist detonates a bomb it is a criminal act no less than when a disturbed 20-year old walks into an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut and shoots 20 children and 6 adults, after having killed his own mother. If every act of violence defines a battlefield, there can be no peace anywhere. Continue reading “It sure would be nice to have a drone up there” →

Interpreting Shariah Law Across The Centuries

Film and Video, Islamic Law, Journalism and Media, Miniatures


An unhappy wife is complaining to the Qadi about her husband’s impotence, 18th century.

Fresh Air, NPR, April 16, 2012

Sadakat Kadri is an English barrister, a Muslim by birth and a historian. His first book, The Trial, was an extensive survey of the Western criminal judicial system, detailing more than 4,000 years of courtroom antics.

In his new book, Heaven on Earth, Kadri turns his sights east, to centuries of Shariah law. The first parts of his book describe how early Islamic scholars codified — and then modified — the code that would govern how people lead their daily lives. Kadri then turns to the modern day, reflecting on the lawmakers who are trying to prohibit Shariah law in a dozen states, as well as his encounters with scholars and imams in India, Pakistan, Syria, Egypt, Turkey and Iran — the very people who strictly interpret the religious and moral code of Islam today. And some of those modern interpretations, he says, are much more rigid — and much more draconian — than the code set forth during the early years of Islamic law. Continue reading Interpreting Shariah Law Across The Centuries →