Arab Spring 3.0
What’s more revolutionary in the Middle East: Facebook or porn?
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This is not the kind of revolution that sends people into the streets or topples governments overnight. But it is a revolution in everyday life, and it is gradually but surely subverting repressive moral regimes across the Middle East.
No one understands this more clearly than radical Islamists. Grand ayatollahs in Iraq and Iran have issued fatwas against using satellite TV to watch what Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani of Iraq calls “pictures of people with little clothes on, songs, and anything that weakens religious observance or causes intellectual and moral decline.”
Muhammad Imran Attari, chairman of the leading Islamic educational organization in Pakistan, explained in a recent fatwa precisely what is at stake in the cultural war: “Watching TV is an addiction that is hard to get rid of. It destroys morality and modifies your ideas in an imperceptible way to the points of view presented on it. TV is destroying Islam in particular. Anti-Islamic elements are using it to lure Muslims away from the Islamic ideology. As a satanic instrument, it tries to present Islam in a modern way, thus distorting it.”
On this front, the news is not on the mullahs’ side. Since 2000 the number of pan-Arab satellite TV channels has grown from 10 to 600. Of the current 600, only 45 offer religious content.
The desperation among Islamists is evident in their increasingly bloody rhetoric against the purveyors of popular culture. Last year the most senior judge in Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Salih Ibn al-Luhaydan, announced that it was permissible to kill the owners of satellite TV channels that broadcast “evil” and “diabolical” programs promoting “debauchery.” Taking matters upon himself, Mohammed Abdel-Al of the terrorist Popular Resistance Committee in Lebanon declared jihad against Madonna and Britney Spears. “If I meet these whores,” he said, “I will have the honor—I repeat, I will have the honor—to be the first one to cut their heads off if they keep spreading their satanic culture against Islam.”
Americans who produce the cultural goods that Ghonim considers trivial should take pride in knowing that they are doing more for peace and freedom than anything foreign aid or the 82nd Airborne could do. Thanks to Wikileaks, we now know that even American diplomats in the Middle East understand that the flow of our lowbrow exports through new communication channels might very well prove decisive in the War on Terror.
In a secret cable revealed in 2010 by Julian Assange’s website, officials in the U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia complained that the al-Hurra news channel, which has received $500 million in U.S. government funding and features interviews with American politicians, is far less popular among Saudis than satellite broadcasts of Desperate Housewives, sexy movies, and celebrity talk shows. The communiqué, titled “David Letterman: Agent of Influence,” argues that American popular culture is doing more to persuade Saudi youth to reject violent jihad than U.S. government propaganda.
“It’s still all about the war of ideas here, and the American programming on MBC [which shows American movies and sitcoms] and Rotana [a channel partly owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation] is winning over ordinary Saudis in a way that al-Hurra and other U.S. propaganda never could,” the cable states. “Saudis are now very interested in the outside world and everybody wants to study in the U.S. if they can. They are fascinated by U.S. culture in a way they never were before.” A Saudi media executive reported to the embassy that U.S. programming on MBC had become the most popular in Saudi Arabia. According to the cable, he “told us that this programming is also very popular in remote, conservative corners of the country, where he said ‘you no longer see Bedouins, but kids in Western dress’ who are now interested in the outside world.”
Satellite television and the Internet certainly provided those Bedouins with a greater ability to see the outside world, but they did not make the kids like what they saw. Many of the political reforms sought by Ghonim and his comrades are undoubtedly popular, and if achieved will limit the power of governments to do harm. But far more people in Egypt and the Middle East are reaching through the new portals for the kinds of pleasures and freedoms that earnest political activists like Ghonim shun and mullahs and dictators rightly fear. This is what’s moving the earth every day, not just days of protests or elections. Call it Revolution 3.0.
Thaddeus Russell is the author of A Renegade History of the United States (Free Press).
Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time.
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OT:
Watching The Breakfast Club, right now.
Were people really that into Molly Ringwald's pussy back in the 80s?
Can't say my generation did much better. No telling how many times I fantasized about Christina Ricci's asscrack after watching The Ice Strom.
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or The Ice Storm, whatever.
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Yo Christina Ricci,
Imma wreck dat azz.Love,
Heroic Mulatto -
Is that the spy-spoof porno that Sen. Thurmond just prior to his retirement?
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pr0n: saving the world.
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Soft power works, but it only goes so far. These revolutions are all too often hijacked: The Mullahs of Iran did it, Putin did it in Russia, the Lindsay Grahams of America did it to the Tea Party, etc.
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Thanks to modern technology, he writes, "the world is less hospitable to authoritarian regimes"
I don't know, the world still seems pretty keen on Obama.
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I don't know, the world still seems pretty keen on Obama.
there is never a shortage of global support for a president whose seeming mission is to diminish the country at every turn. Obama does for the old guard of Europe and a few other places what they can only fantasize doing for themselves.
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The Middle East is still far too conservative so yes, they need a Larry Flynt. They can't have ours since he still has work to do.
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"They can't have ours."
Fuck you, you protectionist, nationalistic statist!
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What on earth does Larry Flynt have left to do? hardcore porn is more available now than in his wildest dreams. He beat Falwell's ass like a drum and scored huge 1st Amendment points. Let the poor old geezer get some rest, he's done more for freedom than most people ever will.
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I want him to out some smug Santorum type with his million dollar rewards.
There are some real possibilities in the Senate. And he wants to do it. Revenge lasts forever.
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I want him to out some smug Santorum type with his million dollar rewards.
Who's "Santorum"?
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Obligatory 1980's music ref.
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"Oh, he's very popular Ed. The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, dickheads - they all adore him. They think he's a righteous dude."
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Debbie Does Dhubai.
Behind the Greenzone Door.
Deep Goat. -
Nice.
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There's a Blue-Eyed Devil in Miss Al Jaber joke in there somewhere. Yeah, doesn't quite work. Good meme though.
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The best ever porn title based on a real non-porn movie title: "Black Cocks Down". I have no idea if it has actually been made.
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"Romancing the Bone" is pretty damn funny.
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, "the world is less hospitable to authoritarian regimes"
They said the same thing when the printing press came about.
Funny that, how authoritarian regimes can use a printing press to solidify their power.
The way we can keep these regimes from using the internet in their favor is to introduce Net Neutrality regulations.
That way the government can shut down or neuter any attempt by powerful individuals or network providers who favor one type of traffic or another.
When the government has this power over the internet, only then will the people be truly free.
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That was a nice "Tony" channel.
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His self-description presents a man who has spent most of his adult life on the Internet but who has never visited a site that was not political or religious. This would place Ghonim within a tiny, perhaps even nonexistent portion of Internet users.
So he's sort of like the Obama of techno-geeks.
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I find this stuff amusing when I read Raimondo who is always complaining about America's decadent infantile, violent and vulgar culture. I guess he has a point since internet porn and piracy doesn't seem to be stopping the growth of government or support for the welfare/warfare state.
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I understand the sentiments from the author, but I read somewhere that only 10% of Eygyptions have internet access, so it is a bit of a stretch to claim that facebook or online porn caused a revolution.
As for the satellite tv, anyone who has been to Egypt will concur that they are everywhere.
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Ruby's videos, which often feature the singer in bed with male models, spurred Mubarak's Egyptian Censorship Committee in 2005 to ban music videos "which feature sexual connotations and females barely dressed." Several Egyptian bloggers have argued that the crackdown on Ruby's videos, which were ubiquitous in cafes, shops, and discos, spelled the end of the Mubarak regime. "It was an issue of a cultural revolution," writes Nahed Barakat, a prominent blogger in Cairo.
Oh Ruuuuuuby, don't take your love to town...
But seriously, while I'm definitely willing to entertain this alt-theory on what kicked off Sprintime for Arabs, how does that square with the immediate and unambiguous turn towards arguably more conservative political leanings with groups like the Muslim Brotherhood? Were the MB going to loosen up the terms on Ruby's performances?
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mostly, I think Arabs involved in the uprising once again took advantage of American naivete and the fanciful thinking that they are just like us, they want the same things, etc etc. Hence, a flowery name like Arab Spring, easily tied to previous movements toward democracy.
Only problem was the original spring actually wanted democratic representative govt. The Arab world had zero experience with such. The MB was the most organized group outside of Mubarak and the best poised to fill the ensuing vacuum.
I'll keep asking: what does the Egyptian military know that either no one else knows or no one else will acknowledge that is causing them to hang on to power? We are always told how the military is held in high regard by the people. What does it know about the MB that others don't know or won't admit?
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What the military brass know is how bad a position they'll be in if they lose power. I don't think it's any more complicated than that.
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Doing a little research on my own, here's an old, pre-Springtime for Arabs article on Ruby's video ban:
When Ruby's first music video came out, islamist politician Hamdi Hassan, of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, complained to Egypt's Parliament that Ruby's performance, and the gyrations of other pop stars, "went against the morals of Muslim society".
More organized or not, if we accept that the elections were fair and democratic, they went to the one party which was centrally responsible for Ruby's ouster.
I'll keep asking: what does the Egyptian military know that either no one else knows or no one else will acknowledge that is causing them to hang on to power? We are always told how the military is held in high regard by the people. What does it know about the MB that others don't know or won't admit?
I have a theory. The military plays the role of an upsetting force.
When a regime becomes unpopular with the people, the military steps in and nudges the regime out-- but further cementing power for itself.
The military doesn't have to be in continuous control of the country-- because they have the biggest guns. If and when the Islamists get out of hand, the military will be there again, and the cycle will continue without ever ushering in true western-style democracy. Which I still argue is nearly impossible in a strongly Islamist culture.
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What spelled the end of the regime wasn't censorship of some silly Kesha-type poptart. It was the Egyptian military refusing to clamp down on the protestors from the beginning. Mubarak lost his Praetorian guard, and thus, his power. The new government in Egypt only survives because the military allows it to do so.
That (and the lack of foreign military intervention, a la Libya) is why Assad is still sitting pretty in Damascus, and why the Iranian uprising a couple years ago sputtered out.
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and why the Iranian uprising a couple years ago sputtered out.
According to the Iranian government, they're still in the middle of their revolution. Kind of the same way the Castro regime is still fighting theirs...
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Congratulations, buttfuck. You started a Facebook page that ostensibly ousted the old boss... so his twin brother could take the reins. Voting for your totalitarian head of state doesn't make him any less totalitarian. Democracy =/= freedom. And as much as we'd all like to pretend otherwise, those protesters who threw out Mubarak are no more interested in freedom than he was. At best, they are neo-Marxists who want an Islamic nanny state - Europe with a crescent, if you will (but I repeat myself, I guess). At worst they are authoritarian theocrats. Anybody who thinks the Arab Spring is about freedom for Arabs is an ignorant sucker.
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