Ramadan times
Just like Egypt's Ramadan TV programmes, the Arab press this week was predictable but worth looking at all the same. Dina Ezzat sampled both
Ramadan is not identified in the Arab world with many activities. It is usually the quiet month of the year, quieter than even the hot summer holiday months of July and August. This tranquillity often ends up with fewer events to report on and fewer commentators who are willing to offer challenging ideas and views.
Many papers dedicate sections to Ramadan-type pages that offer laid-back holiday mood articles and features, including several articles on soap operas and chit-chat talk shows for a dedicated Arab audience.
Diaspora is the name of one soap opera produced and aired for this year's Ramadan by the Hizbullah- affiliated Lebanese satellite station Al-Manar. Diaspora depicts the evolution of the Zionist movement, starting from 1812 to 1948 with the Palestinian nakba, or catastrophe. The 26-part drama offers a detailed account of Zionist attempts to control Arab land at any price, no matter how brutal.
The show was subject to considerable debate in the Arab press this week. The reason is all too obvious: the US State Department objected to the production, on the usual anti-Semitic grounds, and requested that it be cancelled. According to the papers, there was hardly an Arab government that disobeyed. Even state-controlled Syrian TV, which reportedly co-financed the production, chose not to broadcast Diaspora without so much as providing an explanation to a much displeased audience. This raised many question marks by commentators who argued that irrespective of the quality of the show, Diaspora was all but banned from the Arab airwaves out of fear by Arab governments which are being extra careful these days not to offend the Americans because they have learnt -- in some cases the hard way -- that the price for insubordination is high.
The debate also prompted several newspapers to run interviews with the producers who strongly denied any anti-Semitic intentions. Throughout the week, the name of Nasser Akhdar, assistant managing editor of Al-Manar, kept cropping up in the Arab press. Akhdar's comments were almost always the same. On Thursday, the daily Al-Bayan of the United Arab Emirates quoted Akhdar as saying that the show "is not meant to be critical of Jews. Rather, it is meant to shed light on the Zionist movement and the atrocious crimes it committed to achieve its objectives. The horrible Zionist movement thrives on policies of intrigues and wars. We just wanted to reveal these policies."
Akhdar and other Al-Manar producers were also in many Arab papers for shunning the US and Israel's predictable tactic of labelling any anti-Israeli production or book anti-Semitic.
Tash Ma Tash (No big deal) is another TV production that caught the attention of the Arab press during the early days of Ramadan. A popular Saudi TV drama that has been running for some years, Tash Ma Tash is known for its sense of humour, even in countries where the Saudi accent is not easily understood.
This Ramadan, however, Tash Ma Tash was identified with a much more significant matter: women's rights in Saudi Arabia, an issue that is largely taboo in Saudi society. This year, the producers of Tash Ma Tash decided not to play it safe. They challenged their society by criticising, albeit subtly, the many restrictions forced upon Saudi women who, for example, are forced to be escorted by their husbands or male relatives they cannot marry, wherever they go. Saudi and other Arab papers ran several articles about the ongoing debate within Saudi society. Many Saudi ulama, or religious scholars, called on their government to take the show off the air for violating Islamic rules and accepted social norms.
Saudi Arabia was the subject of several other features and news reports this week. On Thursday, the London-based daily Asharq Al-Awsat ran an article on the decision by the Saudi Ministry of Awqaf (religious affairs and endowments), to broadcast the evening prayers from Mecca every night in Ramadan with simultaneous English subtitles. "Every night during the evening prayers in Ramadan a good part of the Qur'an is read, so we therefore found it useful to translate them into English," Saudi Minister of Awqaf Saleh Bin Abdul-Aziz was quoted in Asharq Al-Awsat.
The fact that the Saudi government decided to provide a translation of the Qur'an on its national TV and to also tolerate criticism of the lack of Saudi women's rights are not isolated or haphazard incidents. They are part of an overall march towards reform that the Saudi royal family has been on for the last several months.
On Wednesday, the London-based independent daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi ran an article about such reform efforts. The story that appeared under the headline, "Difficult times of reform in Saudi Arabia", argued that while the Riyadh regime must reform to accommodate national and international outcries over its rigid social rules, it still had to worry about how far and how fast it could go with reforms. "Saudi Arabia (society and government) does not speak with one voice over the issue of reform," Saudi Islamist activist Abdullah Hamid was quoted in Al-Quds Al-Arabi as saying. According to Hamid, "It is Crown Prince Abdullah who is at the helm of reform... but there are others who still have to make up their minds."
Ramadan accounts were also forthcoming from the Iraqi capital. Ramadan was marked in Baghdad by an escalated level of resistance to the US occupation. Stories and pictures of attacks against US troops were a daily item on the front and inside pages of the Arab press this week. Many papers described the attacks as the worst since the war officially ended more than seven months ago.
Commentaries on developments on Iraq this week were highly predictable. They included what has become typical criticism of the US administration in dealing with post-war Iraq.
Of these, Abdel-Bari Atwan's article typified the mood. On Monday, the editor-in-chief of Al-Quds Al-Arabi argued that "the Americans got themselves trapped and now they must find a way out." According to Atwan, the Americans "cannot beat an enemy that is resisting so hard. Nor can they attract reconstruction funds or for that matter any other type of assistance. They are sustaining a financial burden and a high number of causalities and are completely helpless in trying to defend themselves or the Iraqis who they came to occupy."
Like many other commentators in the Arab press, Atwan said that for the Americans "Iraq is going to be a worse experience than Vietnam." And like many other writers, he predicted that the US presidential elections would arrive with the US president "caught in the Iraqi mess".
But stories coming from Iraq also included some human interest features about how Iraqis are marking Ramadan. Again on Monday, Al-Quds Al-Arabi published a feature from Baghdad about how Ramadan was being celebrated in Iraq this year. "The mussaharati faces the dangers of Baghdad's dangerous streets," was the headline of the story. Reported from Baghdad, the story featured the daily routine of the mussaharati (the pre-dawn caller who notifies Muslims to have their pre-fasting meal known as sohour).
"The American troops were terrified when they first saw me beating my drum to wake people up to eat their meal. They thought I was heralding an attack. It was only when they spoke to Iraqi police that they understood what I was doing," said Mouzahim Al-Meshadani, the mussaharati of downtown Baghdad.
For Iraq, and atypical of most Arab capitals, Ramadan was marked by significant political commotion that included several key meetings. Of these, two gatherings received particular attention. One took place in Iraq and brought together a large group of Iraqi Christians who declared their intention to seek a defined share in the wealth and power of their country. The other took place in the Syrian capital and brought together the foreign ministers of Egypt and several of Iraq's neighbours. The Arab press did not react kindly to either meeting. The first was seen as the beginning of civil strife in Iraq while the second was viewed as yet another inconclusive meeting which failed to deal with an increasingly complex Iraqi situation.
Far from the meetings and daily Ramadan features, the daily Kuwaiti Al-Watan gave space to an issue that crops up in the Arab press every once in a while: the Judisation of parts of Iraq. Under the headline, "Beware of the Judisation of Iraq", Eid Al-Manei criticised Arab countries for failing to react to an increasingly conspicuous Israeli presence in many parts of Iraq. Al-Manei wrote: "To allow Israelis to buy large tracts of land in Iraq is to tolerate a clear-cut and aggressive attack on Iraqi sovereignty."
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 6 - 12 November 2003 (Issue No. 663)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/663/pr2.htm