Shock Me Harder

Newspapers, TV Stations and Websites are all screaming very loudly for our attention. The trick is to know the difference between good and bad sensationalism.

I’m sure all of you browsing through the Lebanese/Arab news outlets are noticing strange things happening: Alarbiya’s website is now having a story-du-jour about sex. (My favorite being the one where an Imam issues a fatwa condemning Muslims who have sex with all their clothes off. Apparently, that entitles the wife to a divorce). Albalad, A Lebanese Newspaper, has abandoned its broadsheet format for the scrawny tabloid look, complete with the dramatic combinations of striking imagery and headlines. New TV, a Lebanese satellite T.V. station has exhausted all metaphors, similes, dramatizations, hyperboles that could be available to the Arabic language. Their news bulletins are sounding more like ancient Greek epics (I’m wondering what’s next, background music?). Lebanon’s Future TV has set up a show called “Sabaya”, in which a bunch of very attractive young ladies chat away the 30 minutes just before the news bulletin (coincidence?). Naharnet, an offspring of the rather stern Annahar (a Lebanese newspaper), has once headlined: “Northern High Noon Showdown Decides Who Will Rule Lebanon”.

Increased competition and cheaper access to other news sources is the basic cause of this newfound attention-seeking. But are these attempts a senseless assault on news objectivity, or a legitimate instrument of marketing? The answer is: It depends.

I would differentiate between two kinds of approaches: the first is restructuring News, where a bolder format is adopted, but the content remains intact. The second is the Sugar-coated pill approach, where you surround news with sex and freebies.

Aljazeera’s new website structure and Albalad’s new Tabloid format are good examples of the first kind. Both outlets realized that in a world with too much information, readers will be attracted to simple covers with loud messages and convenient access. I personally am a fan of the new Albalad, it’s much easier to read in crowded spaces.

But the moral problem lies squarely in the second approach. where a sex-sells strategy is shamelessly being used to promote otherwise serious coverage. It reduces respectability, but it works so well people will often ignore mediocre and subjective content.

It is sad that news providers that have actually lost journalists in duty, would have to use such cheap tricks to get their messages across. Before they’ll know it, they’ll become just another Elaph.

Terrorist Philistines

The Shadow of Bamiyan


The only time I felt as sickened as when I saw the destroyed Golden Mosque in Samarra, yesterday was when I watched, live on Aljazeera, the destruction of two huge Buddha statues in Afghanistan by the Taliban back in March 2001.

Honestly, I don’t care about the religious significance of the Artifacts. What I can’t understand is: Why can’t the terrorist appreciate the beauty and magnificence of works of art that are thousands of years old and belong to our collective human heritage? Don’t they understand how invaluable such works are?

Do you think it's the same dogma that guided both horrible incidents?

American Racism

An attempt by US congressmen to block a Dubai-based company from running American ports smacks of racism


How odd would it be, if an American family decides to stop eating at a fast food joint because the Burger flipper is Saudi? If most of the Sept 11 highjackers where Saudis, the logic would go, wouldn’t the flipper in question be tempted to poison their Burgers?

American congressmen today are behaving just like that hypothetical family.

In a nutshell, a British company P&O, which used to run six American ports, was bought up by another company, DP World, which runs ports all over the world. The company is one of the world’s largest ports operators and is expected to run the American ports more efficiently than their predecessors. But there’s a problem: DP World is based in Dubai, which is –horrors!- an Arab city.

Never mind Dubai is one of the world’s fastest growing economies and best managed cities with the lowest crime rate in the world. Never mind that all the ports DP World runs are certified by the International Security Port System. Never mind that DP World has satisfied all the necessary regulatory approvals for the deal to be passed. All that matters to the American congressmen, who want to block the deal, is that two of the September 11 highjackers come from the United Arab Emirates.

Politicians from both sides of the spectrum are joining this nonsense. Of course, they are entitled to scrutinize the deal before approving it, but it is very telling that they are making a public fuss out of it, to get cheap political support from security-obsessed constituencies.

Who's That Man?

Lebanese political experts are finding it very difficult to classify this new-coming species to Lebanese politics; a breed previously thought impossible was miraculously engineered by the latest scientists in neighboring countries...

The Deceived Matchmaker

A reader, David, reflects calmly and candidly on why things are not working out between Aoun and Hariri...

Hopefully Saad Hariri will read GMA's statement regarding the 1-Year anniversary of Rafic Hariri's assasination, and take a moment to reflect on why things are the way they are between the FPM and the FM, and wonder whether or not they had to end up this way. Look how much things have changed from 12 months ago!

It seems as if it was just last week that the assasination occured and most Lebanese were united more than they ever have been since the time of the French mandate occupation. One year later, and it is almost as if March 14th never occured!!

I am personally distraught at all of this, because I can just imagine Bashar and the gang loving every minute of Lebanese disunity. They always tried to show that the Lebanese were so un-united that they could never agree and rule themselves.
We have proven them wrong in many ways, but in others, we sure have a long way to go.

Things between the FPM and the FM didn't have to end up the way they did, the only problem is trying to figure out why things ended up this way. I still remember one year ago how we all thought that the FPM and FM had many things in common, starting with the fact that the FM was supposedly the most "secular" in outlook compared to all the other major Lebanese political groups, and I still remember many FMers praising the FPM for being among the first to hit the streets, to the point where they were even saying that they were learning from the FPM about how to be as organized and efficient as us!
SO what the heck happened?!?

Was it Walid Jumblat that was responsible for the schism between the FPM and the FM, because he heard GMA talk about an audit, and then freaked out that his history would be revealed?

Or was it the Qornet Shehwan gathering, that feared for their seats, now that the FPM was going to enter the electoral race?

Or was it some of the advisors of Saad Hariri, that didn't like GMA and the FPM for a number of various reasons, and figured that if their "plan" was put into action, the FPM would be crushed during election time? Or did they also fear our electoral weight? Or did they get greedy and want the whole pot?

All I know, is that the FM turned around, did some things that were not that "nice" to the FPM, and their media went on the rampage against us.
It is still sad to see this situation, knowing that we have a country to build, hopefully together, and knowing that we still have enemies out their that want to harm Lebanon.

IT's a shame to see things have turned out this way, for whatever reason, because I believe that things should have ended up that the FPM would be participating en masse on Feb. 14th.

Now the question is, can things be changed, before their is too much animosity between the two sides? Ya FM wake up before it is too late!

Better Than March 14

Forget the pessimists. Today, we broke the record.

**Update: you can find great pictures here

I woke up in the morning to watch T.V, and I was surprised to see the huge amount of people flocking down to martyr square in Beirut to mark one year of the Assassination of ex Prime Minister Rafic al Hariri. Let me put it this way: I come for Tripoli, and except for my old Grandmother and my pregnant sister, every single person I know has gone to the demo.

The problem is, the internet surfers are significantly under-informed about the scale of today’s demo. To people with satellite TV, it’s a completely different story. Aljazeera, for its now well known agenda, doesn’t even mention the demo on its webpage (11:00 GMT). Lebanese bloggers are not writing much because they left their pcs and joined. Worldwide media are not posting aerial pics. But the fact of the matter is, the people who came down to February 14, 2006, seem to outnumber those who came on March 14, 2005, considered back then to be Lebanon’s largest ever demo.

The event is unfolding and eventually better pictures will make their way to the net, but trust me on this one: if you had a TV, you would have been amazed.

Saad Goes to Beirut

Let's hope he's well prepared...

Prophet Margins

Did you know that for just $18.99, you get the chance to buy the best selling Tshirt of the year?

[I will not post the picture, but if you chose to see it, click here]

Alright, I saw this comming. I knew the American conservatives are not just going to sit idle. Muslim masses greatly underestimated the sense of defiance westerners have...

This is the catch-phrase:

Yet another example of that so-called 'religion of peace'. As much as these people burn and desecrate the symbols Americans hold dear, what are these folks cryin' about. Celebrate your right to free speech and wear this shirt

Commentary on the Tshirt here.

Well Put

Sorry guys for focusing too much on the Danish cartoons, but my feeling is that what is going on is very serious and is exposing a large problem I always felt existed.

Also, I’m a bit disillusioned with our, shall I say, disappointing politics in Lebanon, and although I’m back in the mood for writing, I’m not yet in the mood for putting petty politicking up on a pedestal.

David Brooks has always been one of my favorite New York Times OP-ed columnists. His last article on the cartoon war is by far the best I’ve read on how the western intellectuals feel about the Islamist’s disproportionate reaction. The piece is sharply mordant, intelligent and strong, just ignore the last paragraph about Democracy and tell me what you think...

February 9, 2006
Drafting Hitler
By DAVID BROOKS

You want us to know how you feel. You in the Arab European League published a cartoon of Hitler in bed with Anne Frank so we in the West would understand how offended you were by those Danish cartoons. You at the Iranian newspaper Hamshahri are holding a Holocaust cartoon contest so we'll also know how you feel.

Well, I saw the Hitler-Anne Frank cartoon: the two have just had sex and Hitler says to her, "Write this one in your diary, Anne." But I still don't know how you feel. I still don't feel as if I should burn embassies or behead people or call on God or bin Laden to exterminate my foes. I still don't feel your rage. I don't feel threatened by a sophomoric cartoon, even one as tasteless as that one.

At first I sympathized with your anger at the Danish cartoons because it's impolite to trample on other people's religious symbols. But as the rage spread and the issue grew more cosmic, many of us in the West were reminded of how vast the chasm is between you and us. There was more talk than ever about a clash of civilizations. We don't just have different ideas; we have a different relationship to ideas.

We in the West were born into a world that reflects the legacy of Socrates and the agora. In our world, images, statistics and arguments swarm around from all directions. There are movies and blogs, books and sermons. There's the profound and the vulgar, the high and the low.

In our world we spend our time sifting and measuring, throwing away the dumb and offensive, e-mailing the smart and the incisive. We aim, in Michael Oakeshott's words, to live amid the conversation — "an endless unrehearsed intellectual adventure in which, in imagination, we enter a variety of modes of understanding the world and ourselves and are not disconcerted by the differences or dismayed by the inconclusiveness of it all."

We believe in progress and in personal growth. By swimming in this flurry of perspectives, by facing unpleasant facts, we try to come closer and closer to understanding.

But you have a different way. When I say you, I don't mean you Muslims. I don't mean you genuine Islamic scholars and learners. I mean you Islamists. I mean you young men who were well educated in the West, but who have retreated in disgust from the inconclusiveness and chaos of our conversation. You've retreated from the agora into an exaggerated version of Muslim purity.

You frame the contrast between your world and our world more bluntly than we outsiders would ever dare to. In London the protesters held signs reading "Freedom Go to Hell," "Exterminate Those Who Mock Islam," "Be Prepared for the Real Holocaust" and "Europe You Will Pay, Your 9/11 Is on the Way." In Copenhagen, an imam declared, "In the West, freedom of speech is sacred; to us, the prophet is sacred" — as if the two were necessarily opposed.

Our mind-set is progressive and rational. Your mind-set is pre-Enlightenment and mythological. In your worldview, history doesn't move forward through gradual understanding. In your worldview, history is resolved during the apocalyptic conflict between the supernaturally pure jihadist and the supernaturally evil Jew.

You seize on any shred — even a months-old cartoon from an obscure Danish paper — to prove to yourself that the Jew and the crusader are on the offensive, that the apocalyptic confrontation is at hand. You invent primitive stories — like the one about Jews who kill children for their blood — to reinforce your image of Jewish evil. You deny the Holocaust because if the Jews were as powerful as you say, they would never have allowed it to happen.

In my world, people search for truth in their own diverse ways. In your world, the faithful and the infidel battle for survival, and words and ideas and cartoons are nothing more than weapons in that war.

So, of course, what started in Denmark ended up for you with Hitler, the Holocaust and the Jew. But in your overreaction this past week, your defensiveness is showing. Democracy is coming to your region, and democracy brings the conversation. Mainstream leaders like Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani are embracing democracy and denouncing your riots as "misguided and oppressive.".

You fundamentalists have turned yourselves into a superpower of dysfunction, demanding our attention week after week. But it is hard to intimidate people forever into silence, to bottle up the conversation, to lock the world into an epic war only you want. While I don't share your rage, I do understand your panic.

More Propheteering

So Muslims thought Danish Cartoons were offensive? Wait till they meet Mustafa Shag…


When Muslims started protesting worldwide against the Danish cartoons, I had a thought: What if all the newspapers in the world got defiant and decided to spite Muslims and republish the cartoons? Whose products will we boycott?

Think of human nature. let’s say you know someone that gets terribly upset when you say the word “cake”. Of course, since we all respect him, we’ll try to steer away from the c word. But there’s always a prankster out there that relishes in such opportunities. He’ll start bombarding him with pictures of cakes, actual cakes, cake recipes, cake songs, cake videos, strippers in cakes...you get the picture.

This is why we shouldn’t expect Ann Summer’s new Mustapha Shag inflatable doll to be the last of such pranks.

The doll, designed to be “Your own inflatable escort for your Hen Night adventures”, has already sparked a controversy in the UK. For those of you who don’t know, Mustafa is the other name of the prophet Muhammad, coincidence?

The Independent wrote about this new controversy today, perhaps trying to lead the way into the next big thing. It wrote about how the Manchester Mosque has written to the sex-shop asking them to withdraw the product:

"You have no idea how much hurt, anguish, and disgust this obnoxious phrase ["Mustafa Shag"] has caused to Muslim men, women and children," reads their letter.

"We are asking you to please relent on compassionate grounds, and have our Most Reverend Prophet's Name "Mustafa" (Peace Be Upon Him) and the afflicted word 'shag' removed as soon as possible."

Ann Summer of course was quick to respond:

"We don't want to offend, but this feels like political correctness gone mad," she said. "If anyone has a better name for a blow-up doll, please let us know."

Does anyone have a better name? Here’s my problem with the Mustafa Shag: Mustapha should be spelled with a “ph”!

Say The Truce

The Beirut riots over the “satanic” cartoons have caused strong feelings in many Lebanese. Most of us are angry, afraid, and utterly shameful. People like Johnny, however, are trying to see what we, and the world, can learn from these tragic events. In his contribution to The Beirut Spring, Johnny suggests that the world can learn from how Beirut managed to be a Muslim/Christian melting pot.

As Eastern Christians living in an Islamic environment, we are all aware of the sanctity of some basic Islamic values and beliefs. Among those are the one concerning the drawing of the Prophet: Not only portraying him is prohibited, the thought of putting him in a cartoon is certainly an offense that no one would even dare think of doing.

We are aware of it, because we are surrounded by Muslims. We had our hard times dealing with each other and we also had our good times.

Although the image that the world is getting from us today - an image of a divided people - is bad, Lebanon's unity, ever since Prime Minister Hariri's assassination, has never been as consolidated as it is today.

A bunch of non-believers have insulted Islamic believers by waging their barbaric acts against the Danish Consulate in Beirut as well as casting stones at a Maronite church, all that under Islamic flags.

The nobility and righteousness of any cause becomes void when it exceeds peaceful demonstration and becomes violent and extreme.

However, the Lebanese people are united today to condemn these acts. They are also united in condemning the cartoons.

Here's how Lebanon can become a source of truce for the whole world.

Lebanon has been a good example to prove that there is a clash of civilisations. Today Lebanon can be a counter example to prove that there can be a harmony of civilisations.

Danish embassies and consulates are being attacked in Islamic countries. Danish products are being boycotted in these countries as well. Meanwhile Christian churches have been burnt, attacked and bombed in Kosovo and Iraq during the past year. And today, Lebanon is added to the list.

Since the barbaric acts in Beirut have been condemned unanimously, Lebanon can now offer this sign of hope to the world and be a source of truce between Western leaders and Islamic leaders.

This truce shall be based on a compromise: Western leaders should apologize for hurting the Islamic Umma's religious feelings while Arab and Islamic countries should condemn any violent act against churches in the Middle East or Central Europe.

They shall agree on the respect of holiness and tolerate everyone's religion. The Western countries will have to concede part of their freedom of expression and set its limits. The Islamic countries will have to treat all religious minorities equally and protect them.

Johnny Kairouz

Apology Not Accepted

If this Aljazeera poll is accurate, 87.7% of its readers (mostly Arab Muslims) think that the Danish newspaper's apology is not enough.


(Translation: Is the Danish Newspaper’s apology enough to stop the popular protests and boycotts? Yes: 12.3% , No:87.7%)

This question is for those of you who voted no: "What should the Danish Government have done for you to vote yes?"