Slashdot Mirror
The Surprising Truth About Internet Censorship In the Middle East
An anonymous reader writes "Internet censorship is common in conservative majority-Muslim countries, but it may have more to do with politics and technology than with religion. I.e., Iran is not so different from Cuba and China. From the article: 'in an attempt to uncover the various reasons — and ways — that countries clamp down on Internet freedoms, the U.S.-based watchdog Freedom House investigated the issue in 47 nations and released a study of its findings this year.
Employing a number of factors ranging from blogger arrests to politically motivated website blockades, the study ranked each country according to its degree of online freedom.
And, as it happens, Islamic countries do not stand out for their degree of censorship.'"
That's not surprising at all. Almost nothing about the alleged "conflict" between these countries and "the West" have to do with religion and it has a lot to do with post-colonialism and the Cold War. It's just that on both "sides" many people like to spin the issues in the direction of religion. It's ridiculous enough to speak about "Islamic Countries" as if they were a homogenous force or fraction.
Sorry for the many scare quotes but they are all appropriate in this case.
What the hell are you talking about? I never defended the USA's idiocy, nor did I talk about other nations. I simply said that instead of comparing religion to oppression, we should understand that religion leads to oppression. The USA is highly religious and because of that we do idiotic things all the time. Here is an example.
Currently hooked on AMP
The USA is highly religious
Sure, but the people who make important policy decisions are, in all likelihood, not very devout. I suspect that the truly devout believers never make it beyond state-level politics, and that even there they are a minority. The kind of people who get votes from devout Christians in America are people who understand how to exploit religion as a way to rally political supporters -- not exactly the sort of thing that religions teach people to do (find me the holy book that says, "You can trick people into thinking they have a moral obligation to support your political ambitions" and I will be impressed).
Palm trees and 8
Oppressive regimes in the Middle East rank among the worst (but not particularly worse than) other oppressive regimes in other parts of the world? Is that a "surprising truth"? If anything this just confirms what we already knew - those in power there are interested singularly in that power, and Islam has just been a convenient way to justify it to their population. Not that Islam is conducive to free speech or any other advancement of the human species - but it's not the main reason these countries are censoring the internet.
There are only a few country where politics rule! Almost all of the world is ruled by religion!
No, most of the world is ruled by culture. The fact of the matter is that very little of religion's commandments are actually followed, whether we're considering Christians, Jews or Muslims.
Having read all three books (Torah, Bible and Koran - what can I say, I like to read science fiction stories before going to sleep), I can tell you that they all (yes, all) condemn such things as stealing, killing etc.
If religion was so powerful, there wouldn't be that much violation of its fundamentals, like stealing and killing. Religion is used as a means to not-so-religious ends, and that is because all three monotheist religions,are easy to misquote, misinterpret, and misuse.
Getting rid of all religions could be A Good Thing...or not. Even if they went away, there would still be plain godless Ideology, which has been proven to be at least as effective in turning whole countries into shit for supposedly noble causes.