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.'"

Comments

Wrong question --

[wealthychef]

This is a false dichotomy. The question is whether religion leads to oppressive politics and low technology, not whether oppressive politics are more correlated with oppression and low technology than religion.

Re:Wrong question --

[wealthychef]

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.

Re:Wrong question --

[betterunixthanunix]

The question is whether religion leads to oppressive politics and low technology

I think the question is the other way around: do politicians seeking to push oppressive policies turn to religion as a way to rally supporters?

Re:Wrong question --

[gmuslera]

More than religion, culture. Some things seen as unappropiate by a culture, be a religion behind or not, are censored, banned, or even the infractors are in some ways punished, The difference is not so evident when you form part of that culture, and that culture is somewhat successfully pushed over a good amount of countries. There maybe some i.e. biological backing for some cultural opinion, but that most accepts the ban is mostly a cultural thing, not knowledge (and are accepted some things that should be banned by the same kind of biological backing). Between the examples in western cultures you have nudity, "soft" drugs, less than 18yo sex, political positions and a lot more.

If you ask a fish if is not disturbed by all that water, it would ask: what water?

Re:Wrong question --

[betterunixthanunix]

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).

Re:Wrong question --

[Jawnn]

This is a false dichotomy. The question is whether religion leads to oppressive politics and low technology, not whether oppressive politics are more correlated with oppression and low technology than religion.

I don't know that that's the question at all. It is folly to believe that any national body politic is driven by religion. To be sure, there's lots of posturing, but that's all about keeping the voters (Republican base) in line, or the various tribal factions (pick a Middle East country) for uniting in open revolt. Beyond that, the leaders don't give a shit about what god things when they're making policy. For all the stuff he got wrong, Karl Marx was dead on about religion being "the opiate of the people". Indeed, the much less seen quote is, "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions." Clearly, Marx understood the cynicism with which powerful political people view religion. Would that more of the world's "oppressed creatures" woke the hell up and realized how much they've been manipulated through the use of religion. Without that tool, the world would be a very, very different place.

Re:Wrong question --

[ChatHuant]

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

Isn't it effectively a distinction without a difference? Once a politician starts relying on the religious voters, he'll have to support a religion-driven agenda or risk being denounced as a turn-coat and kicked out of office - for a religious voter is a jealous voter. Whether he supports the religious agenda from personal conviction or for political survival is immaterial in the end.

Re:Wrong question --

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I simply said that instead of comparing religion to oppression, we should understand that religion leads to oppression.

As am atheiest I have to disagree. There are plenty of religious people who believe exactly the same thing about atheism. I say both groups are missing the forest for the trees -- the most obvious common factor between groups like the Khmer Rouge, which outlawed religion, and groups like the Taliban, which mandate a severe form of religion, is extremism.

Whenever the people running the show value principles more than human lives you get oppression.

Not surprising at all

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Not surprising at all

[DNS-and-BIND]

Well, an Islamic-majority country can be called an Islamic country. Iran is more correctly known by its proper name, the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI). Libya's draft constitution states in Part 1, Article 1: âoeIslam is the Religion of the State, and the principal source of legislation is Islamic Jurisprudence (Sharia).â In Egypt, Article 8 of the draft constitution states that only Islam, Christianity and Judaism are guaranteed freedom of worship and the right to build mosques, churches and temples.

How about walking around in one of these countries and asking people if they live in an Islamic country? How about walking around in the souk, wearing a T-shirt with a crucifix or a Star of David on it? I bet you'd get an answer real fast, and it wouldn't have anything to do with colonialism or the Cold War.

Report is pretty soft on the USA

[t4ng*]

According to report linked to in TFA, the US government has no internet surveillance and does not spread misinformation! Sounds like their report was censored!

Re:No shit

[fustakrakich]

Religious leaders are just another dictator. Religion is only another tool to accomplish the same thing as the politics that teach and exploit strong feelings of strong nationalism/culturalism. The real tool of abuse in all cases is psychology and the sociopaths work their magic on a person from the first day of his/her life..

Surprising?

[sound vision]

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.

Re:No shit

[jbwolfe]

In a Theocracy, there's little difference between the government and religion. The policies that are restricting internet freedom are colored by religious dogma. Whatever reinforces political power is preserving the divine power:

"From the perspective of the theocratic government, "God himself is recognized as the head" of the state".

Re:No shit

[skipkent]

Religious leaders are just another dictator. Religion is only another tool to accomplish the same thing as the politics that teach and exploit strong feelings of strong nationalism/culturalism. The real tool of abuse in all cases is psychology and the sociopaths work their magic on a person from the first day of his/her life..

not quite. religion is voluntary. that's the problem with the political sphere: if dictators ruled by voluntary consent of the people, they wouldn't be dictators, would they?

Re:No shit

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, totally voluntary. All you have to do is say "You know what, I don't believe in Allah at all, I'm just going to life my life freely" and all the Muslims in the Middle East will take your decision respectfully and allow you to go about your business.

Re:Really?

[nomad-9]

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.

Hypocritical American exceptionalists?

[nbauman]

Question:

Do we really have more freedom in the U.S., or do we just permit freedom for ideas we believe in? Are we smug, hypocritical American exceptionalists?

Javed Iqbal was sentenced to 5 1/2 years for offering Al Manar on his cable TV system.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2009/04/2009423233919457969.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Manar#Banning_of_broadcasts

Occupy Wall Street wasn't allowed to express its First Amendment rights to assembly.

I'll take support for human rights whether it comes from the left or right. Freedom House seems to be the latter. I do wish they would show more concern about attacks on freedom of people like Javed Iqbal in their own backyard, but that may be an unreasonable request when you consider the source of their funds,

Here's what Chomsky said about Freedom House. Fair?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_house#Criticism

Chomsky and Herman argue that the group's history has been characterized by excessively criticizing states opposed to US interests while being unduly sympathetic to those regimes supportive of US interests. The authors suggest this can be most notably seen by the way it perceived the US ally El Salvador in the early 1980s, a government that used the army for mass slaughter of the populace to intimidate them in the run-up to an "election", but Freedom House found these elections to be "admirable". Chomsky further claimed in 1988 that Freedom House "had interlocks with AIM, the World Anticommunist League [sic], Resistance International, and U.S. government bodies such as Radio Free Europe and the CIA, and has long served as a virtual propaganda arm of the (U.S) government and international right wing."

Re:No shit

[Anonymous Coward]

You are making a point about apostasy, which is fair enough, but most of the muslims have no problem with my not believing in Allah, because I am not and have never been a muslim.

And it's great that you were born so lucky. If your parents were muslim and you wanted to not believe, 33% of the UK's muslim would want you dead.

Not that your comment is even accurate on sharia. Muslims do not have any problem at all with not believing in allah. Not for muslims, not for non-muslims. However they will want to kill you for
1) any perceived insult to "the prophet" (insult allah all you want, another indication that islam's "god" is just a cruel stupid little medieval dictator)
2) any perceived insult to muslims as a group
3) not paying for their war on non-muslims (yes, you read that right. Also known as jizya)

Please note that this is not an exhaustive list. In particular, once they demanded any non-muslim give up their firstborn son in a system called "devshirme". Or just start a genocide for no reason in particular. Happened more than 100 times in muslim history, including by the paedophile prophet himself, both on muslims and infidels for mostly imaginary reasons, so please don't claim this is somehow not part of islam.

Re:No shit

[xenobyte]

They're also isolationists... According to surveys here in Denmark, most non-western immigrants gets nicely mixed in with the native population in just a few generations - mixed marriages with both male and female immigrants - with the significant exception of Muslim immigrants. Even though they're one of the biggest non-western immigrant group, the number of marriages that does not involve a conversion to Islam by the native part can be counted on one hand. It just almost never happens. The actual numbers are 4-5 between a male immigrant and a female native, and ZERO where the immigrant is female. Even the numbers involving conversion are heavily skewed - while there's hundreds of male immigrants marrying female natives converted to Islam, the number of female immigrants marrying a danish native converted man are still less than a dozen. Most female immigrants basically marry either fellow immigrants or men from the homeland.

This all means that the integration of Muslims is bound to fail. And has failed consistently all over western Europe.

As a nice counterpoint, Asian non-Muslim women married to Danish native men are actually the biggest group by far within the mixed marriage community. And these Asian-Danish families are usually well integrated with higher-than-average income, higher-than-average educational level and zero ghetto issues (gangs etc.). The asian immigrants work and learn the native language. They dress like the natives too, don't make a fuss about weird dietary 'rules' and interact quite normally with everybody else, no matter what gender etc.

So, it's obvious to everyone that what the Muslims are doing is wrong. They either need to do what other immigrants are doing or go somewhere else. It can't continue like it has been. The tensions are getting stronger and it will end badly and then go to worse.