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
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!
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.