Bill Day: Maghreb News

On the move again . . .

Sat, 04 Jan 2003 04:21:01 GMT

A Web Undone 2 is moving again, but will hopefully stay put for a while in its new home at http://www.williamsonday.com.

Freedom on Iran's Airwaves (washingtonpost.com)

Sun, 22 Dec 2002 13:39:07 GMT

"Contrary to what Jackson Diehl says in his op-ed article, dissident Iranian students remain in close and useful contact with the broadcast efforts the United States is aiming at Iran's young people. As we complete the transition to greatly increased programming aimed at Iran's under-30 audience, the voices of student protesters who use their cell phones to reach us are being heard daily on our broadcasts beamed into Iran. We are giving these brave young people what their own government denies them: a way to speak to their fellow citizens. Our new service will also increase news and current affairs programming by 135 minutes, to 315 minutes each day."

Everybody loves me baby . . .

Sun, 22 Dec 2002 13:18:47 GMT

"To know America is to love America?. Advertising maven Charlotte Beers is trying to sell the U.S. to the Muslim world, but nobody's buying it. [Salon.com] Here's a fun game: Combine the following quotation from this story with some article below and guess whether Muslims abroad are buying what she's selling. Here's the quotation:
According to Beers, America's information offensive is off to a grand start, putting out messages that are "believable and always true and accurate," she says. One of her first salvos was a series of mini-documentaries about happy American Muslims, designed to show Muslims abroad that the war on terror isn't a clash of civilizations.

Now, you have to guess which story below goes with this quotation, and you have to guess the reaction of Muslims to both. Tricky, huh!" [The Decline and Fall of the American Empire]

Sadly, we seem to be more committed to examining our propoganda than our policy. Jackson Diehl argues recently in the Washington Post that our revisions to our broadcasts to Iran reflect this emphasis of style over substance, with American pop culture replacing substantive news. Anne Applebaum chimed in a short time later on the administration's neglect of democratic movements in Iran.

Sun, 22 Dec 2002 03:59:15 GMT

Morocco wants to have reliable, independent justice [Arabic News]

Sun, 22 Dec 2002 03:57:34 GMT

King Mohammed, President Chirac dedicate Mohammed V Square in Paris [Arabic News]

A Portrait of the Prophet Behind Islam

Thu, 19 Dec 2002 02:58:00 GMT

"PBS seeks to fill the gap tonight with a two-hour documentary, "Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet." It evocatively if sparingly lays out the biographical material unfamiliar to most Americans: Muhammad's childhood as an orphan in Mecca, his marriage to a wealthy widow almost twice his age, his visions of the Angel Gabriel, his military battles and his victory over Arab paganism."

Perhaps not surprisingly, it appears that this documentary pulls its punches. The review does give it credit for addressing the Prophet's execution of the Jews of Medina, but points out that that the program goes to great lengths to dissassociate this act from any historical animosity between Jews and Muslims. Besides the oft-quoted respect of the Prophet for "People of the Book" -- Jews and Christians -- it is perhaps worth noting once again that Christian atrocities against Jews over the past 2000 years overshadow the comparative tolerance that the Arab and Turkish regimes exercised during the same period.

Powell Unveils U.S.-Arab Initiative (washingtonpost.com)

Fri, 13 Dec 2002 13:00:20 GMT

"In a speech at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, Powell outlined what he called a U.S.-Middle East Partnership Initiative that he said would attempt to move Arab societies out of their current state of economic stagnation, closed and rigid political systems and severely limited educational opportunities, especially for women."

This sounds like it might be a small step in the right direction. With a budget of only $29 million, emphasis on small?

Morocco promises open media policy

Sat, 07 Dec 2002 16:05:33 GMT

"The Moroccan government has promised to communication and media professionals an open policy, marked by efficiency and heedful to citizens' expectations and concerns. "In light of the guidelines made by King Mohammed VI to give a new impetus to the dynamic of change, the government decided to adopt an efficient and open media and communication policy, a policy heedful to citizens with a view to promoting their enthusiasm to contribute to Morocco's development process," Moroccan Communication Minister, Nabil Benabdallah said in a letter to media professionals. "The Communication department will see to it that the information sector remain open to freedom of speech, respectful to the profession's code of ethics and built on two major principles: freedom and accountability," the official said."

At first blush, it looks as theough the Moroccan government is at least saying the right things, which is perhaps more than one can say for our own. However, the troubling phrase about accountability and the "code of ethics" -- in the context of ending a government monopoly -- may suggest that there will still be sharp limits on any government tolerance of dissent.

Thu, 21 Nov 2002 16:13:15 GMT

"The new evil empire It is ironic that despite the strong commitment to democracy in Islam, most Muslims today are living in dictatorships. The Muslim people want freedom. . . Much like the people of the communist world of the past, the Muslim people today are hostages in totalitarian regimes [like those] that flourished during the days of the Cold War." - Benazir Bhutto, former prime minister of Pakistan, speaking at Hillsdale College, September 2002" [The LitiGator]

The Old and the New

Tue, 19 Nov 2002 03:52:05 GMT

I attended a fascinating presentation today, sponsored by the "Middle East Institute" and "TALMS", on the state of efforts to preserve the old city, or medina, in Tangier. Hanae Bekkari, vice president of the Tangier Medina Foundation and a prominent Moroccan architect, described the history of the city and the Foundation's preservation efforts. She delivered the talk in English, and then took questions through an interpreter, to which she responded in French.

Among the Foundation's more remarkable projects is a women's literacy project, which in addition to teaching women to read and write Arabic, administers a microcredit fund which lends money to the women in order to promote independent enterprise. One goal of the project is to help preserve the medina, which is now largely inhabited by low income families from rural areas, by raising the income of the families who live there. A higher level of prosperity will allow both the tenants and the landlords to invest more in the preservation of the old buildings. The Foundation sees this approach as preferable to the gentrification which has overtaken similar historic areas in other cities.

Tangier, owing to its history as a crossroads between Europe and North Africa, is an architectural layer cake. It still retains its original Roman layout, a city divided by two main thoroughfares at the center of which lies the forum. The Roman forum has successively been the site of a Roman temple, a Christian cathedral, and a mosque, which until lately had fallen into ruin but which has been restored under the new King of Morocco. The buildings themselves reflect the successive destruction and rebuilding that has accompanied successive invastions by the Romans, the Arabs, the Portuguese, and the English, and in this respect differ from the largely intact architecture of the great Moroccan imperial cities of Fez and Marrakesh, whose Islamic architecture has been preserved intact for many centuries.

Ramadan

Wed, 13 Nov 2002 04:03:33 GMT

"Every year, 1.5 billion Muslims around the world celebrate the holy month of Ramadan. Ramadan begins upon the sighting of the first crescent moon of the ninth month of the Muslim calendar, which is arranged according to the lunar year. Because of this, it is only possible to give approximate dates for the beginning and the end of Ramadan. This year, it starts on the 16th November. "

Sat, 12 Oct 2002 02:33:12 GMT

Berber riots rock Algerian poll. (BBC Middle East) Rioting in the ethnic Berber region mars local elections aimed at projecting an image of stable democracy in Algeria. [News Is Free: Middle East]

Sat, 05 Oct 2002 15:25:09 GMT

Path to Sahara issue settlement is clearly defined, Morocco says [Arabic News]

Clear as mud, except that Morocco has no intention of changing the status of the Sahara.

Sat, 28 Sep 2002 20:46:13 GMT

Moroccan Islamic Party Wins 44 Seats in Legislative Elections. (IslamOnline) [News Is Free: Middle East] Even though political power is almost completey vested in the king, the violence at the elections suggests that at least some people believe they have a real stake in the outcome.

Sat, 28 Sep 2002 20:29:27 GMT

Web Site Fuels Debate on Campus Anti-Semitism [New York Times: Technology] I do not like the rehetoric of Campus Watch, nor do I like its ad hominem approach: it appears to be more focused on singling out individuals for their views and publishing "dossiers" on them than it does on analyzing the views themselves. That said, in a country that believes in free speech, the best response to this website is speech. According to the New York Times, there appears to be no shortage of criticism of this site.

BBC NEWS | World | Africa | Moroccan king: despot or benevolent autocrat?

Fri, 27 Sep 2002 18:48:49 GMT

"If the monarchy is to survive in Morocco, the king still has a lot of convincing to do to show why rule by one rather than the many is not necessarily a bad thing. "

Sat, 14 Sep 2002 20:59:32 GMT

Women make 49% of registered electorate in Morocco. (Arabic News) Some 62% of the electors are unemployed, and 43% never went to school, the weekly added. [News Is Free: Middle East] The question is, what can they vote for?

Thu, 12 Sep 2002 01:59:57 GMT

Geoffrey Wheatcroft reviews Thomas Friedman's Longitudes and Attitudes in the New York Times:

"'Longitudes and Attitudes'' is a collection of columns, from December 2000 to this past July, broken by September's great caesura, and including material from his diary, notes made but not used as he traveled to the Persian Gulf, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Indonesia, India, Saudi Arabia, London, Brussels. . . .

"For years, Friedman's big idea has been free enterprise in its new form of globalization: ''the inexorable integration of markets, transportation systems and communication systems to a degree never witnessed before,'' which he believed would solve most of the world's ills. Not that ''the maximum of intercourse between nations'' was a new notion, or a bad one. Long before we had heard of the Web, Richard Cobden put it splendidly in 1850 when he said that ''the progress of freedom depends more upon the maintenance of peace, the spread of commerce and the diffusion of education, than upon the labors of cabinets and foreign offices.'"

Both Friedman's idea that commerce cures all ills and his prediction of coming disaster in the Middle East are profoundly disconcerting. Naturally, I am adding this book to my list of books to read.

Tue, 10 Sep 2002 03:37:18 GMT

Jazz without borders. Tunisian oud player Anouar Brahem creates an international sound. ["SFGate"] [Dan Mitchell: Music Notes]

Go to the review to listen to sample of the compser's haunting melodies. I hope he visits Washington on his next tour.

Arab-Israeli concert to promote peace

Sun, 25 Aug 2002 23:41:55 GMT

"Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim is to lead a mixed Arab-Israeli orchestra at a concert for peace in Berlin."

Moroccan Human Rights

Sun, 25 Aug 2002 17:38:28 GMT

Human Rights Watch maintains a page on Moroccan Human Rights.