Monday, November 12, 2007

Censorship in the Islamic World

I said yesterday that the ISU was on the case of blocking this site in Saudi Arabia. Apparently they've done so, and now apparently the United Arab Emirates is doing the same. I note that the visits by the censoring agencies of these countries were the only visits to this site from those countries. They censor me before anyone else from their countries even manages to find my site! Makes me wonder what their procedure is -- a pretty thorough-going one anyway. **

But what it really makes me wonder about is the level of censorship in the Islamic world. It's high across the board, and another. And it's not limited to websites. Books too are banned indifferently from websites in many Muslim countries, and press freedom infringed as well.

And, again, here I think of the call for dialogue we always hear between the West and Islamic societies. I've mocked this call for dialogue before, and now I find a new ground on which to question it. How could there be dialogue if so many Muslims cannot even gain access to the side that is critical of their ideology? In the West we have no problem reading their positions: Saudi propaganda, even though it is much hated, floods into Canada, the US, and Europe for example. But nothing that breaks the party line is let into Saudi Arabia.

Let Muslim countries uncensor the critics of Islam. Then perhaps dialogue can begin. How could it be otherwise? The start of dialogue is 100% depending on this first action of the Islamic world, not the Western world.

** UPDATE: Apparently all traffic is routed through the ISU, and so it was not at all necessarily the ISU itself that was viewing the site. I apologise for the assumption.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Islamic world censors you but porn is OK.

http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/190088.php

abuTrevor said...

Congratulations!

You join a very select group that includes Charles Johnson's LGF and Ali Sina's FFI. Even Jihadwatch isn't included!

By the way, I'm posting this from the "Magic Kingdom" itself, so the censorship can be bypassed.

Kafir Canada said...

I haven't received any hits from Saudi Arabia except from those of the ISU(the censoring agency), so I guess you must be using some form of circumvention with a proxy...

I note too that the ISU is still reading this stuff, also the UAE censoring agency. They read this post and visited the links.