Al Jazeera's Blackout on Bahrain

Just an interesting thing I noticed about Al-Jazeera a long time ago. I've pointed it out a few times on online forums, but I think it's worth warranting a small blog post - though it might be a few months late.

When Egypt was constantly in the headlines back in January, Al-Jazeera emerged as the first-stop broadcaster for news on the burgeoning region-wide movement. And while it has been brilliant in its coverage of Egypt and Libya, with Bahrain we see that Al-Jazeera is not without its own agenda, beyond seemingly embracing the 'Arab Spring'.

My interest in Bahrain's events at its peak, I was almost constantly on Al-Jazeera, reading up on everything happening. And its coverage was good to begin with. In the first month of the protest,; it seemed they had the interest of spreading the Bahraini peoples' message at heart.

Things went sour in Bahrain when on the 14th of March, exactly a month after the then-called 'Pearl Revolution' began, the Saudi army rolled in, dispersing the protesters from their camp and decimating the iconic pearl roundabout. Suddenly, Al Jazeera, which had so readily reported every morsel of news from Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen, stopped reporting on Bahrain. On both Arabic and English channels.

Bahraini Monarch Afraid of Boogeyman

I was just peering through Al-Jazeera and came across this gem of an article: Bahrain king speaks of 'foiled foreign plot'.

So first, the government pulled down the monument at the Pearl Roundabout. That was a couple days ago and wasn't reported as widely as it should have been. Now, they have forced the protestors to retreat using armed force, and blame Iran for all this trouble. The desperate attempts to pin the blame on anything but their own misdeeds are so shallow and see through that it boggles me to think there are people about who agree with their actions.

Now is the Middle East's Chance for Rediscovery

The Arabs have lost sight of their history. This is something true of myself, and true of other Arabs of my generation. My own understanding of Middle Eastern history only began about a year ago, when I began reading up on it for lack of formal education. The more I learn of my history, the more aggravated I am by my education. I know my own story - though it is the exception in some respects - is true of many Arabs of my generation.

The problem with the education of Arabs - and Muslim Arabs, as most of us are - is its love affair with the origin story of Islam. Any Muslim with even a modicum of Islamic knowledge can rattle off the story to you: how the Prophet was visited by Gabriel, how he kept God's word a secret between himself and his wife at first, then revealed it to his family, and then to the greater Meccan public. They can tell you of the migration to Madina - the hijra from which the Muslim calender begins; the conflicts between the Jewish tribes and the glorious victories against great odds; the return to Mecca, where no blood was shed in a peaceful takeover; the Prophet's death, and the subsequent era of the four 'rightly guided' Caliphs. They will tell you that this era ended with the assassination of Ali Ibn Abi Talib.

That story is drilled into our heads from the first moments of our lives, and retold again and again by parents and teachers. It was the Golden Age of Islam, we are told, before Muslim society was corrupted. The Golden Age, before divergent sects evolved. The Golden Age, when Islam was most triumphant.

But little else is taught. Oh, sure, you get some knowledge - about the greatest heights of the Muslim empire in the 9th and 10th centuries and the Israel/Palestine conflict. But all this is in the shadow of the Golden Age. Saudi Arabia is perhaps the greatest testament to how revered the Golden Age is, where, despite all its potential to be a major Middle Eastern and world player, the monarchy chooses instead to rule as though they still lived in the 7th century.

It says a lot that the greatest testament to the Golden Age is the cultural failure that is Saudi Arabia. The royal family is morally corrupt, not just by Islamic standards but by broader, universal standards, as evidenced by stories such as this, where a prince battered to death his manservant. Women's rights have barely penetrated the country, where men and women are segregated and female independence is denied in almost all aspects of life. Every weekend, hordes of Saudis visit Bahrain to enjoy its more liberal values - from being able to enjoy their day without it being dictated rigorously by prayer times, to going out clubbing and drinking.

Perhaps you see where I'm going with this. The Golden Age, if it even existed, has today eclipsed the history of the Arabs, and the 1400 years between the mythical Golden Age and the present day take a back seat - if they aren't completely wiped out of memory.

What's going on in Bahrain and why?

Just over a week ago when Mubarak resigned, I mused briefly on whether or not the revolution would spread to Bahrain, here. Of all the things that could've happened, I didn't expect Bahrain to be the very next country to grip the world after Egypt, but in the last week it's been almost all anyone's talked about. Now the spotlight has begun moving away from us and onto Libya - and good thing too, they need the world's support more than Bahrain does. The acts of the Bahraini government are incredibly mild compared to Ghaddafi's.

I've been asked by a fair few people in the last week about the protests going on, and now that the outcome of the revolution draws increasingly closer and clearer, I felt it'd be appropriate to shed some light about the entire situation.

This article ended up quite a bit longer than I originally thought it would be. If you read this to the end and are neither my lecturer or my parent, you deserve a biscuit.

Mubarak Resigns!

Al-Jazeera's live coverage here.

I've been following the Egyptian revolution for the last 2-to-3 weeks now, particularly enjoying the coverage by The Independent and Al-Jazeera English. My interest in the revolution has only in small part been due to being a journalism student and a follower of news. It's really as an Arab that I find myself invested in the outcome of the Egyptian people's fight, and wondering how far the fires will spread. More specifically, I wonder whether it will spread to my little backwater of Bahrain, though analysts have little belief revolution will reach the richer oil states. But who knows? The victory of the Egyptian people will only help to fan the flames, and perhaps the recent crackdown and infringements of human rights will cause the people to stir.

Egypt is many things: one of the USA's ally in the Middle East, Israel's friendliest neighbour, and a centre of Middle Eastern culture. Both the Fatimid Caliphate in the 10th-12th centuries AD, and the Mamluke Sultanate in the 13tt-16th centuries held Cairo as their capital. Egypt was one of if not the very first Middle Eastern country to be touched by the Industrial Revolution, and in the 50s gave rise to Arab nationalism during the presidency of Gamal Abdel Nasser. Cairo is also home to one of the oldest film industries in the world and was the birthplace of the Arabian renaissance of the 19th and 20th centuries.

So with Egypt's revolution a success - its civil and largely bloodless revolution a success - it can only be good news for the rest of the Middle East. What is reason to rejoice for the people is reason to be concerned for the regimes. Saudi Arabia is reportedly furious with the outcome of events, and the US's decision to ask Mubarak to leave will no doubt hurt its position with all their Middle Eastern allies, including perhaps Israel, who must be uneasy of the potential for an anti-Israeli political party coming to power.

Another point of interest is today's 'siege' on the state broadcaster's building, which is accused of being pro-Mubarak and not reporting truthfully on the protests. It leaves me wondering as to the potential of a truly free press opening in Egypt in the future.

On a slightly different note, The Arabs: A History by Eugene Rogan is a book I've been reading over the past two months. The book is (or was, as I've bought more since) the latest in a series of history texts I've read on the subject in an effort to educate myself on my own cultural and historical background, and the first I would consider a worthwhile read. The writer is a lecturer of Middle Eastern Studies at Oxford and the book, being published in 2009, is perhaps one of the best and most recent published on the modern history of the region. What struck true to me then and amuses me now is the pessimistic outlook of the book:

...journalist and author Samir Kassir [an anti-Syrian Lebanese assassinated in 2005]... had published a remakable essay exploring what he termed the "Arab malaise" of the twenty-first century. It reflected the disenchantment of Arab citizens with their corrupt and authoritarian governments. "It's not pleasant being Arab these days," he observed. "Feelings of persecution for some, self hatred for others; a deep disquiet pervades the Arab world." 

[...]

Kassir, himself a secular nationalist, held the modernizing reforms of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries... as an era "when Arabs could look to the future with optimism." This is clearly no longer the case. The Arab world views the future with growing pessimism, and the secular vision no longer inspires the majority of the population. In any free and fair election in the Arab world today, I believe the Islamists would win hands down.

Roughly a month ago today, this would still have been a truthful statement. How quickly things change. The people of the Middle East have been filled with the optimistic spirit of change, the Egyptian revolution calls for true democracy, and the Muslim Brotherhood, the oldest Islamist group, are both more moderate and less influential, with little public support should they enter future elections.

To quote one Al-Jazeera reporter: "I've seen people give birth; I've seen people get married; I've seen people graduate. I've never seen people as happy as they are here."