TEHERAN - Iran’s parliament is set to debate a draft bill which could see the death penalty used for those deemed to promote corruption, prostitution and apostasy on the Internet, reports said on Wednesday.

MPs on Wednesday voted to discuss as a priority the draft bill which seeks to “toughen punishment for harming mental security in society,” the ISNA news agency said.

The text lists a wide range of crimes such rape and armed robbery for which the death penalty is already applicable. The crime of apostasy (the act of leaving a religion, in this case Islam) is also already punishable by death.

However, the draft bill also includes “establishing weblogs and sites promoting corruption, prostitution and apostasy”, which is a new addition to crimes punishable by death.

Those convicted of these crimes “should be punished as “mohareb’ (enemy of God) and “corrupt on the earth’,” the text says.

Under Iranian law the standard punishments for these two crimes are “hanging, amputation of the right hand and then the left foot as well as exile.”

Read more.

The very fact that this bill was proposed and is up for consideration is just absolutely unacceptable and horrific. Something must be done or the lives of millions of bloggers will be in serious danger.

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Unfortunately we are finding this increasingly difficult due to the lack of funds. And we need some sort of financial aid; donations can open the door for us to launch some really rich media. We have already done that with the “Iran’s New Voice” video, and the Egyptian Tourism Ad, and now we want to include cartoons and a more professional media section on the site that can help make our work for Baha’is (and other equally oppressed minorities, like the Kurds) more visible.

We need a very small injection to keep us going: Our target is only $600, which is not a lot of money. Remember we are doing this voluntarily, so it won’t be for us, but we need some professionals to help us with certain studio work and also to get the design for our media subdomain up and running.

If you wish to help us take MideastYouth.com to the next level, please consider making a donation, and we assure you that we won’t let you down and will do our best creating as much media as possible to inspire positive change in the region.

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You can read more about the Kurdish case at our upcoming site, which is currently under massive construction, or by reading posts by Kurdish authors Goran and Niroj.

Turkish version of the comic:

Bu karikatür Kürtçe şarkı söyledikleri için taraflarına dava açılan ve taciz edilen Kürt gençlerin durumlarından esinlenilerek çizilmiştir.

entence below the comic: Kürt sorunu hakkında daha fazla bilgi edinmek için Kürt yazarlarımız Goran ve Niroj’un yazılarını okuyabilirsiniz.

(Thanks to Ozlem for volunteering her translation.)

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While the article focuses on YouTube, in my opinion it’s hardly the most powerful way to reach the right eyes and audience, especially considering the fact that YouTube is blocked in several countries and most people aren’t tech savvy enough to access it through other means. Blogging platforms like Blogspot and WordPress were and continue to be far more helpful in terms of user outreach and getting people to start expressing themselves easily and freely in societies that doesn’t give us any other option.

Here’s an important excerpt for you to read and really think about:

When it comes to user-generated content and interactivity, Al Qaeda is now behind the curve. And the United States can help to keep it there by encouraging the growth of freer, more empowered online communities, especially in the Arab-Islamic world.

For me, it’s not so much that the United States is keeping it there. We are working for the sake of our future and not exactly for that of America’s. Because it’s not really up the USA to make that decision (eliminating regional extremism/terrorism.) The decision of having a civil society is ours. It’s up to us to be involved in “freer, more empowered online communities,” which is exactly what Mideast Youth does.

This is the perfect way to fight the widespread censorship and extremism that we have been suffering from for many decades - but most importantly we really realized that it’s time for us to do this together, as a diverse team, and we are now one of the most diverse teams working independently together in the region without having to be ashamed of our identities, whether Israeli or Kurdish or Arab or Iranian, we’re here to serve our communities and fight for their rights regardless of their nationalities and beliefs. And I think we’re scaring our governments shitless with this powerful idea! And nothing makes me more proud than to say that we are really proving to the world that this is possible. And soon organizations like Al Qaeda will have no place in our part of the world.

Right now, this generation has a new weapon: Positivity, hope, and what I consider to be one of the most effective and powerful tools in the world - the internet. No one can stop us from using this to communicate our thoughts, ideas, and to express ourselves more openly, both locally and internationally. Our governments and hackers keep trying, and they may succeed temporarily, but in the long run we’ll never let them get there. New media technologies are quickly helping us get access to the right tools and our governments are having quite a tough time catching up with our work.

The most damaging disruptions to the nexus, however, will come from millions of ordinary users in the communities that Al Qaeda aims for with its propaganda. We should do everything we can to empower them.

The youth in the Middle East are empowering themselves, one day at a time, without having to think about America. Because it is hardly Al Qaeda that worries us most. We have bigger problems. We have minorities being oppressed and killed, we have intolerable societal censorship, we have a high number of journalists who paid for their honesty with their blood. And this is besides of all the wars and devastating crimes against humanity that are taking place all around us. I think everyone should wake up to that, and to start thinking beyond Al Qaeda, and beyond our governments, who remain to be unhelpful for us. There are more powerful terrorists in town, and more methods to fight them than YouTube. The whole world wide web is our tool. And while terrorists in the region come in big numbers, student activists come in much larger numbers, and we will eventually win this fight.

And that is not a dream; it is a promise.

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Kareem has been arrested since November 6th, 2006. He is about to spend his 600th day in prison! We are planning an event for this day and hope that you will all be involved.

Here are the details.

Date: Saturday, the 28th of June
Occasion: Day 600 for Kareem in prison!
Theme: Increase awareness for Kareem in prison, and get in touch with him!

How you can get involved:

On the 28th, dedicate a post on your blog/website to Kareem.

You can do this in two ways:

Option 1: Write a post/letter directly to or about Kareem. Make people aware of what Kareem is going through. Express your opinions or concerns over the fact that he is still in prison just for sharing his personal views on radical Islam, extremism within Al Azhar, and the president of Egypt.

Option 2: Write about something controversial, fearlessly, the same way as Kareem did (whether be it about free speech, human rights, religious freedom, political rights, et al) and then dedicate this post to him.

You may also choose to directly write to Kareem using the following address:

Prisoner Abdul Kareem Nabil Suleiman
Alexandria
Borg Al-Arab Prison
Room 1 Section 22
The Arab Republic of Egypt

Please attach the Arabic address on your letter:

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The law will cover different aspects like enforcing the veil and Islamic dress on women, restricting women’s travel without the approval from father or husband. A special committee will be formed to check if women need to travel at all.

That last sentence in particular is hilarious. 3 years after this great news in Kuwait:

2005 May - Parliament approves a law allowing women to vote and run for parliament. In June the first woman cabinet minister, Massouma al-Mubarak, is appointed.

It was followed with this sad news:

2008 May - Radical Islamists make gains in parliamentary elections, winning more than half of the 50 seats. No women are elected.

And these radical Islamists are already trying their best to implement some horrific changes.

But Kuwaiti women are strong, and will never stand for this idiocy.

Or at least let’s hope…

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Tori was an active author at Mideast Youth for a long time and you may read her previous posts here (under a pseudonym.)

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Sometimes criticisms of Israel are deplorable and based on anti-Semiticism. That is true. But that doesn’t mean that any non-Jew who is critical falls under that category, and it’s getting rather tedious to be dismissed as a raging anti-Semite every time we criticize something Israel does or condemn its actions.

Do people not read this blog enough to understand that Arab governments, the IRI, and Islam/Islamophobia are probably the most controversial and criticized topics here? And many of the Israel-related topics are by Americans, Israelis, or Jews themselves. How racist and anti-Semite of us to allow them to use this platform to express their opinions too. How intolerable this place must be.

I criticize Israel all the time, because some of its policies deserve vocal condemnation. At the same time I have also been quite vocal in supporting Arab Jews or Jews in primarily Muslim countries. We also have a network that highlights the Jewish cause in the Middle East. I don’t think a bunch of anti-Semites would be doing these things, and I don’t think that a network founded by non-Jews would include Jews in its staff and authors if they were anti-Semites.

It’s reached to the point now that we can’t ever express our views against Israel without having dozens of hate mail, threats, and insults clogging up our threads and inbox claiming that we’re all racists and anti-Jews and should all burn in the depths of Hell for oppressing Jews further. Well excuse us for not being the Zionist hotspot for all Zionist lovers, and excuse me for pointing out the obvious fact that currently Jews are hardly the most oppressed minority in the Middle East, but this place caters to no views. Whoever reads this site is bound to get criticized and hurt in one way or another, Jew or not.

I stand my by strong belief that there are many minorities in the Middle East who suffer more than the Jews, and stating that hardly means I’m a Jew-bater. It means I think it’s time to pay attention to the others who go through far worse.

There are many other minorities being violently oppressed and killed for their beliefs or ethnicity, yet no one does a thing about them. And I do believe that their case is a lot more graver because, unlike Jews, they do not have a state to be secured in nor do they have powerful leaders and powerful governments’ support. They are alone. Truly alone fighting for their causes as peacefully as possible with hardly any local and international support or even awareness. So no, I don’t think Jews are victims of the region’s worst crimes and I don’t think that their fears are legitimate and relevant today, for the same reason that I support a Jewish state: they are secure, at least in comparison to any other minority I witness here. And it’s something they’ve worked hard for and earned but it also doesn’t mean that because of that we get to dismiss Israeli crimes as attempts at self-defense when they are clearly violating the most basic human rights. Stating that also doesn’t make me a Jew-bater, because many Jews have been saying the exact same thing, which apparently makes them “Self-loathing.”

People have been trying to change how this place works, but they’re wasting their time.

We’re not here to make you look good, and we’re not here to help you win pity.

This place is meant to be controversial. That means you get to be criticized. That doesn’t make us racists and bigots. It makes us interested in what everyone has to say regardless of whether or not you agree.

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You can read some introductory posts that have been published on the site. You will find out why we had to delay the project for a bit, the lack of funding being a primary reason for it. We therefore encourage you to donate if you like the idea of the project and its potential. The donation widget can be found on the bottom right hand side. Costs will be mainly used to increase content, speed up translations, and to technically professionalize both sites further. If you’re a donor, you have the option to request follow ups on how the money donated is being used to ensure that it’s strictly project-related. We have done this with several donors in the past and they are happy with what we managed to create despite the insignificant financial assistance, which will hopefully change now that people can see that we take this project very seriously.

Some articles are still in the process of being translated. You can find that the gallery has also been updated with many unique and exclusive photos.

If you like what you see so far, get involved and make it better.

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For security issues, the DJ has requested that we do not publish his page publicly here. However, you will find samples of his music in the end of the interview.

Q. When did you start playing music? Is there anything in particular that inspired you to get involved?
A. I have never played an instrument. I mostly do DJing and mixing music, also I have produced some tunes in the past. I have been interested in 4/4 based music when I was 12-13 years old. I really liked them, and then Trance music emerged, and I have fallen in love with it. Then when I was about 19, watched one of tiesto’s concerts and I just said I want to do the same thing! Always appreciated Tiesto from start till now. He is the main and first person who inspired me.

Q. Why did you choose to play trance/modern music? Some people in the Middle East think this is a way of Westernization, is this true?
A. There was an attraction in trance music for me when I was a teen. Trance gives me the energy and motivation that I need. I simply love it.
Westernization? No, I don’t think so. I think it’s the presure of governments (especially Islamic ones) to keep everything that comes from west part of the world banned. There is a lot of good and essential thing in this world that they call Westernization.

Q. Do you ever play music in live concerts in Iran, or is it forbidden and dangerous to do that?
A. You mentioned something that I really like to have in Iran, “Trance Events.” Here comes the pain … It’s illegal to hold anything related to trance music. All I can do is underground parties which is dangerous, even I don’t like such a thing because people tend to use illegal drugs, thinking that Trance is cool with drug. But Trance itself is drug! People in underground parties just make Trance recognised as a disgusting thing, and governments use it to advertise bad things about it in newspapers and TV. One example is the word Westernization.

Q. Do you play music to entertain others, or do you ever play the music in order to express any social/political/religious message?
A. Well, I mainly mix music to entertain people, because that gives me a special feeling. But, as I have a weekly radio show, I tend to send message to our government with it, telling them they are wrong and I hate them. Also I have chosen my DJ name (Eagle.s) to show that I am seeking for freedom.

Q. Are there many trance artists in Iran, and if not, do you ever feel left out?
A. Many? No, but there are some people and friends who are keeping up with trance music and follow it’s news. Some of them even produced some tunes. Like Arman Dinarvand or Bit Bit. And ofcourse, best Trance/House artists from Iran are abroad. Like Deep Dish. Iran is not a good place for and artist or DJ to promote. Even I want to leave Iran after my military service which I just have 6 Month left of it. Hope to get a chance to leave here.

Q. This is a more personal question. What do your family think about your music? Do they encourage or discourage you, or are you independent to do what you want?
A. Oh … Family. You can’t find someone in Iran to encourage Trance music or DJing. Everyone says it’s a useless thing. They love money and business more than anything else! But my family is cool, they have left me alone with my DJing. I’m independent for it.

Q. Do you know any other Iranian trance/techno or electronic DJs that you recommend?
A. Other DJs from Iran into Trance/Techno is hard to find. Especially DJs who mix on hardware rather than software. You can find so many Iranian calling themselves DJ on DJ List website, but a lot of them even don’t know what is DJing. Possible examples could be Proyal or Farhad Shirazi. They can get better and better and more active, and I know they will as they have the power of it.

Q. Any final words?
A. Everyone who want to listen my works, can find me on this DJ channel. I have a weekly show there up, named “Trance of Persia” which broadcasts every Monday from 19:00 to 20:00 CET - Central Europe Time (GMT + 2 hours / or 21:30 Iran local time).
Also I upload all of my mixes at XStreamist, where people can both listen or download (High Speed Connection Requierd). I also Have remixed an old classic tune, giving it Trance taste. Named “Apocalypse”. Also I have 2 of my last composed tunes at MySpace profile.

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“When I play my oud, I defy violence in society,” said Haneen Imad, 17, referring to her traditional Arabic lute, as she played an old folk song on its strings. “When I hear the sound of a helicopter droning over my head, I play louder.”

[…]

Farand Nashaat, 14, hides his trumpet in a rucksack on the way to school so as not to draw attention to his love of music.

[…]

Zuhel Sultan, a 16-year-old pianist, joined the music school when she was 10. Gunmen killed her father four years ago and her mother died of a stroke shortly after, but she says she’s lucky.

“I’m lucky because I have music. With music, I can overcome my difficulties — the dangers of roads, explosions, fearing for relatives,” she said with a broad smile.

[…]

Despite hardships, the school provides all instruments, ballet costumes and musical scores — and offers a cherished escape from daily life for pupils like Husam al-Deen, a 17-year-old cellist.

“My most joyful time is at school,” he said. “It’s a beautiful feeling — we forget the problems on the street, the war, the Americans. We forget everything until we go home.”

I bet after reading this article, you too might feel lucky that something you love so much (if you love music, and I can’t imagine anyone who doesn’t) comes so easy in your life while others have to risk their lives just to play it.

For the heavy metal fans out there, there’s a prominent band called Acrassicauda in Baghdad who are seeking official refugee status as what they do is extremely risky as well:

Original members Firas (bass), Tony (lead guitar), Marwan (drums), Faisal (rhythm guitar) and Waleed (lead vocals) were only able to play 3 shows before the war started in 2003. Soon after, Waleed retired from the band and fled the country, leaving Faisal to fill the void of lead singer. Due to increased security precautions throughout Iraq, it became difficult to practice or even get through a show without serious problems. As the situation worsened in Baghdad they began receiving death threats from insurgent groups and religious fundamentalists accusing them of Satan-worship. Eventually, it proved impossible to find any venue that was safe to perform in.

You can read more about them at their blog here. You can see how much they have to deal with just so they can practice and play their music. It’s an increasingly depressing situation for musicians and music lovers in Iraq.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EA1t1caL9L8

In 1983, the ABC news network also featured an exclusive program on the persecution of Baha’is, which we translated into Arabic so more people can know about this in the region and you may find the video here.

Sadly, you can see that not much of this has changed.

But it will. We need to work with each other in order to ensure that.

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To protect your privacy, they have set up a Photobucket account which you can use to upload your pictures. Here are some basic instructions on how to use it:

1. Take the picture, copy it to your PC
2. Go here: photobucket.com/login
3. Username is “diezuender”, password is “mey-2008″
4. See the box right of the ad (it’s captioned “images from my PC”)? Use it to upload your photo
5. Once the upload is complete, add your nickname, your country and your city (if you want to)
6. Click “save and continue”, your photo will show up in the list below
7. Copy the field “HTML-Code” and paste it to the comments section here at Mideast Youth
8. Write us some lines if you feel like writing

You may also use your Flickr account if you have it, or wherever else you have an account. The photobucket is there for those who don’t want to reveal those accounts to the public for the sake of privacy/security.

Here’s what’s outside my room’s window in Bahrain:

They are going to ask their readers to do the same too.

So, send your photos! Link to them via a comment here.

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Without further ado everything you need to know about the award is in the following press release:

Educators, Activists, Entrepreneurs, and Lawyers Win Berkman Awards for Internet Innovation

Winners include Esra’a Al Shafei, Richard Baraniuk, John Breen, Jeffrey Cunard and Bruce Keller, Carl Malamud, and Noah Samara
May 19, 2008

Cambridge, MA - Announced Friday, May 16, at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society’s tenth anniversary gala dinner, recipients of the Berkman Awards were chosen for their outstanding contributions to the Internet’s impact on society over the past decade.

The international group of winners was selected from an open nomination process and comes from a range of fields including human rights and global advocacy; academia; communications and media; and law. The five cash award winners received $10,000 with no conditions on how the funds must be spent.

“There is an amazing amount of public interest innovation and activity on the Internet, and selecting these award winners from an extraordinary field of nominees and finalists was a daunting task,” said John Palfrey, Harvard Law School Clinical Professor and Berkman Center Executive Director. “We hope that these Internet heroes will continue to lead and inspire, making the positive potential of networks a reality.”

A Berkman Award went to Esra’a Al Shafei of Bahrain, the 21-year-old director of student-owned MideastYouth.com, whose mission is “to inspire and provide young people with the freedom and opportunity of expression, and facilitate a fierce but respectful dialogue among the highly diverse youth of all sects, socio-economic backgrounds, and political and religious beliefs in the Middle East.” MideastYouth.com fights for social change with podcasts, blogs, social networks, and online video.

Engineering professor Richard Baraniuk received a Berkman Award for founding Connexions at Rice University. Connexions lets teachers share digital texts and learning materials, modify them, and disseminate them online using a Creative Commons license. This free, open-source platform is a building block towards a system of open educational resources.

John Breen was recognized with a Berkman Award for creating FreeRice.com. FreeRice asks site users to answer multiple-choice vocabulary questions and, for every correct answer, donates 20 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Programme. According to the website, over 27 billion grains of rice have been distributed thus far.

Carl Malamud received a Berkman Award for creating Public.Resource.Org. Malamud is making US case law and government documents freely available online. He has also made images from the Smithsonian freely available on the Flickr photo sharing site and pushed to get broadcast-quality video of all congressional committee hearings posted online by the end of the 110th Congress. He is working with the National Technical Information Service to digitize and put NTIS’ multimedia online. Malamud is making the work of governments more transparent and providing citizens around the world with greater access to legal information.

A Berkman Award was given to Noah Samara, the Ethiopian satellite expert who founded WorldSpace, whose satellite network provides radio and data services to Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and Europe. His work has been cited as a major conceptual influence on XM satellite radio. WorldSpace was one of the most innovative uses of communications satellites when it was launched. In addition to the commercial satellite radio and data service offerings, Mr. Samara has provided the leadership to leverage the project to provide information and entertainment services to people in extremely rural parts of Africa and Asia.

The Berkman Center gave its highest honor, an award for pro bono service, to Jeffrey Cunard and Bruce Keller of Debevoise & Plimpton. Two of the leading Internet lawyers in the world, Cunard and Keller were honored for their pro bono service as lawyers and educators. Over the past five years, despite their demanding private practice, Cunard and Keller have volunteered thousands of hours as classroom and clinical teachers at Harvard Law School. For several years, on a weekly basis during the term, they have flown to Cambridge from Washington and New York, respectively, to teach in person. They have co-authored, and continuously updated, the leading treatise on copyright law in a digital era.

The awards presentation was the finale of the Berkman Center’s year-long, tenth anniversary celebration, Berkman@10, and marked the end of the Berkman@10 conference, a landmark event on “The Future of the Internet,” held on May 15 and 16, 2008, in Cambridge, MA.

About the Berkman Center:

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University is proud to celebrate its tenth anniversary as a research program founded to explore cyberspace, share in its study, and help pioneer its development. Founded at Harvard Law School in 1997, through a generous gift from Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman, the Center is now home to an ever-growing community of faculty, fellows, staff, and affiliates working on projects that span the broad range of intersections between cyberspace, technology, and society. More information can be found at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu.

It was great to have been the only female, the youngest and the only Middle Easterner. I felt a great amount of pride knowing that people no longer regard our youth as a bunch of hopeless people surrounded by conflicts. With more pride I spoke about friends like Nasim Fekrat of AfghanLord.org and Walid of YemenPortal.net, as well as many others who are doing a great deal. I choose to use the cash associated with this prize to make their ideas a reality too. Most of it will be used to further build the network and to proffessionalize Afghan Press, whose Farsi version is about to launch very soon, as well as a new project concerning web circumvention in the Arab world in collaboration with Walid and a few others.

Other than the financial prize that comes with it, the award itself looks absolutely gorgeous, with MideastYouth.com engraved on it, a description of the prize from Harvard University, along with ‘Heroes of the Internet 2008′ at the bottom.

This unexpected recognition made me aware of the fact that we have the best team of authors, voluntary staff members, and community I could ever ask for. Thank you so much for everything, people. I wanted nothing more than to share this moment with the ones who gave this project their everything and wish they could’ve been there with me to receive it. This is far from a personal award. If I could I would chip a piece of it to all of you who contributed. I especially want to thank the people who really made a lot of this happen by offering their help, advice, trust and more:

Lalith
Omid
Liz
Kawthar
Tori
Tamara
Mimi
Mohammad Memarian
Rasha

There’s a lot more, but these are the people who really committed themselves in seeing this place grow and stuck around to watch it grow into the place that it is today.

You guys are wonderful and I honestly couldn’t have done it without you. My only hope is that your passion for this community will be increasingly intense so we can achieve our mission.

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Midnight weddings annoy many people, including husbands and drivers who have to ferry the women folk home, and the elderly who are unable to stay up late. In order to encourage people to hold weddings earlier in the day, members of the Women’s Cultural Forum have started a campaign entitled “Our Weddings Are for Our Happiness.”

Seriously though? Out of all the issues that Saudi women currently face, we find a campaign against … late night weddings? Strikes me as a bit insane.

What do you guys think?

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- Reality
- Best Political/News Series
- Public Service and Activism

The only one it did not win was “best editing,” which is hardly a loss!

This is a really big win for Hometown Baghdad. Congratulations!

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So without further ado…

You can buy this shirt here.

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“I see that any job, whatever it may be, is an agreement between an employer and the employee. It is a matter of accepting and refusing. If there is a woman whose circumstances force her to work in a kitchen for a few hours and she accepts the payment, then I cannot come and say, ‘How could Saudi women take such jobs?’ Our mothers and grandmothers used to do such jobs. And they still do in the Bedouin culture,” he said.

“The ministry or any other concerned authority has no business if a woman is satisfied with her payment. And I have no right to say that a Saudi woman should not be dubbed a ‘housemaid’,” Al Gosaibi said. He

I am happy to see this position accepted by the Saudi Ministry of Labour. In fact this might help stop people from associating housemaid with “cheap” slaves and people might begin to respect and appreciate these positions. If you condemn this, then you would have to condemn the other housemaids from South Asia as well, namely Sri Lanka, which Saudi Arabia has more than 600,000 of.

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Dear Friends and Family,

Hometown Baghdad was recently nominated for four Webby Awards! The Webby Awards are the highest honors of the internet; past recipients to accept awards include Al Gore, Prince, Beastie Boys, founders of You Tube, MySpace, etc.

While the official awards are chosen by the likes of David Bowie and various industry leaders, a People’s Voice Award is given out in each category and anyone can vote! We need just a minute of your time– Please vote now!

- Go to http://pv.webbyawards.com
- Register (only takes a few seconds)
- Check your email for confirmation
- Click on the “online film and video” section
- Vote for us in each of the following categories:

News and Politics Series

Public Service and Activism (they are in the lead for this one; make sure you vote for them here first)

Reality

Editing

If we win, it would be an incredible honor for everyone involved with Hometown Baghdad and would lead to great opportunities for us all. We are up against some strong competition including Discovery, National Geographic, and the NY Times. So we need your help. Please pass this along to your network of friends!
Thank you for your votes and continued support of our work.

All the Best,

The Chat the Planet Team

Like I said, they are in the lead for this category:

Let’s make sure they win.

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In 1983, ABC produced a short documentary highlighting the perils facing Baha’is in Iran. That was a dark era in the history of Iran, marked with an oppressive crackdown on Baha’is and other religious minorities. Sadly, the repression continues to this day.

We at the Muslim Network for Baha’i Rights (MNBR) have translated the video to Arabic, in an effort to raise awareness about the peaceful nature of the Baha’i faith, the abuse innocent Baha’is face, and promote dialogue.

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Previous posts about Fouad by authors of MEY, actively condemning his imprisonment:

However, Kareem Amer is STILL IN PRISON. It has been a year and 6 months now! His case is one of the most serious when it comes to the regional blogosphere and it bothers me that voices for his rights have been distant as of late.

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I don’t know much about the artist, and the only thing I know about the song is that I think it’s called “Wedding”? Not even sure. Found this randomly from one of my Saudi classmates and thought I’d pass it along here for the rap-lovers who are curious as to what Saudi rap might sound like.

Note the beginning is not rap. The background music though is all using Arabic instruments and typical national-style music. So, it’s a very localized rap tune.

[Download]

PS. We have some other Arabic rap music on our radio player. Check out the Iraqi ones, they are pretty great.

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For a while I really regretted posting it since people often use our articles against us, claiming that we are animals, sex-crazed hypocrites, et al, when really it is just critical social commentary. Are we not allowed to criticize our own societies without having a bunch of morons repeatedly claim that they morally superior, using our criticism as an example of our “backwardness”? The racism that resulted due to that post was endless.

Anyways, recently I found a good example of my post via a video featuring Zeid Hamdan, who apparently is a member of a Lebanese indie band.

So, now you all know it has to do with repressed societies - not Islam, and not us being “naturally animals.” It is common sense to realize that when a society is sheltered, and where sex/relationships are generally taboo, people are going to resort to porn to feed their curiosity and/or sexual frustrations.

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This podcast answers the questions for many Islamophobes out there, and also brings up the issues of certain people who hide their anti-immigration agendas behind “religious disputes,” such as Geert Wilders. It’s quite thorough and humorous.

Tariq Ramadan is a senior research fellow at Oxford. He is a philosopher who has been defined as “the matchmaker between Islamic and European thought,” and he believes that a profound change has been taking place among younger generations of Muslims in Europe.

“Swiss by nationality, Muslim by religion, European by culture and Egyptian by memory,” Tariq Ramadan discusses the dynamics and challenges of Islamic youth and their integration into Western society.

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Artists, actors, poets, musicians - very rarely are they taken seriously or appreciated in society, and it takes very much for your average Arab to actually make a profession out of what is commonly referred to as “just useless hobbies.”

Take a look at this video:

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