What the Muslim World Is Watching
November 18
New York Times Magazine
(Page 5 of 6)
When Ghabra spoke, he offered a
cautionary refrain. A new international
order, he said, was emerging out of the
wreckage of Sept. 11. "The world is being
reshaped," he said. He warned against
allowing the "Arab street" to dictate policy.
Surely, he said, one wanted leadership and
judgment from the Arab world, lest it be
further marginalized and left out of the order
of nations.
For Karmi, however, Osama bin Laden was
a "struggler in the path of God." There was
no proof, he added, that Osama bin Laden
was responsible for the events of Sept. 11;
he was merely a man who cared about the
rights of Muslims. He asked and answered
his own question: Why did the "Arab
Afghans" -- by which he meant the Arab
volunteers who had gone to Afghanistan in
the 1980's to fight the Soviet Union -- turn
their wrath against the United States? "They
have been made angry that the enemies are
inside the Arab world," he said, echoing bin
Laden's Oct. 7 videotape. "By its presence
in the Arabian Peninsula, or in Palestine
through its unlimited support for the killing of
Palestinians, America has brought this anger
on itself!"
Rashid, the guest in Doha, offered further
absolution for bin Laden. The man, he
argued, was just "part of the Arab anger in
the face of American arrogance."
The show paused for a commercial break.
One ad offered a striking counterpoint to the
furious anti-Westernism of the call-in
program. It was for Hugo Boss "Deep Red"
perfume. A willowy Western woman in
leather pants strode toward a half-naked
young man sprawled on a bed. "Your
fragrance, your rules, Hugo Deep Red," the
Arabic voiceover intoned. I imagined the young men in Arab-Muslim cities
watching this. In the culture where the commercial was made, it was nothing
unusual. But on those other shores, this ad threw into the air insinuations
about the liberties of the West -- the kind of liberties that can never be had
by the thwarted youths of the Islamic world.
Back on the air, Shafeeq Ghabra made his sharpest intervention of the
program: There was a "democratic deficit" in the Arab world, he argued.
"But if a Saudi citizen had to choose between bin Laden and King Fahd, he
should choose King Fahd. Bin Laden has not come forth bearing a
democratic project, or a new project to improve the condition of women, or
to repair our educational system. What he proposes is a Talibanist project,
which would be a calamity for the Arab people."
Ramhi, the anchorwoman, interrupted him, talking over his voice. "Someone
has to say to the United States, this is a red line!" she shouted. "Here and no
more, in Palestine and Iraq, in other Arab realms!"
Ramhi soon cut off the discussion and segued to a taped segment from
Egypt. The report, a Cairo street scene, was full of anti-Americanism. "Any
young Muslim would be proud to be Osama bin Laden," one young man
said. "America is the maker of terrorism," another asserted, "and it is now
tasting its own medicine." There was authenticity in this rage; it was
unrehearsed and unprompted. The segment went on at some length.
Afterward, Ramhi admitted that there was a "minority opinion" to be found in
Egypt. She cut to the brief comments of a quiet man, in a white shirt and tie,
in the midst of a crowd. He was eager to exonerate his faith. "I am a good
Muslim," he said, "and Islam does not permit the killing of noncombatants.
Islam could never countenance the killing of civilians."
This dissent was immediately followed, however, by more belligerence. Men
clamored for the "evidence," insisting there was no proof of bin Laden's guilt.
And there was the unsettling verdict of the sole "woman on the street"
interviewed. The young woman had a certain fundamentalist chic -- a
colored head scarf arranged with flair and a confident way about her. She
spoke of bin Laden with unadorned admiration. "Bin Laden is the only
personality who is doing the right thing at this time," she said. "He is trying to
awaken them from their slumber!"
Al Jazeera is the only Arab television station to have achieved global fame,
but its status is inflated. The truth is, other Arab channels reach much wider
audiences. The oldest, most successful of the pan-Arab satellite stations is
the London-based Middle East Broadcasting Centre. The station is
controlled by an in-law of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. In addition to
broadcasting the region's most popular program, "Who Wants to Be a
Millionaire" MBC has five news broadcasts of its own. MBC's news
programs come across as blandly professional. Compared to Al Jazeera, its
reporters are staid, careful not to incur the wrath of Arab rulers or to
challenge the established order. There is also the hugely popular Lebanese
Broadcasting Corporation International. LBCI is loaded with entertainment
programming, but it also regularly presents news. The news on LBCI, a
privately owned station, also has a tepid feel. Syria dominates the Lebanese
world, and its news broadcasts avoid broadcasting anything that would
offend.
Despite its comparatively small audience, Al Jazeera has received almost all
of the Bush administration's attention so far. The doors in official Washington
have now opened before Al Jazeera's reporters. Since Sept. 11, there have
been interviews with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
Surely, the emir of Qatar never imagined that the bet he took five years ago
would be so amply rewarded. Al Jazeera still requires the emir's subsidies,
but the station's heightened profile has brought it closer to solvency. Al
Jazeera's footage from Afghanistan, for example, has been sold to news
outlets around the world, with individual clips selling for as much as
$250,000. And earlier this fall, CNN and ABC made arrangements with Al
Jazeera to broadcast the Arabic station's exclusive video from Afghanistan.
Al Jazeera's defenders tend to applaud its independence from the censors
who control state-sponsored outlets in the Arab world. For the Egyptian
novelist Ahdaf Soueif, there is the pleasure of channel-hopping at 2 in the
morning and hearing a television station breaking with the widespread
censorship and silence of the Arab news media. "It provides the one window
through which we breathe," Soueif recently wrote of Al Jazeera.
In one sense, Soueif is right: the Arab world needed to be challenged. This
was a region where the official media, in August 1990, withheld news of
Iraq's conquest of Kuwait for three days. The pompous, sycophantic press
in Arab countries -- whose main function has been to report the comings and
goings and utterances of the ruler of the land -- has been dealt a major blow.
For the first time, Arabs with a satellite dish now have access to uncensored
news.
(Page 6 of 6)
Al Jazeera's viewers see things that people
of the region are clearly not meant to see.
On Oct. 21, Al Jazeera offered silent
footage of Bright Star, a joint
Egyptian-American military exercise, off the
coast of Egypt. It was a potent commentary
on the stealth cooperation of the Egyptian
military with the Pentagon. And despite the
fact that its coverage of the intifada was
horribly slanted, Al Jazeera should get some
credit for being one of the few Arab TV
stations to interview Israelis.
That said, Al Jazeera's virulent
anti-American bias undercuts all of its
virtues. It is, in the final analysis, a dangerous
force. And it should treated as such by
Washington.
A Madison Avenue advertising executive,
Charlotte Beers, has been newly designated
the under secretary of state for public
diplomacy and public affairs. The aim is to
win the propaganda war, or the battle of
public diplomacy in the Muslim world. She
has her work cut out for her. The Bush
administration is eager to explain America's
war, eager for the Arabs and the Pakistanis
to accept the justness of its military actions.
But how can it possibly expect to persuade
the reporters at Al Jazeera to change their
deep-seated view of this conflict? It would
therefore be folly for America's leaders to
spend too much energy trying to moderate
Al Jazeera. It would be counterproductive
to give Al Jazeera's editors and reporters a
special claim on the time of senior American
officials.
There is a better strategy available to
Washington. Instead of focusing on Al
Jazeera, the White House could grant "pool
interviews" to a large number of Arab
stations. It could give the less inflammatory satellite stations, like MBC and
LBCI, as much attention as Al Jazeera. Or, indeed, it could give them more.
After all, MBC has a bigger audience; shouldn't it have a bigger influence,
too? Why not give MBC the scoop of an interview with President Bush?
Why not give LBCI some exclusive access to White House officials?
Americans must accept that they are strangers in the Arab world. We can
barely understand, let alone control, what Al Jazeera's flak-jacketed
reporters in Kabul and smooth anchorwomen in Doha are saying about us.
An American leader being interviewed on Al Jazeera will hardly be able to
grasp the insinuations, the hidden meanings, suggested by its hostile
reporters. No matter how hard we try, we cannot beat Al Jazeera at its own
game. But one thing is sure: there is no need to reward a channel that has
made a name for itself through stridency and anti-Americanism.
There is a war on the battlefield, and that is America's to win. But the repair
of the Arab political condition -- and the weaning of the Arab world away
from radicalism -- is a burden, and a task, for the Arabs themselves. The
only thing America can do is make sure that it never gives this radicalism --
and its satellite channel -- a helping hand.
Fouad Ajami, professor of Middle Eastern studies at the School of
Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, is the
author most recently of ''The Dream Palace of the Arabs.'' |
