Mideast Media Sampler 11/20/11

From DG:

1) How the Muslim Brotherhood gets its message out

Writing in the Atlantic Shadi Hamid explains How Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood Is Already Winning:

The anatomy of a Brotherhood election march is easy to understand. Candidates meet residents and shake hundreds of hands. Volunteers pass out flyers and sign up supporters. But to do this on a national level and cover Egypt's more than 40 million eligible voters requires thousands of organizers, tens of thousands of members and supporters, and considerable funding. Almost no parties -- perhaps save the hardline Salafi ones -- have these kinds of resources, and, for their part, many Salafis, after decades of shunning democratic elections as un-Islamic, are still uncomfortable with election marches. In Ard al-Liwa, the Brotherhood must have had around 30 designated "coordinators" -- all volunteers -- each of whom had a laminated FJP card hanging around their neck. So, when people ask why liberal and leftist parties don't do something similar, it comes down, at least in part, numbers.

It is unclear how effective these marches are. If nothing else, they offer residents a show of strength -- everybody likes a winner -- and reinforce the Brotherhood's street presence. The Brotherhood did this sort of thing for decades during Egypt's long, dark period of consistently rigged elections. Sometimes the Brotherhood would still manage to win seats; sometimes they wouldn't. But, in trying to win despite the odds, they were able to develop an organizational and electoral machinery few here could hope to challenge. Whether that machinery works as intended is something Egyptians -- and everyone else watching Egypt's landmark elections -- are about to find out.

In Foreign Policy Lauren Bohn explains how the Brotherhood became part of the Facebook (or Twitter) revolution. (h/t Tweet from Draddee)

Other critics point to worrying discrepancies and mismatched opaque strings of policy that blur just what those interests really are. Perhaps most notable is the Brotherhood's stance toward women and Copts (the minority Christian population that makes up 5-10 percent of Egyptian society) in leadership roles. @Ikhwanweb recently tweeted, to much confusion, that the Brotherhood would accept and be open to nominating a Copt or female prime minister "if it was necessary." Just an hour before they tweeted they would "accept a woman, whether Muslim or Copt, if she's elected by the people to be president."

"The president is different than the Prime Minister position," Malky clarifies in a fit of mental calisthenics over Twitter. "The Muslim Brotherhood is OK with woman or copt as prez IF elected by the people although, we won't nominate either on a FJP ticket. Nominating is one thing and accepting if elected by majority or another party ticket is another," Malky direct-messages in a split-second. "Fahemtee? LOL." (Do you understand?)

That's the thing. Not many do. Such confusion in laying out a complicated political program in 140-character snippets has led many tweeps to chide the group for not only failing to put forth a unified stance but instead producing a disingenuous Ikhwanonline ‘lite' version for a Western audience.

2) Nuanced repression


Anthony Shadid wrote ... But There’s a Slim Hope in History, about the fears Christians have in the Middle East.(h/t Tweet from Joshua Trevino)

Worries about the fate of Christians in the Middle East are often thrust uncomfortably into the conflict between the West and the Muslim world; in the American presidential campaign, Newt Gingrich regularly warns of an “anti-Christian Spring,” as he did in a Republican debate last weekend. 

But focusing on that conflict, and the bigotries that beset it, misses the nuances of what Christians represent to the region, and the lessons that their history in other times of tumult might offer the future. In the 19th century, they ushered in a renaissance of Arab culture. Just generations ago, they helped articulate the ideologies that seized the Arab world’s imagination. The fate of Arab Christians today will help define the unresolved struggle within the Arab world about its own identity — how universal, fair, just and equal its societies turn out to be.

Last year the New York Times reported on the Christians of Iraq:

Throughout Iraq, churches canceled or toned down Christmas observances this year, both in response to threats of violence and in honor of the nearly 60 Christians killed in October, when militants stormed a Syrian Catholic church and blew themselves up. Since the massacre, more than 1,000 Christian families have fled Baghdad for the Kurdistan region in northern Iraq, with others going to Jordan or Syria or Turkey. Though the exact size of Iraq’s Christian population is unclear, by some estimates it has fallen to about 500,000 from a high of 1.4 million before the American-led invasion of 2003. Iraq’s total population is about 30 million.

Maybe it's easier to acknowledge the numbers, because in this case the flight of the Christians can be blamed on America. But if nearly two thirds of Iraq''s Christians fled in seven years, what "nuance" would tell us more about their role in Arab history than about the inhospitability of Islamic regimes to religious minorities? Why is this nuance even important? In fact as CAMERA notes, the only country in the Middle East with a growing Christian population is Israel. Looking for nuance where there is none is simply a way of ignoring the obvious.

3) Is Saif safe?

The New York Times reports Libyan Fighters Catch Qaddafi’s Last Fugitive Son:

Militia leaders based in Zintan, a western mountain town and stronghold of resistance to Colonel Qaddafi’s regime, said they captured Seif al-Islam early Saturday in the southwestern desert near Awbari, along with a small entourage. 

But while transitional government leaders in the capital, Tripoli, promised that Mr. Qaddafi would be closely guarded and turned over to the International Criminal Court to be tried on war crimes charges, leaders in Zintan insisted that they would not hand him over until a formal national government was formed — a process that is in the works but at least a day or two away. 

Such insistence on factional power is at the heart of international concerns about Libya’s future. And after Colonel Qaddafi’s capture and killing at the hands of militiamen a month ago, his son’s case will be an important test of Libya’s commitment to the rule of law.

Yes it will be an important test in terms of telling us what sort of government will be in charge. But does it really matter how the new rulers of Libya succeed? Regardless of their record so far and the Islamist orientation of the interim government, the UN General Assembly has voted to reinstate Libya to the Human Rights Council apparently because Qaddafi is now gone.

The General Assembly suspended Libya from the U.N.'s top human rights body on March 1 as part of the international effort to halt Moammar Gadhafi's violent crackdown on protesters. It accused Gadhafi's regime of committing "gross and systematic violations of human rights." 

With Gadhafi's death and a new interim Libyan government in place, the assembly adopted a resolution by a vote of 123-4 with six abstentions to restore Libya's rights on the council. The four countries voting "no" were Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Ecuador. 

Before the vote, Libya's deputy U.N. ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi told the 193-member world body that the "new Libya" deserved to return to full membership on the Geneva-based council after Gadhafi's 42-year rule which saw massive violations of human rights.

It's interesting that the New York Times talks about a test of Libya's interim government.  There's a test that the New York Times failed in year's past: acknowledging that Saif al-Islam was part of his father's regime. In 2007 the New York Times, in an embarrassingly flattering profile of Saif al-Islam called him "part scholar, part monk, part model, part policy wonk;" a description belied by his proclamation a few months ago that his family would fight to the last drop of blood. If that wasn't bad enough, the New York Times allowed the younger Qaddafi to bear false witness on behalf of Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi on its op-ed page. The New York Times was not alone in glamorizing the tyrant's son; Esquire named him one of the world's most influential people in 2008.

Covering for tyrants - past and present - simply strengthens them.

4) 1948 in "real" time

I don't know who's behind it but there's a fascinating new Twitter account, 1948war. It's a regular update of the events 64 years ago that led to Israel's War of Independence. There was one item last week that caught my eye.

UN GA calls on orgs not to assist Jewish immigration to Palestine, by a vote of 46-0. Russia abstained. [Nov. 17, 1947]

With "settlements" now regarded by the UN and many others as the primary obstacle to peace, it's fascinating to be reminded that it wasn't what Jews did or didn't do that causes Arab hatred; it's that they were in the Middle East at all.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Middle East and Media Bias.