Some quick hits on the sadly neglected Nancy-Haifa culture wars:
Praktike picks up the baton:
As Marc Lynch has painstakingly documented (against his will, no doubt, but someone has to do it), video clips of sultry Lebanese singers (many of them produced in Cairo, I should note) are now ubiquitious across the Middle East and have led to what Lynch calls the "Nancy-Haifa Culture Wars." The fierce, sometimes violent debate over these video clips resemble American cultural battles about the portrayal of sex in various forms of media, and probably shouldn't be understood as a uniquely Arab phenomenon (a similar reactive process has taken place in India, for instance, though the conservatives seem to be losing).
Clearly, the fact that such a debate is taking place is indicative of the commercial pull that the, um, oldest form of entertainment has for young people in the Arab world. Yes, Arabs, too, enjoy sex!
But there are opposing trends at work here. While Nancy, Haifa, Ruby, and the rest shake their asses to great popular acclaim, it is Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood who are asendant politically. It's clear where they stand on racy video clips; they want to outlaw them. The hijab, an imperfect indicator but an easy one to spot, is more prevalent than ever on Cairo streets. Perhaps the MB is fighting a losing battle for the hearts and minds of Arab youth, but the power of Nancy doesn't seem to spill over into the political realm quite yet. This is not to say that it can't or won't, but rather that it's premature to say that it is, in fact, spilling over.
And the Independent writes about Amr Khaled (thanks to Asaad for the tip):
It is a powerful metaphor for the work of a religious and marketing phenomenon called Amr Khaled, who is trying to pump oxygen into the arid lives of Muslim youth. Amr (rhymes with "charmer") Khaled is the Arab world's first Islamic tele-evangelist, a digital age Billy Graham who has fashioned himself into the anti-Bin Laden, using the barrier-breaking power of satellite TV and the internet to turn around a generation of lost Muslim youth.
Meanwhile, al-Sharq al-Awsat reports that the Bahraini parliament has passed the first law of its kind in the Gulf outlawing the use of Bluetooth wireless technology - evidently aimed at men sending unsolicited emails or text messages to women on their mobile phones. Islamists don't think the penalties are harsh enough (100 dinar, or about $266). I'm sure that this governmental ban will stop it, just like the Saudi government's ban on voting for Star Academy succeeded (a Saudi guy won last year's competition despite the ban, for those who don't get the joke). But maybe it will help distract attention from the very real political problems that Bahrainis seem more interested in.... always a good use of culture wars, don't you think?
It's amazing, really - a culture war keeps happening even if I don't have time to write about it! Go figure.
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