Arab media and Iranian protest

This is interesting:  John Bradley has filed a report from Ahfaz Ahvaz (silly keyboard!) Iran, about unrest among ethnic Arabs in that city.  While his claim that this unrest "presents Iran with its most serious domestic security threat since the 1979 Islamic revolution" may be a bit exaggerated, I was intrigued by this point about the role of the Arab media:

The scale of the riots probably would have escaped attention outside Iran if Arabic Al Jazeera television had not managed to get a video crew into Khuzestan. It subsequently was barred from reporting from the province.

In my last few talks about the Arab media -  at Harvard and in Ann Arbor - questions have come up about how al-Jazeera had dealt with Iran. What's interesting is that this seems to be changing.  One thing I noticed in the research for my book was how completely "Arab-centric" al-Jazeera's talk shows have generally been - out of nearly 1000 talk shows I examined, only a handful dealt with anything not directly related to the Arab world.  And Iran was not part of that "Arab" world.

But over the last year or so, there seems to have been a notable increase in the number of programs devoted to Iran.  Ghassan bin Jidu's show, Open Dialogue, seems to deal with Iran almost once a month now, for instance.   Iran is still clearly treated as non-Arab, not part of the Arab "narrative", but it is also clearly entering more heavily into the Arab political argument.  At the Michigan event, Juan Cole speculated that this was largely to do with anti-imperialism, with Iran's standoff with the US and UN over the nuclear weapons issue capturing Arab attention, rather than anything to do with Iranian domestic politics.  My sense was that the nuclear issue certainly played a role, but I have seen quite a few programs about Iranian domestic politics too.   

Bradley's report suggests that the news coverage might be following the same track.  If he's right about the impact of al-Jazeera's coverage on the Iranian political scene, it would also be one more instance of that station helping rather than hurting American interests in the region - not through any conscious decision to "help" the US, but simply by reporting and discussing the kinds of protests and reform movements which are so central to its approach to politics.   Whether that kind of coverage would continue in the event of an American escalation against Iran is an interesting question.  2003, when al-Jazeera was more or less completely consumed by the Iraqi question, was the only period where discussion of reform largely dropped out of al-Jazeera's discourse - which suggests that something similar might happen in the event of a confrontation with Iran (though at a lower level, since Iran is still outside the Arab identity narrative).

Comments

[Maurice]

"Ahvaz", not "Ahfaz" -- unless you really want to p*ss off the Persians by calling it Al-Ahwaz . . .

[the aardvark]

My bad - Ahvaz it is, indeed. Silly keyboard.

[Philip Grant]

There are a few points worth making here. Firstly, the obvious one that the US, Iran and many Arab regimes, whatever their many differences, have in common the fact that they have all blamed al-Jazeera for troubles they have faced at one point or another. Secondly, that when the Iranian government expelled al-Jazeera from Iran last spring after rioting in Ahvaz, there were articles in the more "right-wing" press such as Keyhan labelling al-Jazeera as a Zionist organisation, and adducing as evidence the fact that it was widely known as such in the Arab world. Thirdly, the al-Jazeera affair reinforces the impression one has that the one thing sure to unite all Iranians, however much they hate their government, is the idea that foreign forces are trying to destabilise the country: I remember talking about the al-Jazeera/Zionist theory with a highly articulate, well-informed and reform-minded student in Tehran, who dismissed the idea as more propaganda on behalf of the Arabs in their quarrel with Israelis, something which had nothing to do with Iran. He then explained how in fact al-Jazeera was controlled by Lebanese Hizbullah, that this group was financed by Iran and that therefore the foreign forces plotting against the Iranian people were actually in league with Iran's government. Fourthly, it will be interesting to see how al-Jazeera's new interest in Iranian affairs change perceptions of Iran in the Arab world; one of the most astonishing things I have noticed in my time in Iran and in the Arab world is the extent of the ignorance Iranians have about Arabs and vice versa, probably greater than ignorance in Europe or America about either Arabs or Iranians.

[aardvark]

Philip - really interesting. When were you in Tehran - before or after the Presidential election? Mohammed Khatami was just on al-Jazeera last week, which I found kind of noteworthy.

[Dr Victorino de la Vega]

The New York Times reports that the Dutch government has decided to upgrade the compulsory “cultural integration” exams prospective immigrants have to take before obtaining a visa to the country of Erasmus...in order to “filter away all unwanted religiously conservative individuals”

“A lesson, about the Netherlands' nude beaches, is followed by another: homosexuals have the same rights here as heterosexuals do, including the chance to marry.

Just to make sure everyone gets the message, two men are shown kissing in a meadow.

The scenes are brief parts of a two-hour-long film that the Dutch government has compiled to help potential immigrants, many of them from Islamic countries, meet the demands of a new entrance examination that went into effect on Wednesday
”

Or course citizen of certain countries with high numbers of “religious conservatives” such as Israel and the US are exempted from taking the exam…but the Dutch government wants us to believe this shouldn’t be interpreted as blatantly racist double-standard directed at Arabs and Mohammedans!

But there’s even worse that sheer racism at work here: ironically, by focusing its message on nude beaches, swingers clubs, hash bars…etc. the Dutch government is contributing to the distortion and debasement of Western culture in the eyes of its critics, thus reinforcing their prejudices.

Just like their Neocon friends in Washington and Tel-Aviv, the Muslim-bashers of Amsterdam and The Hague are useful idiots feeding the anti-Western narrative of Osama Bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri.

Instead of promoting humanistic and secular values by building schools and universities with modernist secular curricula in the Middle-East and South Asia, instead of telling prospective immigrants the world over that Europe is a beacon of humanism and democracy, we’re content with provoking Muslims gratuitously.

In Hitler’s Germany, Jehovah's Witnesses were forced to accept blood transfusion and force-fed ham so they could become “good Germans”.

In Guantanomo’s prisons, Arab and Muslim detainees were routinely forced to watch gay porn movies while listening to the Israeli national anthem

I guess this must have paved the way for the Dutch government’s new immigration law…