Knives are out for the Arab world’s one and only uncensored television station. The Qatar-based satellite station al-Jazeera is being demonised as the “voice of terrorism”. Colin Powell, the United States secretary of state, describes it as “the most vitriolic, irresponsible” TV channel in the world. Condoleezza Rice, the US national security adviser, has asked American broadcasters not to show al-Jazeera’s exclusive pictures from Afghanistan. Both George Bush and Tony Blair want it censored.
Apparently, Osama Bin Laden is sending coded messages through the video recordings he sends to al-Jazeera. What really rattles the leaders of the “free world” is that a “cave dweller”, as Bush dubbed Bin Laden, can also be a sophisticated manipulator of the media. Bin Laden speaks directly and eloquently to his Arab audiences; in contrast, Blair’s own broadcast on al-Jazeera, hesitant and often inarticulate, went down like a lead balloon in the Arab world.
Al-Jazeera was started in 1996 after a BBC Arabic-language satellite channel based in Saudi Arabia was closed down by the Saudis. The staff, all BBC-trained, went off wholesale to the new station, which had received $100m from the Emir of Qatar. In programmes such as The Opposite Direction, More Than One Opinion and No Frontiers, al-Jazeera broadcasts the kinds of discussion people in the Arab world used to have only behind closed doors.
It is the only station that provides a voice to Arab opposition parties, openly discusses democracy and human rights, and exposes abuses of power. Only on al-Jazeera can Arabs discover Israel’s viewpoints and see Israeli politicians being grilled by hard-nosed professionals. And most of all, it is the only airspace where Islamic alternatives to the status quo, moderate as well as extremist, are critically examined.
Just how profoundly al-Jazeera has changed the Arab media landscape can be seen from the station’s long-running battle with the Syrian authorities. On the death of the former president Hafez Assad, al-Jazeera provided wide-ranging coverage of the domestic and regional implications of his departure. In particular, the station aired the views of a number of important Arab commentators, all uniformly condemning the speedy amendment of the constitution to install Assad’s son, Bashar.
In a typical incident, an independent member of parliament, Monzir Moussali, raised serious objections to the amendment. Viewers of Syrian national television did not see or hear Moussali’s voice. Instead, they heard the Speaker first censuring Moussali and then telling the House that “the sinful part of the respected member’s soul led him into error, and he has realised his mistake and repented”. But al-Jazeera not only broadcast Moussali’s objections, it also carried an extensive interview with him on its nightly news programme, Today’s Harvest.
Al-Jazeera has had similar battles with the authorities in Libya, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. All four states have repeatedly threatened to withdraw their ambassadors from Qatar.
Recently, President Bashar al-Assad ordered the Syrian media to be “calm, logical and balanced” in their reporting, which must “respect the intelligence of the audience”. Other governments are contemplating relaxing their media laws as the audiences for local, censored channels dwindle to a handful of the party faithful.
Al-Jazeera has set an example for other satellite stations. The London-based al-Mustakillah Television has acquired a huge following, particularly in the Maghreb. Launched in 1999, al-Mustakillah devotes a great deal of its programming to issues of human rights, democracy and freedom of expression. Shedding a Light on the Culture of Human Rights, presented by Abdul Hussein Shaban, the president of the Arab Human Rights Organisation in the UK, is one of its most popular programmes.
When I appeared on its weekly 90-minute phone-in programme, The Diplomat, this month, the switchboards were jammed with calls from Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. According to Le Monde, when The Diplomat is on air, city streets across the Maghreb are as deserted as in a state of emergency or under a curfew.
While al-Jazeera is slick and ultra- professional, al-Mustakillah’s production values can only go up. However, both these stations are ushering in slow but definite change to societies in the Middle East.
President Bush should beware: any attempt to close or censor the most popular and free television station in the Arab world would prove a sure recipe for losing the hearts and minds of Muslims. Indeed, it is this kind of strategic nonsense that confirms how little western leaders know about how the Arab world works.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if the first collateral damage from Operation Enduring Freedom turned out to be the stirrings of a free press in the Arab world?
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