As Muslim countries go, Egypt is relatively enlightened. And yet, censorship and police-state tactics are rife there, as I wrote before. Here's the latest example.
Egypt has banned editions of two French and German newspapers, Le Figaro and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, because of articles deemed insulting to Islam, the state news agency MENA said on Sunday. Under a decree issued by Information Minister Anas el-Feki, the two editions will not be able to enter the country, it said.
And in case you missed it, here's how another moderate Muslim nation, Turkey, deals with criticism of the state. Prosecutors there recently hauled novelist Elif Shafak into court; she had dared to invent Armenian characters who, in a fictional dialog, were critical of Turkey's violent past. Shafak stood trial for the crime of "insulting Turkishness." She was acquitted (like Orhan Pamuk, another prominent Turkish writer who was tried on the same charge back in December).
The acquittals are a pleasing outcome, of course, but it remains a thoroughly distasteful reality that supposedly "modern" Muslim nations can arrest and detain anyone whose words the rulers deem undesirable.
The same fate can befall those whose images the officials don't like. A couple of years ago, Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had local cartoonist Musa Kart prosecuted for having drawn the PM as a kitty helplessly entangled in a ball of yarn. Kart was ordered to pay a fine of almost $4,000.
And just a few months ago, Mr. Erdogan instructed his lawyers to go after a British artist, Michael Dickinson, for a collage that showed the head of state's mug grafted onto a dog's body. In Turkey, Dickinson could face three years behind bars. A spokesman for the Turkish government helpfully explained that
"[J]ust as it was the artist’s prerogative to depict the Prime Minister as a dog, it is the prerogative of the Prime Minister — and this could have been anyone — to decide that this was insulting and sue him."
In other words: "You have the right to make any art you want, and we then have the right to throw you in jail."
Chilling stuff.
I think that you're the first person I've heard of who's called Egypt and Turkey modern.
Posted by: Jacob | Thursday, September 28, 2006 at 10:19 PM