• The New Followers

The New Followers

When I look into the conversations taking place in private and public gatherings, read newspaper or periodical commentaries or listen to the news on the radio and TV, I feel as if we were in a vicious circle, with a single source of information and news.

It’s the new media game with its nagging sentences and phrases and repeated words and terminology, as if designed to make its rumors documents and its errors true facts making us the new followers just satellite dishes and listeners who believe everything they see and hear.

The people involved in such discussions refer to their news sources, as if everything they read in a paper, listen to on the radio or watch on TV were an undeniable fact. Our vocabulary has thus become quoted from the West s media. Whoever is described by the West as a terrorist, a dictator or a maverick is taken for granted to be so, and contemporary projection in politics, art, literature or even sport uses the same words, descriptions and titles we are now prey to.

News sources

The history of the Arab press began two centuries ago, or more exactly in 1828, with the appearance of the Egyptian Official Gazette Alwaqae Almisriya. Despite all the developments which our Arab press has witnessed in terms of print technology, wider coverage, and design and format, and although every Arab country has its own national news agency now, we still depend on foreign news agencies, as the Arab agencies do not create their own news and therefore do not claim to be its source. The same is true of TV news, as apart from routine local news, international news is provided by Western agencies.

It’s easy to identify the reasons behind this shortage of Arab news sources, as in audio-visual and print media there is a serious shortage of looking for and publishing information. The press covers the news in a superficial manner, and the tabloid press with its gossip, crime and models coverage is now the popular form, and Arab news makers are now a bunch of outlaws, profiteers and criminals at a time values and value are measured according to fame.

Talk shows are very popular now and their guests have become stars in all walks of life, the talk of the town, day and night and topics in the news and of discussions. The same incident is talked about day after day, and the guests, society, politics, art and sport stars, become items in such programmes, very welcome at first as hot news then become stale and consigned to oblivion as outshone by another piece of news, and so on, letting the machine keep turning, and making us as new followers - unaware that it grinds us and our values.

The dilemma of history writing

As I am critical of the influence of that blind machine on our life, I am equally so of historical research which is not free from subordination. I saw this out of my experience in the study and the teaching of history at academic institutions. Many textbooks, even on Arab-Islamic history, quote foreign sources! Ironically, in studying the history of their conquests, occupation and independence, history professors rely on the sources of enemies, rivals and non-allies! This irony becomes more tragic when the study of the East s history is judged according to Western writings. We have left our heritage, historical and literary texts in the hands of others to investigate our position in, and attitude to, the world. I don t mean here that all others writings are prejudiced, but I call on our national research and history centers to redouble their efforts to write their own history accounts rather than depend on foreign ones.

Looking at the footnotes to historical studies shows that they are based on European orientalists sources and references. The same is true even of the studies which deal with prominent Arab philosophers, Muslim religious scholars and makers of modern history, as if we were only able to read them through Western eyes! That wouldn’t t have been the case if we had opened our national archives to Arab academic and historical investigation. Our documents should be read through Arab eyes, and the archives of national revolutions should be available to the new generations without biased interpretations or pre-imposed views.

Let me ask: When will Arabs read their leaders letters and memoirs? When will the pages written by the makers of our modern Arab history be available to history students in order to usher a new dawn of credibility and transparency free from a unilateral, distorted reading of history?

Each year, and after the lapse of a certain number of years, foreign archives are made open to researchers from different nationalities. These archives are regarded as a treasure and heritage to be preserved as well as a constitution to be recognized. I hope when we launch these projects which read our history we open a new chapter in our future.

The job of history writing today has become a terrible tragedy whose heroes play fictitious roles in the making of history. They appear on TV with their frailties and forgetfulness interviewed by gossip talk-show hosts who are only interested in filling long hours of chatter with the dark side of history. Let me ask: Is it our fate that the world knows things we are ignorant of, that the West writes our own history and that the huge media machine is alienated, generation after generation?

Towards a new contract

What appears to me is not only the dark side of the picture but also the most common which hides serious experiments under the media hype which deceives people with its values, terms and vocabulary. It is devilish advertising which promotes earthly gods as starts who ruin life. Promoters of those who falsely claim to be versed in the true religion and diverst people’s attention from their real issues are not excepted. As a matter of fact, we are looking for a sound start to criticism of the media reality as a false earthly religion in order to free its new followers. The starting point may be freedom from intellectual intimidation by media tycoons, as the only source of knowledge, as a basis for a new media contract.

To begin with, such a contract will look for serious, renewable sources, including a study of our critical morals in politics, society, culture and arts, to identify the spirit of tolerance in our heritage and real values in our traditions. Let’s look for the seeds of building rather than destruction. Let s call for national unity and a better understanding of ourselves. In addition, let s free dialogue from its negative aspects, from just an exchange of insults, noise and private matters and make it a basis for development, something which the huge media machine lacks.

 

The new media contract will provide the largest space for civil society organizations which instead of nominal, alienated assemblies are the true voice of the people - which, if given ample opportunity, can provide a solid foundation for public order, awareness raising, enlightenment and a broad base of rebels against the new media domination. It should also be clear of such media slogans designed to suppress rational voices and divergent opinions which should be listened to, as well as of other terms such as public interest, national security and teeth of democracy used as tools for suppression, intimidation and persecution.

A new voice

In our consideration of the new media contract we should not fall prey to the monopoly of sources and news. The media has strong power, which looks like an ice ball rolling down the hill destroying everything along its way. We have therefore to find a new voice to be strong enough amid international media voices. As experience suggests, money is not a problem facing our ambitions. We spend a lot of money on many things, so why isn’t the media one of these? The media is no longer confined to TV channels, newspaper pages and radio networks. It flows freely through the air: news on the Internet and mobiles.

Accordingly, I don t think that one TV channel is sufficient to be our voice amid this media jungle. Neither do I recommend paid advertisements in the Western media, as those involved in, and affected by, decision-making do not base their assumptions on such advertisements. Our new voice, even if it is Arab, will be heard if it is marked by credibility and transparency and will be quoted and promoted in the media as it precedes, or even makes the news. But this voice will not be free and effective unless the sources of knowledge are available and those engaged in it enjoy their constitutional rights and access to it is easily allowed.

The new followers are invited to free themselves, and we involved in the media, history and the truth are required to give them a hand. In the beginning was the Word that changed the universe, and the Almighty s first call to our Muslim nation was to read, i.e. to think and scrutinize. Let s shape a future which is free from such submission that has replaced military colonialism with intellectual colonialism. Our free minds are our most precious assets and the most important tool for building our new Arab societies.

Sulaiman Al-Askary

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