The fact that media has became a new way of life is so obvious that nobody dares challenge it. It provides people with the information that can influence their daily life and keep them in touch with the national and international events. Since its emergence, media has facilitated the constitution of state-nation. Life is a combination of new habits and this newcomer gives people the new habits, and links the private and social life: people watch a movie, read a book, hear a piece of news and discuss that at work with others. It’s an omnipresent power which has been leading private and public discussion. Even the new political life has been changed since media has emerged. Media underlies the political debates, challenges politicians, and stimulates people’s participation on the political scene. The question is, can media pave the way for democracy in the Middle East or will it restrict any passage to it? And what’s its role in shaping the public sphere and in the strained relation between state and public sphere?
Media emerged in the Middle East when Modernity set foot in this part of the world. At its early stage, media was in some wealthy enterprise’s hands in the modern world and under state control in the Middle East. Newspapers appeared before other mass media and were strictly government-owned. Despite the high state surveillance, Middle Eastern elites dared to challenge their state-run media by establishing their own newspapers. The first Arab press was Christians, but it became Islamic, too, after a while, and the first Islamic press, Al-Menar in Cairo had an important role to mobilize the Muslim against the European Modernity. The press of other Middle Eastern countries were dealing with the same issue more or less. The same as Arab countries, newspaper was government-established in Iran, in its early emergence. The first ones date back to the Naser-Aldine Shah, one of the shahs of the Kajar dynasty which ruled Persia since 1794-1925. These newspapers were usually published outside of the country by the elites who were against the state policies. The more important one, Akhtar, published in Istanbul, could mobilize the Persians against the British who were given the Concession of Tobacco, a contract which enabled the British to underbuy the tobacco from the Persian farmers and oversell it to its interior and exterior clients. The British and Shah were obliged to cancel the contract after consecutive uprisings mobilized by the Ayatollahs and the press.
Consider the role of media in deepening the role of citizenship, one must say that by the flows of information across nations and boundaries, citizen become aware of their human rights and will demand being granted those rights. I have to add here that citizenship, individual or collective, whose primary rights involves the notions like freedom of speech, thought, the right to take part in a fair election, and so on, finds its meaning in a democratic framework. And because these notions have always been a dream for Middle Eastern people, it’s better to put this citizenship into a general category emerging in the Middle East, which is civil society. The wary civil society is, as Sorenson says “defined as the place where a mélange of groups, associations, clubs, unions,” and the other components “provide a buffer between state and citizen.” Sorenson’s development of civil society underlies this fact that civil society prepares the base for implementation of required institution for reaching democracy and suppression of this class by the regimes is a reason for not having achieved democracy. That the civil society can be the prerequisite condition for democracy is undeniable, but without elites and military forces collaboration, democracy can’t be achieved in the Middle East. I have to say the study of the new vague of democratization since the democratic passage in Portugal in 1974 shows that the more sustainable democracies are those achieved through a coalition between the elites in powers. But when it comes to the Middle East, as Sorenson pointes out “many of elite actor models use as their template military regimes.” These kinds of regimes always backfire and follow the establishment of another authoritarian regime.
To sum up, I reckon that the development of the new media, especially internet, can activate the process of democratization by making a new public sphere, in which any citizen is given the right to share the flow of information , go beyond the boundaries and be aware of his/her rights. The civil society, required to challenge any tyranny and the base of any democracy, has been revived in this new world .This new media, especially the internet, has put the non-democratic regimes in the Middle East on the world spotlight and it’s for sure that they will, sooner or later, grant the citizenship rights to their people.
“I have come to restore your rights, to punish the usurpers, and that I respect God, his prophet, and the Qur’an.”
Napoleon after the invasion of Egypt, 1798
“We are in Egypt not merely for the sake of the Egyptians, though we are there for their sake, we are there also for the sake of Europe at large.”
Arthur James Balfour, 13 june 1910, House of Common
You know, the saddest thing about these western leaders is that they have taken us for the nomads who don’t know a bit about their welfare in that without them we can’t survive. They started colonizing us, remapping our countries, and supporting fundamentalist groups for their own benefits. Take for example a terrorist group like Taliban which was shaped to prevent the spread of communism in the region, and when Soviet Union collapsed it turned against those who were fighting for freedom once and it became a strong enemy of the great West; hence a false image of ‘Muslims’. Yes, it might be right that without its colonialism the Middle East couldn’t taste modernity, but do you think we’re modern now? We went through two required stages of modernity but are stuck in the third one, which is the grant of human rights. To justify its colonialism, western missionaries, according to Hamid Dabashi, made the notion of the West versus the East, or according to Edward Said its Others. Then, they easily managed to spread the Islamophobia across the world. The Western missionaries depicted us as ‘the Others’, like the Others of the Lost Series, always threatening and never seen. We know what democracy is, what our rights are, and how to fight for it. If the West cared for it, it could support us instead of depicting a frightening image of us. It saw us fighting for our rights last year in the streets of Iran, but stayed aside watching us. If you’re really going to change something, just try to fathom what we are and not what the idiotic Islamist groups are trying to depict.
"بر خلاف نظر بقیه، من معتقدم زنان گیلانی در کنار کار و تلاش روزانه، حریم عفاف و ناموس خود را هم حفظ میکنند."
"تکمله: این کشفیات را جای دیگهای مطرح نکنید؛ چون چشمتان میزنند! البته اگر چنین سخنی در تبریز و یا زنجان در مورد زنان آذربایجانی ایراد میشد، چه بسا مردم با همان «چاقوی زنجان» درسی بهصاحبسخن میدادند تا هرگز آن را فراموش نکند!"
جمله ی اول از افاضات احمدی نژاد و دومی جوابیه ی اعلمی به اوست.
واکنش من با خواندن این مطالب این بود که:
الف) جناح چپ و راست جمهوری اسلامی در این یک زمینه، دست کم، هم نظرند که جایی مناسب تر از بدن زن برای عرض اندام خودشان و رجزخوانی ها پیدا نمی کنند.
ب) حقش این است که از قباحت سخنان این دو "همه ی" ما مردان ایرانی کلاهمان را بالاتر بگذاریم.
پ) دارم به این می اندیشم که چه بی رنگ شده است امیدهایم به اصلاح این نظام، حتی از راه شکیباترین خشونت پرهیزی ها.