Arab satellite good for democracy?

Arab satellite television

The world through their eyes
Feb 24th 2005 | CAIRO, LAAYOUNE, QATAR AND RIYADH
From The Economist print edition

With 150 channels to choose from, Arabs are arguing, comparing and questioning as never before. Will this burst of freer speech bring democracy any closer?

THE dusty little town of Laayoune lies at the extreme western end of the Sahara desert, or about as far as you can get from Arabia and still be in an Arabic-speaking land. Before this century its only links to the Arab east were shortwave radio, old newspapers, the occasional Egyptian movie, and the talk of pilgrims returning from the haj. But now the clamour of places such as Beirut and Baghdad has come to Laayoune's doorstep: indeed, right into its living rooms, 24 hours a day.

Across the Arab world, the impact of the satellite dish has been profound. It has not merely broken the isolation of Laayoune and countless other towns and villages (roads and telephones can do that). It has not simply exposed their people to extremes of behaviour, from stark p*rnography to fervid fundamentalism (the internet can do that). Satellite television has created a sense of belonging to, and participation in, a kind of virtual Arab metropolis. It has begun to make real a dream that 50 years of politicians' speeches and gestures have failed to achieve: Arab unity.

That dream remains, in fact, a distant prospect. Despite lofty talk, the ties that bind Arabs remain largely ones of sentiment and memory, as well as the broadly shared Muslim faith and Arabic language. Yet all these common things are strengthened by satellite television.

Arabic is a diverse, richly layered language. Natives of Laayoune still speak their local dialect. But now that they hear a range of usages every day—from the classical speech of literature to its many regional derivatives—these no longer strike them as over-formal or exotic. The written language taught in schools, known as modern standard Arabic, used to be forgotten in daily affairs. Now it has come alive as a real spoken tongue, accessible not just to the educated few, but to everyone.

For religious instruction Arabs are as likely, now, to tune directly to Mecca as to seek opinions from the neighbourhood mosque. They may follow one of two private Saudi-owned channels that propagate the kingdom's arid take on the faith. Viewers bored by bearded sheikhs may turn instead to TV preachers such as Egypt's Amr Khaled, whose similarly conservative message comes packaged in a snappy blazer and jeans.

Such satellite fare has speeded the homogenisation of Muslim religious practice. In January, for example, Saudi religious authorities abruptly announced, a day earlier than expected, the start of the Muslim lunar month of Dhu'l Hijja. During four days of this month pilgrims perform the haj rituals at Mecca, while fellow Muslims celebrate the Eid holiday. In the past, other governments could have ignored the Saudi call, citing reliance on their own astronomers. But the haj is now broadcast live. Despite the global chaos as millions scrambled to change their Eid plans, every Muslim country except Indonesia felt obliged to follow the Saudi line, for the simple reason that their people could see their co-religionists gathered at Mecca's Mount of Mercy.

Local issues still inflame passions in places like Laayoune. But so do the travails of Iraqis and Palestinians, 3,000 miles away. Saturation coverage has made provincial Arabs as keenly aware of the issues and personalities involved as the café pundits of Cairo and Damascus. And when the politically minded of the Arab periphery think of making noise about their own concerns, their preferred forum is now not the local press. It is chat shows and news bulletins beamed from distant Qatar and Dubai—home, respectively, to the Arab world's two most popular news channels, al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya.

Al-Jazeera, by far the best known among some 150 Arab satellite channels, boasts 40m-50m regular followers. The entertainment channel MBC has even more. When their smaller rival, Beirut-based Future TV, ran a song contest last summer, 15m viewers voted on the outcome: more Arabs than have ever cast ballots in a free election.

Critical voices

The winner of the song contest, a Libyan student of dentistry, was instantly, if briefly, the most famous Libyan in the world after the country's leader, Colonel Muammar Qaddafi. This underscores another reason for the potency of Arab satellite TV. Until a decade ago, rulers such as Mr Qaddafi were assured of captive audiences. The only critical voices were likely to come from Bush House in London, via the BBC's Arabic Service, or from the French government's racier Radio Monte Carlo, or from the propaganda broadcasts of neighbouring, hostile regimes.

Nearly all Arab states maintain terrestrial broadcasting monopolies (Iraq and Lebanon being the exceptions). By and large, however, the Arab public has exercised technology's gift of choice to leave the dowdy old state channels in the lurch. Sniffing this wind, many of the region's ubiquitous ministries of information have launched their own satellite channels. The Egyptian government's mammoth media organ, for example, boasts no fewer than 25. Satellite competition has also persuaded state broadcasters to offer flashier graphics, more field reporting and coverage of leaders that is less adulatory.

None of this, however, can contain the impact on Arab media consumers of an ever-widening range of choice. It is one thing to learn of different, perhaps attractive, lifestyles in foreign cultures by way of Hollywood movies; it is quite another to see them being practised next door. Even the most purdahed of Saudi women are liable to observe that driving cars, forbidden to them, is quite normal for their sisters not only in distant, decadent America, but also in nearby Kuwait or Dubai. Syrians or Egyptians can see that real elections take place not just in rich Christian Europe, but in neighbouring Palestine and Iraq. Such innovations are no longer perhaps just for people “like them”, but for people “like us”.

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An increased awareness of what they have now and what they can have will probably speed up the neocon domino theory across the ME faster than any shots or missles fired by us. Even if you can account the fears that some fundamental clerics will exploit the new medium, it is only one of the several cacophony of voices. Tearing down the Great Satan is different when you have the context of Western people living lifestyles that could be possible in their homes. Adolescents who need an outlet for their growing frustrations could very well turn it on their governments instead of joining groups plotting to take us down.