This is the latest relevant press release we received from Congressman Trent Franks’ office.

May 25, 2007 – Congressman Trent Franks (AZ-02) launched the first Members’ briefing this week for the bi-partisan Task Force on Religious Freedom, which he co-chairs with Congressman Emanuel Cleaver (MO-05). Testifying at the briefing were Harold Hongju Koh, former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and labor, and Dean of International Law at Yale Law School, Ambassador John Hanford, U.S. State Department Office of International Religious Freedom, and Nina Shea, Vice-Chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, among others. The briefing focused on recent religious freedom developments in Egypt, as well as implications and recommendations for U.S. foreign policy in light of Egypt’s poor human rights record and the worsening status of religious freedom.

Congressman Franks stated, “Religious freedom is the cornerstone of human liberty and the hallmark of a free society. I am honored to have had the privilege of hosting the first Members’ briefing of the year for the Task Force on International Religious Freedom, and to have been joined by Representative Aderholt and many other Congressional staff. Recognizing that an assault on religious freedom anywhere threatens the dignity and security of all human beings, we must never cease to be vigilant in guarding the most precious of our human liberties. This Task Force will be a vehicle that will allow us to do just that – to continue advocating policies and affirming the right of every member of the human family to freely worship and live according to the dictates of their own conscience.”

Among the things discussed in the briefing were the plight of the Baha’is, the Egyptian blogger Abdel Kareem Amer, who was imprisoned for criticizing President Mubarak and insulting Islam on a personal webblog, and the continuing difficulties of members of other religious communities such as the Coptic Christians who face increasingly harsh government regulation.

Click here to download the opening statement of Congressman Trent Franks.

Dr. Abu Khoula writes on Elaph, a leading Arab liberal news Web site, an open letter to President Mubarak: A Call for President Mubarak to Free Abdul Kareem (In Arabic).

In his previous article on Kareem, Dr. Abu Khoula predicted that this case will tarnish the reputation of Al-Azhar University, as well as Egypt’s educational system and judicial branch. His letter goes on to explain how his predictions were correct due to the global outrage worldwide. For example, Amnesty International had set up a Web page to collect letters in support for Kareem, and UN Watch has brought up Kareem’s case several times. He bolsters his argument further by reminding President Mubarak that Kareem was awarded a 2007 Index on Censorship Award.

Furthermore, Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim assured the writer that the Ibn Khaldoun Center for Development Studies is determined to defend Kareem during the upcoming months, for his case is another case for freedom of opinion.

On such bases, Dr Abu Khoula hopes that the President of Egypt could pardon Kareem and end the injustice he is facing from Al-Azhar University.

(Correction: While Reporters Without Borders overwhelmingly supports Kareem, the article is incorrect to say that this Web site is set up by them. We are not affiliated with any organization.)

This was published a while ago by Arab Media & Society, but it’s another one of Mona Eltahawy’s interesting articles related to the blogosphere in the Middle East: Arab blogs: Or how I stopped worrying and learned to love Middle East dictators.

Below is an excerpt on the Egyptian blogosphere:

[T]he blogs have a miniscule audience, their detractors say. Not enough eyes and ears, they complain. To those detractors, to those old men on the rug still trying to figure out who’ll be left standing and to those who are still wading through the bog of stagnation, covered in self-defeat, I say “so what?”

And in defense of my “so what?” is the recent hat-trick, a triple whammy, scored by Egyptian bloggers.

One: the exposure by bloggers of the sexual assaults of women in downtown Cairo by gangs of men during a religious holiday in Cairo in October 2006 (for more see Sharon Otterman). Bloggers forced the issue onto the national agenda. Egyptian authorities studiously maintain the blogs were trying to make Egypt look bad but the flood of comments left by women attesting to their daily versions of the downtown sexual assaults showed otherwise.

Back to those electronic pamphleteers for a minute, because it is they who complete the circle between the October sexual assaults and May 25, 2005. Alaa and his mother were not the only targets of state-sanctioned violence that day. Many female protestors and journalists were sexually assaulted by security forces and pro-government thugs. Several bloggers who wrote about the October sexual assaults had previously witnessed those sexual assaults in May 2005 and so were more than ready to hold the State accountable for the security forces’ failure to bring offenders to justice.

Two: the detention in December of a police officer accused of sexually assaulting a prisoner. A month earlier Egyptian blogs had circulated a video showing the prisoner, Imad El Kabir, with hands bound behind his back and his legs held in the air, being sodomised with a stick as those around him taunt him. His lawyer has said the torture took place in January 2006 in a police station after Kabir was detained and beaten for trying to stop an argument between the police and his brother.

Three: the second detention in 18-months of 22-year-old blogger Abdul Kareem Nabil—also known as Kareem Amer—after he posted articles critical of Islam on his blog. When the security services of President Hosni Mubarak, the man who has dominated Egypt for a quarter of a century, arrest a blogger then the phrase “David and Goliath” cannot even begin to explain it (for more see Rania Al Malky).

On Tunisia, we learn the value of ten minutes to a blogger:

Whenever I think of Tunisia and the Internet I always think of 10 minutes. That’s how much time journalist and human rights campaigner Sihem Bensedrine (interviewed by Arab Media & Society) has to type out her latest news before security apparatus track down the Internet café she is filing from. Then she slips out to another café to begin another round of 10 minutes. I’ll never forget hearing her describe this at a conference in Copenhagen we spoke at last year that was organized by the Danish chapter of the writers’ organization PEN on freedom of expression in the Arab world.

How many rounds of 10 minutes do we spend surfing the net, mindlessly? She has 10 minutes to tell the world about the latest horrors of the police state otherwise known as the torture fiefdom of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali aka Tunisia.

Read it all. She discusses and lauds bloggers from all over the Middle East. Indeed, these bloggers are part of a large movement, a metamorphosis of sorts in civilian journalism.

Previously posted article by Eltahawy: Mona Eltahawy: Mubarak does not own Egypt and he does not own Islam.

The director of the Free Kareem Campaign, Esra’a, weighs in on the impact of cyber-activism and blogging in the Middle East: Cyber activists shape up for the fight.

Why the internet? The most important reason is interaction. It is the perfect tool for Arabs across the region to network with each other and to help each other when needed. Before blogging, many of us had no connection to diverse minorities within Arab countries, such as the Kurdish and Jewish communities. Arabs in the Gulf region hardly had any contact with fellow Arabs in North Africa.

We are quickly learning how to break these limits and boundaries through new and interactive technologies. Many of us choose to do this through cyber activism, which has proven to have significant social impacts. Through campaigns such as Free Kareem–aimed to free the 22 year old Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer–and pan-Arab networks such as Inter-Iman (inter-iman.com)–the Arabic version of the Middle East Interfaith Network–and Dis Moi (dis-moi.org)–a French website promoting tolerance and constructive dialogue amongst a diverse group of young Arabs–blogging is being taken to a new level. This new generation of group blogs and cyber campaigns is powerful enough to change public discourse in our societies, because many of these young writers are beginning to discuss taboos, something we were never given a chance to do in public, and are learning how to increase awareness through successful public relations and creative means of communication.

Cyber campaigns are also bringing attention to issues that are rarely discussed in our mainstream media outlets, such as forced prostitution or migrant rights. Moreover, cyber activists are trying to break stereotypes by making important statements through their campaigns. Tired of the false claim that Muslims are intolerant and unable to accept criticism, a group of young activists, including myself, led the Free Kareem campaign to underscore that although Kareem criticized our faith, we will fight for his right to express such opinions. We believe that this approach will have a positive impact on Muslims in the region. Furthering this argument, more websites were created in order to fight for the rights of religious minorities within our societies, including Arab Jews, Kurdish Christians, and others.

Here’s a good compendium of Egypt’s recent crackdown on bloggers: Egypt’s blog rebels silenced by jail.

In recent months, the Egyptian regime has jailed several bloggers, ending a period in which it had taken a more relaxed attitude towards internal critics. Human rights activists claim the about-turn follows the US administration’s decision to relax pressure on Middle Eastern governments to enact democratic reforms.

[...]

In February, Abdel Kareem Nabil, 22, a former student at Egypt’s Islamic Al Azhar University, was jailed for four years for insulting Islam and Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, on his blog.
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Last month, another popular and outspoken blogger from the banned Muslim Brotherhood, Abdel Monem Mahmoud, was thrown into Egypt’s notorious Tora prison, where he remains today.

[...]

Initial ambivalence on the part of government security agents changed in November, said Mr Zarwan, when a cellular phone video appeared on dozens of Egyptian blogs showing two police officers apparently sodomising a detainee with a rod. A public outcry ensued and the officers are being tried for torture.

Hossam Hamalawy, who writes a Cairo-based blog called 3Arabawy, said that, despite the crackdown, the bloggers are growing bolder.

“Some people are intimidated but overall it’s producing the opposite effect,” he said. “It is radicalising the blogosphere even more. We have bloggers joining every day.”

Bridget Johnson, a consultant for the Free Kareem campaign, writes another fantastic article on World Press Freedom Day: When bloggers are silenced, the world must speak for them.

“It causes us to cry, be grieved, and be struck with frustration to find ourselves threatened with death,” he wrote on May 7, 2006, after escaping 20 fellow students wielding knives, leather belts and sticks who had surrounded his taxi outside the university. “Not because we kill. Not because we loot others’ property. Not because we transgress the limits of our freedom. But because we think!” In February, Soliman was sentenced to three years in prison for “insulting Islam” and one year for insulting President Hosni Mubarak. “I shall not recant, not even by an inch, from any word I have written,” read Soliman’s last blog post before his Nov. 6 arrest, when authorities were closing in. “These restrictions will not preclude my dream of obtaining my freedom.”

[...]

As we mark World Press Freedom Day on Thursday, we unfortunately see that the United Nations body tasked with protecting rights — the Human Rights Council — has taken a giant step backward. On March 30, it passed a resolution urging the world to ban public defamation of religion, specifically Islam, thereby encouraging use of a charge under which Soliman was convicted. The council has passively allowed oppressive nations to stifle free speech and must change course or lose all credibility.

Council members that currently hold cyber dissidents in prison — China and Tunisia — should be removed from the panel. In addition, the U.N. should turn down Egypt’s offer to host the Internet Governance Forum in 2009.

Freedom-loving nations around the world must support these bloggers both in one-on-one dealings with offending nations and by turning up the pressure within international bodies. Arab League members — all of them — must pledge to respect free expression.

Please lobby against Egypt’s inclusion in the IGF by contacting Nitin Desai, the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Adviser for Internet Governance:

United Nations
Secretariat of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF)
Palais des Nations, CH-1211 Geneva 10
Swiss Confederation

Tel: +41 22 917 57 59
Fax: +41 22 917 00 92
E-mail: igf AT unog DOT ch

Bahraini blogger Mahmood Al-Yousif, who is currently in Abu Dhabi for a media conference, is about to take part in a session which will be aired on several Arabic networks, and he notes:

The interesting thing is that Egyptian judge who is suing 21 Egyptian blogs is supposed to make an appearance via satellite. Other than the plagiarism issue, do you have any other issues you would like to put to him?

Send your questions (and plenty of them!) to hewar@bbc.co.uk

We consider this an urgent opportunity to question the judge about Kareem’s sentence.

Please send your questions and concerns about Kareem to the address given, folks! Be as respectful as possible but don’t shy away from bringing the important issue to the table. For once we have an opportunity to openly question the fairness of Kareem’s trials and sentence.

Whether or not the judge will actually make an appearance is not for sure, but let us send the questions anyways in hopes that someone else will shed the light upon this issue.

While the judge is not (as far as we know) directly connected to Abdul Monem’s arrest, still, this is a good opportunity to also bring that up. Even though Kareem and Monem had opposing views, they were both victims of the same human rights violation, and must be supported equally.

Update: Mahmood has just noted that the judge did not make it and instead sent his lawyer, but submit your questions and concerns as soon as possible anyways so that our media understands that we want these questions answered soon!

Remember the address is: hewar@bbc.co.uk

At Al-Masree Al-Yawm. Translation below!

Bloggers Demonstrating for Prisoners’ Release to Demonstrate At Ten Capitals Tomorrow

Muhammad Abdul-Khaleq Msahel
April 26, 2007

On the upcoming Friday, ten American and European capitals will be witnessing large-scale demonstrations in front of Egyptian Embassies. These demonstrations are in protest of limiting freedom of opinion and speech, repressing bloggers, and transgressing their blogs.

Global Voices, a Canada-based blog, is setting up the communications between the human rights organizations and all blogs around the world to gather in front of Egyptian Embassies in Vienna, Brussels, Ontario, Prague, Athens, Rome, Bucharest, Stockholm, and London, as well as the Egyptian Embassy Cultural Office in Washington.

Bloggers have invited others to participate in these demonstrations with the purpose of applying pressure on the Egyptian government to release jailed bloggers from prison, among them [Abdul] Kareem Nabeel, who is charged with insulting the President of the Republic and the Islamic religion.

Corrections:

- Global Voices Online is not based in Canada, but is rather an American-based international project of Harvard Law School.
- Global Voices Online has no association with our campaign.
- Berlin is also participating in tomorrow’s rallies.

The Economist: Bloggers may be the real opposition.

(Hat tip: Anca R.)

THEY call themselves pyjamahideen. Instead of galloping off to fight holy wars, they stay at home, meaning, often as not, in their parents’ houses, and clatter about computer keyboards. Their activity is not as explosive as the self-styled jihadists who trouble regimes in the region, and they come in all stripes, secular liberal as well as radical Islamist. But like Gulliver’s Lilliputians, youthful denizens of the internet are chipping away at the overweening dominance of Arab governments.

[…]

Such pinpricks have yet to puncture the dominance of any Arab state. But with internet access spreading even to remote and impoverished villages, and with much of its “user-generated content” pitched in pithy everyday speech rather than the high classical Arabic of official commentary, the authorities are beginning to take notice. In February, an obliging Egyptian court fired a shot across the bows of would-be web dissidents by sentencing 22-year-old Abdelkarim Suleiman to four years in jail. A law student in Alexandria, he had strayed by penning bitter critiques of Egypt’s main centre of Islamic learning, al-Azhar university, and of Mr Mubarak, and posting them on his personal blog.

From Reporters Without Borders:

Call to French president to lobby President Mubarak about press freedom

Reporters Without Borders called today on French President Jacques Chirac to urge his Egyptian counterpart, Hosni Mubarak, to expand press freedom and release from prison blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman (“Kareem Ameer”) and journalist Abd al-Munim Gamal al-Din Abd al-Munim when Mubarak visits France on 15 April.

“Egypt throws journalists and cyber-dissidents in jail and censors what they write to stifle the media and online activity,” the worldwide press freedom organisation said. “Egypt is one of France’s main economic partners in the region, but this partnership must include discussion about democratic reforms, which are not being made through lack of political will.

“Mubarak’s government continually abuses press freedom by silencing independent voices,“ it said. “The president refuses to reform the press law and give more guarantees to media workers, whose job is made dangerous by the existence of 35 offences for which they can be sent to prison, including up to five years for ‘false news,’ defaming the president or foreign heads of state and ‘undermining national institutions’ such as parliament and the army.

Kareem Amer was arrested on 6 November last year after posting articles on his blog www.karam903.blogspot.com denouncing government abuses and criticising the country’s religious institutions, especially the Sunni Al-Azhar University, where he studied law. He was sentenced on 22 February this year to three years in prison for “incitement to hatred of Islam” and one year for “insulting” Mubarak.

Reporters Without Borders is also very concerned about Abd al-Munim Gamal al-Din Abd al-Munim, of the twice-weekly Islamist paper Al-Shaab, organ of the Labour Party (Hizb al-Amal), who was arrested by state security (SSI) agents at his home in 1993. He was tried that year in the prosecution of the Islamist group Talia al Fatah and in February 1999 in a case about people expelled from Albania, but was cleared in both. However, the authorities refuse to give any information about him.