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.

Kareem Amer was interviewed by Copts United after being investigated by Al-Azhar University for his online writings. As a result, he was charged with disdaining religions, insulting Al-Azhar’s teachers, and atheism. A few days later, he was formally expelled, and the Dean of the Sharia & Law Faculty, Dr. Hamdi Shalby, submitted a copy of the investigation documents to the Public Prosecutor.

The two videos below were recorded during his two-part interview. We have provided English subtitles and transcripts below.

(Thanks to Mina for providing the translation for the first video!)

Transcripts:

Interview with Abdul Kareem Nabeel Suleiman, Part I

Following is a transcript from the first of a two-part interview with Egyptian blogger Abdul Kareem Nabeel Suleiman, which occurred on March 14, 2006. You can view the video with English subtitles here.

Interviewer: The young thinker Abdul Kareem Nabeel Suleiman: Welcome to Copts United. We welcome you, and we would you like to tell us about the investigation that was run today by the disciplinary board in Al-Azhar University. Go ahead.

Abdul Kareem Suleiman: Frankly, I wasn’t expecting you to label me as a thinker. I’m just a seeker of the truth. Thank you, you made me happy by your saying this, but I do not acknowledge that I am a thinker. I’m just a seeker of the truth. Today I headed for the college to attend the disciplinary board, and the lawyer Mr. Mamdouh Nakhla was with me. Our appointment was at 11:00 a.m. but we started a bit late, at 2:30 p.m. The investigation was initiated by four of the college professors: Dr. Abdul Hadi Zarea, Dr. Ra’fat Hammad, and two others.

Interviewer: Sir, we would like to know from you what the reason of the investigation is in the first place.

Abdul Kareem Suleiman: The reason of the investigation is some of my articles published on the Web sites of Modern Discussion and Copts United. There was an article in which I criticized Al Azhar University because of its segregation of male and female students; they accused me of insulting Al-Azhar University because of this article.

Interviewer: And is this wrong, or what?

Abdul Kareem Suleiman: Well, I am criticizing and expressing my opinion. I am trying to criticize. The purpose of…

Interviewer: That’s what I mean. To Al-Azhar University, is criticism wrong? As well as freedom of expression, or what exactly?

Abdul Kareem Suleiman: They prevent… In Al-Azhar, here in the university… In the end of the investigation, the told me that that this article is considered to be insulting and slanderous. They accused me of insulting and slandering, but I did not write anything of the sort. All I did was try to express my thoughts. I tried to criticize something I saw is wrong. But they interpreted it another way.

Interviewer: In a wrong way.

Interviewer: Mr. Abdul Kareem, we would like to know what exactly you are charged with.

Abdul Kareem Suleiman: I was charged with disdaining religions in general, and specifically Islam; as well as insulting and slandering the Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar University [inaudible] and one of the professors of the college here [Sharia & Law Faculty]. That’s all.

Interviewer: Anything else?

Interviewer: Anything else?

Abdul Kareem Suleiman: And another charge, I don’t know from where they got it from: Atheism.

Interviewer: Atheism?

Interviewer: Mr. Abdul Kareem, we would like to know: How did the investigation end?

Abdul Kareem Suleiman: The investigation ended by my refusal to sign on my statements. Not out of fear; I told them everything. I was frank with them about everything. However, I refused to sign because I don’t recognize the legitimacy of the disciplinary board. I told them in the end that they don’t have the right to investigate me inside the college for an activity I exercised away from list of rules that should bind me only inside the university. They imposed on me…

Interviewer: A certain way of thinking?

Abdul Kareem Suleiman: Yes, indeed, they imposed on me a certain way of thinking, and they prevented me from even trying to think outside this framework.

Interviewer: What do you expect the result to be after the investigation? Or what will their judgment be?

Abdul Kareem Suleiman: In reality, I have been expecting confronting Al-Azhar University for a long time. From the time I entered this university, I felt it’s not my place.

Interviewer: It’s not your place?

Abdul Kareem Suleiman: Of course [it’s not my place].

Interviewer: Were these thoughts, Abdul Kareem, a reason for arresting you a while ago in Alexandria or not?

Abdul Kareem Suleiman: Of course. I was previously arrested on the 26th of last October [2005], following the events that occurred at the church of Muharram Bek, because I wrote an article criticizing some of the acts of the demonstrators in the Muharram Bek area. They tried at that time to attack the church, and they assaulted some of the Copts and [stole] their property. So, I was held for eighteen days, and I was released after pressure from human rights organizations and other international bodies.

Interviewer: Thanks to the young thinker, Abdul Kareem Nabeel Suleiman, a second-year student in the Faculty of Sharia & Law at Al-Azhar University, Damanhour branch.

Interview with Abdul Kareem Nabeel Suleiman, Part II

Following is a transcript from the second of a two-part interview with Egyptian blogger Abdul Kareem Nabeel Suleiman, which occurred on March 14, 2006. You can view the video with English subtitles here.

Interviewer: This is our second interview with the young thinker Abdul Kareem Nabeel Suleiman, a second-year student in the Faculty of Sharia & Law at Al-Azhar University, Damanhour branch, after taking a rest, and after he had calmed down after leaving the investigation. Mr. Abdul Kareem, welcome to our second interview. Could you provide us with an idea on the summary of today’s investigations at the Faculty of Sharia & Law?

Abdul Kareem Suleiman: The investigation began at around 2:30 p.m. It was about some of what was brought up in my articles that were published on the Modern Discussion and Copts United Web sites. Among the professors who investigated me were Deputy Dean Dr. Abdul Hadi Zarea and former Dean Dr. Ra’fat Muhammad Hammad.

I was asked some questions regarding opinions I had expressed in my articles. They saw that these opinions constituted exceeding their red lines. Of course, I do not recognize the existence of such red lines in the first place, and never in my life have I been limited by a red line. The only red line is my relationship with others. That is the only red line that I might accept to limit the freedom of the individual.

I answered them in all frankness. I cannot let go of my frankness for any reason. No matter what the price is, I cannot let go of it. This might cause me trouble but I shall never rest until I am frank and until I have a single personality.

For example, I could have denied all what had happened, and to, as they say, ‘play on words’ by pretending that nothing had happened. However, I’d lose myself. What would I have gained? What would I have gained when what’s inside me is one thing, and what’s outside of me, what I tell and face people around me with, is something else? I’d surely lose myself. Even if I were to have gained people, and if people were to encourage me and were to be impressed with me, in the end, I would not be pleased with myself this way.

Interviewer: Mr. Abdul Kareem, can you tell us what you were specifically charged with, and what your response to these charges was?

Abdul Kareem Suleiman: The disciplinary board accused me of three main charges. The first charge… They are ideological charges. It’s the first time for me to learn that an idea would be a charge. Today, when I went to the university, I learnt that I can commit a crime that does not have any physical effects: Thinking!

The first crime I was accused of committing was disdaining religions, and of course specifically Islam. I had not imagined that I would face a charge like this because it was never my intention to disdain any religion. The purpose of the existence of religions was to institute ethics that human beings can make use of in their lives. That was the purpose of the emergence of religions, regardless of how they were founded and what their origins are. Whether they are mythical or not is not our topic. I found them accusing me of disdaining religions.

The second charge: Atheism. I had written an article during the election period of the President of the Republic, titled “Pledge Allegiance to President Mubarak… As The Leader of the Believers!” The first paragraph of this article was interpreted by them as… Well, I was discussing in it the relationship between those with religious authority and those with political authority, and the ties that bring them together… That is, the benefits that bring them together. There are mutual benefits. For example, they monopolize the authority of deities. I employed a phrase that they used against me: I described god as ‘the imaginary being’. I did not mean it that way. Generally, in the view of some people, deities are imaginary, and there is no physical evidence to prove god’s existence. This does not mean that I am an atheist. I make my own point of view clear, and I write neutrally and stay away from claiming the existence of this god or that god. That was what I meant, but it was used against me.

The third charge they caught and used against me… It seems that they deliberately track down my mistakes. The most eloquent expression describing what they do is tracking down mistakes. They try to highlight my mistakes and bring anything against me. There was an article in which I criticized some of the policies of Al-Azhar University. I was discussing the idea of segregating male and female students. I described it as apartheid segregation, and indeed it is so, on the basis of the race of male students being separated from the race of female students. That generates problems. It gives them excessive repression, and each gender looks at the other gender as… Well, what’s forbidden is desired. They look at each other as strange beings, and as nonexistent in front of them, or not available for them. Once they get the chance, they tend to commit adultery. That was the topic I was handling.

I also criticized one of the doctors in a lecture who was teaching the students the invalidators of wudu [partial ablution]. In a blatant manner, he explained to the students wudu invalidators in an unethical way. So I criticized him, and they considered that to be insulting and slandering of this doctor.

There was also something else I had written about: When Dr. Muhammad Sayid Tantawy, the Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar, tried to produce a document pledging allegiance to President Mubarak during the election period of the President of the Republic, from the Islamic Research Academy members, which they refused to do. The disciplinary board considered that this writing is insulting and slanderous.

Interviewer: Mr. Abdul Kareem, do you expect to be referred to investigatory agencies, aside from the disciplinary board?

Abdul Kareem Suleiman: Well, in such a country where law is designed to serve certain aims, I do not rule out being referred to any agencies. However, this will not dissuade me from doing what I wish to do. It will not push me to leave the path I have begun to walk in. I shall walk in it in endlessness. In fact, it has no end. I don’t believe that this ideological way is ascending, but walking in it is endless. I’ll keep walking in it until I die.

Interviewer: Do you interpret the position of the university toward you as a personal one, or is it a public policy that aims to place many more restrictions on the freedom of expression, opinion, and belief?

Abdul Kareem Suleiman: In general, the policy of the university is one that denies the thinking of the ‘other’. It employs the policy of one opinion, one idea. It has no readiness to accept a differing idea to appear. Because of that, any idea that goes against its unidirectional ideas – that it wants to impose on its students – even if they do not publish on it… I have no publications inside the faculty or university, and my activities are almost completely limited to the articles I publish on the Internet. To be precise, the university aims to extract students’ minds. They do not want them to think. They want them to learn the material as it was brought down, and that they accept it and submit to it as it is. They cannot try to think of it, or to use their minds to think of it.

Interviewer: Thanks to Abdul Kareem Nabeel Suleiman, a second-year student in the Faculty of Sharia & Law at Al-Azhar University, Damanhour branch.