{"id":913,"date":"2006-04-16T09:28:04","date_gmt":"2006-04-16T14:28:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/you-cant-fire-me-i-quit\/"},"modified":"2006-04-16T09:28:04","modified_gmt":"2006-04-16T14:28:04","slug":"you-cant-fire-me-i-quit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/you-cant-fire-me-i-quit","title":{"rendered":"You can’t fire me, I quit!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fawaz Turki explains “How To Lose Your Job at a Saudi Newspaper<\/a>”<\/p>\n

What mattered was that I had committed one of the three cardinal sins an Arab journalist must avoid when working for the Arab press: I criticized the government. The other two? Bringing up Islam as an issue and criticizing, by name, political leaders in the Arab or Islamic world for their brazen excesses, dismal failures and blatant abuses.<\/p>\n[. . .] My first provocation was — horror of horrors — to criticize Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak after he cracked down on human rights activists several years ago. My second occurred soon after the failure of the Camp David accords when I called for the resignation of Yasser Arafat as head of the Palestinian Authority.<\/p>\n

My last was to write about the atrocities Indonesia had committed during its occupation of East Timor from 1975 to 1999. For that transgression, my Saudi paper showed no mercy. I was out the door. No questions asked, no explanations given. You don’t write about atrocities committed by an Islamic government — even when they’re already documented in the history books — and hope to get away with it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other depressing news from the Islamic world, it appears my buddy the Brooding Persian is pulling the plug on his blog<\/a>. I hope that’s not the case; while his posts could get insanely overlong, he offered me a vitally important perspective on life, politics and religion in Iran and on earth. And he also reminded me of the importance of The Iliad<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fawaz Turki explains “How To Lose Your Job at a Saudi Newspaper” What mattered was that I had committed one of the three cardinal sins an Arab journalist must avoid when working for the Arab press: I criticized the government. The other two? Bringing up Islam as an issue and criticizing, by name, political leaders … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “You can’t fire me, I quit!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-explicit","category-religion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-eJ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":311,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/help-out","url_meta":{"origin":913,"position":0},"title":"Help out","author":"Gil","date":"August 25, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"oday's been designated a \"Day of Conscience\" by people who are trying to stop the genocide in Sudan. If you're interested in helping save the citizens of Darfur, there are plenty of regional events today that you can participate in.For more information on the on the genocide in Sudan, you\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Sudan"","block_context":{"text":"Sudan","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sudan"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":939,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/clooless","url_meta":{"origin":913,"position":1},"title":"Clooless","author":"Gil","date":"May 3, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I think Nina Shea gives George Clooney a little too much, um, credibility in this essay about his cluelessness re:Darfur, but I'm with her on the idea that maybe it's not Bush's fault. I've been pretty quiet about Darfur lately, mainly because I'm beaten down by the idea that it's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Sudan"","block_context":{"text":"Sudan","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sudan"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":328,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/sudans-osama","url_meta":{"origin":913,"position":2},"title":"Sudan’s Osama","author":"Gil","date":"August 9, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Lee Smith, besides being the all-time MLB saves leader and a novelist who writes about southern women, also discusses the Arab world on Slate. Last week, he wrote a pretty neat piece about Sudan, discussing the \"palace intrigues\" and motivations for the genocide, while also trying to put the current\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics (explicit)"","block_context":{"text":"Politics (explicit)","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/politics-explicit"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":241,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/do-something","url_meta":{"origin":913,"position":3},"title":"Do something","author":"Gil","date":"May 4, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Arab nomads on horseback have been committing genocide in western Sudan. I've been reading and hearing about it for a while. 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I wrote all about it and posted some good pix: here, here, here, here, here, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":220,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/consider-your-sources","url_meta":{"origin":913,"position":5},"title":"Consider your sources","author":"Gil","date":"May 27, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Over on Drudge today, an entry reads Archives: Tape shows Nixon too drunk to speak to British PM....It details a story that, during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, President Nixon was too drunk to have a phone conversation with the British prime minister. But that sentence isn't necessarily accurate. 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