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 in the Arab or Islamic world for their brazen excesses, dismal failures and blatant abuses.
[. . .] 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.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.
In other depressing news from the Islamic world, it appears my buddy the Brooding Persian is pulling the plug on his blog. 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.
A guy over here in Istanbul–James Wilde by name–who worked for Time Magazine for around 35 years, once told this story: while covering the war between Egypt and Israel, he witnessed the execution of 3 to 400 Egyptian prisoners. He tried to call the story in to Time but their reply was something like “That’s not news.” And they sent a helicopter to get him and his photographer out of there. His photographer was shot and killed; the story was never published. And who knows how many US atrocities the world over were covered up by higher-ups? Of course, that in no way excuses the behavior of the Arab newspapers, which, by many accounts, are indeed manipulative, repressive, and censor at will. James got to keep his job; i guess that’s something.