This is very disappointing news.

On the issue of conspiracy theories, you just have to look at the magazine website of Aljazeera to notice the prominent position even this 'independent' Arab news service places on conspiracy theories and the like.

Also see here http://weekbyweek7.blogspot.com/ for more

Fawaz,

I am sorry to hear you have lost your job, but you sound savvy enough to realise that being a "journalist" doesn't give you any special priviledges no accorded to any other citizen (although I assume you were working from Washington).

A Saudi newspaper must abide by Saudi laws. Saudi Arabia is not a democracy, it is classified as an Absolute Monarchy/Theocracy (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabia#Politics).

Even the Australian media 'barons' "have yet to learn, in addition to that, is that newspapers are not published to advance the political preferences of proprietors, or the commentary of subservient analysts who turn a blind eye to the abuse of power by political leaders...". H

You must of known after 9 years the beast you were dealing with.

I hope this has given you some exposure and assisted you with finding other employment, your job must have not meant alot to you for you to risk loosing it.

Good luck, at least you can see it from your side of the fence, as we see it over here in the west.

No need to give up writing baseless propaganda; just get a job at News Corporation. At least the western sheiks have nukes.

[Comments deleted for excessive use of capitals. Poster suspended for a week.]

From a group which has tried for years to do a deep study of the Middle East problems virtually since the end of WW1, an overhead unbiased view might show that as regards the old adage of pot calling the kettle black, worse might be said of our side because we are so much involved in patting ourselves on the back as regards superior honest to goodness insight.

Indeed, it is about time we began to remind ourselves that as far as political and diplomatic hypocrisy is concerned, bin Laden might be somewhat in front in declaring we are the evil ones and not the Islamics.

Examples do not have to be shown from the Sermon on the Mount and the expressions of Jesus in the Temple to the Pharisees, that much of our yearning for the Middle East is about contraband and hegemon.

Right now it has surely become oil for the power lamps of China in a frightening way, especially as Iranian oil is the the best oil, and it might be better for China to stay friendly with Iran just so China might do a deal with Iran and gain the bigger slice of the pie.

Surely this is far less evil than the big Bush webspin that America is trying to save the Middle East for democracy. Dyarky democracy we might say, or double-rule, the term for British colonial democracy in India, and used by the British in Iraq after WW1, with British commissars or commissioner watchkeepers, discreetly tagging along. For what is the Baghdad GreenZone fortress all about - surely there for a permanent stay.

Surely the Saudi Sunnis know what will happen in Iraq, all about oil, as will happen in Iran. In fact, a bit more less spin or more honesty about it from both sides might be an opening for the little doves of peace to swarm about in the future. And with us Aussies always talking about a fair deal, it might be about time we made a start helping the doves of peace fly in, shaming all us bullsh--tters

What a disappointing response to such an interesting and important article.
I thought online opinion was a thinkers forum. Wake up to yourselves!
Didn’t this even register with any of you? "And never mind that Arab society - a society that remains broken in body and spirit more than a half-century after independence - needs very much to engage in serious self-assessment and to promote an open debate in the media among intellectuals, academics, political analysts and others about why Arabs have failed all these years to meet the challenges of modernity."

What about this?
"Democracy may be a political system, but it is also a social ethos. How responsive can a country be to such an ethos when its people have, for generations, existed with an ethic of fear - fear of originality, fear of innovation, fear of spontaneity, fear of life itself - and have had instilled in them the need to accept orthodoxy, dependence and submission?"

Now go back and re-read the article and then write out a hundred times “I will not post crap on the online opinion pages”.

Staunch, I was thinking similar things myself, but less eloquently. I thought this was a really important piece and went out of my way to chase it and couldn't believe that it hasn't attracted more comment.

STAUNCH: I thought online opinion was a thinkers forum.

Yeah nah. That'll learn ya, but.

And there's one of them aprostate things in "thinker's".

GrahamY,

Maybe the article didn't attract many comments because the story is expected. You can't work for any newspaper anywhere and criticise the politics they promote. Can you have a job or keep it at foxnews if you criticise US policy and / or Israel?

Fawaz,

Honest journalism is becoming a rare commodity so keep writing what you truly believe and one day you will get a job because of what you stand for not because of what you should write.

Fact is, honesty is not respected across many workplaces these days - more of the world's moral decline where the ends justify the means.

I lost my last job due the fact that I like to call a spade a spade. People in positions of power are can say what they truly believe, but due to their own agendas, the absymal irony is, that they rarely do.

Also I read this article previously on the Washington Post website - and reached the same conclusion then as Fellow Human.

Welcome back F_H - you have been greatly missed.

Regards

Fellow Human, of course you can criticise US policy or Israel and keep a job at Fox, although I'm sure there are limits. The point is not that he lost his job for going against the newspaper's stance, but that the newspaper's view of what could be published is so narrow. Not only that, but this view is uniform across newspapers in Saudi Arabia, and aparently much of the Arab world.

So, imagine a world not only where Fox refused to carry stories on prisoner abuses in Abu Ghraib, but where the Washington Post, New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, CNN etc. etc ad nauseum refused to carry such stories. You'd have a dysfunctional society, at least compared to what is now considered the norm.

Perhaps the reason this article didn't collect too many comments is because the writer didn't sheet the blame home to Islam.

Fawaz Turki, a journalist living in Washington, asked questions already answered by him: those paying requests a music. However, this guy lives in the USA and has got some options.

What about Australia, where getting employment, if a professional especially, is just a sweet life-time dream for not belonging to an ethnic majority?

GrahamY

Clearly Islam was the main influence in the author's loss of employment and clearly such censorship is wrong.

However, this form of censorship is not exclusive to Islam. Many years ago (I was 16) I worked for a firm of auditors, one of our clients was a Christian bookshop. I didn't know that I would be expected to join the staff members for prayer - when I refused, explaining I wasn't religious, a complaint was made about my 'conduct' to my employer. I didn't lose my job, but I was never sent to this client again.

I thought that the point of this article held a broader application and was relevant to the perils of censorship across the news media in general, such as Fox/Murdoch or Chinese control over internet and so on.

Now I see that it was all about Islam.

Surely, "Clearly Islam was the main influence in the author's loss of employment", Scout.

And what does influence an Australian reality?

Perhaps there is light at the end of the tunnel for the Arabic community.I was beginning to think that their aversion to logic was genetic.We don't here enough from people like Fawaz Tuki and more articles like this will stop people like from me from pre-judging all Muslims as ratbag religious nutters.

Thank you Arjay, I agree we do need some honest reflection from the Islamic community. But it appears that that Arab newspapers are only doing what happens in the 'west' only more extreme. After all if they were simply following Murdoch's example.....

I was also concerned that this thread would simply devolve into yet another Islam bashing excuse.

:-)

Fawaz Turki: Thank you, that was a calm, candid, important opinion to read. Please keep writing, explaining, informing.

& Staunch: Spot, as it were, on.

So many actors we read about in the middle east appear to sack, torture and lock up opponents quietly yet scream high school rhetoric in public. We're still hearing about America/Aust/France/Denmark/miscellaneous countries as the Great Satan/evil/whore/miscellaneous insults; and how somebody will smite/blow up/behead/misc threats ..us. Blah, blah, blah. Zzzz.

Outrageous censorship and bizarre speech there was a bit of a surprise to us here. Now it's pathetically familiar but still not taken very seriously. The intent is obviously taken seriously but the words themselves? Well, it's a lot of repetitive, false and inflammatory speech so there's not much use.

We'd like to take these closed regimes, their unhinged radicals, their proclaimed disdain for life and ludicrous use of xenophobic language seriously, but how? And, in the end, why? If they wished to be taken seriously by the world they'd yell less, ask more questions and think up a decent argument.

Anything that issues from the mouths of these propaganda units pretending to be popular governments or from newspapers pretending to be free press or all the shouting from scary zealots is to any other eye in the 21st century merely a sign of manifest weakness on their part.

Indeed, now even when poor old Osama BL "speaks" out these days it's too painful to listen to as "he" (or whoever it is) thrashes around inside his own ideological death throes. Who are the crusaders if not your own beheaders you idiot?

It's not important whether we, they or anyone else in this world has the might but whether what's claimed actually has some semblance of truth and usefulness and whether we may all speak and report it freely.

Luckily for us in rest of the world, most of the middle east's bully boys lose mightily on both counts of truth and utility no matter how often they beat loyalty and cooperation into their flock. This is because bullsh*t always, always loses. It just takes time