# Censorship in the Arab World



## Andy Capp (Oct 5, 2008)

This was interesting, Morocco might be moving in the right direction, but can you seriously see the UAE ever being totally censorship free?

I can't.


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## stewart (Jun 21, 2009)

Either can I.

Try China then.................

Internet Censorship in China - Breaking World Internet Censorship News - The New York Times


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## SwedeUAE (Dec 28, 2009)

*UAE will never be censorship free*

There will always be censorships where you have "morality laws", monopoly or duopoly in communication and overall have a non-democratically voted in leadership. That is just a fact of life, give someone too much power, they invariably restrict what the rest can do "for their own good benefit".


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## Iron Horse (Apr 10, 2008)

It is slowly moving in the direction of less censorship. I also think the US will move to restrict some things too, based on current statements from elected government members.

As the scientific community pushes more for open knowledge things will change.

I did find this interesting however, in terms of opening things up:
gulfnews : Malaysia allows sports betting for non-Muslims


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## SmirLife (Sep 16, 2010)

Morocco's censorship laws are definitely more relaxed than most of the other arab countries, but there are still some areas and certain times of the year where there is strict censorship.


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## Guest (Sep 16, 2010)

Don't be naive and think that there is no censorship in the west, eg the US. If the CIA don't want us to know things, we won't

And having lived in China, I have seen the western slant, especially media like CNN, put on censorship there. There's no question that things are censored in China, but nowhere near the extent we are led to believe


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## Shekamu (Aug 25, 2010)

I have an Oxford Student's English-English dictionary at home in Dubai that I had borrowed and decided never to return to the public school that I went to in the Umm Suqeim area.

The dictionary had the entry and definition for the following words all blacked out with a marker: Bible - Christian - Christmas - Christianity - Jesus - Judaism - Jew - Hindu - Hinduism - Buddha - Pork - Pig - Wine - Beer.

Since government schools teach everything in Arabic including science/maths - they had very few English language books in the library. The Al Owais charity foundation donated a box of English books but the Ministry of Education had to go through them for censorship.

But I've never seen such unbelievably stupid censorship. All of the above words except for Hindu/Buddha and Beer are mentioned in the Quran as well. They're just words and definitions. I looked up Bhagavad Gita in the same dictionary and it wasn't blacked out - which says something about the level of knowledge of other religions the person who marked it out had.


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## Mr Rossi (May 16, 2009)

I like how things like The Inbetweeners get through on Showtime, guess there is no Arabic for "clunge" yet?


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## BritishGuy (Jul 24, 2010)

Ignorance breeds Ignorance. A wise guy once said that.... Or was it just me? Either way, you know what I mean.


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