Artículos de revistas sobre el tema "Repression in Libya"

The Libyan Muslim Brotherhood needed to manoeuvre underground for several decades, just as most opposition groups in Libya had to—because of the repression from the Qaddafi regime. In 2012, however, the political wing of the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood (LMB), the Justice and Construction Party (JCP, sometimes also called the Justice and Development Party) participated in popular elections just shortly after its inception. Seven years later, one can unanimously say that the movement was not able to take power in the country. This paper will analyse the LMB in post-revolutionary Libya by concentrating on the attempts of establishing legitimacy in the political sphere—while continuously being informed by historical influences. Methodologically, the paper examines primary sources, key academic texts but also factors in interview data from semi-structured interviews. Overall, the paper addresses the puzzle of why Libya as a predominantly Sunni, conservative country did not translate into a conservative Sunni movement like the LMB faring well; with that, derailing the impression that the whole region was “going Islamist” after the so-called Arab Spring. The LMB today is still influenced by the historical treatment it received under Qaddafi, which lead it to base itself mostly in exile, hence it struggled to entrench itself in the country. The LMB was pointed towards their opponents’ fearmongering of an alleged Islamist takeover, mostly without addressing self-inflicted wounds, such as their inability to unite or to convince major parts of the population of their political programme.

Since December 2010, the ‘Arab Spring’ has featured techniques of civil resistance in sustained campaigns involving strikes, demonstrations, marches and rallies, as well as the use of the new social media to organize, communicate, and raise awareness in the face of state attempts at repression and censorship. In the case of Tunisia, Egypt, and - most dramatically - Libya, the protests have actually led to the departure of long-established regimes, whereas the situation in Syria and Bahrain remains unsettled to date.

Against the sceptics, who see nonviolence as a serendipitous occurrence of the Middle East Revolution, the reality is that of a powerful, conscious determination of the revolutionaries in at least three countries where repression was immense, and where people refused to take up arms after the nonviolent precedents in Tunisia and in Egypt. In Bahrain, Yemen and Syria, the refusal to resort to violence is a conscious choice of hundreds of thousands of people. Th at clear appreciation of the power of nonviolence, in contrast to the revolutionaries in Libya, is the leitmotive of the Middle East Revolutions. Th e rebels in Libya made a mistake in taking up arms against Qaddafi , and lost Tripoli on the very day when the military front was constituted. Yet the rule remains, across the ME Revolution from the beginning of the paradigmatic shift in January 2011, in the attachment to nonviolence as the privileged means to revolutionary success.

Zwara Berber is a variety of Nafusi (ISO 639-3; Lewis, Simons & Fennig 2016) which belongs to the eastern Zenati group within northern Berber (where Berber is the scientific term for Tamazight), a branch of Afro-Asiatic. Zwara (Zuwārah, Zuwara, Zuāra, Zuara, Zouara) is a coastal city located at 32.9° N, 12.1° E in Libya. The speakers refer to themselves as /at ˈwil.lul/ (also /ajt ˈwil.lul/) ‘those of Willul’ and to their specific variety of the language as /t.ˈwil.lult/ ‘the language of Willul’. Having no official status during the Italian colonization of Libya and the first period after the country's independence in 1951, repression of the language became severe after the Cultural Revolution of 1973. Its propagation through teaching and the media fell under a constitutional ban on the denial of the Arab identity of the state, and qualified as such as treason, a capital offense. Until the revolution of 2011 (‘17 February’), the language was therefore not spoken in cultural, educational or governmental domains and could not be taught, printed or broadcast. The number of Tamazight speakers in Libya is estimated at 184,000 in Lewis et al. (2016) and at 560,000 by Chakel & Ferkal (2012). In the absence of a municipal register, the number of inhabitants in Zwara is uncertain. A conservative estimate is between 50,000 and 100,000, which is also the number of speakers of the Zwara variety. Other than through exposure by radio and television, children learn Arabic only from age six, when attending school. Speakers have variable L2 Arabic competence depending on exposure to the language.

The fight against money laundering offences and terrorist financing is a primary concern of States and international organizations, due to the threats generated by these two acts against the integrity of the financial system and global security. The reflections carried out within the framework of this thesis reveal the duality of the measures likely to fight against these two phenomena, which are focused on prevention and repression. After having addressed the international framework of this fight against money laundering and terrorist financing offences, in a preliminary chapter.This thesis, in its first part, highlights the autonomy of the substantive rules governing the criminalization of money laundering and terrorist financing. While money laundering is an offence of consequence, which necessarily implies the commission of an original offence, without losing its distinct and autonomous character, terrorist financing is an obstacle offence, a particular form of criminal conspiracy, which the legislator has established as an autonomous offence.In the second part, this research reveals the conceptual unity of the preventive regimes against money laundering and terrorist financing (starting with the obligation of vigilance, passing through the obligation to report suspicions, and ending with the procedures for freezing assets and seizing property), and of the sanctions applicable to the fight against these two incriminations.The comparative nature of this study allows us to note recent progress on the part of the Libyan legislator in order to make this fight effective, thus allowing reducing the gap between French and Libyan law, despite the existence of certain flaws in the Libyan legislation.This comparative study is an opportunity for us to make proposals for the evolution of the Libyan legislation in terms of anti-money laundering. Key words: Money laundering; Financing of terrorism; Crime; Criminal law; Comparative study; France; Libya.

In the 2011 wave of popular uprisings shaking authoritarian rule in the Middle East, mass societal mobilizations have been the crucial factor. But institutional actors, especially armies, are also playing an active role. Armies in the region have generally had less and less involvement in formal interstate wars and consequently have played more of a role, willingly or not, in underpinning regimes. Recent events demonstrate two patterns: armies that have refused to play this role (Egypt, Tunisia) and armies that have been willing, at least for some time, to answer the regimes’ requests to engage in repression (Bahrain, Yemen, Syria) or even civil war (Libya). How can we account for the military's growing role in civil strife or civil peace?

This article looks back at the 2011 Arab Spring where the movements that brought hope to the region and beyond seem to have gone astray. The military has taken over in Egypt, while Libya, Syria and Yemen have descended into civil strife with tremendous human costs. Bahrain has witnessed repression that has overwhelmed the opposition, and while Tunisia, the country where Arab Spring began, has avoided the violence characterizing the aforementioned states, change has remained rather limited. As for other countries that rode on the same wave of mobilizations, hopes for democratic transformation have been subdued in somewhat less violent contexts but with varying degrees of pressure from the state. This article examines what has happened to the Arab Spring countries, why and what is required to democratically transform the region.

The article is devoted to the analysis of one of the forms of genocide policy, namely — the crime of deportation, which was practiced by the Russian state throughout its existence. The political significance of the deportations was to curb the resistance of the tamed peoples, to prevent the real or potential threat of anti-Russian movements. Russia, as the successor to the USSR, did not assume political, legal and moral responsibility for the repression, the process of rehabilitation of deported peoples was stopped completely. At the time of the collapse of the USSR, the leadership of the RSFSR tried to take certain steps in this direction, but with the proclamation of the Russian Federation as the successor to the union state, such efforts were completely stopped. In the current conditions in Russia there is no political, legal and moral assessment of crimes, no objective assessment of the causes and consequences of mass repression, rehabilitation of deported peoples committed in part or not at all, a number of regulations of the Soviet period to restrict rights and freedoms procedural use, etc. Moreover, the aggressive actions of modern Russia against independent states, including Moldova, Georgia, Syria, Libya, and especially Ukraine, have been a determining factor in new waves of forced migration of large populations, accompanied by significant human, moral, and material losses. All this imposes a special responsibility on the world community to carry out actions of various ranks (political, legal, economic, etc. ) to deter the criminal actions of the aggressor country and to develop the necessary conditions and requirements for the inevitability of punishment for crimes committed by the Putin regime.

As this IJMES special issue on “Relocating Arab Nationalism” is going to press, democracy movements in the Arab world have toppled the old regimes in Tunisia and Egypt; uprisings in Yemen, Bahrain, and Libya are shaking the foundations of their respective governments; and protests in Algeria, Jordan, Iraq, Morocco, and Oman have sent rulers scrambling to respond with some combination of reform and repression that they hope will ensure their survival. The events have had reverberations in Iran, sub-Saharan Africa, and elsewhere; but they have clearly, at least so far, reverberated most strongly from one Arab country to another. This is reflected, among many other ways, in the protesters' self-conscious borrowing and repetition of chants and slogans, such as tūnis huwwa al-ḥall (Tunisia is the solution) and the ubiquitous al-shaʿb yurīd isqāt al-niẓām (the people want the fall of the regime). In showing how Arabist symbols, discourses, and identifications can be mobilized for purposes that are not only cultural but also deeply political, even when they do not involve any project to create a Pan-Arab nation-state, the protests sweeping the Arab world have made the recurring themes of this special issue more timely than we had imagined.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that the Muslim world is undergoing a political upheaval of historic proportions. The Arab Spring is one of the most recent and dramatic manifestations, with millions of men and women across the Arab world taking to the streets – often in the face of brutal repression ‒ to demand the reform or overthrow of their authoritarian governments.Their bravery has already led to the ouster of four dictators – in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen – and the process is still far from over. But this uprising is only part of a much broader phenomenon, as a reviewof just the past five years demonstrates. In late 2008, largely free and fairelections ended two years of military-backed emergency rule in Bangladesh,and put the country back on a democratic track. In 2009, similarelections in Indonesia consolidated the democratic regime that had beenin place there for just over a decade. That same year in Iran, by contrast, national elections, which were widely viewed as having been rigged, ledto the so-called “Green Revolution” – the biggest prodemocratic uprisingagainst the authoritarian regime there since the revolution of 1979. In2010, Iraq held its second, and far more representative, elections since theoverthrow of the Ba’athist regime. In 2011, national elections in Turkey that returned the AK Party to power with its largest electoral victory yet, coupled with ongoing judicial investigations into subversive activities byhard-line authoritarian elements, marked a decisive turning point in Turkey’s democratic evolution. In 2012, the willingness of Senegal’s president to step down peacefully after losing an election there seemed to confirm thevictory of democracy in that country as well.As the suppression of Iran’s Green Revolution, the 2012 military coupthat interrupted Mali’s democratic experiment, and the ongoing violencein several of the other transitioning polities, indicate the process is neithersmooth nor unidirectional. Several aspects of the current upheaval, however, are already clear. First and foremost, the political mobilization of theMuslim masses – the eruption of “people power” – is now an irreversiblereality for the foreseeable future, so that only regimes that are genuinelyrepresentative and accountable can hope to enjoy any legitimacy in thefuture. Second, as public opinion poll after poll has demonstrated, democracyhas become a hegemonic concept throughout the Muslim world aswell ‒ meaning that effective governance and opposition will need to take place within its institutional and normative parameters. Third, as Table 1shows, judging by the most recent election results, in most of the Middle Eastern states at least, political parties rooted in an Islamist background are likely to garner the lion’s share of electoral support for some time to come ...

AbstractScholarly opinions on the linkages between foreign military interventions and human rights promotions or violations are highly divided across the board. While many scholars see military interventions as effective means to save and promote human lives and rights from the clutches of repressive regimes, others reject such interventions as harmful to domestic reconciliations and rights promotions. The Arab Spring has renewed the debates between the liberal enthusiasts who staunchly supported NATO's military intervention to free up the Libyans from the Gaddafi regime and the critics who saw creeping dangers in this new intervention, ostensibly inspired by the “responsibility to protect” doctrine. This paper investigates the issue of Arab Spring-led foreign direct and indirect military interventions in Libya, Bahrain and Syria and critically examines the consequences of interventions for improvements or decline in Arab human rights conditions. Its findings support the position of the anti-intervention scholars that foreign military interventions produce deleterious effects on human rights in the target states.

Il saggio raccoglie le riflessioni condivise dall’Autrice in occasione del Convegno Dialogo transdisciplinare e identità del giurista organizzato dalla Facoltà di Giurisprudenza dell’Università degli Studi di Milano nel settembre 2022. L’occasione di dialogo con cultori delle materie di diritto positivo che condividono con i giuristi storici il compito di formazione degli operatori del diritto di domani ha stimolato una riflessione che si è sviluppata ripercorrendo le ricerche svolte in anni recenti, o attualmente in corso, collaborando con colleghi di diverse discipline, giuridiche e storiche, sul notariato, sul diritto penale, sulla giurisdizione amministrativa, sulla repressione attuata in Libia dal Tribunale Speciale per la Difesa dello Stato.

In response to quelling Libya’s popular uprising against the authoritarian rule of Gaddafi, the United Nations Security Council referred the situation in Libya to the International Criminal Court. Subsequently, the Office of the Prosecutor brought four cases against the most responsible seniors for attacking civilians protesting the Gaddafi regime in 2011. Later, the Prosecutor went behind the borders of the original situation by prosecuting Al-Werfalli, who was accused of crimes taking place in the summer 2017, when there was no repressive apparatus against Gaddafi’s opponents. This recent case may pose a jurisdictional challenge that leads to a conceptual question: what does the concept of a ‘situation’ mean? The Court’s jurisdiction limits the contours of a situation. The main constituent element of a situation is a concrete crisis that differentiates the situation from others. This contextual element will be discussed in this article.

This article aims to shed more light on the potentials and limitations of social media as a tool for activists. It does this by focusing on the use of one particular social media platform — Twitter — during one specific period of a certain uprising: the first 24 hours of protests in Libya during the Arab Spring in 2011. Even though this study is thus limited, it represents an important step in the direction of analyzing what actually happens when social media is put to use in relation to concrete events. The identified social network patterns, as well as the content of the posts, resonate with what Enzensberger (1970) calls “emancipatory use of media”: The architecture is decentralized, network connections are distributed, and mobilization and self-organization is going on. It must be realized however, that seeds of such emancipatory use does not necessarily preclude “repressive use of media”.

Abstract This article aims to shed light on the plural form of resistance performed around the South-Eastern Tunisian border area through the case study of the ordinary people of Ben Guerdane’s resistance to the jihadi attack of 7th March 2016. Placing the so-called “epopee of Ben Guerdane” in a broader historical context, it seeks to explore the fluctuations between resistance and repression along the border area both in the past and in the present, showing how multifaceted the repertoire of resistance – which includes anti-colonial struggle, guerrilla action, regime opposition, subversions, forms of everyday resistance and jihadi insurrection – has been. Following the insight of Critical Border Studies, the border will be considered as an epistemological viewpoint rather than simply a geopolitical device, considering the central role of material and symbolic borders and boundaries that shape the living experiences of Ben Guerdane’s inhabitants. The article relies on qualitative data collected during long-term fieldwork in addition to shifting the focus of the study of the Tunisian-Libyan border from national security to an approach that prioritizes the experiences of ordinary people.

A pattern of affording impunity to local power brokers throughout Africa pervades the application of international criminal law (ICL) in Africa. The International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation into Uganda is a notorious but representative example, although similar analyses can be made of the Central African Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Libya. In Uganda, only members of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) have been indicted for international crimes, even though the United Nations, international human rights groups, and local NGOs have documented years of abuses perpetrated by government troops and local auxiliary units, often against the same populations victimized by the LRA. The ICC is thereby implicated in the power structures and political arrangements of a repressive state that both combats the LRA and often brutalizes the civilian populations of northern Uganda. Inserting itself into Uganda, the ICC becomes a partisan player in the endgame of a civil war that extends back over a generation, and is itself rooted in ethnic and tribal animosities cultivated through 19th century Euro-colonial benedictions of favor. Here, the ICC and the war it adjudicates become surprising bedfellows, repurposed by local elites for the consolidation of domestic power.

ABSTRACT The Arab Spring wave in the beginning of 2011 that hit Middle Eastern countries, started from Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and Syria, which still continue to this day, is a symbol of the fall of authoritarian and repressive Arab regimes, as well as a symbol of the struggle of Arabian people who want great changes in various fields such as economic, social, and democratic political system. After eight years, the Arab Spring still has many problems, Middle Eastern countries still trapped in conflict and civil war. The transition of democracy that hoped is not going well, trapped in sectarian interests: tribes, religions, streams (madzhab), and political groups. Sectarianism has become one of the causes of instability and colored the politic dynamics in the region. In fact, it socially and historically has multiple roots over a long period of time in the Middle East. This paper seeks to read the history and dynamics of sectarian conflict, as well as the process of democratic transition: between opportunities and challenges, and the realization of democracy in the region after the Arab Spring. Keywords: Sectarianism, Democracy, Arab Spring, Middle East. ABSTRAK Gelombang Arab Spring pada awal 2011 yang melanda negara-negara Timur Tengah, dimulai dari Tunisia, Mesir, Libya, Yaman, dan Suriah yang masih berlanjut hingga kini, adalah sebuah simbol jatuhnya rezim-rezim Arab yang otoriter dan represif, dan juga sebagai simbol perjuangan rakyat Arab yang menginginkan adanya perubahan besar dalam berbagai bidang, ekonomi, sosial, sistem politik terbuka dan demokratis. Setelah delapan tahun semenjak bergulirnya, Arab Spring masih menyisakan banyak problem, negara-negara Timur Tengah masih terpuruk, terjebak dalam konflik dan perang saudara. Transisi demokrasi yang dicita-citakan tidak berjalan dengan baik, tersandera oleh kepentingan-kepentingan sektarian: suku, agama, mazhab dan kelompok politik. Sektarianisme menjadi salah satu penyabab instabilitas dan telah mewarnai dinamika politik di kawasan Timur Tengah. secara sosio-historis sektarianisme di Timur Tengah memiliki akar yang berlapis-lapis dalam kurun waktu yang panjang. Tulisan ini berusaha untuk membaca sejarah dan dinamika konflik sektarisnisme, proses transisi demokrasi: antara peluang dan tantangan, dan realisasi demokrasi di Timur Tengah pasca Arab Spring. Kata Kunci: Sektarianisme, Demokrasi, Arab Spring, Timur Tengah.

For Iran, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and its peaceful settlement were and remain closely related to national security interests. The basis of Iran's national security is anchored in the protection of all the layers of Iranian identity. Taking into consideration that this identity consists of Iranian, Islamic, Shiite and Revolutionary elements, we can argue that the attempt to impose a military solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and, particularly, the direct involvement of Turkey and foreign mercenaries in the conflict, has been and still remains a threat to all components of Iran’s security. The status quo of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has effectively hindered the implementation of the Azerbaijan-Northern Iran-Turkey pan-Turkic program. Moreover, the neutralization of this obstacle has been one of the important components of the security of Iran's identity. Azerbaijan, with the support of Turkey, is consistently trying to advance the idea of “one nation, two states”, presenting the northern provinces of Iran as “Southern Azerbaijan” and talking about the need to unite them with the Republic of Azerbaijan. In the context of this ideology and the struggle of the Pan-Iranian ideology against it, preventing the expansion of Azerbaijani forces toward the east and southeast was within Iran’s immediate interests. It is not surprising that in the aftermath of the 44-Day War in Karabakh, Iran has implemented several military drills across the Iran-Azerbaijan borders. The latest one is the largest and it has been accompanied by several anti-Azerbaijani statements from Iranian officials. In addition, Iranian officials have repeatedly stated that the territorial integrity of the Republic of Armenia is a red line for Iran and the North-South Corridor is of vital importance for Tehran. From the perspective of Iran’s Islamic identity, the current Azerbaijani state, with its secular approaches and pro-American, pro-Israeli policies, is considered a threat in the context of regional countries which are founded on Islamic values. Many Iranian experts and state officials believe that the Israeli technologies and human resources which have been used by Azerbaijan can also be used against Iran. From the perspective of Shiite identity, although Azerbaijan is a country with a Shiite majority population, the facts surrounding repressions in cities with a significant religious population make Azerbaijan an enemy of Shiite identity. The policy adopted by Azerbaijan around religious organizations inspires Iran to raise legitimate questions about the sincerity of Azerbaijan’s Shiite identity. During and after last year’s war, the transfer of Sunni mercenaries to Azerbaijan has also had a major impact on the security of Northern Iran. It is crucial to remember that Iran has made it a national security priority to fight against Sunni extremist groups in Syria, Iraq, Libya and other parts of the region, asserting that if they are not eliminated outside of Iran’s borders, they will end up in the country proper. During the war, Iran’s officials repeatedly stressed the importance of the withdrawal of those mercenaries from the region. The presence of the mercenaries in the region was condemned not only by the representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Iran and by the Majles but also in a statement made by Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on 3 November 2020. From the perspective of Iran’s revolutionary identity, the existence of Azerbaijan’s clan-based state authorities and the reliance of Azerbaijani politics on foreign economic and political actors in a polarized society make Azerbaijan an obstacle for the dissemination of Iran’s revolutionary values. Thus, we can state that while Iran’s response to the escalation of the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh was neutral and balanced, as it has been traditionally, Iran still has strong concerns about Azerbaijan’s behavior and desire for a military solution, Turkey’s involvement and the arrival of mercenaries in the region. Furthermore, Tehran’s statements about the sovereign territories of Armenia being its red line, especially when it comes to the southern Syunik region after the trilateral agreement of 9 November, make Iran’s security in the northern regions very vulnerable. This is the reason why Iran has been proactive with regards to its statements about regional stability and peace while also initiating a series of visits to both Azerbaijan and Armenia to boost all the possible regional projects, especially concerning the North-South Corridor.

This article assesses the Liberal and Fascist administrations’ shifting attitudes towards colonial concubinage during the years of the repression of the anti-colonial resistance in Italian Libya (1911–32). Also known as mabruchismo, concubinage in Libya closely resembled its counterpart in Italian Eastern Africa, as it involved middle- to upper-class Italian officers coercing colonised women into engaging in often exploitative intimate relationships. During the first 20 years of colonisation of the territory, the colony's military administration employed an ambiguous stance regarding the practice, condemning it discursively to ingratiate itself with the local elites while unofficially allowing it to provide safe sex to its officers. When the resistance was defeated in the early 1930s, and the Fascist administration began its demographic colonisation plans, colonial concubinage was prohibited as out of place in a racially segregated settler colony. This article employs an analysis of official archival sources to trace the regulatory framework that shaped the lives of the Libyan women and Italian officers engaged in concubinage in a shifting colonial society. The colonial administrations’’ regulatory efforts toward colonial concubinage testify to the crucial role that Libyan women and racially ‘‘mixed’’ relationships played in shaping categories of race, class, and gender relative to the Italian colonial context.

This article investigates the Special Tribunal for the Defence of the State (Tribunale Speciale per la Difesa dello Stato; TSDS) in the colonial territories that constitute present-day Libya at the time of fascist rule. This court acted as the judicial arm of the fascist regime in the so-called Italian ‘fourth shore’. As a tool of the repressive apparatus of the regime, it persecuted the ‘anti-national enemies’ outside the metropolitan area, striking against those who opposed the fascist dictatorship and the fascist occupation in the colony by de-legitimising the defendants on juridical, political and moral grounds. The TSDS in Libya shows that the fight against the ‘anti-nationals’ was a primary concern of Mussolini's ultranationalist regime not only in the peninsular territory but also within the colonial administration.

What factors explain variation in decisions to use force in American foreign policy? Consider the Obama administration’s decision to intervene in Libya. Upon assuming office, Obama outlined a foreign policy marked by a self-professed doctrine, ‘don’t do stupid shit’. In short, Obama sought to avoid the unnecessary use of military force, but when the threat of mass atrocity emerged, despite strong protests from senior advisers, he became drawn into the 2011 Libya intervention. By contrast, following chemical weapon attacks in Syria in 2013, Obama reneged on upholding his so-called ‘red-line’, pursuing diplomatic measures even though support for a military response was strong. But what explains this variation? Rationalist perspectives across the board have tended to overrate interpretive efficiency. Yet, such assumptions obscure the capacity for interests to be interpreted in different ways. To redress this issue, I build on discursive institutionalist insights, developing a model to show how principled and cognitive ideas act as weapons in institutional debates, serving to repress or displace information. To show how agents come to rely on principled or cognitive ideas, I develop a three-part model offering two mechanisms – cognitive repression and normative displacement – by which agents displace and repress certain types of information, depending on the ‘form’ in which that information is presented. This enables a more comprehensive understanding of how different interpretations lead to policy variation at critical moments of decision.

The Middle East and North Africa have experienced mass protests and political changes since the end of 2010. Indeed, the uprisings were a decisive turning point in the history of the Arab world. Although the leading causes of the revolts appear to be similar, as they result from political repression and socioeconomic grievances, their outcomes were highly different, and thus each state has developed a distinct state-building process. This article aims to explain one of the main factors that led to these divergences by comparing the role of “social cohesion” in Tunisia’s and Libya’s uprisings. The study concludes that, while the strength of social cohesion in Tunisia has fostered the role of civil society and thus explains to a certain degree the relative success of democratic transition in the country, the weakness of social cohesion in Libya has damaged the social fabric and therefore increased the emergence of tribal conflicts in the post-transition era.

There have been many changes in the human rights movement’s relationship with political Islamist movements in the Arab world, particularly in countries directly affected by the Arab Spring. While the specifics differ from country to country, the overall change has been for the worse, with deterioration on more than one front. The two movements are again caught in a crisis of trust, characterized by suspicion and mutual recriminations. At times, one side may totally reject the existence of the other amid accusations of ideological rigidity or ties with anti-Islamic Western forces working to alter national identity. When human rights organizations first emerged in the Arab world in the 1970s, they initially did not find a welcoming, supportive environment. State regimes were the most alarmed by these “alien entities,” since these new activists sought to monitor governments and report on their many human rights abuses. Nonetheless, the international situation and the inclination of elites to rebel against traditional forms of despotism, led many to accept this new type of civil society organization. Human rights groups were first recognized in Tunisia and Morocco and later in most other Arab countries. At this stage, the rights movement and political Islamist movements began to become cautiously acquainted with each other. Several Islamist groups were formed during this same period in Arab North Africa, while in states like Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and even Libya, they were decades old. At first, the relationship between the two parties was one of confusion. Despite the ideological divide between the two, human rights organizations stepped up to defend Islamists during successive waves of repression and exclusion. The relationship evolved when some Islamists began gradually showing an interest, though selective, in the rights system. At the same time, radical leftist groups fundamentally changed their attitude toward human rights organizations when the latter came to play an effective role in more than one country. After the Arab Spring, the political landscape shifted dramatically. Freedoms were unleashed, allowing parties and groups to surface and start jockeying for power through fiercely competitive elections, in a milieu in which nearly everyone was engaged in politics and public affairs. In this environment, many political Islamist movements were transformed; once suppressed, excluded, marginalized organizations, they became recognized political parties with a plausible path to power. Some of these parties attempted to monopolize power, as in Egypt, while others accepted multiparty governing coalitions, as in Tunisia, Morocco, and, for a short time, Libya. This role reversal put Islamist movements before a difficult choice. It opened them up to criticism and rights-based assessments of their political performance, just like the old regimes. At times, rights movements were more severe in their criticism and detailing of violations by Islamist movements, as they feared the religious ideology of these movements could have direct, grave consequences for state and society. For foes of the Islamists and other intellectuals and activists, the specter of a theocratic state still looms large for foes of the Islamists and other intellectuals and activists. The relationship between rights organizations and political Islamist movements varies from country to country, given the widely different circumstances in states directly impacted by regional political transformations in the wake of the Arab Spring. It is therefore important to discuss some of these cases in order to highlight the differences as well as commonalities. For reasons of space, a detailed discussion of each country is difficult, so I will focus on just some cases.

In many Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries, the army has traditionally been a central pillar of the authoritarian regimes, responsible for the security and integrity of the state and a symbol of national sovereignty and social unity. Nevertheless, the 2011 Arab revolts witnessed stark differences in the response of the armies. This article argues that a relational reading of the Structure of Political Opportunities and Threats, particularly when its dimension of the state’s capacity and propensity for repression is informed by a MENA-salient regime feature—army embeddedness—offers a compelling solution to the puzzle. An analysis of the Egyptian, Syrian, and Libyan episodes of contention, based on a comparative method that combines mechanism-based process tracing and typological theorizing, demonstrates the theoretical payoffs of this sensitized dimension. Cross-case similarities underscore the value of thinking about the army as a full-fledge agent embedded within a web of relations with social and political forces. Specifically, findings reveal how army embeddedness shapes the respective operation and effect of the mechanisms “political opportunities” and “political threats,” and highlight the importance of differentiating between the state’s capacity and the state’s propensity for repression. Within-case variations highlight the historically specific development of such embeddedness and how it plays out distinctively in each case, forming different scenarios of high and low capacity and propensity for repression.

Introduction In any list of dictators and antagonists of the West the name of Libya’s Colonel Muammar Qaddafi will always rank highly as one of the most memorable, colourful and mercurial. The roles he played to his fellow Libyans, to regional groupings, to revolutionaries and to the West were complex and nuanced. These various roles developed over time but were all grounded in his self-belief as a messianic revolutionary figure. More importantly, these roles and behaviours that stemmed from them were instrumental in preserving Qaddafi’s rule and thwarting challenges to it. These facets of Qaddafi’s public self accord with the model of “persona” described by Marshall. Whilst the nature of political persona and celebrity in the Western world has been explored by several scholars (for example Street; Wilson), little work has been conducted on the use of persona by non-democratic leaders. This paper examines the aspects of persona exhibited by Colonel Qaddafi and applied during his tenure. In constructing his role as a revolutionary leader, Qaddafi was engaging in a form of public performance aimed at delivering himself to a wider audience. Whether at home or abroad, this persona served the purpose of helping the Libyan leader consolidate his power, stymie political opposition and export his revolutionary ideals. The trajectory of his persona begins in the early days of his coming to power as a charismatic leader during a “time of distress” (Weber) and culminates in his bloody end next to a roadside drainage culvert. In between these points Qaddafi’s persona underwent refinement and reinvention. Coupled with the legacy he left on the Libyan political system, the journey of Muammar Qaddafi’s personas demonstrate how political personality can be the salvation or damnation of an entire state.Qaddafi: The Brotherly RevolutionaryCaptain Muammar Qaddafi came to power in Libya in 1969 at the age of just 27. He was the leader of a group of military officers who overthrew King Idris in a popular and relatively bloodless coup founded on an ideology of post-colonial Arab nationalism and a doing away with the endemic corruption and nepotism that were the hallmarks of the monarchy. With this revolutionary cause in mind and in an early indication that he recognised the power of political image, Qaddafi showed restraint in adopting the trappings of office. His modest promotion to the rank of Colonel was an obvious example of this, and despite the fact that in practical terms he was the supreme commander of Libya’s armed forces, he resisted the temptation to formally aggrandize himself with military titles for the ensuing 42 years of his rule.High military rank was in a way irrelevant to a man moving to change his persona from army officer to messianic national leader. Switching away from a reliance on military hierarchy as a basis for his authority allowed Qaddafi to re-cast himself as a leader with a broader mission. He began to utilise titles such as “Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council” (RCC) and “Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution.” The persona on display here was one of detached impartiality and almost reluctant leadership. There was the suggestion that Qaddafi was not really acting as a head of state, but merely an ordinary Libyan who, through popular acclaim, was being begged to lead his people. The attraction of this persona remained until the bitter end for Qaddafi, with his professed inability to step aside from a leadership role he insisted he did not formally occupy. This accords with the contention of Weber, who describes how an individual favoured with charisma can step forward at a time of crisis to complete a “mission.” Once in a position of authority, perpetuating that role of leadership and acclamation can become the mission itself:The holder, of charisma seizes the task that is adequate for him and demands obedience and a following by virtue of his mission. His success determines whether he finds them. His charismatic claim breaks down if his mission is not recognized by those to whom he feels he has been sent. If they recognize him, he is their master—so long as he knows how to maintain recognition through ‘proving’ himself. But he does not derive his ‘right’ from their will, in the manner of an election. Rather, the reverse holds: it is the duty of those to whom he addresses his mission to recognize him as their charismatically qualified leader. (Weber 266-7)As his rule extended across the decades, Qaddafi fostered his revolutionary credentials via a typical cult of personality approach. His image appeared on everything from postage stamps to watches, bags, posters and billboards. Quotations from the Brother Leader were set to music and broadcast as pop songs. “Spontaneous” rallies of support would occur when crowds of loyalists would congregate to hear the Brotherly Leader speak. Although Qaddafi publicly claimed he did not like this level of public adoration he accepted it because the people wanted to adore him. It was widely known however that many of these crowds were paid to attend these rallies (Blundy and Lycett 16).Qaddafi: The Philosopher In developing his persona as a guide and a man who was sharing his natural gifts with the people, Qaddafi developed a post-colonial philosophy he called “Third Universal Theory.” This was published in volumes collectively known as The Green Book. This was mandatory reading for every Libyan and contained a distillation of Qaddafi’s thoughts and opinions on everything from sports to politics to religion to the differences between men and women. Whilst it may be tempting for outsiders to dismiss these writings as the scribbling of a dictator, the legacy of Qaddafi’s persona as political philosopher is worthy of some examination. For in offering his revelations to the Libyan people, Qaddafi extended his mandate beyond leader of a revolution and into the territory of “messianic reformer of a nation.”The Green Book was a three-part series. The first instalment was written in 1975 and focuses on the “problem of democracy” where Qaddafi proposes direct democracy as the best option for a progressive nation. The second instalment, published in 1977, focuses on economics and expounds socialism as the solution to all fiscal woes. (Direct popular action here was evidenced in the RCC making rental of real estate illegal, meaning that all tenants in the country suddenly found themselves granted ownership of the property they were occupying!) The final chapter, published in 1981, proposes the Third Universal Theory where Qaddafi outlines his unique solution for implementing direct democracy and socialism. Qaddafi coined a new term for his Islamically-inspired socialist utopia: Jamahiriya. This was defined as being a “state of the masses” and formed the blueprint for Libyan society which Qaddafi subsequently imposed.This model of direct democracy was part of the charismatic conceit Qaddafi cultivated: that the Libyan people were their own leaders and his role was merely as a benevolent agent acceding to their wishes. However the implementation of the Jamahiriya was anything but benevolent and its legacy has crippled post-Qaddafi Libya. Under this system, Libyans did have some control over their affairs at a very local level. Beyond this, an increasingly complex series of committees and regional groupings, over which the RCC had the right of veto, diluted the participation of ordinary citizens and their ability to coalesce around any individual leader. The banning of standard avenues of political organisation, such as parties and unions, coupled with a ruthless police state that detained and executed anyone offering even a hint of political dissent served to snuff out any opposition before it had a chance to gather pace. The result was that there were no Libyans with enough leadership experience or public profile to take over when Qaddafi was ousted in 2011.Qaddafi: The Liberator In a further plank of his revolutionary persona Qaddafi turned to the world beyond Libya to offer his brotherly guidance. This saw him champion any cause that claimed to be a liberation or resistance movement struggling against the shackles of colonialism. He tended to favour groups that had ideologies aligned with his own, namely Arab unity and the elimination of Israel, but ultimately was not consistent in this regard. Aside from Palestinian nationalists, financial support was offered to groups such as the Provisional Irish Republican Army, the Moro National Liberation Front (Philippines), Umkhonto we Sizwe (South Africa), ETA (Spain), the Polisario Front (Western Sahara), and even separatist indigenous Australians. This policy of backing revolutionary groups was certainly a projection of his persona as a charismatic enabler of the revolutionary mission. However, the reception of this mission in the wider world formed the basis for the image that Qaddafi most commonly occupied in Western eyes.In 1979 the ongoing Libyan support for groups pursuing violent action against Israel and the West saw the country designated a State-Sponsor of Terror by the US Department of State. Diplomatic relations between the two nations were severed and did not resume until 2004. At this point Qaddafi seemed to adopt a persona of “opponent of the West,” ostensibly on behalf of the world’s downtrodden colonial peoples. The support for revolutionary groups was changing to a more active use of them to strike at Western interests. At the same time Qaddafi stepped up his rhetoric against America and Britain, positioning himself as a champion of the Arab world, as the one leader who had the courage of his convictions and the only one who was squarely on the side of the ordinary citizenry (in contrast to other, more compliant Arab rulers). Here again there is evidence of the charismatic revolutionary persona, reluctantly taking up the burden of leadership on behalf of his brothers.Whatever his ideals, the result was that Qaddafi and his state became the focus of increasing Western ire. A series of incidents between the US and Libya in international waters added to the friction, as did Libyan orchestrated terror attacks in Berlin, Rome and Vienna. At the height of this tension in 1986, American aircraft bombed targets in Libya, narrowly missing Qaddafi himself. This role as public enemy of America led to Qaddafi being characterised by President Ronald Reagan (no stranger to the use of persona himself) as the “mad dog of the Middle East” and a “squalid criminal.” The enmity of the West made life difficult for ordinary Libyans dealing with crippling sanctions, but for Qaddafi, it helped bolster his persona as a committed revolutionary.Qaddafi: Leader of the Arab and African Worlds Related to his early revolutionary ideologies were Qaddafi’s aspirations as a pan-national leader. Inspired by Egypt’s Gamel Abdul Nasser from a young age, the ideals of pan-Arab unity were always a cornerstone of Qaddafi’s beliefs. It is not therefore surprising that he developed ambitions of being the person to bring about and “guide” that unity. Once again the Weberian description of the charismatic leader is relevant, particularly the notion that such leadership does not respect conventional boundaries of functional jurisdictions or local bailiwicks; in this case, state boundaries.During the 1970s Qaddafi was involved in numerous attempts to broker Arab unions between Libya and states such as Egypt, Syria and Tunisia. All of these failed to materialise once the exact details of the mergers began to be discussed, in particular who would assume the mantle of leadership in these super-states. In line with his persona as the rightly-guided revolutionary, Qaddafi consistently blamed the failure of these unions on the other parties, souring his relationship with his fellow Arab leaders. His hardline stance on Israel also put him at odds with those peers more determined to find a compromise. Following the assassination of Egypt’s Anwar Sadat in 1981 Qaddafi praised the act as justified because of Sadat’s signing of the Camp David Accords with Israel.Having given up on the hope of achieving pan-Arab Unity, Qaddafi sought to position himself as a leader of the African bloc. In 2009 he became Chairperson of the African Union and took to having himself introduced as “The King of Kings of Africa.” The level of dysfunction of the African Union was no less than that of the Arab League and Qaddafi’s grandiose plans for becoming the President of the United States of Africa failed to materialise.In both his pan-Arab and pan-Africa ambitions, we see a persona of Qaddafi that aims at leadership beyond his own state. Whilst there may be delusions of grandeur apparent in the practicalities of these goals, this image was nevertheless something that Qaddafi used to leverage the next phase of his political transformation.Qaddafi: The Post-9/11 Statesman However much he might be seen as erratic, Qaddafi’s innate intelligence could result in a political astuteness lacking in many of his Arab peers. Following the events of 11 September 2001, Qaddafi was the first international leader to condemn the attacks on America and pledge support in the War on Terror and the extermination of al-Qaeda. Despite his history as a supporter of terrorism overseas, Qaddafi had a long history of repressing it at home, just as with any other form of political opposition. The pan-Islamism of al-Qaeda was anathema to his key ideologies of direct democracy (guided by himself). This meant the United States and Libya were now finally on the same team. As part of this post-9/11 sniffing of the wind, Qaddafi abandoned his fledgling Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) program and finally agreed to pay reparations to the families of the victims of the Pan Am 107 flight downed over Lockerbie in 1987.This shift in Qaddafi’s policy did not altogether dispel his persona of brotherly leadership amongst African nations. As a bloc leader and an example of the possibility of ‘coming in from the cold’, Qaddafi and Libya were reintegrated into the world community. This included giving a speech at the United Nations in 2009. This event did little to add to his reputation as a statesman in the West. Given a 15-minute slot, the Libyan leader delivered a rambling address over 90 minutes long, which included him tearing up a copy of the UN Charter and turning his back to the audience whilst continuing to speak.Qaddafi: The Clown From the Western point of view, performances like this painted Qaddafi’s behaviour as increasingly bizarre. Particularly after Libya’s rapprochement with the West, the label of threatening terrorist supporter faded and was replaced with something along the lines of a harmless clown prince. Tales of the Libyan leader’s coterie of virgin female bodyguards were the subject of ridicule, as was his ardour for US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Perhaps this behaviour was indicative of a leader increasingly divorced from reality. Surrounded by sycophants dependent on his regard for their tenure or physical survival, as well as Western leaders eager to contrast his amiability with that of Saddam Hussein, nobody was prepared to draw attention to the emperor’s new clothes.Indeed, elaborate and outlandish clothing played an increasing role in Qaddafi’s persona as the decades went on. His simple revolutionary fatigues of the early years were superseded by a vast array of military uniforms heavily decorated with medals and emblems; traditional African, Arab or Bedouin robes depending on the occasion; and in later years a penchant for outfits that included images of the African continent or pictures of dead martyrs. (In 2009 Vanity Fair did a tongue-in-cheek article on the fashion of Colonel Qaddafi entitled Dictator Chic: Colonel Qaddafi—A Life in Fashion. This spawned a number of similar features including one in TIME Magazine entitled Gaddafi Fashion: The Emperor Had Some Crazy Clothes.)The Bedouin theme was an aspect of persona that Qaddafi cultivated as an ascetic “man of the people” throughout his leadership. Despite having many palaces available he habitually slept in an elaborate tent, according once again with Weber’s description of the charismatic leader as one who eschews methodical material gain. This predisposition served him well in the 1986 United States bombing, when his residence in a military barracks was demolished, but Qaddafi escaped unscathed as he was in his tent at the time. He regularly entertained foreign dignitaries in tents when they visited Libya and he took one when travelling abroad, including pitching it in the gardens of a Parisian hotel during a state visit in 2007. (A request to camp in New York’s Central Park for his UN visit in 2009 was denied; “Inside the Tents of Muammar Gaddafi”).The role of such a clown was unlikely to have been an aim for Qaddafi, but was instead the product of his own increasing isolation. It will likely be his most enduring character in the Western memory of his rule. It should be noted though that clowns and fools do not maintain an iron grip on power for over 40 years.The Legacy of Qaddafi’s Many Personas Colonel Muammar Qaddafi was a clever and complex leader who exhibited many variations of persona during his four decades of rule. These personas were generally facets of the same core self-belief of a charismatic leader, but could be conflicting, and often confusing, to observers. His eccentricities often hid a layer of deeper cunning and ambition, but ultimately led to his marginalisation and an impression by world leaders that he was untrustworthy.His erratic performance at the UN in 2009 perhaps typifies the end stages of Qaddafi’s leadership: a man increasingly disconnected from his people and the realities of what was going on around him. His insistence that the 2011 Libyan revolution was variously a colonial or terrorist inspired piece of theatre belied the deep resentment of his rule. His role as opponent of the Western and Arab worlds alike meant that he was unsupported in his attempts to deal with the uprising. Indeed, the West’s rapid willingness to use their airpower was instrumental in speeding on the rebel forces.What cannot be disputed is the chaotic legacy this charismatic figure left for his country. Since the uprising climaxed in his on-camera lynching in October 2011, Libya has been plunged in to turmoil and shows no signs of this abating. One of the central reasons for this chaos is that Qaddafi’s supremacy, his political philosophies, and his use of messianic persona left Libya completely unprepared for rule by any other party.This ensuing chaos has been a cruel, if ironic, proof of Qaddafi’s own conceit: Libya could not survive without him.References Al-Gathafi, Muammar. The Green Book: The Solution to the Problem of Democracy; The Solution to the Economic Problem; The Social Basis of the Third Universal Theory. UK: Ithaca Press, 2005.Blundy, David, and Andrew Lycett. Qaddafi and the Libyan Revolution. Boston and Toronto: Little Brown & Co, 1987.Marshall, P. David. “Persona Studies: Mapping the Proliferation of the Public Self”. Journalism 15.2 (2014): 153-170.Qaddafi, Muammar. Speech at the United Nations 2009. ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKMyY2V0J0Y›. Street, John. “Celebrity Politicians: Popular Culture and Political Representation.” British Journal of Politics and International Relations 6 (2004): 435-52.Street, John. “Do Celebrity Politics and Celebrity Politicians Matter?” The British Journal of Politics & International Relations 14.3 (2012): 346-356.TIME Magazine. “Gaddafi Fashion: The Emperor Had Some Crazy Clothes.” ‹http://content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2055860,00.html›.TIME Magazine. “Inside the Tents of Muammar Gaddafi.” ‹http://content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2058074,00.html›.Totman, Sally, and Mat Hardy. “In the Green Zone: 40 years with Colonel Qaddafi.” Ed. Geoffrey Hawker. APSA 2009: Proceedings of the APSA Annual Conference 2009. Sydney: Macquarie University, 2009. 1-19.Totman, Sally, and Mat Hardy. “The Rise and Decline of Libya as a Rogue State.” OCIS 2008: Oceanic Conference on International Studies. Brisbane: University of Queensland, 2008. 1-25.Vanity Fair. “Dictator Chic: Colonel Qaddafi—A Life in Fashion.” ‹http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/08/qaddafi-slideshow200908›.Weber, Max, Hans Heinrich Gerth, and C. Wright Mills. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. London: Routledge, 2009.Wilson, J. “Kevin Rudd, Celebrity and Audience Democracy in Australia.” Journalism 15.2 (2013): 202-217.

A closer look at recent reports of “modern slavery” in the Sahara, particularly the exploitation of sub-Saharan migrants in contemporary southern Libya, shows that they speak of other forms of captivity, such as debt bondage, forced prison labor, and hostage taking for ransom. Such forms of exploitation have an equally long history in the region but are more obviously enmeshed with contemporary phenomena: repressive migration policies, state incarceration, and the worldwide ranking of nationalities. This article seeks to understand them for what they are, using fieldwork and historical examples. Understanding shifts the blame for the migrants’ plight from “local culture” to the international political economy and grants migrants a degree of agency that blanket condemnations of slavery often deny. It also opens up more general questions about links between labor, mobility, and captivity; the relationship between state and nonstate systems of political control, their boundaries and overlaps; and the different ways value is accorded to individual lives—or actively created, negotiated, or denied—in the Sahara and beyond.

Introduction Since December 2010 the dramatic spectacle of the spread of mass uprisings, civil unrest, and protest across North Africa and the Middle East have been chronicled daily on mainstream media and new media. Broadly speaking, the Arab Spring—as it came to be known—is challenging repressive, corrupt governments and calling for democracy and human rights. The convulsive events linked with these debates have been striking not only because of the rapid spread of historically momentous mass protests but also because of the ways in which the media “have become inextricably infused inside them” enabling the global media ecology to perform “an integral part in building and mobilizing support, co-ordinating and defining the protests within different Arab societies as well as trans-nationalizing them” (Cottle 295). Images of mass protests have been juxtaposed against those of individuals prepared to self-destruct for political ends. Video clips and photographs of the individual suffering of Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation and the Bahraini Abdulhad al-Khawaja’s emaciated body foreground, in very graphic ways, political struggles that larger events would mask or render invisible. Highlighting broad commonalties does not assume uniformity in patterns of protest and media coverage across the region. There has been considerable variation in the global media coverage and nature of the protests in North Africa and the Middle East (Cottle). In Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen uprisings overthrew regimes and leaders. In Syria it has led the country to the brink of civil war. In Bahrain, the regime and its militia violently suppressed peaceful protests. As a wave of protests spread across the Middle East and one government after another toppled in front of 24/7 global media coverage, Bahrain became the “Arab revolution that was abandoned by the Arabs, forsaken by the West … forgotten by the world,” and largely ignored by the global media (Al-Jazeera English). Per capita the protests have been among the largest of the Arab Spring (Human Rights First) and the crackdown as brutal as elsewhere. International organizations have condemned the use of military courts to trial protestors, the detaining of medical staff who had treated the injured, and the use of torture, including the torture of children (Fisher). Bahraini and international human rights organizations have been systematically chronicling these violations of human rights, and posting on Websites distressing images of tortured bodies often with warnings about the graphic depictions viewers are about to see. It was in this context of brutal suppression, global media silence, and the reluctance of the international community to intervene, that the Bahraini-Danish human rights activist Abdulhad al-Khawaja launched his “death or freedom” hunger strike. Even this radical action initially failed to interest international editors who were more focused on Egypt, Libya, and Syria, but media attention rose in response to the Bahrain Formula 1 race in April 2012. Pro-democracy activists pledged “days of rage” to coincide with the race in order to highlight continuing human rights abuses in the kingdom (Turner). As Al Khawaja’s health deteriorated the Bahraini government resisted calls for his release (Article 19) from the Danish government who requested that Al Khawaja be extradited there on “humanitarian grounds” for hospital treatment (Fisk). This article does not explore the geo-politics of the Bahraini struggle or the possible reasons why the international community—in contrast to Syria and Egypt—has been largely silent and reluctant to debate the issues. Important as they are, those remain questions for Middle Eastern specialists to address. In this article I am concerned with the overlapping and interpenetration of two ecologies. The first ecology is the ethical framing of a prison hunger strike as a corporeal-environmental act of (self) destruction intended to achieve political ends. The second ecology is the operation of global media where international inaction inadvertently foregrounds the political struggles that larger events and discourses surrounding Egypt, Libya, and Syria overshadow. What connects these two ecologies is the body of the hunger striker, turned into a spectacle and mediated via a politics of affect that invites a global public to empathise and so enter into his suffering. The connection between the two lies in the emaciated body of the hunger striker. An Ecological Humanities Approach This exploration of two ecologies draws on the ecological humanities and its central premise of connectivity. The ecological humanities critique the traditional binaries in Western thinking between nature and culture; the political and social; them and us; the collective and the individual; mind, body and emotion (Rose & Robin, Rieber). Such binaries create artificial hierarchies, divisions, and conflicts that ultimately impede the ability to respond to crises. Crises are major changes that are “out of control” driven—primarily but not exclusively—by social, political, and cultural forces that unleash “runaway systems with their own dynamics” (Rose & Robin 1). The ecological humanities response to crises is premised on the recognition of the all-inclusive connectivity of organisms, systems, and environments and an ethical commitment to action from within this entanglement. A founding premise of connectivity, first articulated by anthropologist and philosopher Gregory Bateson, is that the “unit of survival is not the individual or the species, but the organism-and-its-environment” (Rose & Robin 2). This highlights a dialectic in which an organism is shaped by and shapes the context in which it finds itself. Or, as Harries-Jones puts it, relations are recursive as “events continually enter into, become entangled with, and then re-enter the universe they describe” (3). This ensures constantly evolving ecosystems but it also means any organism that “deteriorates its environment commits suicide” (Rose & Robin 2) with implications for the others in the eco-system. Bateson’s central premise is that organisms are simultaneously independent, as separate beings, but also interdependent. Interactions are not seen purely as exchanges but as dynamic, dialectical, dialogical, and mutually constitutive. Thus, it is presumed that the destruction or protection of others has consequences for oneself. Another dimension of interactions is multi-modality, which implies that human communication cannot be reduced to a single mode such as words, actions, or images but needs to be understood in the complexity of inter-relations between these (see Rieber 16). Nor can dissemination be reduced to a single technological platform whether this is print, television, Internet, or other media (see Cottle). The final point is that interactions are “biologically grounded but not determined” in that the “cognitive, emotional and volitional processes” underpinning face-to-face or mediated communication are “essentially indivisible” and any attempt to separate them by privileging emotion at the expense of thought, or vice versa, is likely to be unhealthy (Rieber 17). This is most graphically demonstrated in a politically-motivated hunger strike where emotion and volition over-rides the survivalist instinct. The Ecology of a Prison Hunger Strike The radical nature of a hunger strike inevitably gives rise to medico-ethical debates. Hunger strikes entail the voluntary refusal of sustenance by an individual and, when prolonged, such deprivation sets off a chain reaction as the less important components in the internal body systems shut down to protect the brain until even that can no longer be protected (see Basoglu et al). This extreme form of protest—essentially an act of self-destruction—raises ethical issues over whether or not doctors or the state should intervene to save a life for humanitarian or political reasons. In 1975 and 1991, the World Medical Association (WMA) sought to negotiate this by distinguishing between, on the one hand, the mentally/psychological impaired individual who chooses a “voluntary fast” and, on the other hand, the hunger striker who chooses a form of protest action to secure an explicit political goal fully aware of fatal consequences of prolonged action (see Annas, Reyes). This binary enables the WMA to label the action of the mentally impaired suicide while claiming that to do so for political protesters would be a “misconception” because the “striker … does not want to die” but to “live better” by obtaining certain political goals for himself, his group or his country. “If necessary he is willing to sacrifice his life for his case, but the aim is certainly not suicide” (Reyes 11). In practice, the boundaries between suicide and political protest are likely to be much more blurred than this but the medico-ethical binary is important because it informs discourses about what form of intervention is ethically appropriate. In the case of the “suicidal” the WMA legitimises force-feeding by a doctor as a life-saving act. In the case of the political protestor, it is de-legitimised in discourses of an infringement of freedom of expression and an act of torture because of the pain involved (see Annas, Reyes). Philosopher Michel Foucault argued that prison is a key site where the embodied subject is explicitly governed and where the exercising of state power in the act of incarceration means the body of the imprisoned no longer solely belongs to the individual. It is also where the “body’s range of significations” is curtailed, “shaped and invested by the very forces that detain and imprison it” (Pugliese 2). Thus, prison creates the circumstances in which the incarcerated is denied the “usual forms of protest and judicial safeguards” available outside its confines. The consequence is that when presented with conditions that violate core beliefs he/she may view acts of self-destruction—such as hunger strikes or lip sewing—as one of the few “means of protesting against, or demanding attention” or achieving political ends still available to them (Reyes 11; Pugliese). The hunger strike implicates the state, which, in the act of imprisoning, has assumed a measure of power and responsibility for the body of the individual. If a protest action is labelled suicidal by medical professionals—for instance at Guantanamo—then the force-feeding of prisoners can be legitimised within the WMA guidelines (Annas). There is considerable political temptation to do so particularly when the hunger striker has become an icon of resistance to the state, the knowledge of his/her action has transcended prison confines, and the alienating conditions that prompted the action are being widely debated in the media. This poses a two-fold danger for the state. On the one hand, there is the possibility that the slow emaciation and death while imprisoned, if covered by the media, may become a spectacle able to mobilise further resistance that can destabilise the polity. On the other hand, there is the fear that in the act of dying, and the spectacle surrounding death, the hunger striker would have secured the public attention to the very cause they are championing. Central to this is whether or not the act of self-destruction is mediated. It is far from inevitable that the media will cover a hunger strike or do so in ways that enable the hunger striker’s appeal to the emotions of others. However, when it does, the international scrutiny and condemnation that follows may undermine the credibility of the state—as happened with the death of the IRA member Bobby Sands in Northern Ireland (Russell). The Media Ecology and the Bahrain Arab Spring The IRA’s use of an “ancient tactic ... to make a blunt appeal to sympathy and emotion” in the form of the Sands hunger strike was seen as “spectacularly successful in gaining worldwide publicity” (Willis 1). Media ecology has evolved dramatically since then. Over the past 20 years communication flows between the local and the global, traditional media formations (broadcast and print), and new communication media (Internet and mobile phones) have escalated. The interactions of the traditional media have historically shaped and been shaped by more “top-down” “politics of representation” in which the primary relationship is between journalists and competing public relations professionals servicing rival politicians, business or NGOs desire for media attention and framing issues in a way that is favourable or sympathetic to their cause. However, rapidly evolving new media platforms offer bottom up, user-generated content, a politics of connectivity, and mobilization of ordinary people (Cottle 31). However, this distinction has increasingly been seen as offering too rigid a binary to capture the complexity of the interactions between traditional and new media as well as the events they capture. The evolution of both meant their content increasingly overlaps and interpenetrates (see Bennett). New media technologies “add new communicative ingredients into the media ecology mix” (Cottle 31) as well as new forms of political protests and new ways of mobilizing dispersed networks of activists (Juris). Despite their pervasiveness, new media technologies are “unlikely to displace the necessity for coverage in mainstream media”; a feature noted by activist groups who have evolved their own “carnivalesque” tactics (Cottle 32) capable of creating the spectacle that meets television demands for action-driven visuals (Juris). New media provide these groups with the tools to publicise their actions pre- and post-event thereby increasing the possibility that mainstream media might cover their protests. However there is no guarantee that traditional and new media content will overlap and interpenetrate as initial coverage of the Bahrain Arab Spring highlights. Peaceful protests began in February 2011 but were violently quelled often by Saudi, Qatari and UAE militia on behalf of the Bahraini government. Mass arrests were made including that of children and medical personnel who had treated those wounded during the suppression of the protests. What followed were a long series of detentions without trial, military court rulings on civilians, and frequent use of torture in prisons (Human Rights Watch 2012). By the end of 2011, the country had the highest number of political prisoners per capita of any country in the world (Amiri) but received little coverage in the US. The Libyan uprising was afforded the most broadcast time (700 minutes) followed by Egypt (500 minutes), Syria (143), and Bahrain (34) (Lobe). Year-end round-ups of the Arab Spring on the American Broadcasting Corporation ignored Bahrain altogether or mentioned it once in a 21-page feature (Cavell). This was not due to a lack of information because a steady stream has flowed from mobile phones, Internet sites and Twitter as NGOs—Bahraini and international—chronicled in images and first-hand accounts the abuses. However, little of this coverage was picked up by the US-dominated global media. It was in this context that the Bahraini-Danish human rights activist Abdulhad Al Khawaja launched his “freedom or death” hunger strike in protest against the violent suppression of peaceful demonstrations, the treatment of prisoners, and the conduct of the trials. Even this radical action failed to persuade international editors to cover the Bahrain Arab Spring or Al Khawaja’s deteriorating health despite being “one of the most important stories to emerge over the Arab Spring” (Nallu). This began to change in April 2012 as a number of things converged. Formula 1 pressed ahead with the Bahrain Grand Prix, and pro-democracy activists pledged “days of rage” over human rights abuses. As these were violently suppressed, editors on global news desks increasingly questioned the government and Formula 1 “spin” that all was well in the kingdom (see BBC; Turner). Claims by the drivers—many of who were sponsored by the Bahraini government—that this was a sports event, not a political one, were met with derision and journalists more familiar with interviewing superstars were diverted into covering protests because their political counterparts had been denied entry to the country (Fisk). This combination of media events and responses created the attention, interest, and space in which Al Khawaja’s deteriorating condition could become a media spectacle. The Mediated Spectacle of Al Khawaja’s Hunger Strike Journalists who had previously struggled to interest editors in Bahrain and Al Khawaja’s plight found that in the weeks leading up to the Grand Prix and since “his condition rapidly deteriorated”’ and there were “daily updates with stories from CNN to the Hindustan Times” (Nulla). Much of this mainstream news was derived from interviews and tweets from Al Khawaja’s family after each visit or phone call. What emerged was an unprecedented composite—a diary of witnesses to a hunger strike interspersed with the family’s struggles with the authorities to get access to him and their almost tangible fear that the Bahraini government would not relent and he would die. As these fears intensified 48 human rights NGOs called for his release from prison (Article 19) and the Danish government formally requested his extradition for hospital treatment on “humanitarian grounds”. Both were rejected. As if to provide evidence of Al Khawaja’s tenuous hold on life, his family released an image of his emaciated body onto Twitter. This graphic depiction of the corporeal-environmental act of (self) destruction was re-tweeted and posted on countless NGO and news Websites (see Al-Jazeera). It was also juxtaposed against images of multi-million dollar cars circling a race-track, funded by similarly large advertising deals and watched by millions of people around the world on satellite channels. Spectator sport had become a grotesque parody of one man’s struggle to speak of what was going on in Bahrain. In an attempt to silence the criticism the Bahraini government imposed a de facto news blackout denying all access to Al Khawaja in hospital where he had been sent after collapsing. The family’s tweets while he was held incommunicado speak of their raw pain, their desperation to find out if he was still alive, and their grief. They also provided a new source of information, and the refrain “where is alkhawaja,” reverberated on Twitter and in global news outlets (see for instance Der Spiegel, Al-Jazeera). In the days immediately after the race the Danish prime minister called for the release of Al Khawaja, saying he is in a “very critical condition” (Guardian), as did the UN’s Ban-Ki Moon (UN News and Media). The silencing of Al Khawaja had become a discourse of callousness and as global media pressure built Bahraini ministers felt compelled to challenge this on non-Arabic media, claiming Al Khawaja was “eating” and “well”. The Bahraini Prime Minister gave one of his first interviews to the Western media in years in which he denied “AlKhawaja’s health is ‘as bad’ as you say. According to the doctors attending to him on a daily basis, he takes liquids” (Der Spiegel Online). Then, after six days of silence, the family was allowed to visit. They tweeted that while incommunicado he had been restrained and force-fed against his will (Almousawi), a statement almost immediately denied by the military hospital (Lebanon Now). The discourses of silence and callousness were replaced with discourses of “torture” through force-feeding. A month later Al Khawaja’s wife announced he was ending his hunger strike because he was being force-fed by two doctors at the prison, family and friends had urged him to eat again, and he felt the strike had achieved its goal of drawing the world’s attention to Bahrain government’s response to pro-democracy protests (Ahlul Bayt News Agency). Conclusion This article has sought to explore two ecologies. The first is of medico-ethical discourses which construct a prison hunger strike as a corporeal-environmental act of (self) destruction to achieve particular political ends. The second is of shifting engagement within media ecology and the struggle to facilitate interpenetration of content and discourses between mainstream news formations and new media flows of information. I have argued that what connects the two is the body of the hunger striker turned into a spectacle, mediated via a politics of affect which invites empathy and anger to mobilise behind the cause of the hunger striker. The body of the hunger striker is thereby (re)produced as a feature of the twin ecologies of the media environment and the self-environment relationship. References Ahlul Bayt News Agency. “Bahrain: Abdulhadi Alkhawaja’s Statement about Ending his Hunger Strike.” (29 May 2012). 1 June 2012 ‹http://abna.ir/data.asp?lang=3&id=318439›. Al-Akhbar. “Family Concerned Al-Khawaja May Be Being Force Fed.” Al-Akhbar English. (27 April 2012). 1 June 2012 ‹http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/family-concerned-al-khawaja-may-be-being-force-fed›. 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Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties. —John Milton (1608-1674) Introduction The publication of 12 cartoons depicting images of Prophet Mohammed [Peace Be Upon Him] first in Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten on 30 September 2005, and later reprinted in European media and two New Zealand newspapers, sparked protests around the Muslim world. The Australian newspapers – with the exception of The Courier-Mail, which published one cartoon – refrained from reprinting the cartoons, acknowledging that depictions of the Prophet are regarded as “blasphemous by Muslims”. How is this apparent act of restraint to be assessed? Edward Said, in his book Covering Islam has acknowledged that there have been many Muslim provocations and troubling incidents by Islamic countries such as Iran, Libya, Sudan, and others in the 1980s. However, he contends that the use of the label “Islam” by non-Muslim commentators, either to explain or indiscriminately condemn “Islam”, ends up becoming a form of attack, which in turn provokes more hostility (xv-xvi). This article examines how two Australian newspapers – The Australian and The West Australian – handled the debate on the Prophet Muhammad cartoons and considers whether in the name of “free speech” it ended in “a form of attack” on Australian Muslims. It also considers the media’s treatment of Muslim Australians’ “free speech” on previous occasions. This article is drawn from the oral testimonies of Muslims of diverse ethnic background. Since 1998, as part of PhD and post-doctoral research on Muslims in Australia, the author conducted 130 face-to-face, in-depth, taped interviews of Muslims, aged 18-90, both male and female. While speaking about their settlement experience, several interviewees made unsolicited remarks about Western/Australian media, all of them making the point that Muslims were being demonised. Australian Muslims Many of Australia’s 281,578 Muslims — 1.5 per cent of the total population (Australian Bureau of Statistics) — believe that as a result of media bias, they are vilified in society as “terrorists”, and discriminated in the workplace (Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission; Dreher 13; Kabir 266-277). The ABS figures support their claim of discrimination in the workplace; in 1996 the unemployment rate for Muslim Australians was 25 per cent, compared to 9 per cent for the national total. In 2001, it was reduced to 18.5 per cent, compared to 6.8 per cent for the national total, but the ratio of underprivileged positions in the labour market remained almost three times higher than for the wider community. Instead of reflecting on Muslims’ labour market issues or highlighting the social issues confronting Muslims since 9/11, some Australian media, in the name of “free speech”, reinforce negative perceptions of Muslims through images, cartoons and headlines. In 2004, one Muslim informant offered their perceptions of Australian media: I think the Australian media are quite prejudiced, and they only do show one side of the story, which is quite pro-Bush, pro-Howard, pro-war. Probably the least prejudiced media would be ABC or SBS, but the most pro-Jewish, pro-America, would be Channel Seven, Channel Nine, Channel Ten. They only ever show things from one side of the story. This article considers the validity of the Muslim interviewee’s perception that Australian media representation is one-sided. On 26 October 2005, under the headline: “Draw a Cartoon about Mohammed and You Must Die”, The Australian warned its readers: ISLAM is no laughing matter. Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, is being protected by security guards and several cartoonists have gone into hiding after the newspaper published a series of 12 cartoons about the prophet Mohammed. According to Islam, it is blasphemous to make images of the prophet. Muslim fundamentalists have threatened to bomb the paper’s offices and kill the cartoonists (17). Militant Muslims The most provocative cartoons appearing in the Danish media are probably those showing a Muhammad-like figure wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse coming out of it, or a queue of smoking suicide bombers on a cloud with an Islamic cleric saying, “Stop stop we have run out of virgins”. Another showed a blindfolded Muslim man with two veiled Muslim women standing behind him. These messages appeared to be concerned with Islam’s repression of women (Jyllands-Posten), and possibly with the American channel CBS airing an interview in August 2001 of a Palestinian Hamas activist, Muhammad Abu Wardeh, who recruited terrorists for suicide bombings in Israel. Abu Wardeh was quoted as saying: “I described to him [the suicide bomber] how God would compensate the martyr for sacrificing his life for his land. If you become a martyr, God will give you 70 virgins, 70 wives and everlasting happiness” (The Guardian). Perhaps to serve their goals, the militants have re-interpreted the verses of the Holy Quran (Sura 44:51-54; 55:56) where it is said that Muslims who perform good deeds will be blessed by the huris or “pure being” (Ali 1290-1291; 1404). However, since 9/11, it is also clear that the Muslim militant groups such as the Al-Qaeda have become the “new enemy” of the West. They have used religion to justify the terrorist acts and suicide bombings that have impacted on Western interests in New York, Washington, Bali, Madrid amongst other places. But it should be noted that there are Muslim critics, such as Pakistani-born writer, Irshad Manji, Bangladeshi-born writer Taslima Nasreen and Somalian-born Dutch parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who have been constant critics of Muslim men’s oppression of women and have urged reformation. However, their extremist fellow believers threatened them with a death sentence for their “free speech” (Chadwick). The non-Muslim Dutch film director, Theo van Gogh, also a critic of Islam and a supporter of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, advocated a reduction in immigration into Holland, especially by Muslims. Both van Gogh and Hirsi Ali – who co-scripted and co-produced the film Submission – received death threats from Muslim extremists because the film exhibited the verses of the Quran across the chest, stomach and thighs of an almost naked girl, and featured four women in see-through robes showing their breasts, with texts from the Quran daubed on their bodies, talking about the abuse they had suffered under Islam (Anon 25). Whereas there may be some justification for the claim made in the film, that some Muslim men interpret the Quran to oppress women (Doogue and Kirkwood 220), the writing of the Quranic verses on almost-naked women is surely offensive to all Muslims because the Quran teaches Muslim women to dress modestly (Sura 24: 30-31; Ali 873). On 4 November 2004, The West Australian reported that the Dutch director Theo van Gogh was murdered by a 26-year-old Dutch-Moroccan Muslim on 2 November 2004 (27). Hirsi Ali, the co-producer of the film was forced to go into hiding after van Gogh’s murder. In the face of a growing clamour from both the Dutch Muslims and the secular communities to silence her, Ayaan Hirsi Ali resigned from the Dutch Parliament in May 2006 and decided to re-settle in Washington (Jardine 2006). It should be noted that militant Muslims form a tiny but forceful minority of the 1.4 billion Muslims worldwide. The Muslim majority are moderate and peaceful (Doogue and Kirkwood 79-80). Some Muslim scholars argue that there is specific instruction in the Quran for people to apply their knowledge and arrive at whatever interpretation is of greatest benefit to the community. It may be that stricter practitioners would not agree with the moderate interpretation of the Quran and vice versa (Doogue and Kirkwood 232). Therefore, when the Western media makes a mockery of the Muslim religion or their Prophet in the name of “free speech”, or generalises all Muslims for the acts of a few through headlines or cartoons, it impacts on the Muslims residing in the West. Prophet Muhammad’s Cartoons With the above-mentioned publication of Prophet Muhammad’s cartoons in Denmark, Islamic critics charged that the cartoons were a deliberate provocation and insult to their religion, designed to incite hatred and polarise people of different faiths. In February 2006, regrettably, violent reactions took place in the Middle East, Europe and in Asia. Danish embassies were attacked and, in some instances, were set on fire. The demonstrators chanted, “With our blood and souls we defend you, O Prophet of God!”. Some replaced the Danish flag with a green one printed with the first pillar of Islam (Kalima): “There is no god but God and Mohammed is the messenger of God”. Some considered the cartoons “an unforgivable insult” that merited punishment by death (The Age). A debate on “free speech” soon emerged in newspapers throughout the world. On 7 February 2006 the editorial in The West Australian, “World Has Had Enough of Muslim Fanatics”, stated that the newspaper would not publish cartoons of Mohammad that have drawn protests from Muslims around the world. The newspaper acknowledged that depictions of the prophet are regarded as “blasphemous by Muslims” (18). However, the editorial was juxtaposed with another article “Can Liberty Survive a Clash of Cultures?”, with an image of bearded men wearing Muslim head coverings, holding Arabic placards and chanting slogans, implying the violent nature of Islam. And in the letters page of this newspaper, published on the same day, appeared the following headlines (20): Another Excuse for Muslims to Threaten Us Islam Attacked Cartoon Rage: Greatest Threat to World Peace We’re Living in Dangerous Times Why Treat Embassies with Contempt? Muslim Religion Is Not So Soft Civilised World Is Threatened The West Australian is a state-based newspaper that tends to side with the conservative Liberal party, and is designed to appeal to the “man in the street”. The West Australian did not republish the Prophet Muhammad cartoon, but for 8 days from 7 to 15 February 2006 the letters to the editor and opinion columns consistently criticised Islam and upheld “superior” Western secular values. During this period, the newspaper did publish a few letters that condemned the Danish cartoonist, including the author’s letter, which also condemned the Muslims’ attack on the embassies. But the overall message was that Western secular values were superior to Islamic values. In other words, the newspaper adopted a jingoistic posture and asserted the cultural superiority of mainstream Australians. The Danish cartoons also sparked a debate on “free speech” in Australia’s leading newspaper, The Australian, which is a national newspaper that also tends to reflect the values of the ruling national government – also the conservative Liberal party. And it followed a similar pattern of debate as The West Australian. On 14 February 2006, The Australian (13) published a reader’s criticism of The Australian for not republishing the cartoons. The author questioned whether the Muslims deserved any tolerance because their Holy Book teaches intolerance. The Koran [Quran] (22:19) says: Garments of fire have been prepared for the unbelievers. Scalding water shall be poured upon their heads, melting their skins and that which is in their bellies. Perhaps this reader did not find the three cartoons published in The Australian a few days earlier to be ‘offensive’ to the Australian Muslims. In the first, on 6 February 2006, the cartoonist Bill Leak showed that his head was chopped off by some masked people (8), implying that Muslim militants, such as the Hamas, would commit such a brutal act. The Palestinian Hamas group often appear in masks before the media. In this context, it is important to note that Israel is an ally of Australia and the United States, whereas the Hamas is Israel’s enemy whose political ideology goes against Israel’s national interest. On 25 January 2006, the Hamas won a landslide victory in the Palestine elections but Israel refused to recognise this government because Hamas has not abandoned its militant ideology (Page 13). The cartoon, therefore, probably means that the cartoonist or perhaps The Australian has taken sides on behalf of Australia’s ally Israel. In the second cartoon, on 7 February 2006, Bill Leak sketched an Arab raising his sword over a school boy who was drawing in a classroom. The caption read, “One more line and I’ll chop your hand off!” (12). And in the third, on 10 February 2006, Bill Leak sketched Mr Mohammed’s shadow holding a sword with the caption: “The unacceptable face of fanaticism”. A reporter asked: “And so, Mr Mohammed, what do you have to say about the current crisis?” to which Mr Mohammed replied, “I refuse to be drawn on the subject” (16). The cartoonist also thought that the Danish cartoons should have been republished in the Australian newspapers (Insight). Cartoons are supposed to reflect the theme of the day. Therefore, Bill Leak’s cartoons were certainly topical. But his cartoons reveal that his or The Australian’s “freedom of expression” has been one-sided, all depicting Islam as representing violence. For example, after the Bali bombing on 21 November 2002, Leak sketched two fully veiled women, one carrying explosives under her veil and asking the other, “Does my bomb look big in this”? The cartoonist’s immediate response to criticism of the cartoon in a television programme was, “inevitably, when you look at a cartoon such as that one, the first thing you’ve got to do is remember that as a daily editorial cartoonist, you’re commenting first and foremost on the events of the day. They’re very ephemeral things”. He added, “It was…drawn about three years ago after a spate of suicide bombing attacks in Israel” (Insight). Earlier events also suggested that that The Australian resolutely supports Australia’s ally, Israel. On 13-14 November 2004 Bill Leak caricatured the recently deceased Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in The Weekend Australian (18). In the cartoon, God appeared to be displeased with him and would not allow him to enter paradise. Arafat was shown with explosives strapped to his body and threatening God by saying, “A cloud to myself or the whole place goes up….”. On the other hand, on 6 January 2006 the same cartoonist sympathetically portrayed ailing Israeli leader Ariel Sharon as a decent man wearing a black suit, with God willing to accept him (10); and the next day Sharon was portrayed as “a Man of Peace” (12). Politics and Religion Thus, the anecdotal evidence so far reveals that in the name of “freedom of expression”, or “free speech” The West Australian and The Australian newspapers have taken sides – either glorifying their “superior” Western culture or taking sides on behalf of its allies. On the other hand, these print media would not tolerate the “free speech” of a Muslim leader who spoke against their ally or another religious group. From the 1980s until recently, some print media, particularly The Australian, have been critical of the Egyptian-born Muslim spiritual leader Imam Taj el din al-Hilali for his “free speech”. In 1988 the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils bestowed the title of Mufti to Imam al- Hilali, and al-Hilali was elevated to a position of national religious leadership. Al-Hilali became a controversial figure after 1988 when he gave a speech to the Muslim students at Sydney University and accused Jews of trying to control the world through “sex, then sexual perversion, then the promotion of espionage, treason and economic hoarding” (Hewett 7). The Imam started being identified as a “Muslim chief” in the news headlines once he directly criticised American foreign policy during the 1990-91 Gulf crisis. The Imam interpreted US intervention in Kuwait as a “political dictatorship” that was exploiting the Gulf crisis because it was seen as a threat to its oil supply (Hewett 7). After the Bali bombings in 2002, the Howard government distributed information on terrorism through the “Alert and Alarmed” kit as part of its campaign of public awareness. The first casualty of the “Be alert, but not alarmed” campaign was the Imam al-Hilali. On 6 January 2003, police saw a tube of plastic protruding from a passenger door window and suspected that al-Hilali might have been carrying a gun when they pulled him over for traffic infringements. Sheikh al-Hilali was charged with resisting arrest and assaulting police (Morris 1, 4). On 8 January 2003 The Australian reminded its readers “Arrest Adds to Mufti’s Mystery” (9). The same issue of The Australian portrayed the Sheikh being stripped of his clothes by two policemen. The letter page also contained some unsympathetic opinions under the headline: “Mufti Deserved No Special Treatment” (10). In January 2004, al-Hilali was again brought under the spotlight. The Australian media alleged that al-Hilali praised the suicide bombers at a Mosque in Lebanon and said that the destruction of the World Trade Center was “God’s work against oppressors” (Guillatt 24). Without further investigation, The Australian again reported his alleged inflammatory comments. Under the headline, “Muslim Leader’s Jihad Call”, it condemned al-Hilali and accused him of strongly endorsing “terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas, during his visit to Lebanon”. Federal Labor Member of Parliament Michael Danby said, “Hilali’s presence in Australia is a mistake. He and his associates must give authorities an assurance he will not assist future homicide attacks” (Chulov 1, 5). Later investigations by Sydney’s Good Weekend Magazine and SBS Television found that al-Hilali’s speech had been mistranslated (Guillatt 24). However, the selected print media that had been very critical of the Sheikh did not highlight the mistranslation. On the other hand, the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell has been critical of Islam and is also opposed to Australia’s involvement in the Iraq war in 2003, but the print media appeared to ignore his “free speech” (Dateline). In November 2004, Dr Pell said that secular liberal democracy was empty and selfish, and Islam was emerging as an alternative world view that attracted the alienated (Zwartz 3). In May 2006, Dr Pell said that he tried to reconcile claims that Islam was a faith of peace with those that suggested the Quran legitimised the killings of non-Muslims but: In my own reading of the Koran [Quran], I began to note down invocations to violence. There are so many of them, however, that I abandoned this exercise after 50 or 60 or 70 pages (Morris). Muslim leaders regarded Dr Pell’s anti-Islam statement as “inflammatory” (Morris). However, both the newspapers, The Australian and The West Australian remained uncritical of Dr Pell’s “free speech” against Islam. Conclusion Edward Said believed that media images are informed by official definitions of Islam that serve the interests of government and business. The success of the images is not in their accuracy but in the power of the people who produce them, the triumph of which is hardly challenged. “Labels have survived many experiences and have been capable of adapting to new events, information and realities” (9). In this paper the author accepts that, in the Australian context, militant Muslims are the “enemy of the West”. However, they are also the enemy of most moderate Australian Muslims. When some selected media take sides on behalf of the hegemony, or Australia’s “allies”, and offend moderate Australian Muslims, the media’s claim of “free speech” or “freedom of expression” remains highly questionable. Muslim interviewees in this study have noted a systemic bias in some Australian media, but they are not alone in detecting this bias (see the “Abu Who?” segment of Media Watch on ABC TV, 31 July 2006). To address this concern, Australian Muslim leaders need to play an active role in monitoring the media. This might take the form of a watchdog body within the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils. If the media bias is found to be persistent, the AFIC might then recommend legislative intervention or application of existing anti-discrimination policies; alternatively, AFIC could seek sanctions from within the Australian journalistic community. One way or another this practice should be stopped. References Ali, Abdullah Yusuf. The Holy Quran: Text, Translation and Commentary. New Revised Ed. Maryland, USA: Amana Corporation, 1989. Anonymous. “Dutch Courage in Aftermath of Film-Maker’s Slaying.” The Weekend Australian 6-7 Nov. 2004. 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Submission. “Film Clip from Short Submission.” Submission. 11 June 2006. http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2655656?htv=12> The Age. “Embassies Torched over Cartoons.” 5 Feb. 2006. http://www.theage.com.au>. The Guardian. “Virgins? What Virgins?” 12 Jan. 2002. 4 June 2006 http://www.guardian.co.uk/>. Zwartz, Barney. “Islam Could Be New Communism, Pell Tells US Audience.” Sydney Morning Herald 12 Nov. 2004. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Kabir, Nahid. "Depiction of Muslims in Selected Australian Media: Free Speech or Taking Sides." M/C Journal 9.4 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0609/1-kabir.php>. APA Style Kabir, N. (Sep. 2006) "Depiction of Muslims in Selected Australian Media: Free Speech or Taking Sides," M/C Journal, 9(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0609/1-kabir.php>.