Egyptian Blogger Reviews Iranian Blogging Book

Alaa, of Manal & Alaa's Bit Bucket fame, has just published a review of Nasrin Alavi's new book We Are Iran: The Persian Blogs. Apparently the editors who finally ran the piece in the magazine Bidoun were a bit heavy-handed, so Alaa has posted the original first draft.

Egypt and Iran have roughly similar population sizes as well as a huge youth cohort (roughly 70% under age 30). Egyptians and Iranians, of course, both live in a dictatorship. So Alaa's attempt to relate to the Iranian blogging scene is quite fascinating. Here are some choice excerpts of the review:

...The youth compromise 70% of the population in Iran (just like Egypt), most of them are educated (unlike Egypt) and from 4 to 8 million have access to the internet (just like Egypt), but unlike Egypt Iran sports 70000+ blogs, sounds like a great way of learning about the country, read the daily diaries/opinions/rants/navel gazing of 70000 almost random individuals. I believe Egyptian bloggers present a fairly decent window into the country and we are only 400 or so, try and imagine what image you can construct from 70000 blogs.

But of course the Iranian bloggers are not writing on the web everyday to explain to clueless Egyptians, or westerners what their society looks like. They are there to talk about their own lives to each other, most of the 70000 blogs are in Farsi and remain inaccessible to the rest of the world. And that is why I got excited about Nasrin Alavi's "We Are Iran", a book that claims to be about Iran's thriving blogging scene.

...The book is a mashup, a product of the rip, mix and burn culture of the internet, what Nasrin did was cut samples from blogs and other sources and paste and remix them all up weaving them with her writing to give us a book about her Iran, about an Iran that millions share with her, if others see Iran differently that doesn't make the book less accurate.

Instead of transferring the blogs to another medium she used them to create a new form more suitable for the medium. And it works out great, come to think of it merely translating and republishing the blogs would have made no sense. Blogs exist in a complex environment, their value comes not just from the words written in them but from the networks they build and the interactions around them, a book won't offer the same environment, reconstructing a new environment for these blog posts was "the right thing"(TM).

After this I stopped trying to LEARN, I treated the book as art, and instead of seeing confusing differences between the only society I know and this alien society I am obsessed with I started seeing similarities between individual human beings. There is this great post from http://peaceiran.blogspot.com in which he gives "Tips on how to liberate Iran" to the US Army, it is hilarious and his description of Tehran fits Cairo to the very last detail including the artists cafe that has horrible coffee and primordial waiters (Al Bostan anyone?).

And you still get a good glimpse of the blogging scene. Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of it is how it spans different groups, different generations (there is a great post by a mother who must be as old as my mom talking about her son mocking her 'Look at you, the trendy young rebel, keeping a blog ...'), different backgrounds (the dissent in Iran comes from mullah's as well as from university students, how many of you know that the imprisoned blogger Mojtaba was actually a cleric and a student of the holy city of Qom), and different classes (wonderful post by a female taxi driver comparing her shopping list to the shopping list of her passenger the wife of some big government official).

Mashup or not the book is still very political, and you will learn a lot from it, for instance I always thought that the dictatorship in Iran did not lead to corruption, but it turns out there is rampant corruption there, not unlike what we got in Egypt (and yes Iranians too believe they got the most corrupt officials ever). The book presents many of the key individuals in the reform and dissent movements, some are known to western media and many are not. And it doesn't stop at politicians and activists, artists and poets are mentioned (the legendary Googosh for instance).

Alaa's review marks a moment of cross-cultural learning within the Middle East. Reformers and activists typically focus on repression in their own country. And while each state certainly poses unique civil rights challenges, a regional discussion of subculture and reform techniques is critical. It would be cool to get a bunch of the region's blogger-activists in a room together. The mix of surprise and recognition expressed in Alaa's review offer a small taste of what the discussion might sound like.

Comments

[Alaa]

nice thought, spaces like globalvoices do more than just give a glimpse of different blogospheres, they do start a conversation between bloggers.

and yes when you throw these people in one room you get interesting results, I just came back from Africa Source II, for the first time the event had a strong focus on media activist and not just Free/Open Source Software advocacy and to me it was a transformative experience (will try to write about that at some point).

but let's be fair to the editors of Bidoun (who happen to be very good friends of mine), I knew the size constraints from the start, I choose to write my blogpost first and then turn it into what bidoun needs, the first and most heavy handed editor was Manal and not anyone from Bidoun, and the final article is still good and IMO more lucid.

[OrDoesIt]

Points well taken. We look forward to hearing more about Africa Source II - and to news of other blogger gatherings.

[sami]

See also an article in French about the iranian weblogestan school:

http://www.kitab.nl/2006/04/16/weblogestan/

[arrelryDese]

hey :)
its very interesting point of view.
Nice post.
realy gj

thank you ;)