The Arab Media's Charter of Dishonor

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

Through their information ministers, the Arab rulers have added a new assault on the Arab citizen by adopting a collective media document on February 12, 2008. Thanks be to the states of Qatar and Lebanon, which did not agree to the document. This is a charter of shame and disgrace, to be added to the records of Arab leaders and rulers already full of continuous, unrelenting assaults on the freedom of the Arab human being, his dignity, his pride, and his desire to rise up from the rubble of backwardness and humiliation these rulers keep piling upon his back.

Arab information ministers are ratifying a document in which they say they will stand against anything that would touch the dignity of the Arab citizen on Arab satellite channels — as though these tyrannical devils had left the Arab citizen any dignity that could be preserved. On this very point, it seems the Arab rulers suspect that some shred of dignity may have remained with the Arab citizen, and so they decided to preempt matters and tightly seal off any outlet through which a trace of dignity might leak out.

The ministers say in their document that they stand against incitement to hatred, which some Arab satellite channels supposedly broadcast. What hatred are they talking about? It is the Arab rulers who spread hatred among people and Arab peoples through their intelligence services and their official media. The rulers’ media outlets never tire of heaping praise and adulation on the rulers, and broadcast songs and anthems glorifying their deeds and “achievements” that have led the nation to defeats and ruin. And their media are the ones that mislead the masses, lie to the people, manufacture illusions, and fabricate imaginary myths. These are apparatuses that make the Arab citizen hate himself, not merely hate others.

Who made the Palestinian hate the Jordanian, and the Jordanian hate the Palestinian, and the Moroccan hate the Algerian, and the Libyan the Tunisian, and the Yemeni the Arab of the Peninsula, and the Lebanese the Syrian, and the Iraqi the Kuwaiti, and the Arab hate the Arab, and the Arab hate himself? Is it not you, O rulers, through your intelligence services, your conspiracies, your persecution of citizens, and your rancorous mobilization of your peoples against other Arab peoples?

Arab foreign ministers want to prevent Arab satellite channels from incitement to terrorism. That is, they want the channels to stop showing solidarity with the Iraqi, Palestinian, Lebanese, and Somali resistance, and with the resistance of Islamic organizations to America, Israel, and Western schemes against the region; and they want these channels to stop hosting those who support the mujahideen and strugglers who insist on the nation’s freedom and its pride.

The Arab rulers are the terrorists who hunt down citizens in every corner and cranny, and use against them every method of abuse, torture, and deprivation of a dignified life. The Arab rulers are the ones who plunder the nation’s wealth and squander it in nightclubs, at gambling tables, and in the chambers of fallen women. These rulers have no right to accuse anyone of terrorism, because they are the head of the killer serpent that spews its deadly venom into the body of the nation and tosses it, cast aside, to be gnawed at by every greedy predator.

The Arabs want to prevent satellite channels from broadcasting criticism of the rulers or insults to symbols. These hired hacks, none of whom would show jealousy over his own honor or that of his family, want to keep their masters of appetite above criticism and above reproach, as though they were pure angels God has bestowed upon the Arab nation. And they want us, too, to stop criticizing the clerics of the sultan, who have lost their religious conscience and bent their religious knowledge in service of those who demolish the nation and hand it over to its enemies.

What is amusing is that Arab ministers want to attack the satellite channels dealing with obscenity. Who set up these channels, honorable ministers? Was it not your rulers and princes who launched these fallen channels in order to distract the Arab citizen and drop him into a sea of lust and yearning for pleasures? Did your states’ intelligence services not oversee programs to degrade the Arab citizen?

Arab rulers agree on nothing but disgrace, defeat, submission, or humiliation. They do not agree on vengeance, dignity, or good deeds. They agree on recognizing Israel, on hunting down Bin Laden, on conspiring against Lebanese resistance, on striking Iraqi resistance, and on serving America and Israel, on pursuing the citizen, on security cooperation between interior ministries, on suppressing opinion in the media, on methods of torture in detention centers, and on cutting off the livelihood of dissident citizens.

Arab rulers do not agree on releasing freedom of opinion, which means human dignity, nor do they stop plundering Arab wealth. They do not agree on a program for unity, or a program for joint defense, or an economic program they might implement to safeguard Arab funds. I do not want to go on at length about this, because the Arab citizen can enumerate many important matters that the Arab rulers ignore.

This Arab media document could only be issued by cowards who fear the word and free opinion. If Arab rulers were real men, they would not have pursued opinion, would not have banned speech, would not have imprisoned the free. The coward is the one who fears the word and fears logical confrontation through the media. You, Arab rulers, are but half-men in whom no blood runs hot, and whose bodies do not tremble at disgrace. You adore humiliation and shame, and your souls refuse to part with defeat, and your backs refuse to have the sons of Zion and the Americans dismount from them.

Free intellectuals are required not to stand silent or conciliatory before this document. Every free Arab, head held high, is required to confront this document without shame or fear, and to incite its downfall and the downfall of those who drafted it and those who ordered its drafting. This is a nation whose standing must rise, and its standing rises only through the strength of its thinkers, its intellectuals, and its revolutionaries, who see no life in humiliation.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “وثيقة اللاشرف الإعلامية العربية” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.