By Nigel Thorpe
Senior English Editor
Albawaba.com - Amman
The end of March saw an historic two-day conference in Amman, Jordan, attended by Information Technology (IT) specialists from 18 Arab countries who discussed ways of “Arabizing” Internet names. Jamal Ali, director of the Egyptian Universities Network, stressed the need to “establish Arabic as one of the five international languages on the internet” so that the worldwide web could “open wider horizons for non-English speaking Arab citizens.” The Arabization of internet names will, he believes, remove all linguistic barriers in the Arab citizen’s way towards globalization and free trade.”
In a recent article, Newsweek noted that “all across the Arab and Muslim world, from the poorest to the richest, people are clamoring for more access to the communications revolution.”
Nowhere is the contrast between the modern high-tech Internet world and centuries old low-tech traditions starker than in the markets of downtown Bombay. On a recent visit, the author stumbled across Mohammed Ahmed, a young teenage entrepreneur whose simple tent office stood as the sole island of modernity in a sea of flapping chickens, shambling beggars and bartering merchants. Mohammed is keeping the ancient tradition of the neighborhood scribe alive by typing documents and letters in Hindi, Urdu, Arabic or English on a second-hand Pentium 1 computer linked precariously to the worldwide web by a telephone cable that angles up skywards towards the broken roof of a nearby derelict house. Last year, Mohammed worked on an ancient Smith typewriter whose grossly overworked keys had all the symmetry of his father’s carbohydrate-abused teeth. “Since I’ve started watching my son “hiking around” (surfing) the internet, I have learnt a lot about the world outside India,” commented Mohammed’s father as he stood proudly watching his multi-lingual, computer literate, citizen-of-the-world son plying his lucrative non-traditional trade.
A current CNN commercial filmed in the ancient Nabataean city of Petra in modern-day Jordan takes up the same theme. Filmed against a backdrop of the famous “rose-red” ruins and shots of the twin ubiquitous harbingers of globalization, the satellite dish and Internet café, an educated Bedouin in traditional dress delivers the solemn line “a human being without information is nothing.”
Seemingly light years away from Bombay and Petra, the shinning metal and glass ramparts of the Dubai Internet City rise high above the modern office blocks like giant teeth in the jaws of the desert that encircle a bay in the Arabian Gulf. The manager of the complex, Mohammad Al Gergawi, told Newsweek that “The world is changing, and a lot of people think this part of the world will be the last to change. But we are lucky enough to live in a place called Dubai.” The government of Dubai announced its intention of creating an Internet City in October 1999 and only a year later, it was ready to do business with names such as Cannon, Microsoft, and Oracle signed up for office space.
Facing a different sea, the Mediterranean, another edifice of metal and steel is nearing completion as a second “temple” of the Internet age in the Arab world. The new Library of Alexandria in southern Egypt, like its ancient illustrious progenitor, will link continents and facilitate the exchange of knowledge between scholars and the citizens of the world.
As the IT tsunami threatens to sweep the Arab world from the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea in the west, to the Indian Ocean in the east, it would unwise to underestimate the traditional “breakwaters” that stand in its way. As Newsweek observes, “the autocrats of the Middle East have a long tradition of imposing ignorance on their subjects.” With knowledge comes power and often riches. Five hundred and fifty years ago, the sultans of the Ottoman Empire banned the Gutenberg press and the flood of printed knowledge it propagated for 235 years. Many historians have argued that it was the stifling influence of the Ottoman sultans and pashas that lost the Arabs their early lead in science and medicine. “The Arabs,” suggests Newsweek, “have been struggling to close the gap (between them and the western world) ever since.”
Now, at the start of a new millenium, some Arab politicians seem to fear the Internet as much as their Ottoman predecessors feared the printing press. With the West moving at the speed of Internet optical links, the Arab world could be in danger of entering a “dark age” of its own on the wrong side of the digital divide. Even in the Arab “IT base camps” of Egypt, Jordan and Dubai, politicians and religious authorities are increasingly wondering if the promise of the future is worth losing control over the present. For many Arab rulers the Internet is seen, justifiably from their point of view, as a dark force in the insidious process of globalization. “Hotmail and Yahoo may be the most subversive thing that ever happened to the House of Saud,” commented an anonymous dissident from Jeddah. While Saudi Arabia continues to fine tune its Internet censorship filters, Jordan’s honeymoon with the Internet may be coming to an end as religious conservatives and the security forces seek to impose strict controls on the country's mushrooming crop of Internet cafes. Pending legislation will require café patrons to leave a record of clients' surfing activities for government scrutiny. Olivier Faure, marketing director for Jordan Telecom fears that once this
legislation becomes law, “the number of Internet users will plunge.” Although King Abdullah is a well known computer enthusiast and Internet protagonist, he needs the long-term support of tribal leaders in Jordan who at present fear the worldwide web could undermine their culture, values, and authority, claims Newsweek.
Dubai’s Internet City is increasingly becoming the IT and Internet model for the Arab World but even here, amongst the clutter of computer equipment that still needs to be unpacked and installed, there is a need to “bend the rules” that apply to the rest of Dubai and the other Gulf States that lie outside its doors. As a kind of computer Vatican City, it is increasingly becoming a state within a state; an oasis of globalization in the traditional “desert culture” that surrounds it. In what might be dubbed the IT paradox, Dubai and the rest of the Arab world, is struggling to reconcile the Internet’s unrestricted freedom of information and speech, with the oppressive laws that control local newspapers and other media outlets. Internet journalists now live by dual standards; criticize your government in your Internet editorial and you are safe, but print the same article in your local newspaper and you are likely to end up in prison. As highlighted in a current Albawaba article, the US State Department’s report on human rights described the freedom of the press and freedom of expression in much of the Arab speaking world as being “non-existent or extremely limited.”
Restrictions imposed by government and religious institutions are not the only obstacles that the IT spider must circumvent to entrap the earth’s population in a truly worldwide web. In many Arab countries, poverty continues to be one of the most important practical barriers to the Internet age. With the combined cost of a computer and modem exceeding $500, few can afford a home computer in countries where the average annual per capita income may be $940 as in Sudan, or as low as $750 in the Yemen.
Internet cafés in many Arab capitals and larger provincial cities have helped enormously to bridge the “economic IT gap” but with hourly charges of between one and two US dollars, web-surfing it still seen as an expensive pass time by the poorly paid. The Jordanian city of Irbid hopes to be included in the Guinness Book of World Records as having the largest number, more than 100, of internet cafés on a single road. That road leads down to a local university that caters for the information-hungry younger generation.
According to the results of a recent survey quoted by Albawaba, only 6 percent of the population in the Arab world have regular access to the worldwide web.
The unusual socio-economic structure of many Arab countries such as Jordan helps to explain this low rate of Internet use. The “middle-class” seems to be an endangered species in these economies which are typified by a growing number of increasingly poor workers, and a very small number of an increasingly rich elite. In western economies, the British paper the Economist concludes “the middle income category are the main clients of the Internet and computer salespeople.”
In the Arab world, the 6 percent who are “web-wise” are, according to Hamoud Salhi, professor of political science at California State University, “typically well established, educated young men, with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. The vast majority (of the Arab population) have no Internet access and many are illiterate.” The leaders of many Gulf states, Salhi argues, “aren’t ready to make Netizens of their citizens.” If the Arab world is to progress, its leaders must adopt IT as a means to an end, and not as an end in itself.” That end, Salhi argues, should be improved general education, the formation of political institutions, and the development of a middle class.
Lack of clearly defined, long-term legislation covering the Internet and e-commerce in many Arab countries is discouraging international investors. Hisham El-Sherif, who started his own telecom company, Nile On-line, comments “you make a deal with me, and the next day you change the rules of the game.”
In some Arab countries, the lack of infrastructure support for the Internet continues to be a problem. Hamoud Salhi, concludes that “Afraid of being left behind, leaders in Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf in particular rush to launch Web sites and embrace e-business without giving much thought to their countries’ existing infrastructure or whether their people are equipped for cyberspace.”
In spite of Jameel Ali’s assertion at the recent Amman conference that the Arabization of internet names will remove all linguistic barriers to the use of the Internet, a working knowledge of written English remains an entry requirement for potential “cybernauts” or web surfers. The number of Arabic websites is increasing rapidly, but it is, for the foreseeable future, impractical to translate the thousands of millions of pieces of web information in English into Arabic.
For the time being therefore, non-English speaking “cybernauts” are likely to spend their time paddling in shallow Arab IT lagoons catching only an occasional glimpse of web-surfers on the oceans of information that lie beyond the linguistic reef.
It is difficult to overestimate the importance of the decision that Arab leaders must take as they stand at the crossroad of web-driven globalization and traditional avenues.
Complete rejection of the Internet could well lead to a Gutenberg2 scenario that isolates the Arab world from global advances in technology and culture. Complete, uncritical acceptance of the worldwide web in its present form, however, could led to the loss of traditional values of which Arabs are rightfully proud. The ideal solution
would be, in the words of CNN’s Bedouin IT enthusiast, “to accept the things from the Internet which are good, and keep the valuable things in our own traditional culture.” This, however, is likely to be easier said than done.
Meanwhile, the technology clock ticks ever faster and little time remains for the Arab world to make its momentous and irreversible IT choice.
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
