The Passion and Energy of Youth
October 2009
Banner photo: [Sanna Lindberg/Getty Images]
Blogging for a Change
Mona, right foreground, at the SGI-USA New York Culture Center [Manuel Elias] Mona Eltahawy is a syndicated columnist and public speaker on Arab and Muslim issues, one of a few writers whose essays appear regularly in both the western and Arab press. Egyptian by birth, she grew up in London and Saudi Arabia, and has lived in the U.S.A. since 2000. She taught a course on Media and the Arab World at The New School in New York City in the 2009 spring semester and will teach a course on Women and New Media in the Arab World at the University for Peace in Costa Rica for the fall 2009 semester. In February 2009, she was a speaker in the SGI-USA Culture of Peace Distinguished Speakers Series in New York City. Speakers also customarily hold a discussion with SGI-USA youth members. Below are some excerpts from this discussion, focusing on the influence of blogging and social network sites on the Internet.
SGI-USA Youth: Can you describe the course that you're teaching?
Mona Eltahawy: It looks at media in the Arab world. My contention is that the groups that are most marginalized in the Arab world--young people and women--are rarely represented in the media and in power, so they have created a new space in the virtual world, and the virtual world is now beginning to impact and influence the real world.
Facebook, for example, has become not just a place to meet and make friends, but many young people in the Arab world are using it as a platform for activism. They'll do all the things that you do--have parties and put pictures up the next day--but they will also organize strikes, or they will organize charitable drives. For example, there was a rockslide in Egypt last September in a very poor neighborhood, and a lot of young people on Facebook organized to get blankets and food and to go and help, because the government was not able to meet that demand.
Do any of you blog?
SGI-USA Youth: I have a personal blog. I write about things I learned during the day. It's just personal stuff.
ME: During the feminist movement in the 60s and 70s, the phrase "the personal is political" became very popular, and I believe that this is what is at the heart of blogging. You said it's just personal, but that's very important, because when you blog about "just the personal," you matter, you count. When you take that into the context of the parts of the world that I write about--which has always been about the leaders, about the family, or the tribe or the group that you belong to--when you as the individual start to blog, you're saying, "I count." And that is very political, because you are challenging the power structure that tells you, "You don't count."
SGI-USA Youth: What can we as individuals do to contribute to the blossoming of a culture of peace in the Middle East--where does that effort start?
ME: You are lucky because your generation can be in touch with your peers in ways that my generation never could, because you can go online now and meet them on Facebook and talk to them on their blogs. You can communicate with these activists who are fighting for human rights, education, freedom of worship, gay and lesbian rights--these are all being fought for right now; it's a very exciting time. You can meet them and ask, "As an American who lives in New York, what can I do?" And I think that some of the things that they will tell you will be "Try to influence your officials, who are allies of our government." But there are also joint projects that you can do. You can blog together. You can have virtual conferences together. The Internet is a virtual world amazing in its possibilities.
SGI-USA Youth: You speak at many universities--what is it that you hope to impart to young people?
ME: The world is for young people. You have to make it the world that you want. And what excites me about young people is this idea of "what can I do?" Every person has the power to bring about change. For me words are very important, because that's what I do. Muslims are taught that the first word from God was "read." So it's integral to my idea of religion and spirituality to read and express yourself. It's very important, because that's how we know each other, by expressing ourselves. Now you can do that on this very powerful medium that can connect you to someone in Malaysia, in Egypt, in South Africa--that's an amazing network that was never even dreamed of when I was your age.
The blogosphere is becoming a bastion of free speech in the Arab world [Caroline Taix/AFP] I met a blogger in Malaysia who told me something that really gave me insight into how blogs can break down barriers. He said to me that for a long time he was very anti-Semitic--he hated Israel and hated Jews. But during the Lebanon war in 2006, he began to hear about Israeli bloggers and started to talk to them online. He had never communicated with a Jewish person before, and he said it changed his mind completely. He began to understand how Israelis think, and what it's like to be Jewish. He's not anti-Semitic anymore and wants to visit Israel one of these days. So look what happened when this young man went online and met other young people that he would normally never have the chance to meet, and they began to talk. Look at the barriers they broke down.
