[An Nahar] Saudi authorities have banned hundreds of books, including works by renowned Paleostinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, as part of a crackdown on publications deemed threatening to the conservative kingdom.| Betcha they all can be downloaded from the internet... |
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face...
clamped down on dissent following the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011, from which it has been largely spared, and has adopted an increasingly confrontational stance towards the Moslem Brüderbund and other Islamist groups it has long viewed as a threat to its security.
The local Okaz daily reported Sunday that organizers at the Riyadh International Book Fair had confiscated "more than 10,000 copies of 420 books" during the exhibition.
Local news website Sabq.org reported that members of the kingdom's notorious
The
Similar action was taken against works by Iraq's most famous modern poet, Badr Shaker al-Sayyab, and another Iraqi poet, Abdul Wahab al-Bayati, as well as those by Paleostinian poet Muin Bseiso.
The fair's organizing committee also banned a book entitled "When will the Saudi Woman Drive a Car?" by Abdullah al-Alami, the Saudi Gazette daily reported.
Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world where women, forced to cover in public from head to toe, are not allowed to drive.
Other banned books include "The History of Hijab" and "Feminism in Islam."
Activist Aziza Youssef said the crackdown had offered "free advertising to those whose books were banned" as many "rushed to download these works from the Internet."
Organizers also banned all books by Azmi Bishara, a former Arab Israeli MP who left the Jewish state in 2007 and is now close to authorities in Qatar, where he is based, Sabq.org reported.
The ban comes amid escalating tensions between Qatar and three other Gulf Arab monarchies -- Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain -- who pulled their envoys from Doha earlier this month, accusing it of interfering in their internal affairs.
The decision to withdraw the ambassadors was seen as driven largely by Saudi animosity towards the Moslem Brüderbund of deposed Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi
...the former president of Egypt. A proponent of the
One Man, One Vote, One Timeprinciple, Morsi won election after the deposal of Hosni Mubarak and jumped to the conclusion it was his turn to be dictator...
and its regional affiliates, which are widely believed to receive support from Qatar.
"Revolution", a book by Wael Ghonim, a secular Egyptian and former Google
...contributed $814,540 to the 2008 Obama campaign...
executive who became an icon of the country's 2011 uprising that toppled Saudi ally Hosni Mubarak
...The former President-for-Life of Egypt, dumped by popular demand in early 2011...
, was also banned from the Riyadh fair, according to Sabq.
Organizers of the book fair, which began March 4, had announced ahead of the event that any book deemed "against Islam" or "undermining security" in the kingdom would be confiscated.
A few days after the fair opened, Saudi authorities closed the stall of the Arab Network for Research and Publishing headed by Islamist publisher Nawaf al-Qudaimi and confiscated all his publications, citing threats to the kingdom's security.