Why Saudi Arabia hates Al Jazeera so much
If you want to understand why many Arab world leaders hate Al Jazeera, consider
“Sharia and Life.”
For years, the call-in show was one of the network’s most popular, reaching tens of
millions. Viewers would call in and pose their faith questions to Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an
Egyptian cleric and a spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. People would ask all
kinds of things: Is it all right to smoke during Ramadan? Does a female Palestinian
woman have to wear a hijab while carrying out a suicide bombing?
Before Al Jazeera, a show like this would have been unusual in the Arab world, where
media is tightly controlled. But the Qatari-owned network has a mandate to produce
ambitious journalism on a wide range of subjects (some taboo). It offers, too, a broader
range of opinions than most Arab media.
These qualities have made it the most popular network in the Middle East. It’s also
attracted a lot of enemies. Rulers in places such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt resent the
station’s broad reach and its willingness to rile up opposition. They don’t like its Islamist
bent, and they’re angry that their populations are exposed to reporting critical of their
regimes (and supportive of the Qatari agenda).
For years, they’ve called on the station to evolve, or go away. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and
Jordan have kicked Al Jazeera bureaus out of their countries. Saudi Arabia has also
banned hotels from offering the channel. And now Qatar is embroiled in a diplomatic
war with a group of Arab states, and shuttering Al Jazeera appears to be one key
demand.
* * *
There are about 350 million Arabic speakers across the Middle East. As far back as the
1950s and ’60s, radio stations tried to reach this group. Sawt al-Arab radio, for example,
was created by Egypt to spread Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s pan-Arabist
ideas. (It was so effective that Nasser’s political opponents in Saudi Arabia jammed the
station. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.)
In the 1990s, the Saudi royal family began buying Arabic newspapers and sharing them
across the region. They also developed a satellite station, MBC, intended for a broad
audience. That never quite caught on, but it did show would-be moguls the potential of
pan-Arabic media.
It taught the region’s leaders something else, too: that they might well lose their death
grip on the information their populations were able to consume. As Shibley Telhami,
who wrote a book on Arab media, explained, “this simultaneous sense of inspiration and
threat is likely what inspired the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, to
start Al Jazeera . . . in 1996.” Since then, the country has poured billions into the
network.
Thani had come to power only a year before, and he faced fierce criticism from the
Saudi-run newspapers. Al Jazeera, he hoped, would offer a different perspective, and
maybe cut into the people consuming Saudi media.
To build an audience, the channel produced content that would appeal to people. As
Telhami explained: “Viewers were exposed to programming that most Arabs hungered
for, from opposing opinions to more information on issues they cared deeply about as
Arabs and Muslims. This included live footage of bloodshed in Israeli confrontations
with the Palestinians — footage that Arab national television broadcasts limited so as
not to awaken their public’s passion.”
The station broke other important barriers, too. It sent reporters to the Israeli Knesset
and aired debates live. During the 2008 war in Gaza, Al Jazeera had more reporters on
the ground than anyone else, and it was the only station with live coverage. It
also, Telhami writes, pushed for “presentation of multiple views, including presenting
Israeli views dating back to the 1990s, when few other Arab stations dared do so, as well
as airing Bin Laden tapes, Iranian views, and hosting or covering speeches and news
conferences of American officials — including then-Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld, American military commanders and spokesmen, and White House and State
Department officials — during the Iraq war.”
These qualities were major selling points. By 2001, it had become the most-watched
Arab television station for news. By 2006, more than 75 percent of Arabs called the
network their favorite or second-favorite news source.
The network’s success, however, made it a target of criticism, both from the outside and
from within. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Americans accused the channel of stoking
anger and fear about U.S. foreign policy. In 2012, China took action against Al Jazeera
English. Indeed, the channel has probably alienated every regional leader at one point or
another.
Al Jazeera Arabic (which is run separately from Al Jazeera English) has also got a
reputation for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood. Hugh Miles, the author of “The Al
Jazeera Effect,” compared the network with Fox News, telling the Telegraph, a British
newspaper, that “Al Jazeera Arabic is very partisan and it supports Islamists. I think
that’s a defensible position because there are lots of Islamists and it’s a popular view in
many parts of the world. It’s not accepted by other Arab countries, which regard it as
seditious and threatening, but they offer another perspective.”
“Al Jazeera is sensationalist, Islamic, and pan-Arabic, but it mirrors Doha’s policy
concerns in more ways than it might care to acknowledge,” Simon Henderson, director
of the Washington Institute’s Gulf and Energy Policy Program, wrote just four years
after the network’s launch. “Many Arab governments would prefer Al Jazeera to simply
disappear.”
The latest diplomatic kerfuffle has some of the station’s reporters worried that that is
what is going to happen. While the station released a statement calling the demand for
its closure “nothing but an attempt to silence the freedom of expression in the region,”
its staffers worry that Qatar might agree to, say, restructure things so that the network
has less freedom. Some of its foreign reporters from places such as Egypt or Syria worry
that they might be sent back to their home countries.
Still, the network’s journalists say they’re staying positive.
“There may be things going on at higher diplomatic and political levels,” Al Jazeera
English editor Giles Trendle told the Telegraph. “But from Al Jazeera’s side, I would just
say we are confident that we’re here to stay and we’re committed to carrying on with our
jobs and carrying on with our journalism.”
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