25 Sep 2013 | News and features, Religion and Culture
A publicity shot from Lucien Bourjeily’s latest play
Banning a work of art, a book or a play says more about a society and its temperament than anything else. As free speech and readers mark Banned Books Week, Index on Censorship magazine editor Rachael Jolley looks at Lebanon, where the country’s Censorship Bureau has recently flexed its muscles
In the past few weeks, Lebanese playwright Lucien Bourjeily has had his play Will It Pass or Won’t It? banned by his government. Ironically, the play is about censorship, specifically the process in Lebanon whereby plays are passed by the Censorship Bureau of the General Security Office — or not performed.
Bourjeily’s play dramatically challenged that process. But the censors did not see the funny side of his finger poking at a system that involves playwrights putting their words through the wringer of a censorship process, before being squeezed out again.
The censors came up with a variety of reasons why the play should not be shown, ranging from it not being “realistic” (surely missing the point of fiction there), to it not being good enough. Those in charge decided it was not for the people to decide whether it was worthy of their time, it was for them. And with that the play was to be banned.
Banning a work of art, a book or a play says more about the society and its temperament than anything else. Some nations are less than confident about themselves; they are clearly worried that if their ideas are questioned they will be weakened and their power diminished. Ban a book or a play if you worry that by talking an idea or a principle that discussion will somehow harm society. If you don’t worry about your values, principles or laws being discussed since you are perfectly willing and able to defend them, then there is no need for a work of art, book or play to be censored.
A robust, vibrant and creative society is a place where open discussions can take place, and Index on Censorship magazine, throughout its life, has often helped publish some important writings which were censored in other parts of the world, and smuggled out to Index. When the Soviet Union still existed, great thinkers there were censored and silenced, and Index helped their voices to be heard. Today it still seeks to help publish those whose words and ideas are silenced by their own governments. In its winter edition it will publish an extract from Bourjeily’s play so that readers can make up their own minds about whether it is worth performing.
Healthier societies do not hold back debates, even when they may disagree with them. They allow them oxygen to see how worthy of consideration they are. Ideas can shock or offend. Robust societies can cope with that, and even feel healthier for it.
Prodding and debating, as any writer, politician, thinker, inventor or scientist knows, is good for an idea or a thesis; it might be flawed, disproved or ignored. Or not. In the same way that scientists depend on their ideas being tested to see if they work and should be developed, leaders of nations should expect their proposals, their laws or processes to be prodded, debated and discussed. And that is what happens in a book or a play.
In a recent interview, Bourjeily said he felt that the Lebanese were treating their people as children, not allowing them to make their own decisions. Because of that, they were no longer expressing ideas in public, because of the consequences. They are self censoring, they are not exploring. None of that is good for any developing society. Inventors and scientists are attracted to those vibrant centres as are artists and writers. Across the world and throughout history those buzzing hives of thought have led the globe financially and culturally. As ever an open lively society attracts the world’s leading thinkers and creators, a place where censorship and fear is rife does not. Leaders of the world take note.
Rachael Jolley is editor of Index on Censorship, an award-winning magazine, devoted to protecting and promoting free expression. International in outlook, outspoken in comment, Index reports on free expression violations around the world, publishes banned writing and shines a light on vital free expression issues through original, challenging and intelligent commentary and analysis, publishing some of the world`s finest writers.
To mark Banned Books week, Index’s publisher SAGE has freed up access to the full archive of Index on Censorship through 28 Sept. Access articles here: http://ioc.sagepub.com/
This article was originally posted on Sage Connection
13 Sep 2013 | Lebanon, News and features, Religion and Culture
A publicity shot from Lucien Bourjeily’s latest play, Would It Pass Or Not?
Lucien Bourjeily retains a sense of humour. It’s an important attribute for a playwright taking on Lebanon’s censors.
Earlier this year, Bourjeily, an internationally acclaimed writer and director who dazzled the London International Festival of Theatre 2012 with his immersive work 66 Minutes In Damascus, wrote a play about Lebanese censorship. “Would It Pass Or Not?”, produced by anti-censorship group March, addresses the question every Lebanese writer and artists asks themselves before sitting down to begin a work.
Lebanon is a country battling to keep a lid on sectarian tensions, and eternally caught up in other people’s wars. Censorship is seen as a national security issue, and overseen by the army.
Like so many modern blue-pencillers, the Lebanese Censorship Bureau insist that it is only protecting citizens. There is, says Bourjeily, quite a bit of sympathy for this argument in the country.
So Bourjeily decided to tackle the topic head on and write not about the many sensitive issues in Lebanon but about the censors themselves.
Suspecting that the answer to “Would it pass or not?” would be an emphatic “not”, he and his company sought to exploit a loophole, performing their play on university campuses to invited audiences rather than in public theatres. The censors still pursued him. Two officers from the bureau turned up at a university show and broke up the performance. Bourjeily decided he would try to test the censor’s decision.
In conversation with Index, Bourjeily told of his bizarre encounters with the censor board’s general. He was summoned to the bureau in Beirut on 28 August.
The play cannot go ahead, he was told, because it was not realistic. It was exaggerated.
True, Bourjeily says. It’s fiction. Of course it’s unrealistic and exaggerated. Otherwise it would be a documentary.
The general turns to his subaltern and describes scenes from the play, asking “would such a thing happen here?”, unintentionally and ironically echoing a scene in the play itself. When censors are censoring a play about censorship, things are bound to turn to farce sooner or later.
Normally, Lebanon’s censors will suggest changes to works that will allow them to pass – a joke removed here, a political remark erased there. But with Bourjeily’s play, this was apparently not going to happen.
The censors’ next move was interesting: they would show, they said, that Boujeily’s play had no artistic merit. On 3 September, General Mounir Akiki appeared on television bearing testimony from four “critics”, each of whom said the same thing; that there was no artistic value in “Would it pass or not?”. Curiously, none of these critics were named, but their views were taken very seriously indeed. One said that Bourjeily’s play were “with a defamatory hallucination indicating the absence of his artistic level”, another that the play “was not related to the theatre, but rather with prosaic words and it does not meet the conditions regarding the structure.”
It’s a familiar ruse; if it’s not art, it’s not artistic censorship; if it’s rubbish, who would want to see it anyway?
In this, the censors echoed the notorious, and in hindsight ridiculous, court hearings over Lady Chatterley’s Lover in Britain in 1960 , the crux of the argument being whether the book was actually literature or mere obscene pornography. Great lengths were gone to by intellectuals such as Richard Hoggart to prove that Lady Chatterley’s Lover was literature, and thus, perhaps something one might wish your wife or your servants to read, at least if you were an enlightened sort of chap.
This is always what censorship of works of art comes down to: someone, be it the colonels, the Lord Chamberlain or whoever else, is to decide what you can read, what you can write, what ideas you can process. As the late Christopher Hitchens observed in a speech at the University of Toronto in 2006, if given the choice, would you nominate someone for that role? Or would you think you’d take your chances with your own intellect?
Lebanese writers and theatregoers are deprived of that option every day.
This article was originally published on 13 Sept 2013 at indexoncensorship.org
30 Jul 2013 | Religion and Culture, Saudi Arabia
Raif Badawi, founder of the Free Saudi Liberals site, has been sentenced to seven years in jail and 600 lashes by a Jeddah court, according to a tweet from his lawyer Waleed Abu Alkhair yesterday
Badawi’s wife Ensaf Haidar, who now lives in Lebanon, confirmed the sentence to CNN’s Mohammed Jamjoom.
Badawi was arrested in June 2012 for “insulting Islam through electronic channels”. Abualkhair said the conviction was connected to charges of “insulting the religious police” and ridiculing religious figures in the kingdom.
In January, a court had refused to hear apostasy charges against Badawi, concluding that there was no case. Apostasy carries the death sentence in Saudi Arabia.
Among evidence against Badawi was an allegation that he had “liked” an Arab Christian page on Facebook. His lawyer believes he was pursued after calling for a “day of liberalism” in May 2012.
The court has also ordered that Badawi’s website be shut down.
1 May 2013 | Newswire
Preliminary research from a survey of nearly 10,000 Arab respondents has found that while most support the right to free expression online, they are apt to believe that the internet should be regulated, according to the researchers.
The survey — a joint effort between researchers at the Qatar campus of the US-based Northwestern University and the World Internet Project — explored media usage in the Arab world. Participants were drawn from eight Arab nations: Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates.
The survey questioned participants’ perceptions of the news media, finding that 61 per cent thought the “quality of news reporting in the Arab world has improved over the past two years.” Media credibility declined in countries that experienced revolutions during the Arab Spring. The Saudi Arabian respondents gave their media outlets high marks with 71 [per cent agreeing with the statement, “The media in your country can report the news independently without interference from officials”.
Overall, the survey found high Facebook penetration among respondents who used social media. Ninety-four percent of the social media users had Facebook accounts, 47 per cent used Twitter and 40 per cent used Facebook. Among the Bahrain social media users, 92 per cent had a Facebook account, while just 29 per cent of the Egyptian respondents did.
The survey aimed to assess the use of media — TV, radio, newspapers, books, web — and levels of trust respondents had toward the sources. It also sought to guage how the respondents used the internet to communicate and conduct transactions like banking or purchases.
The results can be accessed at Arab Media Use Study.
