(http://www.csmonitor.com/)
from the September 13, 2009 edition -
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0916/p17s01-wome.html
Arabs tackle free speech taboo
Across the Middle East, what would never happen in polite company now
appears on broadcasts of The Doha Debates – discussion of controversy.
By Caryle Murphy | Correspondent
Doha, Qatar; and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
As soon as the cameramen called it a wrap, the audience swarmed onto the
TV studio set. Almost giddy with delight, several university students from
Saudi Arabia went straight for chairs vacated by the performers and
pretended to be stars of the show.
The program that thrills these students isn't a reality show, a religious
forum, or a sexy soap opera. It's something far more ordinary – but also
mightier. As the show's producers like to say, it's about "the power to
change minds" – through words.
That is the theme of The Doha Debates, the five-year-old hit show on BBC
World News. Produced eight times a year in Doha, capital of the tiny Gulf
emirate of Qatar, the program features speakers debating such controversial
questions as "Does political Islam threaten the West?" "Does the face veil
hinder Muslim integration?" "Do Gulf Arabs value profit over people?" "Are
Muslims failing to combat extremism?" "Is Arab unity dead and buried?" and
"Should Muslim women be free to marry anyone they choose?"
Moderated by former BBC interviewer Tim Sebastian, the debates follow the
format of the prestigious British debating club, the Oxford Union. After
four speakers (two on each side) argue for and against a motion, the
panelists are questioned by Mr. Sebastian and the audience, which then votes
electronically to determine the winning side.
Through the BBC, The Doha Debates can be seen in some 300 million homes in
200 countries. But its greatest legacy may be in the Middle East, where
authoritarian regimes stifle free speech, newspapers are heavily censored,
children are raised to obey without question, and school systems reject
critical thinking in favor of rote learning.
Amid this smothering environment, The Doha Debates is perhaps the freest
public forum for probing tough issues that deeply resonate in the Arab
world.
"It offers an opportunity for free speech and expression of an opinion,
which is very much in demand and very highly appreciated," said Asaad
al-Asaad, an English instructor at Riyadh's Yamamah University, who
accompanied
his Saudi students to Doha for a taping.
One student, Mishaal al-Rasheed, said the program has taught him that "you
don't need at the end of the debate to agree with me. But at least respect
me for my ideas."
He is impressed, he added, that Qatar "took the lead in having debates in
our Islamic world.... In another Arab country, [the debaters] might be in
jail right now."
One of the show's failings, Mr. Asaad said, is that it lacks Arabic
subtitles, which would make it more accessible.
Asked about this, moderator Sebastian, who also founded the program, said
in an e-mail that he wasn't aware of any "full-length BBC current affairs
show [that] carries subtitles in any foreign language." But, he added that
starting in October the program will start an Arabic website that will carry
subtitles on streamed video of the debates.
Free tickets to the live tapings are given mostly to students from all
over the Middle East attending universities or high school in Qatar. For an
hour, they have the rare experience of being able to say whatever they like
without fear of reprisal.
At times, their pent-up frustration explodes on air. During a recent
program, a young Egyptian was urged by a debater to make his views known. "How
can I voice out my opinion if my leaders are actually oppressing me to not
talk?" he shouted back. "My leaders are in power [for] 27 years and I am not
allowed to speak."
The program's impact is evident in the hundreds of appreciative e-mails,
including some from Israel, that pour onto its website, www.dohadebates.com,
which gets about a million hits a month, according to Alexandra Willis,
who until recently was the program's producer. Some messages praise the
program for giving a new generation "the tools to think for themselves," she
added.
One "legacy" of the show, Ms. Willis said, is "an incredible surge in
debating activities in Qatar and the region." This is evident in new debate
clubs at high schools and universities across the Middle East, including in
Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and at a Palestinian university in the Israeli-occupied
West Bank.
The Doha debates has also staked out new territory by inviting Israelis to
be on the program and grapple with controversial aspects of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In March 2007, for example, Ilan Pappe, of Haifa
University, and Yossi Beilin, a former peace negotiator and Knesset member,
spoke
on opposite sides of the motion that "Palestinians should give up their
full right of return."
Israeli debaters also have included former Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami
and Deputy Education Minister Michael Melchior. President Shimon Peres was
a special guest.
When another program debated whether Palestinians "risk becoming their own
worst enemy," the audience agreed by 71 percent. And in March, the program
tackled whether "it's time for the US administration to get tough on
Israel" during a taping at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. (The
audience said, "yes," by 63 percent.)
On another show, senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar got a harsh
grilling from young Palestinians. "He kept answering questions by talking
about
what the Israelis are doing and the students kept telling him we expect
something better from you," recalled Sebastian.
The program's birthplace, Qatar, is a feisty Arabian Gulf nation of
200,000, whose natural gas exports gives it one of the highest per capita
incomes
on earth.
The show arose from a 2004 conversation that Sebastian, former host of the
BBC interview program HARDtalk, had with Qatar's ruler, Sheikh Hamad bin
Khalifa al-Thani, and his wife, Sheikha Mozah. She is chairwoman of the
Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, which funds
worthy causes. The couple asked Sebastian to suggest projects the
foundation might sponsor.
"I said, 'What about town-hall debates?' " Sebastian recalled. Given a
green light, he hired Willis away from the BBC to be his producer.
They showed tapes of the initial debates to BBC executives, who agreed to
broadcast the show after realizing "this was something quite special ... in
the Arab world for people to speak out this way," Willis recounted.
The program is "an independent unit" of the Qatar Foundation, which
provides the funding. But "they have no say in what we do, who we invite, or
the
topics we choose to debate," Sebastian said in a phone interview. "And
they've never sought to have any say. One of the biggest favors they've done
us
is to let us entirely alone."
There's no better place to see the impact of The Doha Debates than Yamamah
University, a private college in Riyadh's sprawling desert outskirts.
Seated in his campus office, Asaad said that when he decided to teach debating
his only model was Arabic TV shows, where discussions "turn into more of a
rooster fight than an actual debate."
Initially, his students "were shouting at each other or answering a
question with a question," Asaad recounted. "I said, 'Hey guys, we ... should
be
doing some things in a different way. There should be some quality. There
should be some research. We should go a little bit deeper beyond what people
say in the coffee shops or the bus stops.' "
Then Asaad found The Doha Debates website. "As a teacher, it provided me
with everything I needed," including the ability to download past debates
and read transcripts. "We discussed the format, the role of the moderator,
and I said, 'Fine, can we try a debate like this?' "
Their first public debate in the university's auditorium took on the
motion "This house believes coeducation improves education." (The audience of
both male and female students gave the idea a thumbs down.)
His students were so taken with debating that Asaad organized what he
believes is the first debating club at any Saudi university. It now has about
25 regular participants.
"You could say that our debate club is the legitimate child of The Doha
Debates," said the Syrian-born instructor, adding that Yamamah now offers a
course in debate. "By preparing the students to become good debaters, you're
preparing the future community leaders to become better negotiators."
Saud Al-Thonayan, a club member, said that before he discovered The Doha
Debates, "when anyone talked about debating in Arab countries, I said it's
not debating, it's fighting." He recalled being "shocked" during a taping
when the "sensitive issue" of political Islam was discussed before an
audience of conservatives and liberals. "All of them were debating and asking
questions in a new way for Arab countries," he said. "In a friendly way."
Learning this "new way" has been a personal struggle for Mr. Thonayan.
"There is an important thing that I love in debating: How to be calm. Because
I face a lot of problems in this case. I get angry. I always debate with
extremists, with religious people about some Saudi issues, like women's
rights. And we always end up fighting because I get nervous and angry."
But, he added, "I have learned how to be calm, how to control myself."
Saudis generally aren't used to formal debate. The older generation often
admonishes young people not to bring up certain topics – like the ban on
women driving – because it's regarded as impolite to discuss contentious
issues in public, said debate club member, Abdulrahman al-Duwaish.
"If it's a sensitive issue, it will be opened sooner or later … so we have
to talk about [it]," Mr. Duwaish said. "And because of our debate club,
because of The Doha Debates, we are opening these issues ... and, inshallah,
you will see us after 10 or 15 years leading Saudi Arabia for a better
era."
Sebastian doesn't debate that. He's encouraged to see young audiences
"testing the limits of what is possible.... They want to take their societies
forward. They don't want to follow; they want to lead," he said. "They feel
much more confident. If they represent the direction that the Arab world is
headed in, then the world is in for some pleasant surprises.
"What we've done is let out a genie, which will be very hard to put back
in the bottle."
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