World Press Freedom Day: a eulogy to international journalism?

Yesterday a group of students from Northwestern University joined a worldwide huger strike in support of the Roxana Saberi, an American journalist imprisoned in Iran for espionage.

Saberi’s plight has brought world-wide condemnation of the Iranian government, after she was sentenced to eight years in prison in a closed trial that lasted only one hour. A reported 225 people have signed up to the “Free Roxana” campaign, after the Northwestern graduate started her own hunger strike in protest on April 21.

“The main point is to create awareness about the situation Roxana is facing and what many people are facing in Iran,” said student David Caratelli.

Saberi’s story is the latest example of how journalists around the globe are being persecuted for their profession. Fittingly, yesterday also marked World Press Freedom Day, instituted in 1997 by the United Nations General Assembly to raise awareness of the importance of freedom of the press as enshrined under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In the past year, 60 journalists and media workers have been killed, 29 kidnapped and more than 900 attacked around the world. “Journalists been killed while trying to lift the veil of secrecy that governments seek to wrap around their military actions”, said Jeremy Dear, general secretary of the National Union of Journalists.

Speaking at a debate at London’s Frontline Club on Friday, he argued against the motion “Governments at war are winning the battle of controlling the international media”.

“The war on terror has been accompanied by a war just civil liberties and independent journalism,” he said, citing numerous instances of journalists in Iraq and Afghanistan facing persecution. But despite the actions of repressive governments the world over, he argued that “the voices of those suffering are given life by journalists”.

Yet his point was hotly contested. Andrew Gilligan, the controversial Evening Standard columnist, argued against the motion, claiming that war correspondents today are so desperate for stories that they latch on to anything that they would normally dismiss as rumour or government spin.

He said: “The real problem for reporting on combat situations and the reason that so many stories from Iraq were wrong is simply this: wars create a sellers market in news”. Citing the practice of embedding journalists with troops in combat situations, he said that war creates a “sellers market” for news where journalists routinely succumb to a pervasive form of self-censorship.

“Even the most independent-minded journalist in the world is not disposed to write unkind things about somebody in that situation. No one needs to threaten or be threatened,” he said.

His co-speaker James Shea, Director of Policy Planning in the Private Office of the Secretary General NATO, also countered the argument that web 2.0 technology is undermining government control of information.

“These days, everybody can be a reporter on reality”

“And if the profession has been democratised, why can’t the government also therefore enter the profession as a reporter on its own activity?”

He cited new NATO TV channels and the use of articles by eminent ‘experts’ in papers as examples of how the government is bypassing the media to get its message across and winning the war of words that has grown out of the war on terror.

Yet the most compelling of all the speakers was and Alan Fisher, a London correspondent from Al Jazeera who has reported from war zones around the world, most recently during Georgia’s war with Russia in August of last year. 

Descrying the debate’s Western-centric view on the success of the media, he said:

“People tend to think that if a tree falls in the forest, and an American broadcast network isn’t there to record it, did it really fall?”

Discussing the coverage of the war in Gaza, which prompted the theme of the debate, he said that Al Jazeera had been the only channel able to give full coverage of the bombings because it was prepared to tap the vast resources of local journalists already living on the strip, unlike many outlets which relied almost exclusively on Israeli news reports.

He also argued that the proliferation of international news outlets meant there are “more ways of accessing the truth” that ever before, creating a more varied and exciting perspective on international events. He said:

“We challenge authority more than ever before an we continue to and that is why the government cannot win.”

To have and to hold…at least til the contract ends

Ask your average man on the street what he thinks of marriage and you’re unlikely to hear the word “pleasure” enter the conversation.

But ask your average Muslim what they think of a “Mutah” marriage – meaning a “pleasure” or “temporary” marriage – and you will get a quite different reaction.

Mutah marriages, specific to the Shia form of Islam, have always been a controversial subject. Dating from the time of the Prophet Muhammed, it allows a man to have a short-term contact with a woman in which he enjoys all the benefits of a marriage but few of the responsibilities, such as providing for her or sharing the same bed.

It can last for anything from one hour to 99 years.

“It’s totally hypocritical,” says Ahmed Asfahani, a Shia journalist from Al Hayat who moved to the UK from Lebanon more than 30 years ago. He argues that while Mutah is formalised and regulated by families in Shia communities in the Middle East, in the Western world it is used as an excuse for hypocrisy.

He says: “Mutah was originally created to allow older women – widowers or spinsters – to find companionship late in their life when no one will do a Nikah [permanent] marriage with them.

“But in places like Britain and America, it is used by young men as an excuse to sleep with Western girls. They don’t care because it means nothing to them, but for the boy, it is an excuse to pretend he is not breaking his beliefs.”

This bias is clear in the difference in popularity of Mutah among men and women. A quick trawl of Mutah.com, a dating website for Muslims around the world to advertise for Mutah relationships, reveals 122 entries under the male profiles but only 3 under the female.

“I need a companion with whom I can talk to, somebody who shares some depth in life, somebody with dignity and self-respect,” reads one male testimony.

“I need a partner who can fill the void in my empty life. I don’t want to be alone anymore. I don’t wish to be a hermit.”

Writing under an alias, the young British Muslim says that he cannot wait til he can afford to be married. “There is no way that I can wait till my late 20’s, early 30’s – when most people seem to be getting permanently married. This is far too long to wait for somebody who doesn’t want to slip.”

Yet Mutah is controversial even in Muslim circles. Few Shias and even fewer Sunnis agree with the practice, which stems from Qua’ranic verse 4:24. It reads:

“As to those whom you married for a fixed time (mutah), give them their agreed dowries; and there is no sin for you in what you mutually agree together after what has been settled.”

In the time of the Prophet Muhammad, this was taken as meaning that soldiers could form temporary marriages while they were away from their wives, but it was banned by Umar, the second caliph, and later abandoned by most schools of Islamic law.

Sunnis, which form the vast majority of the 2m Muslims living in the UK, often treat the practice as impulsive sex, not far from prostitution. Although the “Twelver” Shias, who predominate in Iran and Iraq, disagree, actively promoting the practice as essential to the sexual health of a society, the stigma attached remains rife in the West.

And it is particularly pronounced among women. Although Mutah is prohibited for virgins and between Muslim girls and non-Muslim men, it is often viewed as at best a form of laxity or at worst, an excuse for adultery and prostitution.

In Iran, prostitution has increased by an estimated 635 per cent since the Islamic revolution 30 years ago.

For this reason, statistics on its prevalence are hard to come by. A recent review by four Government departments – the Treasury, the Work and Pensions Department, the Inland Revenue and the Home Office – has concluded that 1,000 men in the United Kingdom are now polygamists.

But because Mutah marriages require no formal contract and are not recognised under British law, no statistics are even collected.

Yet there are those among British Shias in the West that advocate the practice as an important way for Islam to accommodate the practicalities of love and life. Sheikh Ali Al-Hakim, of the Islamic Centre of England, editor of Islam & Feminism; Theory, modelling and applications, argues that Mutah offers an alternative to the lax morality of Western morals.

“In Mutah, it is a marriage it is a contract,” he says. “Without it, people have no responsibility to each other. If a man walks up to a woman and propositions her, what is she meant to say; ‘I have a boyfriend?’ That means nothing.

“Look at this 13-year-old boy who is having a baby [referring to boy-dad Alfie Patterson]. it is easy to exploit religion but at least this way this kind of thing cannot happen.”