Two years ago, when Arab bloggers appeared for the first time on the web, most of their weblogs -- if not all -- were written in English. Not a long time after that, some new Arab bloggers decided to start writing their weblogs in Arabic. There were some technical difficulties at the beginning, but eventually all the difficulties were solved.
However, the great growth of the Arab blogosphere seemed to move in two parallel lines. As a reader, and a blogger, I have noticed that English-writing Arab bloggers are living in their own world, and the Arabic-writing Arab bloggers are living in another world. Now to make things easier, let's call the first group A, and the second group B.
The great divide can be shown clearly by the variation of the qualities in every group. For example, most members of group A are liberals who look to West with admire, and tend to criticize the situation in their countries harshly. They have little or no HTML knowledge, and they like to start blogging using a free service such as Blogger.
In the other hand, most members of group B are expert programmers who look to West in suspicious, and write their blogs with Islamic sense. Of course, there are some exceptions in both sides, but I can't study every individual case in this article.
Such differences, and therefore such divide, is not a big a problem by itself, as long as A and B are communicating with each other properly. The big problem is coming next.
From my observations, I have noticed that A and B are living in two separate worlds. Every group seems isolated and enclosed with itself. Just take a look at Sabbah's blogroll, and then look at al-Mohareb's blogroll. You may refer this to personal preferences, but I think it reflects a deeper problem. Because other than the blogrolls, A members do not link to B members and vice versa. Furthermore, there are even smaller groups inside A and B, which looks so obvious in the case of the Kuwaiti blogs and the Egyptian blogs, where the two communities are very self-centered.
I think this is a serious problem because as most of you know "links are the building blocks of the web" and therefore the blogosphere. I can't emphasize on this enough, but links are really important. And if the Arab blogosphere is to be built upon ignorance and denial, it will be a weak destructed world. This is unhealthy, and it cannot be good for our little beautiful world. # »
However, the great growth of the Arab blogosphere seemed to move in two parallel lines. As a reader, and a blogger, I have noticed that English-writing Arab bloggers are living in their own world, and the Arabic-writing Arab bloggers are living in another world. Now to make things easier, let's call the first group A, and the second group B.
The great divide can be shown clearly by the variation of the qualities in every group. For example, most members of group A are liberals who look to West with admire, and tend to criticize the situation in their countries harshly. They have little or no HTML knowledge, and they like to start blogging using a free service such as Blogger.
In the other hand, most members of group B are expert programmers who look to West in suspicious, and write their blogs with Islamic sense. Of course, there are some exceptions in both sides, but I can't study every individual case in this article.
Such differences, and therefore such divide, is not a big a problem by itself, as long as A and B are communicating with each other properly. The big problem is coming next.
From my observations, I have noticed that A and B are living in two separate worlds. Every group seems isolated and enclosed with itself. Just take a look at Sabbah's blogroll, and then look at al-Mohareb's blogroll. You may refer this to personal preferences, but I think it reflects a deeper problem. Because other than the blogrolls, A members do not link to B members and vice versa. Furthermore, there are even smaller groups inside A and B, which looks so obvious in the case of the Kuwaiti blogs and the Egyptian blogs, where the two communities are very self-centered.
I think this is a serious problem because as most of you know "links are the building blocks of the web" and therefore the blogosphere. I can't emphasize on this enough, but links are really important. And if the Arab blogosphere is to be built upon ignorance and denial, it will be a weak destructed world. This is unhealthy, and it cannot be good for our little beautiful world. # »
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