Cartoon time

Speaking against the motion at the latest Doha debate, Mona Eltahawy made my point about critical thinking. The motion that 'This House believes that Arab media needs no lessons in journalism from the West' was roundly rejected (67 to 33, I think) by the largely Arab audience. I'll post a link to the transcript when it becomes available. I don't know if these debates get put out on regular BBC channels, but they and Hard Talk are two reasons why it's worth having BBC World. I am increasingly critical of the BBC's news reporting standards but they can still give us interesing and lively discussion programmes. On the latest edition of Hard Talk, Stephen Sakur brought Flemming Rose, Jyllands-Posten newspaper editor, and Imam Ahmed Abu Laban, the leader of Islamic Faith Society, Denmark (the group responsible for stirring things up in other Arab countries) to the table. Neither of them managed to completely convince with their arguments. Laban was pretty evasive about some questions. You could see he just didn't agree with with the fundamental right to free expression. He made a charge that also came up in the Doha debate: namely, that the west expects muslims to sit there quietly like well-behaved students while they get a master class on democracy. Actually, he didn't phrase it as well as I've just done (he,he) but that was his essential point. Rose was weak on defending his initial reasoning for commissioning the drawings. Stephen Sakur's okay but I wish they'd bring back Tim Sebastian! He's completely wasted chairing the Doha debates.


Disillusioned Lefty has a good post today on some of the absurdities thrown up by all this kerfuffle.