Discovering Arab point of view of war

By CHRIS BARTON

I've spent the week trying to get an Arab point of view on this war. My quest got off to an alarming start at Arabia.com: "The Orthodox Church in occupied Jerusalem called on all US and British Christian soldiers invading Iraq to revolt against their commanders and disobey orders.".

The article quoted Archimandrite Attallah Hanna saying the US-led war "is a Satanic and colonial one" and that "God would severely punish the United States, Britain and their allies for this unjust war and their crimes against humanity".

Oh dear - and this was a Christian point of view.

There was more convoluted logic at Arabic News in a debate to abandon the Arab League: "The call advocated by the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to lay executive mechanisms to found an advanced Arab collective security that copes with the 'spirit of the age' coincides with an assertion made by an Arab diplomatic source, on the beginning of consultation to rebuild an entity that totally differs from the Arab League, and that will exclude certain states, according to 'negatives of previous experience'." Phew! Perhaps there was problem with the translation.

An editorial at Arab News made chilling sense, referring to warnings by President Mubarak that the war against Iraq would create a hundred bin Ladens.

"The most astounding aspect of this bitterness toward the US and UK, and the willingness of young Arabs to die fighting them, is that most of them probably never gave Iraq a second thought a few weeks ago. They were anything but militant; they have been turned into militants by events."

At The Star King Abdallah of Jordan was advocating a more familiar way to vent disagreement: "The King appeared in a televised speech urging citizens to express their anger through peaceful demonstrations, to contribute and to volunteer in the humanitarian efforts taking place in Jordan. 'I am angry like you, and I am one of you,' said the King."

Tempers flared again, however, at Al Bawaba where Iraqi Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan told Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal to "go to hell" on Tuesday after a call for President Saddam Hussein to step down, adding: "You loser, you are too small to talk to the leader of Iraq and those who will be swept away from the land of the Arab world are people like you. You are a minion and a lackey." The language is quaint, but you get the idea.

I've yet to see the English version of the al-Jazeera TV site (english.aljazeera.net) because hackers have kept it offline all week.

Yesterday, when trying, I got the unusual error message, "You are not authorised to view this page. You do not have permission to view this directory or page from the internet address of your Web browser".

That just made me want to get access more than ever.

I thought I had found the site's new location at www.aljazeerah.info. The language was arrestingly and logically succinct: "Shock and Awe. As verbs and/or nouns, the two words do not indicate death in any sense or form. You cannot shock a corpse. If the killing is intended to shock and awe the remaining living, the term to use is terrorism."

But then I discovered the statement: "This website (aljazeerah.info) is not related by any means to the Arabic TV network,'Aljazeera'."

So that left www.aljazeera.net - the Arabic site. By hovering over Arabic text and watching the web address that shows in the bottom left hand corner of my browser, I was able to navigate to a series of animated cartoons. Some were incomprehensible, but others provided an insight into an Arab perspective.

There was something particularly ironic about two Arab guys sitting in front of two different TVs. One with some McDonald's takeaways beside him was cheering the bombs raining down on Baghdad, the other, next to a hookah, was cheering an Iraqi soldier capturing an American.

But then I found the photos - a graphic series of dead and wounded civilians - too horrific to look at.

If there was ever a way to understand the Arab point of view it was here.

* Email Chris Barton

Arabia.com

Arabic News

Arab News

The Star

Al Bawaba

english.aljazeera.net

www.aljazeerah.info

www.aljazeera.net