Published March 11th, 2006 by Future Atlas
Mideast media: criticizing Islam on Al Jazeera
A Syrian-American psychiatrist has provoked anger and discussion in the Arab world with her harsh assessments of the current state of Islam, and unfavorable comparison of Muslims to Jews, in appearances on Al Jazeera satellite TV.
Two aspects of this story are salient:
- Al Jazeera, for all the distress it causes the United States, is a powerful vehicle for bringing new ideas to the Middle East and challenging ossified thinking.
- The tens of millions of migrants who have moved from the Third World to developed countries are an important source of cultural flows, transmitting ideas about different ways to live back to their homelands.