In these last three posts about censorship I have tried to get off of the obvious topic and expand my knowledge about different types of censorship and different reasons for censorship.
During my semester look at censorship I learned that there are many different reasons: to guard our children from items that we feel they should not be exposed to, because of certain morality issues, and more recently I learned that it can be used to standardize our language.
Today, I want to talk about extreme censorship. One of my last posts was about Abdel Kareem Soliman who was censored even went to jail because of what he posted on his blog. This post is about the most extreme censorship of all. Bombing.
A suicide car bomber blew up the Mutanabi book market in Baghdad. This is not just simple censorhip of one book because it says a sexual word—this is censorship of reading and knowledge in general.
The authors Sumana Raychaudhuri and Saswato Das state
“The symbolism was clear: The suicide car-bomber wanted to strike at the heart of
Iraq’s intellectual life… it is clear that the bombing, which killed and injured scores and left a 20-foot-wide crater, was targeted at those who think, read or are interested in learning.”
They think that the best retaliation to the bombing would be to rebuild the book market. They think it would be a symbol showing that no matter what happens that the people of Baghdad will continue to gain knowledge.
Now, I do not think that it is the best of ideas to re-build just because it will probably be attacked again, but there are other ways to retaliate.
“A popular Arab saying holds that “Cairo writes, Beirut prints,Baghdad reads.” For a thousand years, Baghdad has been a leading cultural light of the Arab world, and this is not the first time its books have been desecrated.”
I think that if the people of Baghdad find ways to keep reading even with all of the war and destruction that they will send the message that no matter what –they will not stand for this type of censorship and will continue to educate themselves.
This article taught me to look at the reasons behind censorship. Are the people who are doing the censorship doing it because they want to protect me, or are they doing it to send me a message that I can not learn.
The reasons behind censorship determine whether or not censorship is okay.
Sumana Raychaudhuri and Saswato Das.”A tradegy for all who love books.” Newsday. March 14, 2007
