Pulse of the Saudi Blogosphere · Global Voices
Ahmed Al-Omran

It had been a relatively quiet week in the Saudi blogosphere this week. However, several good posts can be found by bloggers from inside the country, and also by those who live abroad. So, let's get it started…
A new community website for Saudi bloggers has been causing much controversy, and Saudi bloggers, as well as some Arab bloggers, have reacted to a post written by the co-founder of the first Saudi blogging community. Farooha, the other co-founder, wrote: “you cannot regulate the Saudi blogosphere. You cannot “refine” it nor “filter” it or whatever else I read that you wish to do to it.” The Egyptian Sandmonkey also wrote on the same topic:
They know that this is the one medium of free thought and expression left in the arab world, and that scares the shit out of them, because, as they so rightly fear, Freedom of speech, expression and thought is their enemy. They can only prosper in an environment of censorship, rules and restrictions put and approved by them, while us, the evil old guard, will prosper anyway.
Aya, another Saudi blogger, says she is proud not to belong to the new community: “I have a couple of questions here, first: What makes this community official ? As far as I know, there is nothing official about blogging. Bloggers are independent individuals who don’t officially belong to anyone. Isn’t this an oxymoron “Official – Bloggers”?” she wrote.
Moving to another topic, Fedo has noticed a new fad among Saudi female bloggers, which is writing about sex, and called them to stop doing this because “writing about sex is cheap.” After reading some news of a recent sex scandal, hibbalicious seems to be worried. “This is such a bad situation, what does it reflect about what is happening in our societies now?, not just in Kuwait but in many Arab countries, people are becoming more and more sexually promiscuous, and thats not just single people but married people as well,” she wrote. Meanwhile, Ubergirl calls to change the name of Saudi Arabia to Sexist Arabia. She also has an interesting post on demonic possession.
Responding to a post by another blogger, Dodi wrote on women's rights: “Discrimination and racism do exist everywhere in your society and ours!! A woman is my country is very well respected. Go to a travel agent and you go first, a bank or any other office and you will be served first. I went the High Minister of Education and we waited in a room and the employee himself came to us, took our papers helped us with all he could and even offered us BREAKFAST!!!” Now to let's go to Misso‘s questions: “What happened to the gallant and chivalrous image of a man? What happened to the dream of a “they lived happily ever after”? Is this sensible thinking that comes with the wisdom of age? Or is it the resignation of women who saw and knew better and are just trying to make it work. But then again, I can’t help thinking why try to make it work if it is not working for you?”
Finally, here are three more posts that also worth mentioning: Aya asks: What Saudis are famous for?. Dotsson was getting bored with Saudi blogs, but he found six new bloggers that really changed things around, and last but not least, let's see how a weird coincidence brought two Saudi bloggers to meet.