Blogging in the UAE

In the aftermath of the blocking of a popular web log, the UAE's blogosphere is buzzing. A thousand Emirates-based bloggers are now brightening cyberspace with cultural commentary, mad rants and scrupulous accounts of their trips to the mall.

She responded: "I realise the risks involved in blogging, which is why I try to include positive coverage … My main fear is imprisonment/deportation, but I hope nothing on here is really that seriously likely to cause offence."

They were both right. In July her site was indeed blocked. On holiday in Australia, the Secret Dubai diarist posted that she feared "manacles and prison vans" on her return.

But she met no uniformed welcoming committee — on the contrary, after a few days her site was once again fully accessible.

Yet the blocking delivered a seismic shock to the UAE's bloggers. This was not the first blog to disappear behind Etisalat's proxy server (that distinction goes to an Arabic-language blog called "The Land of Sands").

But this was the best known of the English-language blogs — and by no means the most reckless.

"Those who have been reading Secret Dubai know that there was never an exceedingly controversial post," wrote Esperanca De Souza, a veteran blogger of five years in the UAE's cyberspace.

Now the dust has settled, though the UAE blogosphere may find itself, in the marketing cliché, with an opportunity disguised as a problem.

"The number of messages that Secret Dubai got was amazing — she got 65 comments overnight," says Raj, an Indian expat blogger who focuses on design. "Now other bloggers are trying to get blocked as well!"

Secret Dubai Diary has now had over 26,000 visitors. Each day an average of over 300 drop by — a figure boosted substantially by the temporary embargo.

The blocking also stimulated others to seek their place in the Emirates' blogosphere. "I personally have come across a lot of new bloggers," says Raj. "It has definitely made people curious to know what all this blogging is about."

In the UAE over a thousand bloggers already broadcast their thoughts with tools like Blogspot and Livejournal.
They represent most nationalities and ages, but if there is such a thing as a typical UAE blog, it bears some resemblance to a teenage girl's diary.

"There are a few serious bloggers but the rest are ‘I bought this, then I bought that'," says Raj. Indeed, a trawl through local cyberspace collects forensically detailed accounts of shopping and watching TV.

Thankfully, there are also plenty of entertaining rants, such as a teacher at his class of "20-odd students with the collective attention span and critical thinking skills of a stunned earthworm"; or an expat incensed by people phoning radio stations for requests "with a fake American accent" ("It's disgusting really, trying to be someone you're not, and doing it so badly you make an idiot out of yourself.").

There is also the downright derangement (or sophisticated ironic stance) of a Dubai-based heavy-metal fan.

The intro gives the flavour: "this site is all about me and how epic I am. I rule so hard. Everyone thinks I am such a stud and totally rad. I only like stuff that is totally sweet and that's why everyone wants to be like me."

But in the aftermath of the Secret Dubai blocking many also hope to shape a more reflective blogosphere.
None is more eager than Adnan Arif, a Pakistani expat who is probably the only UAE resident to actually blog professionally.

"I started off blogging about my personal life when I was a student in the States," he says. "After 9/11 I got politicised. You start thinking about your audience and shaping your content."

Arif now runs Wrist Fashion, "one of the highest-traffic blogs on watches in the world", attracting over 40,000 unique visitors each month.

His other commercial site, Sensory Impact, dedicated to odd designery stuff, attracts over 100,000 individual viewers.

"Blogging has been good to me," he says. "Through it I have met a lot of great people and travelled a lot. It has opened a lot of doors… but I know people in the UAE who have married people they met though blogging."

Arif hopes the UAE can be similarly enriched by blogging. He believes the time has come for blogs to abandon the minutiae of daily life and become an alternative to traditional media.

"The incident sparked off something," he says. "There are the first glimmerings of a blog community. The UAE needs more substance. It's all new here — people are setting up blogspot sites but not knowing what to do with them."

The new mood is reflected in a group blog set up by the anonymous Secret Dubai blogger.

Arif has also set up a meetup group that he hopes will put fire in the bellies of established bloggers and help new ones make their first steps in cyberspace.

"It's sort of exploded," says Esperanca de Souza. "Everyone wants to get a blog now."

Of course, lurking at the back of everyone's mind is the obvious concern. Look what happened to Secret Dubai Diary.

If bloggers continue to express their colourful views, are they not eventually going to find themselves suddenly off-line?

"I think there is definitely some paranoia," says Raj.

On the other hand, bloggers who choose to remain anonymous are relatively hard to identify.

Also, as the Secret Dubai blogger herself pointed out, the episode shows that Dubai is emphatically not like other countries where bloggers might realistically anticipate a midnight knock.

Anyway, for now at least, the inhabitants of the UAE blogosphere show no signs of moderating their expression.

"I think it's all going to simmer down," says Arif. "Before, because there was no space to complain elsewhere, people used the only outlet they could to express their negative thoughts. Now, I think you are going to find