Literary censorship
There is a limit to what can be shown on television, what can be said in public, shared on the internet and written on books. The government controls the information that its people are fed. For instance, governments do not want the public to view information that can incite or create a rebellion. Censorship is, therefore, a policy that the government uses to retain and control its people by preventing the public from viewing some contents that are considered offensive or inciting (Peleg 19). Through censorship, the government passes out policies and laws that may bun some books, some TV programs, and some websites that share contents that are not in line with what the government deems right or good for public consumption. The majority of Middle East countries, including Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates, censor the media strictly. The Middle East runs the most stringent censorship programs in the world where Turkmenistan is the strictest. In the Middle East, the government controls all forms of media, starting with literary books, television, social media, and the internet. Governments in the Middle East refrain much of the new from getting to the public by only releasing good reports, good news and propaganda, besides countries like Turkmenistan have banned nongovernmental libraries and all foreign publications from entering and being consumed in the country. There are different types of censorship in the Middle East, including literary censorship, where books, various publications are banned. There is also internet censorship where internet is shut down, or some tactics are enforced to limit what the internet can show to the public for instance since 2011, Bahrain slowed down internet speed to prevent the spread of videos and pictures while Egypt completely shut down the internet for five days as a censorship program in 2013.
Literary censorship is an act of taking control or taking measures to suppress ideas and information in literary works (Marshik 176). With literary censorship, literary works that do not conform to governmental laws are banned from the market while the authors my risk sentence. Literary censorship is different from other censorship programs, for instance, it’s different from media censorship, unlike literary censorship where a book is banned after its release, media censorship use automatic censorship programs to prevent contents with some phrases, words and vulgar from the internet. There are various methods used in the Middle East to carry out literary censorship; this includes banning the literary work entirely from the market, use of blacklists, and nontechnical censorship methods. Non-technical censorship methods involve the use of law to prohibit various contents, using bribes to lure authors into withdrawing the information, confiscating the book, or advising the author to withdraw the peace of work from the market.
In this paper, two literary works, Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa al-Sanea and Season of Migration to the North by Tayib Saleh, will be discussed along the line of censorship. The girl of Riyadh focuses on Saudi Arabia women, what the society expects of women, and how gender inequality limits their social wants. Season of Migration to the North is about the conflict between modern Sudan and the brutal history of European colonialism and how the impacts of colonialism are felt in the contemporary Sudanese society.
Season of Migration to the North
Season of Migration to the North is a novel by a Sudanese novelist Tayeb Salih published in 1966. Tayeb Salih (1929-2009) was a great Sudanese novelist of all time; he was born in Karmakol in the Northern parts of Sudan. He studied Bachelor of Science in the University of Khartoum before joining the University of England. Tayeb Salih’s literary career started in London, where he wrote in the exploration of various themes inspired by his communal village life. Many of his works revolve around themes like the cultural conflict between the Africans and the whites, reality and illusion, harmony, and brotherhood conflict. It can be argued that much of his works are ingrained in Islamic background and experiences of modern Africa. Besides 1 Season of Migration to the North novel that won Tayeb Salih prominence and fame worldwide, he also wrote other novels, including The Weeding of Zein that also gained him some popularity and made it into the Kuwait filmmakers awards. Tayeb Salih died in 2009 in London, aged 79 years.
Season of Migration to the North was published in 1966. The novel is a story told to a general audience. The narrator returns to his homeland after writing a PhD thesis. The narrator is determined to make changes in the country after the colonial government. On his arrival, he meets a new villager called Mustafa Sa’eed, who seems not to recognize him for his achievements like all the other villagers (Salih 21). The narrator discovers that Mustafa is learned after reciting a poem in fluent English; the narrator gets determined to know who Mustafa is. He later discovers that Mustafa was also a student educated in the West. Mustafa has a history of attracting women by appealing to their Orientalist fantasies. Then the love ends in tragedy where three women committed suicide, and Mustafa murdered his fourth wife. Mustafa drowns in River Nile, and his widow Hosna is happy to get remarried (Salih 42). The narrator is appointed the guardian of Mustafa’s sons and prevents his widow from getting remarried. However, Hosna is married to Wad Rayyes against her will, she kills Wad, and then herself, and both are buried without a proper funeral arrangement.
Seasons of Migration to the North was censored in native Sudan. The novel was banned for many years, starting in 1989. This novel contained graphic sexual imagery that offended the Islamic government. Therefore, the sexual imagery in the book does not conform to Islamic beliefs and culture; thus, the book cannot be readily accepted in many Islamic states. However, it is essential to note that the ban comes many years after the book’s release to the market. Later, the ban was lifted, and the book can today be readily available in Sudan.
Girls of Riyadh
Rajaa al-Sanea wrote the girls of Riyadh in 2005. Rajaa al-Sanea was born in 1981 in Saudi; she grew up In Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. In 2005, she graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the University of King Saud. Girls of Riyadh is her first novel that sparked mixed reactions. Al-Sanea is a daughter to a family of doctors; she is currently a student and lives in Chicago in the United States, where she is also a dentist.
Girls of Riyadh is a novel that describes a romantic relationship between men and women in Saudi Arabia. The novel narrates a story of four girls in Saudi Arabia looking for love that is halted by the systems and the culture that curtail women’s freedom. In Saudi Arabia, women have limited freedom; the cultural background has very distinctive expectations and demands for women. In this culture, women, especially the teens, are expected to make least contacts with men, modern technology has come to overhaul the system, and young men can now try to seduce young ladies and lure them into giving out their phone numbers. Besides, technological development is another contemporary system that has opened up young women in Saudi Arabia in the sense that they cannot be contained within the old culture.
The novel’s main characters include Sadeem, Lamees, Gamrah, and Michelle (Alsanea 4). These girls have different life experiences, but when it comes to love, they are facing the same obstacles. The narrator sends out emails to a weekly newsletter that has recently received many subscribers telling them about the life of these four girls. Gamrah is a conservative girl whose marriage with her husband, who is studying abroad, is midway. People envy her because of her fortune. After they move to America, where her husband is studying, she finds out that the husband is having a romantic relationship with another woman of Japanese origin (Alsanea 27). She divorces and returns to the village, ashamed and shunned by the community.
The girls of Riyadh are not allowed to speak to men in public; they have phones that they use to communicate with men. Women are seriously restricted in this culture, and their freedom is completely limited. Michelle, on the other hand, breaks the norms and wears as a boy; she is in love with Faisal. She later breaks up with Faisal to follow the tradition; however, she is stuck between the Saudi Arabia culture and the Western culture, given that she is half-American and a half- Saudi. Sadeem is in love with the man she would soon marry. However, she breaks the rules by spending a night with the man before they are married, they divorce, and Sadeem is shunned from society for losing her virginity before the marriage. Finally, Lamees combines culture and modernity; she chooses her job but adhering to the culture. Her choices somehow make er happy than the other three girls.
The novel was released in 2005 and immediately banned in Saudi Arabia. Therefore, the book was first published and then censored a few months later by the government since it contains controversial and inflammatory content. The book is sometimes referred to as Sex and the City due to its narrative structure and content. This novel contains some contents that do not conform to societal rules in Saudi; these include illicit love contents described in the novel, sex before marriage, and the gender roles inverted in the novel. This novel was basically about abandoning Saudi culture so that one can find true happiness and fulfillment; the government, therefore, banned it, fearing that the public would be fed with contents that could spark a cultural rampage.
Author’s plight
Many authors who break the laws to write about contents that are considered taboo topics or unclean contents for public consumption face predicaments and threats that may force them to flee their countries for fear of prosecution or attack.
- Nawal El Saadawi
Nawal El Saadawi is an Egyptian writer, psychiatrist, and physician. She has written many books focused on feminism and the place of women in Islam culture, paying particular attention to female genital mutilation. Saadawi is a medical doctor by profession who graduated from the University of Cairo in 1955. She married Ahmed Helmi, who was a fellow student in the medical school; they have a daughter together called Mona Helmi. They divorced after two years. Through her medical practice, she has witnessed and observed various problems that women undergo both physically and psychologically. These problems are embedded in oppressive cultural practices; this sparked her interest in using writing to address the oppression women face in society. She has written numerous novels and short stories, including Memoirs of a Woman Doctor, I Learned Love, Memoir from Women’s prison, Women, and sex, among other novels (Amireh 215).
El Saadawi has been writing about controversial topics in Egypt, and this has cost her imprisonment and persecution. She published a feminist magazine called the Confrontation in 1981. The magazine directly criticized President Anwar Sadat, who was the Egyptian president of that time. The president ordered her imprisonment for the criticism while in prison; she still fought for women’s liberation by forming Arab Women’s Solidarity Association. She was released later in 1981 after President Sadat was assassinated. In 1988, Nawal El Saadawi’s life was threatened by politicians and Islamists; this forced her to flee Egypt.
- Naguib Mahfouz
Naguib Mahfouz was born in 1911 in Egypt and died in 2006. He was a writer who won several awards, including the Nobel Prize in 1988. He is recognized as one of the most influential writers of Arabic literature. In total, he wrote 34 novels and more than 350 short stories, he wrote several movie scripts and was given newspaper slots in his 70-years career. Naguib Mahfouz’s style of writing touched on various social issues and social themes, including homosexuality, socialism, and God. Writing about some of these themes was considered a taboo in Egypt hence prohibited. One of the most rejoiced works by Mahfouz includes the Cairo Trilogy. In this novel, Mahfouz wrote about Cairo, where he grew. He also wrote Adrift on the Nile in 1966. This novel sparked mixed reactions during President Anwar Al Sadat; the novel criticized Egyptian society in many ways under the Nasser regime. As a result, it was banned to avoid infuriating Egyptians who loved their retired president.
Mahfouz also wrote, ‘Children of Gebelewi, ‘ which was later banned in the entire Middle East because of blasphemous reasons (Malti-Douglas 91). Besides these controversies, in his many works, he wrote about Egyptian politics and nationalism. Controversies escalated around his work, especially his novel ‘Children of Gebelawi,’ that was deemed blasphemous. Death threats against Mahfouz followed; the government gave him police protection until 1994 when extremists attacked him and stubbed his neck. With more threats arising from his controversial works, he was forced not to write for some time; the threats forced him to stay in Cairo with bodyguards and his lawyer.
- Salman Rushdie
Born in1947, Salman Rushdie is a British writer raised in India. He is a professional lawyer who studied law at Cambridge University. Salman Rushdie wrote Grimus; his first novel in 1975, in 1981, he produced his second novel Midnight’s Children that won the Booker Prize award in 1981. In 1983, Salman Rushdie wrote another novel called ‘Shame’ that depicted the political turbulences in Pakistan. Moreover, he wrote many other novels, including The Satanic Verses, The Jaguar Smile, Nicaragua, Haroun and the Sea of stories among many other novels.
Salman Rushdie wrote about controversial topics that, in many instances, predisposed him to severe threats. For example, his work “The Satanic Verses’ that was released in 1988 caused immediate turmoil in the Middle East. The novel was viewed as irrelevant since it depicted irrelevant depictions of Muhammad. In the novel, Salman Rushdie depicted Muhammad as evil and a liar; thus, the book was banned in many countries, including Kenya, Tanzania, Iran, Sudan, Thailand, Pakistan, and many other countries (Grant 77). The novel was considered anti-religious, and the writer’s execution was ordered, a bounty was offered for his death, he was forced to live under police protection for many years fearing for his life. He wrote another book called ‘Fatwa’ that sparked violence globally. The book was banned, and its copies burned, people associating themselves with the book were seriously injured or killed.
How do authors go around censorship?
Censorship is not always successful in curtailing literary works from getting into the market. Authors have many ways to avoid censorship or at least reduce the effects of their work. First, writers manage censorship by publishing their work in other countries and then selling them from the global market. For instance, Nawal Al Saadawi wrote many of her works from outside of Egypt, where her books were banned. This helped her to continue communicating here themes to the audience through writing.
Besides publishing the books in other countries, translating the work to English or a foreign language for global consumption is another way to evade censorship. A good example is Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa al-Sanea, the novel was written in Islamic language and was therefore limited to the market that can understand that language. The book was later banned in that market; however, through translation to English; the book was made available in the global market without any censorship restrictions.
The world is now highly digitalized; there are many social media platforms and internet platforms that people use to share messages, pictures, videos, and files. This is a contemporary platform where authors can evade their censorship. The speed at which a file can be sent to reach millions of people across the globe in seconds makes it easy to send censored books through the use of internet platforms. Online publishers are also available, and one can publish the book online and sell it online to reach millions of people across the globe.
Conclusion
Censorship is widespread, especially in the Middle East were hitherto cultural beliefs are sharply observed. Authors who slightly write anything that does not conform to the culture may risk his or her career or even life. However, in as much as censorship is good in cleaning contents for public consumption, it should not be very limiting and strict, it should be specific on particular topics that can cause real chaos.