The New America Foundation’s Nicholas Schmidle again, in Slate‘s "Dispatches" section, this time writing about the state and the state of blogging in Saudi Arabia. The focus of the piece is a Saudi blogger, Raed al-Saeed who, in response to Geert Wilders’ inflammatory anti-Islamic film, Fitna, crafted his own video on the less savory elements of Christian contemporanea and biblical history. According to Schmidle, the exercise in relativism was, in addition to being a healthy exercise in comparative propaganda, an online smash.
Schmidle is one of my favorite new(ish) writers, and his reporting is worth noting (no, we don’t know each other, and no, I don’t get a cut for promoting his work). You can see his personal website here; it’s second only to Hugh Miles’ personal site in the Writers category of Groovy Online Portfolios.
Interesting that the Saudi blogger Raed’s name is Raed. Reminds me of Salam Pax’s Baghdad Blog (see background stories here and here).
Schmidle, Nicholas. " Blogging in Support of the Saudi Government." Slate (17 April 2008).
MICHAEL A. INNES 