Despite my title, I think I’m entitled to occasionally just post articles I find interesting (like the one yesterday). Here’s one by a 17 year old high school student defending hijab that I found on an “Islamic” (they said it, not me) website that I found, although I can’t say I agree with it 100%.

And here’s a post from Cat in Rabat that struck me. And not just because it showed up in my linkbacks.

Yesterday, when The View From Fez posted that a new English-language newspaper, The Casablanca Analyst was on the stands, I could hardly believe it - but it is, indeed, true!  And aside from the aforementioned typos/translation errors, it’s quite excellent!  I read excerpts to my class last night, and would like to share my favorite with you.  It’s on page 2, in an article called “Ambition in modesty.”  Let’s read, shall we?

 We would like the reader to be pleased with his newspaper and to experience a faint thrill whenever he buys his copy of the Analyst.  We certainly do not want him to buy it grudgingly - as he sometimes does with some third rate newspapers - when he often feels swindled and finds that the daily he has purchased is too expensive for the two and a half Dirhams he paid for it.

On the contrary, we want our reader to buy his copy of the Casablanca Analyst without hesitation and almost with his eyes closed as he will each time be sure that every single article in it will bring him something new, will quench his intellectual curiousity, enrich his world view, and give him that exquisite pleasure that newspaper connoisseurs experience and that even the best satellite channels could not substitute.

Finally, we would like our public in Morocco to become a newspaper reading public in general and particularly to impatiently expect his copy of th eAnalyst and purchase it first thing in the day.  This may be a dream but we shall diligently work to make it come true./

My students remarked that the editors are indeed quite ambitious, and I don’t disagree, but that kind of confidence is what they’ll need to succeed in a country where even the most popular newspapers only sell around 100,000 per issue (Morocco’s population is 31 million), and where few people speak or read English.

And yet, I’m impressed, because not only are the articles original, but the writers seem to remain true to their identities, claiming their perspectives as Muslims, humanists, pacifists, environmentalists, nationalists, seekers of truth, democrats, lovers of literature and the arts, militants for freedom and economists (not in that order).

I look forward to the next issue.