Yasmine Mohammed ياسمين محمد  🦋

The sorry state of Arab publishing and reading culture coincides with how reading and writing are impaired by censorship, poor education, religious fundamentalism and war. A book that aims to find a market in all the Arab countries has to negotiate with 22 countries' censors.

An old Arab idiom goes: "Books are written in Cairo, published in Beirut and read in Baghdad." But a half-century of war, economic stagnation & totalitarianism in the region has undermined that process.

The rise of autocratic regimes across the region in the mid 20th century forced intellectuals to restrict their commentary & accept government intervention, while economic stagnation sapped readers' ability to pay for new books.

On top of that, the growth of Islamic fundamentalism put new limits on what writers can safely express and what readers can safely read. Religious books represent a higher share of Arabic titles, accounting for 17% of all books published, compared to a world average of 5%.

Arabs represent 5 percent of the world's inhabitants, yet they produce just 1.1 percent of the world's books, less than the percentage produced by Turkey alone. Government readers and religious authorities routinely review books before publication in most Arab countries.

It is in this climate that @IdeasB2 is rekindling both Arabic publishing & a reading culture. Making books & articles available for free in digital formats circumvents the 22 countries' censors,