The happy bloggers of Syria

The latest reliable data show the number of Syrians accessing the World Wide Web has jumped by more than 1,500% over the past six years. The way the internet is connecting Syrians with information about the world and each other is practically too good to be true. Just ask young bloggers in Damascus.

Over cups of sweet purple mulberry juice in an upscale café in Damascus, one such blogger told me how the internet has changed her life. Like many young women growing up and living in the Middle East today, 27-year-old Sara Takieddin says she’s become a “more devout” Muslim as she’s grown older. This is reflected no-where better than in the internet blog she started a few years ago documenting her “transformation from being nonreligious to being devotedly religious,” right up to the point last year when she started wearing a veil.

Sara’s blog, http://stellar101.blogspot. com, initially attracted a handful of visitors posting questions about why she became so religious. Intrigued by the communication with strangers, Sara says she took pleasure in posting personal answers about her transformation.

Then things took a dramatic turn. Kevin Sites, an American journalist for Yahoo whose articles about different parts of the world referred to as “The Hot Zone” are featured prominently by Yahoo, made a visit to Syria and used the name of Sara’s blog in one of his articles. Literally overnight http:stellar101.blogspot.com received a deluge of new visitors from around the globe and Sara turned from modest personal blogger into international advicegiver on the subject of Islam.

“People started asking me about jihad, then people would ask everything, such as about the Afghan guy who turned Christian, why does it say this in the Quran, why does it say that in the Quran. Whoever asks, I answer,” she says.

While Kevin Sites’ reference also brought on a number of messages from “fanatic Americans and Israelis cussing out Arabs and Syrians,” Sara says the experience was overwhelmingly positive. As a professional audio-engineer and musician, she often posts original compositions of music on her blog, and was thrilled when a musician from a Christian Church in Wisconsin contacted her blog asking permission to recreate a piece of her music for a church service.

Sara saw this as an example of the inter-net’s potential in bringing together people of different worlds. “It was exciting because I felt I had achieved something huge in bridging the gap between Christians and Muslims,” she says.

A similar experience was had by Ghalia al-Azmeh, 24, an elementary school teacher in Damascus. Her blog, http:// cocktail4.blogspot.com, went from about 70 visitors on January 30, 2006 to more than 7,000 the next day following Kevin Sites’ reference to it on Yahoo. The expo-sure was thrilling and satisfying for Ghalia, who says she sought to create a blog focusing on Syrian history, beauty and architecture, “because I wanted to intro-duce my country to the world.”

What happened to these two women shows how leading global websites can instantly amplify the realities of internet connectivity for those who previously had little opportunity to interact with people from different continents. The excitement resonated through the Damascene blogger community, resulting in the creation of more blogs. Ghalia notes that in early-2005 when her blog first went online, “there were just 15 Syrian blogs. Now there are 143.”

The experiences of Sara and Ghalia clearly represent the most positive side of the internet story in Syria. But it is a side defined by the fact that they, like the vast majority of Syrian bloggers, take careful measures to ensure their blogs and other online activities steer clear of anything overtly political.