Tuesday, January 17, 2006

More from Mahmood's Den

Mahmood has a round-up of Bahraini blogs (done weekly for Global Voices), where he cites the responses of many Bahraini bloggers to the recent death of the son of the Bahraini king:
Practically every Bahraini blog offered condolences to his majesty the king of Bahrain on the tragic death of his 6th son: Shaikh Faisal, who was just 14 and died as a result of a car accident. Shaikh Faisal is remembered by his friends as an avid equestrian and is full of life. Some commentors however wanted to break the norm and politicise this tragic event, especially as controversial forums like the recently lauded BahrainOnline.org, which mysteriously is on a 4 day maintenance regime! Hassan Al-Khozai (Arabic) was disgusted by some of the black-hearted comments on 'some' Bahraini forums who seemed to revel in the extinguished young life just because it belonged to a royal, and this comes from someone who could only be described as opposition. However Hassan is certainly not unique in this respect, he has proven his humility just as other traditional government opponents have: Abdulhadi Khalaf, and Manama Republic have conveyed their condolences with the politeness, respect and humility this situation demands.
By the way, Global Voices is a fabulous way to keep track of blogs from all around the world. People from many countries provide a blog roundup once a week or whenever the fancy strikes them and thus give a lot of exposure to blogs others will never have heard of. (There hasn't been an Israeli blog roundup since early December 2005, and a lot has certainly happened since then!)