海角大神

Politics and prose, we鈥檝e learned, are incredible bedfellows 鈥� the Thai reading protest聽and the CIA 鈥淒octor Zhivago鈥� propaganda campaign聽are just two fascinating examples.聽

How鈥檚 this for a third: an online bookseller in the Middle East is attempting to single-handedly stop censorship in the Arab world by launching a section on its site devoted entirely to banned books.

Jamalon, called the 鈥淎mazon of the Middle East,鈥� is taking this provocative step 鈥渢o make banning books so futile that governments have no choice but to cease their attempts at censorship,鈥� according to Quartz, which first reported the story.

鈥淎ny book sold聽in the Middle East normally becomes boosted when a government聽bans it 鈥� it becomes a best-seller,鈥� Jamalon founder Ala Alsallal told the online news site. Censorship is so counter-productive, he聽told Quartz, that聽鈥渨riters try to publish books that governments will not like so they can make more money.鈥澛�

Alsallal is leveraging that same counterintuitive philosophy to affect political change in his corner of the world.

When Arab authorities ask the 28-year-old founder to stop selling certain books to their citizens, he explains that it is logistically impossible.

鈥淲e have 10 million titles, and there are 50,000 new English books and 2,000 new Arabic books published every month. We cannot handle the聽filtering.鈥�

As such, Jamalon hasn鈥檛 removed a single book from its site, according to Quartz.

Jamalon鈥檚 other advantage is that it is a pan-Arab online site that is not subject to any one country鈥檚 individual mandate. So while an individual Arab government may ban a book, shut down a publisher, or seize contraband titles, Jamalon is free to carry any book and find creative means to source them.

Alsallal said he was inspired partly by New York鈥檚 Strand Bookstore, which has a table devoted to once-prohibited titles like William S. Burrough鈥檚 鈥淣aked Lunch鈥� and Vladimir Nabokov鈥檚 鈥淟olita.鈥�

Compare those titles to 鈥淗adith al-Junud,鈥� or 鈥淪oldiers鈥� Sayings,鈥� by Ayman al-Otoum. The book is about the 1986 Yarmouk University protests in which Islamist activists protested Jordanian authorities; it was published earlier this year and became a bestseller once it was banned in Jordan.

It鈥檚 currently a top seller on Jamalon, one small chapter in a very novel mission to counter censorship in the Middle East.聽聽聽

Husna Haq is a Monitor correspondent.