Global Voices Online

Algerian-American blogger The Moor Next Door remarks upon France's intended burqa ban, saying, “The trouble the French may want to worry about is not the burqa as it is worn in France today, but that such a ban, as the headscarf ban has done, will make the garment a greater symbol of Muslim identity and sign of cultural defiance.”

Harvard University's Berkman Centre for Internet and Society has released a study of the Arabic blogosphere entitled Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere. About 35,000 active blogs were covered. “The goal for the study was to produce a baseline assessment of the networked public sphere in the Arab Middle East, and its relationship to a range of emergent issues, including politics, media, religion, culture, and international affairs,” announced the centre.

Lameen Souag links to Berber books available online for downloading.

Writing at the Maghreb Politics Review, Alle discusses Algerian politics, and the relationship between the country's president and officers in its military establishment.

Kal, from Algeria, reacts to Obama's address to the Muslim world which he delivered in Cairo, Egypt. “The speech carrying both substance and elegance. It will be widely praised and cited in the future as a major event in the “post-9/11″ period and in America’s relationship with the Muslim world,” he writes.

Algerian blogger Bilad Talsiman [Ar] laments the conditions of media in the Arab world in this post he wrote to mark the Freedom of Press day.

Algerian linguist Lameen Souag asks: “The key issue in Algerian linguistic politics - substantially overshadowing the question of the role of Berber - is what should be the language of bureaucracy and education: Standard Arabic (the official language, and the primary pre-colonial language of literacy for all Algeria) or French (the colonial language, and hence ironically
the language which most of the few educated Algerians at independence had studied in.)”

The Maghreb Politics Review reports: “After the recent hostage release by the southern/Saharan wing of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, there has been much political and military movement in Algeria, Mali and the surrounding countries. According to numerous press rumors, a major joint operation in the border areas is about to go into action any day now.”

Ibn Kafka remarks [fr] on the fact that, despite long-term disagreements between the two nations, the monarch of Morocco sent a congratulatory telegram to re-elected Algerian president Bouteflika.