In the United Arab Emirates, which has the region's second biggest weblog community, an Emirati male blogger writing in Arabic was censored one week after launching "The Land of Sands" in 2004.
But he has found a way to circumvent the Internet servers of Etisalat, the state telecommunications monopoly, and continues posting his writings in which he attacks clerics and charges their influence is rising in the UAE.
"They follow a systematic plan to penetrate the government, media, schools and the laws. They are `Islamising' our world, mind and life," said in an e-mail interview.
"Civil liberties and freedoms are definitely restricted ... some emirates turn a blind eye on personal freedom in places like Dubai for business reasons only," he said, referring to the thriving commercial center and most tolerant member of the UAE federation.
In the tiny island kingdom of Bahrain, a small but successful blogging community includes former political prisoners, one of whom has led an online campaign calling for a boycott of the country's dominant telecommunications company Batelco for what he deems excessive tariffs.
In the case in Kuwait, one of the only two Gulf countries along with Bahrain with an elected parliament, bloggers helped unleash a "virtual" campaign for election reform in April that spilled onto the streets in a Ukraine-type "orange" revolution.
Three university student bloggers translated a call by pro-reform MPs to cut the country's electoral districts to five to fight corruption into a catchy campaign with a distinctive "5 for Kuwait" orange logo.
Bloggers spread the word online, and in a rare instance in the history of the oil-rich emirate, hundreds of young people waving orange banners demonstrated outside the seat of government on May 5. The campaign escalated into further protests. A bitter standoff between parliament and the government forced the country's emir, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmed al-Sabah, to dissolve parliament on May 21, setting new elections for June 29.
But Kuwaiti blogger Ziad al-Duaij believes the dissolution simply postponed further confrontation.
"It was the easy way out, instead of discussing and seeing what better way to resolve this crisis," said Duaij, 41, who began blogging in March 2003 at the start of the US invasion against Iraq, which was launched from Kuwait.
RSS