Syrian voted “Best Arabic Blogger”

SMN 1, May 2, 2010

He mixes literary expression with politics. The stories he posts resemble old-style Arabic literature but with underlying references to politics in his home country, Syria.

Nathan Joseph, a 29-year-old Australian of Syrian origin who works as a network security engineer in Perth, Australia, started blogging at the end of 2006 to strengthen his bond with the Arab world.

His blog, Madad, won the award for the best Arabic blog this year in the category of “people’s choice”. The competition was organised by Deutsche Welle, Germany’s international public broadcaster.

Joseph told SMN by email that he created his blog after he became fed up with writing on websites and forums that limited his freedom of expression.

Madad includes posts on a variety of topics from literature and music to human rights.

Nathan said that his most popular posts are stories with a strong contemporary political morale. He said that he gets around 1,000 readers every day, mostly from inside Syria.

One of his stories talks about a citizen prosecuted for daring to address himself to a fictional ruler as his father and asking him to love his subjects equally as his own children.

He said that he hoped this kind of story would push Syrian youth to reflect on the situation in their country.

He added that blogging was still not very effective in Syria because of the government’s pressure on bloggers and its close monitoring of what is published on the net.

Joseph established a forum to provide technical support for Arabic-language users of the WordPress blogging platform.