A short summary about the Libyan book outrage

*I’m going to try my best to explain what happened but this is just a short disection of events.*

During the last week a group of authors who contributed to the book شمس على نوافذ مغلقة “sun over closed windows” visited Zawia city for a book signing event. The book includes different types of writing from a selection of young libyan authors. It was meant to highlight the peaceful power of words and how they can be used to fight hate speech and violence.

Zawia is a conservative city that is ruled by multiple militias that have religious leanings.

Someone uploaded the screenshots of the text online without context and it went viral. Many facebook pages started to call for the arrest, death, murder of anyone associated with the book. Most of that hate was directed at the women unfortuantely. They started using all the previous photos of women who weren’t even a part of the book and disgracing them and their families online.

A lot of the comments were inciting violence towards any woman who dared comment or defend the book.

Libyan women have started to react by getting together in groups and organising themselves to report all the online posts that are inciting violence against the authors. I myself have managed to report two links that were removed by Facebook today.

Civil society and culture are being branded as weapons of liberalisation by extremists. Many book clubs were already being closed down or heavily monitored and censored in different Libyan cities. If this pattern continues it will put a lot of innocent lives in danger.

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