In an age of homogenized reporting, bloggers on both sides of the Iraq war are filling the void of personal coverage and challenging the narratives of war planners and mainstream media alike. Wayne Hunt traces this phenomenon with two case studies.

Bettina Graf gets behind the scenes at Islamonline.net, one of the world’s most popular Islamic websites, giving an in-depth look at how the site creates and issues fatwas.

Muhammad Gamal argues for more academic and professional attention to the audiovisual translation industry, which is proliferating everywhere from mobile phone screens to stadium megatrons.

American television news has largely abandoned the Middle East. Can international outlets like Al Jazeera English pick up the slack? Publisher and Co-Editor Lawrence Pintak on coverage of the Gaza conflict.

Hamid Dabashi gives “blood and bone” to the lives and predicaments of Iran’s filmmakers. Yet his conceptions of “realism” seem to be surrogates for aesthetic judgments, argues Farouk Mitha.

Absent participatory government, the film industry became a key political battleground in the late French empire. Historian Elizabeth F. Thompson compares struggles for control of the cinema in late colonial Fez and Damascus.

The head of Saudi Arabia’s Sharia courts made waves during Ramadan when he said that satellite channel owners were liable for execution for airing “indecent programming.” But this controversy goes far beyond broadcast standards, argues Andrew Hammond.

Some feared the 2008 novel The Jewel of Medina would create the fiercest backlash among Muslims since the Danish cartoon scandal. So why hasn’t it? Shereen El Feki looks at the politics surrounding the book’s publication.

A pitched battle on the streets of Beirut backed Hizbullah’s opponents into a corner last May. But it was media savvy and the powerful rhetoric of Hassan Nasrallah that turned a tactical victory into a strategic success, argues David Wilmsen. Features video and full translations of three speeches.

Being a business journalist has never been easy in the notoriously tight-lipped UAE. But will investors tolerate Dubai & Co’s culture of keeping quiet amid a global financial crisis, asks Contributing Editor Dana El-Baltaji.