Dear colleagues, it is my pleasure to inform you that a new issue of CyberOrient journal is now available online. All the best, Vit Sisler CyberOrient: Online Journal of the Virtual Middle East http://www.cyberorient.net/ Vol. 6, Iss. 2, 2012 Articles Cyberactivists Paving the Way for the Arab Spring: Voices from Egypt, Tunisia and Libya Mohammed El-Nawawy and Sahar Khamis http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=7994 The wave of Arab revolutions and uprisings that has been shaking all corners of the Arab Middle East since 2011 and that has come to be known as the Arab Spring owed a major portion of its success to online activism. The spark that ignited these revolutions in the offline world was ignited by the Arab cyberactivists’ well-coordinated campaigns, calling for the toppling of corrupt regimes in their home countries. These campaigns were launched through various forms of social media, such as blogs, Facebook, Twitter and Flicker with the goal of introducing drastic political changes and allowing for a higher margin of freedom in a region that has often been associated with autocracy and dictatorship. Three Arab countries in particular – Egypt, Tunisia and Libya – have witnessed sweeping transformations, leading to the ousting and court trials of members of their old regimes and the holding of democratic presidential and parliamentary elections. This study utilizes qualitative, on-the-field interviews with cyberactivists in these three countries to provide a unique perspective into how they have paved the way for a new era of openness and democratic reform in their respective countries. Mythical Roots, Phantasmic Realities and Transnational Migrants: Yemenis Across the Gulf of Aden Samson A. Bezabeh http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=8043 This article analyzes the relationship between transnational migration, state-based religious cosmologies and new electronic media. It illustrates the way mythical realities and a Christian cosmology have structured the existence of the Yemeni diaspora. In analyzing the way mythical realities have been deployed, I seek to understand how old ways of creating boundaries have been redeployed in electronic landscapes. Much has been written regarding the interface between religion and media. Yet little attention has been paid to the phantasmic element that exists in digital-based transnational discourses. Drawing on the Lacanian concept of jouissance in this article, I pinpoint how mythical realities, important for creating boundaries, also operate at the phantasmic level. In doing so, I ultimately aim to show how transnational migration across borders operates within a field that is dotted with religious mythology and phantasmic realities that are increasingly expressed in the electronic landscape. I also show how the changing relationship between Muslims and Christians should be explained by taking more factors into account than concrete human reality. Explanations should also be sought in the distant past and in the domain of fantasy, which has so far proved to be uncomfortable ground for most scholars studying religious dynamics in the Horn of Africa. The Time of Concluding the Contract in E-Commerce from Islamic Legal Perspective Abdulrahman Alzaagy http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=8029 The issue of when a contract between face-to-face parties is deemed to be concluded presents no legal difficulty to deal with in conventional dealings. However, the borderless nature of the Internet presents questions as to when a contract is deemed to be irrevocably formed and therefore raises questions regarding contract validity. As a general rule, a contract is formed when there is an exchange of offer and acceptance between the parties. However, in online contracts the contracting parties are not in face-to-face meeting and thus the exchange of offer and acceptance involves the possibility that such correspondence may not reach its intended recipient because of technical errors or other technological complexities. As a result, this article tends to engage in a critical study to determine the time when a contract formed in the cyberspace is concluded in the light of Islamic contracting principles with reference to a number of International legal frameworks. Comments Tweeting like a Pigeon: The Internet in the Arab Revolutions Miriyam Aouragh http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=8000 The extraordinary uprisings since December 2010 represented the long-prepared transformation from fatalism to people power. The online–offline dialectic allowed the revolution to be mediated with global ramifications - from Wisconsin to Barcelona to Athens. This techno-social nexus forms a crucial element of the overall push and pull factors and this contribution reassess the "Net Worth" from a critical perspective. The fetishizing flora and fauna labels from earlier hyped political-techno events --"Cedar", "Green", or "Orange" revolutions-- that coincided with particular geo-political algorithms, were initially copied and pasted as emblematic solicitations. But whether Wikileaks or the Palestine Papers, and YouTube videos or blogs disclosing practices of torture and corruption—opinions have been shaped and decisions were mediated by online technologies. This piece demonstrates the overflow of YouTube music clips through the prism of the Tunisian revolution. I will look at these dynamics through the lens of Palestine as an informative ethnographic comparison because it helps indicate the power structure behind technology and allows me to assess the multiplicity of internet politics and argue that online activities and offline power structures do not exist in isolation and are unequally mediated. Reviews Blogistan: The Internet and Politics in Iran Zuzana Krihova http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=7913 Sreberny and Khiabany's book Blogistan deals with various paradoxes and contradictions of Iranian policy towards the information and communication technologies (ICTs). Placing the Iranian blogosphere within the rapidly modernized telecommunication sector and looking at the democratic potentials of the Internet being suppressed by Iranian state policies, Blogistan reveals how the contradictions between the development of ICTs and its state's control as well as tension between market interests and revolutionary claims create a contradictory blogosphere in Iran. Von Chatraum bis Cyberjihad: Muslimische Internetnutzung in lokaler und globaler Perspektive Göran Larsson http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=7922 The book titled Von Chatraum bis Cyberjihad: Muslimische Internetnutzung in lokaler und globaler Perspektive, edited by Matthias Brückner and Johanna Pink, focuses on different aspects of the Islamic and Muslim presence on the Internet. It is divided into three subsections. The first focuses on Internet use in the Islamic world, the second on trans-locality and the Internet, and the third on global Islam. -- Vit Sisler, Ph.D. Charles University in Prague Faculty of Arts & Philosophy Institute of Information Science and Librarianship New Media Studies http://uisk.jinonice.cuni.cz/sisler/