Aljazeera Publishing

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Al Jazeera Publishing
Type Publishing Company
Country Flag of United Arab Emirates United Arab Emirates
Availability Worldwide
Key people Sultan Al-Faisal, Investment Company
Sarah Walsh, Editor
Launch date 1992
Website www.aljazeerapublishing.com
www.aljazeera.com
www.islamonline.com
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Aljazeera Publishing was formed in 1992 in London to produce content for expatriate Persian Gulf (i.e. those from the region known as Aljazeera) residents living in the United Kingdom. Aljazeera Publishing is now headquartered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates [1]. It produces a number of publishing titles in both print and offline format.

Aljazeera refers to the geographic region of the Arabian Peninsula which consists of modern day Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrain, Yemen, Kuwait and Qatar. The name Aljazeera has been in use for centuries and specifically means 'The Island'. The Arabian Peninsular is considered by locals to be an island (Aljazeera), as on three fronts it is surrounded by water and on the fourth by desert.

In 2005 and 2006 Aljazeera Publishing was involved in a number of legal disputes with AlJazeera TV Channel covering domain usage of Aljazeera.com [2] and trade mark registrations. The domain name usage case arbitrated by World Intellectual Property Organization proved highly embrassing for the TV Channel who were found guilty of "abusing the administrative proceedings" and had its case rejected with the panel questioning the integrity of the evidence submitted by the TV Channel.

Aljazeera Publishing first published a magazine in 1992 called Al Jazeera Al Arabia. Since then it has adopted a shortened version of the name as simply AlJazeera Magazine as listed in Media UK.[3]

The shortening of the title occurred after an alleged investment by a Saudi investment company. Al Jazeera Publishing was highly critical of the Saudi Arabian government’s human rights records and published a number of critical reports in 1993, 1994 and 1995.

These human rights reports raised Al Jazeera Al Arabia’s profile on the Middle East stage. Extracts of such reports were used in a Human Rights Watch report [4] as published in 1993, as well as the Islamic Research and Information Center [5].

Since the Saudi investment no more anti Saudi Arabian stories have appeared in any of Al Jazeera Publishing titles, rather the attention appears to have turned against the Qatari ruling family with a string of hostile articles such as "Egypt arrests Qatari prince over illegal car race" [6], "Qatari prince convicted of abusing girls" [7], "First church in Muslim Qatar risks backlash" [8] and "Qatar finances sports centre in Israel" [9].

Besides Aljazeera Magazine, Al Jazeera Publishing produces IslamOnline.com, which is a popular English-language Islamic site on the Internet.[citation needed] Since 1998, Al Jazeera Publishing has been involved in a dispute with Islamonline.net. According to whois, the Islamonline.net domain name was registered after IslamOnline.com. IslamOnline.net is much more popular based on statistics from Alexa.[10] This is likely because IslamOnline.net offers an Arabic version as well as English.[original research?] Al Jazeera Publishing owns trademark rights [11] for IslamOnline in Europe.

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://www.aljazeerapublishing.com/
  2. ^ http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2005/d2005-0309.html
  3. ^ http://www.mediauk.com/magazines/343300/al-jazeera-magazine
  4. ^ http://www.hrw.org/reports/1994/WR94/Middle-09.htm
  5. ^ http://www.iric.org/f1t3.asp
  6. ^ http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/news_service/middle_east_full_story.asp?service_id=9821
  7. ^ http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/news_service/middle_east_full_story.asp?service_id=9380
  8. ^ http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/news_service/middle_east_full_story.asp?service_id=9901
  9. ^ http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/news_service/middle_east_full_story.asp?service_id=9603
  10. ^ Alexa traffic comparison between islamonline.net and islamonline.com
  11. ^ http://www.patent.gov.uk/tm/t-find/t-find-number?detailsrequested=C&trademark=2378643
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