Some of my many joys of the Internet are making friends around the world and learning about different cultures. A particular focus of my activities in this area is to learn from Muslim friends in the Middle East. I met these people on Google’s Orkut social networking service, and some of them read my blog, created with Blogger.com, another Google product. Today I received an e-mail from my closest friend, pleading that I let the world know that Iran Telecommunications has blocked Iranians’ access to Orkut. She was moved to express herself with a four-letter word, which I suspect is a profoundly unusual action for this Muslim woman.

Hasty research uncovered an entry at Iranmania about the issue. The Web site is probably overloaded by now. According to some, the Iranian powers are blocking the wildly popular Persian Blog, as well as blogs at Blogspot (another holding of the Google empire) and more. Are they protecting Iranians from evil Western influences? Preventing them from speaking out against their government? It’s certain they are preventing Western minds like mine from a better understanding of the Muslim mind.

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