The Arabic Omani blogosphere has gone mad in the last two weeks over a post written by Muawiyah Al Rawahi that suggested that the government should loosen its alcohol regulations to allow local Omanis to also have an alcohol purchase permit, just like expats. For those who don’t know, except for the month of Ramadan, alcohol can be served at licensed restaurants and hotels in Oman legally for all Omani and expat customers. However, licensed liquor stores in Oman can only sell alcohol to “permit” holders. Muawiyah suggested in his blog post that the fact that locals are not allowed to have an alcohol purchase permit pushes them to seek the alcohol black market which is obviously not regulated and can have health and safety issues in addition to the monopolistic activities practiced in such markets.

The Arabic community was outraged by Muawiyah’s public discussion of a social and religious taboo: drinking alcohol. Though previously celebrated in forums and other blogs for his commentary and criticism of public figures and government practices, Muawiyah has been criticised and personally insulted on a number of online discussion boards for his “unislamic and immoral opinions”.  ِA single thread dedicated to criticise and attack Muawiyah on Omania2.net had more than 12 pages of comments AFTER deleting all the ones which were regarded by the staff members as ones that violate the rules of the forum. A Omani member of over a 1000 posts who claims to be currently in Australia asked the administration to ban Muawiyah completely from the forum because of his suggestions to disobey religion.

The outrage in the Arabic community is bizarre to some extent, mainly because the sale of alcohol is legal in Oman. Yet it remains socially unacceptable for most people, and it is of course prohibited by religion. The majority of commentators in Arabic forums cannot seem digest the idea that alcohol has always been legal in Oman. This reminds me of how I always tried to explain to my classmates earlier this year about different social norms in Oman, and how things could be legal, yet socially and religiously unacceptable (e.g. drinking alcohol), or legal and religiously permitted, yet socially no longer acceptable (e.g. having four wives).

It is interesting to see how ‘freedom of expression’ became a really popular proposition in the online Omani community with all the expose´campaigns and criticism of the government earlier this year, yet the community is not willing to allow a blogger to have an “opinion” on a legal topic that is not socially acceptable. However, just the same way the authority can no longer control what people want to say, the people themselves will not be able to control what anybody wants to say either.