How did a Middle East blog find one of its most outlandish stories, "Emirates to introduce shisha lounges onboard A380 fleet," reprinted as fact across the world? Easy: there is little in the region like The Pan-Arabia Enquirer, billed as "The World's Only seven-star Satirical News Source".
"Katie Price to sue country of Jordan over naming rights," screamed one headline. "She cannot sue a country for a name they had even before her parents were born!" cried one Arab tweeter. The Enquirer has triggered a tidal wave of comment, prompted by headlines the such as "Saudi clerics 'running out of day-to-day things to ban'" or "Qatar buys all Nobel prizes 'simply to piss off' Richard Dawkins".
"Traditional media outlets in the region often fail to scrutinise press releases, no matter how far-fetched they may be," says avid reader Yousef Tuqan, the CEO of a UAE-based digital agency. "The satire of the PAE holds a mirror up to this."
Since 2010, the site has been dousing sombre topics such as east-west culture clashes, dictatorship and war with its own special silliness. "The Middle East is absolutely ripe for satire," says the Enquirer's founder and chief maker-upper, who works anonymously with his small team and is careful not to cause any real offence. "It's about finding the right angle: looking beyond what's happening now in Egypt, for example, to the way earnest international 'commentators' were bickering on Twitter over the semantics of a coup."
"At first our audience was mainly western expats," says the site's founder. "But we quickly gained a large Arabic following too." Among them is prolific tweeter, journalist, academic and Sharjah royal family member, Sultan Al Qassemi. "The Pan-Arabia Enquirer has introduced a lighter side of news in a region at a time when news ranges from the tragic to the dry," he says. Now, the brand has expanded into merchandise, with a compilation book in the pipeline. But, for the next few weeks at least, the focus is on dealing with one major loss: "The Iranian election hit comedy hard," says the founder. "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a satirical goldmine."
