BROOKE GLADSTONE: Joel Campagna is with the Committee to Protect Journalists. We'll link to his report on Saudi Arabia from our site, onthemedia.org.

Rasheed Abou-Alsamh knows a lot about the lively debate happening online in Saudi Arabia. He writes a blog there in which his views often clash with that of his main employer, the conservative Arab News. He also writes for foreign papers, like The Washington Times and The Christian Science Monitor.

In a recent Monitor piece, he profiled some notable blogs written by young Saudi women. He told us that one of those bloggers, who goes by the name Saudi Eve, returned from a business trip to find her website blocked.

RASHEED ABOU-ALSAMH: She's been writing a lot about her love life and a bit about her sex life, though not anything explicit in Western terms, and also writing about God and spirituality and religion. And she's mixed the two together, and I think the fact that she did write about religion and sex in the same post in Arabic attracted lots of negative attention from the authorities. And I think that's what caused her to be blocked.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Has she gotten any support within Saudi Arabia?

RASHEED ABOU-ALSAMH: Yes. I would say it's split 50/50. Other bloggers were outraged when she was blocked, and they started an "Unblock Saudi Eve" campaign on their sites, and they also encouraged other bloggers to send unblock request forms to the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, which is the main Internet hub for the kingdom.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So you're saying the reaction to Saudi Eve's plight is about 50/50. What about the ones who are against her?

RASHEED ABOU-ALSAMH: I read lots of comments from female bloggers that were telling her, oh, you know, we really think what you've been writing is horrible and you shouldn't be exposing your private life in public. I was able to read those things because I have a satellite Internet connection, which gets me past the censors. And I think many Saudis are subscribing to this new form of technology to get around the censorship.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And how long will that last before that route is also blocked?

RASHEED ABOU-ALSAMH: Well, it's pretty expensive. It costs more than 100 dollars a month to subscribe to it, so I don't think they fear that a mass population would pick it up any time soon.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Mm-hmm. Now, some bloggers have organized under something called The Official Community of Saudi Arabian Bloggers. You'd think they'd be supportive of Saudi Eve, but, in fact, they're not. Right?

RASHEED ABOU-ALSAMH: [LAUGHS] The opposite, in fact. I interviewed one of the founders of the Official Community of Saudi Arabian Bloggers, and his name is Mohammad al-Mossaed. He was saying that their group aims to support bloggers who mostly write in Arabic, that they exclude blogs that are purely like personal diaries and they exclude blogs that criticize Islam in any way. So I am sure they construed what she had written on her blog as being criticism of Islam or not being appropriate to what they think religious topics should be talked about.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So they profess great conservatism and respect for the faith, but there was a post that we found from another young Saudi woman's blog, a site called "A Thought in the Kingdom of Lunacy." This woman's e-mail moniker is Classic Diva, and here's what she wrote after talking to one of the bloggers from the Official Community of Saudi Arabian Bloggers.

She writes, "We chatted a few times, and one day he told me that his father was in the hospital, terminally ill. And within a few minutes of him telling me about his father, he tried to have cybersex with me. What I want to know is this. What is someone like that doing as a member of OCSAB?"

She writes, "And while I'm on the subject of Islamic principles, since when are covert relationships permissible in Islam?" Is she likely to incur any risk for even writing a blog entry like that?

RASHEED ABOU-ALSAMH: Well, as I wrote in my story, she has many problems with her own family, being able to blog, because she told me that her family is very conservative and that for a few months they forbade her to use the Internet at home because her brothers were suspicious that she was having an online affair with somebody.

I mean, she was forced to sneak out of the house to go, you know, use the Internet at her friend's house to blog.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Or, as you mentioned in your piece, the universal refuge for bloggers, Starbucks.

RASHEED ABOU-ALSAMH: [LAUGHS] Yes, exactly, where you have wireless Internet access.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Many great claims have been made for the power of the Internet to liberalize countries. They used to say it about China. People don't say it so often any more. Do you think the Internet can have an impact on the culture of Saudi Arabia?

RASHEED ABOU-ALSAMH: Yes, I do, definitely. I mean, we currently have a population of around 24,000,000 people in Saudi Arabia; 3.1 million of them are currently online, and, according to a study that came out this week from Microsoft, there's a 20 percent Internet growth rate in the kingdom.

So, I mean, although there are only like 300 blogs registered in the kingdom that I know of, I do think that the Internet is having an impact.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Rasheed, obviously you feel pretty comfortable in departing from the editorial line of your newspaper in your pieces in The Christian Science Monitor, The Washington Times and in your conversations with us. Are you feeling pretty secure at Arab News or do you just feel you have other places to go?

RASHEED ABOU-ALSAMH: I do feel secure, because I know there are many other Saudis who think the same way I do, but they're just too afraid to speak up.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Why aren't you?

RASHEED ABOU-ALSAMH: Because I think in the end, I think we Saudis have to decide what sort of country we want for the future. We just have to come out and, you know, speak up for what we believe in.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: All right. Rasheed, thank you very much.

RASHEED ABOU-ALSAMH: Thank you.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Rasheed Abou-Alsamh is a senior editor at Arab News, and he blogs at rasheedsworld.blogspot.com.