By Katelyn Fossett, ForeignPolicy.com, Dec. 10, 2013

On Monday, Saudi authors Yasser Bahjatt and Ibraheem Abbas learned that their science fiction book, which shot to the top of the best-seller list in Saudi Arabia, had been banned from sale in Kuwait and Qatar. The episode was familiar: in late November, Saudi Arabia's Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice yanked the book from shelves for a thorough examination in response to concerns over inappropriate content. The book, called Hawjan, is a fantasy/sci-fi story with religious themes that spurred rumors [....]

"There is almost no science fiction in the region -- it does not exist as a genre," Bahjatt told Foreign Policy. After seeing the immense popularity of Hawjan, he stressed that the dearth can't be attributed to a lack of demand and instead blamed it on the restrictions of conservative Islamic society. "In the past two decades in the region, imagination has been systematically shut down ... I think part of it might be religious. Rather than go ahead and try to [understand] religion on their own, people started relying on scholars to tell them."

It was this "shutdown" of imagination -- and its implications for progress and innovation -- that initially compelled Abbas and Bahjatt to start their Arab science fiction group and publishing company [....]