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Intimate strangers in a splintering world

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Multiculturalism is enriching and as easy as child’s play. But as the winds of intolerance blow harder, it may become a liability for my son and his generation.

Monday 29 April 2013

You don’t need to belong to a place to have a sense of belonging and you can be a foreigner in your own land. Image: ©Khaled Diab

As Iskander and I enjoy a rare sunny Sunday during this northern European spring that has not yet found its spring, our son quite literally sings the praises of multiculturalism, as he recites nursery rhymes and songs he likes in different languages.

While I bask in his sonshine, I marvel at how the intricacies of different cultures and identities become, in his tiny hands, quite simply child’s play.

Not only does he act at home in his two native cultures, Belgium and Egypt, he also took the complexities of the Holy Land, where he spent more than half his short life, in his, at first wobbly, stride. In that sun-kissed, trouble-drenched corner of the world, his blond locks went down a treat on both sides of the bitter divide, as did his nonchalance, charm and tenderness.

When we returned to Belgium recently from our 20-month stint in Israel-Palestine, we were a little concerned about how long it would take him to adjust to life back in Europe, especially the demanding task of starting pre-school.

But he took to it like a rubber duck to bubbly bathwater. Within a few short weeks, Dutch switched back to being his dominant language after a hybrid Palestinian-Egyptian Arabic had been during most of our time in Jerusalem.

Multilingualism, as researchers are increasingly discovering, enhances children’s cognitive abilities and helps them to do better in school. As the world continues to shrink, Iskander’s polyglottic childhood should place him in a good position to enjoy an international adulthood.

Although like any parents we hope that the future is bright for our son, there are a number of clouds on the horizon that trouble me. My wife and I take the benefits of multiculturalism as a given, as do most people in our circles. Not only is the microcosm of our family confirmation of this, but our own experiences back up this conviction.

For my part, I find that dividing my childhood, youth and adulthood between the Middle East and Europe has been a generally enriching experience, despite certain challenges – I feel both out of place and at home everywhere. My well-heeled Belgian wife developed a keen wanderlust early on which influenced her choice of studies, her extensive travels and her choice of careers.

Iskander is the next step along this evolutionary line. While both my wife and I grew up in monocultural families, Iskander has been born into diversity, with all its inherent richness and complexities.

My own personal experiences have taught me that in human interactions personal culture and disposition are more vital factors than collective culture. For example, my wife and I – both secular progressives with an inclusive, humanist outlook – have far more in common with each other than we do with our supposed cultural kin.

But as the winds of monocultural intolerance swirl evermore-menacingly overhead, not everyone sees the situation this way. A growing number of people (re)subscribe to the notion that there is an innate, cliquey cultural essence which unites a certain group to the exclusion of others.

This is partly a by-product of the social and economic alienation many people encounter, and the consequent desire to manufacture a sense of belonging. As I get older, I’m growing to understand better the attraction some people feel to having deep roots: the security derived from the familiar, the ability to read the various chapters of your life inscribed on every paving stone for miles around, and the convenience of being in the comforting proximity of family and lifelong friends.

But you don’t need to belong to a place to have a sense of belonging and you can be a foreigner in your own land. I know people who have lived in the same place their entire lives and feel alienated from their surroundings. I know others who move constantly but settle into each station as if it were their final destination.

With petty nationalism seemingly on the rise, partly on the back of the crisis afflicting global capitalism, this exclusiveness often manifests itself along nationalistic, even patriotic, lines. Given our aversion to nationalism, we hope that Iskander will grow up to become a proud citizen of the human nation.

But I appreciate that peer pressure, or rejection, may force him to jettison, or at least to underplay, one of his identities. And so, paradoxically, he may come full circle: returning to one of the monocultural roots of his multicultural parents.

Although balancing national identities can be done relatively painlessly, especially between societies that are not in conflict, a tougher nut to crack is religion. Of course, Iskander is still too young for religion to be a real issue, but we plan to raise our son to appreciate the beauty of his triple heritage – the secular, non-aligned humanism of his parents, his father’s Muslim and his mother’s Christian heritage – and to choose his faith for himself.

Even though the millet system, which gave a high degree of autonomy for recognized religious communities, was once an admirable expression of pluralist tolerance in action, its survival in much of what was once the Ottoman empire, including Israel and Palestine, grates against 21^st century reality and aspirations. This outdated system defines faith as a birth right, no matter how wrongly or incorrectly this may describe a person’s actual convictions.

In Egypt, this means that my identity papers say that I am a “Muslim” – which I partly am, in the cultural sense of the word. In addition, given the legal assumption that the son of a Muslim man is also, by default, a Muslim, Iskander, regardless of his actual beliefs, would still be a Muslim in the state’s eye. If Iskander rejects Islam or religion in general, this could result in the surreal situation where two generations of non-believers are still officially defined as Muslim – a situation not unlike that of the historian Shlomo Sand in Israel, who is a third-generation non-believer, but cannot change his ID card to reflect this.

However, the sands may be slowly shifting: the well-known writer Yoram Kaniuk has won the right in the courts to be registered as “without religion”.

Our refusal to predefine our son’s convictions have made me so far reluctant to register Iskander’s birth in Egypt, in the hopes that one day the religion field will disappear from birth certificates and IDs, or until I find a legal means to keep it blank.

However, even if the state becomes more amenable to diversity – which seems unlikely under the current Islamist stewardship but is conceivable under new management given the protection of personal freedoms guaranteed by the new constitution – society as a whole will not necessarily follow suit.

In Egypt, especially in traditional and conservative circles, the idea that religious identity is inherited runs deep, both among Muslims and Christians, and the traditional model of tolerance is to live as good neighbours and friends but not generally to intermarry. That said, I have met a number of conservative Muslims who accept the rights of other Muslims to convert and even to become atheists.

More troublingly, the increasing marginalisation of Christians in society and their targeting by Islamic extremists bodes ill if the country fails to rediscover its pluralism. For Iskander, this could be problematic if he decides to pursue his Christian identity or, worst, in the eyes of society, abandons religion altogether. And even if he chooses to become a Muslim, it would cause him to feel shame towards an integral part of his personal heritage.

But our son’s mixed heritage is not just potentially problematic in the Middle East, it can also cause him difficulty in Europe. Although European society has evolved into a multicultural kaleidoscope which, at its best, is incredibly tolerant and accepting of diversity, there are numerous worrying undercurrents.

Here in Belgium, the law guarantees equality regardless of background and people possess the legal freedom – both nationally and at the EU level – to choose the belief system that suits them. Moreover, the apparent unceremonious death of organised religion has left questions of faith almost completely in the private and personal sphere.

But even if Christianity has to a large extent fallen by the wayside, Christian rituals have been secularised, as reflected in the enduring popularity of Catholic sacraments, such as baptism and confirmation. Moreover, for some, old Christian prejudices have combined with secular distrust of religion or old-fashioned racism, to stigmatise Muslims. This manifests itself in the increasing mainstreaming of Islamophobia, as well as xenophobia in general.

The trouble with the push towards greater monocultural conformity, whether in Europe or the Middle East, is that the rolling boulder of intolerance gathers no nuance as it hurtles down the slippery slope to ever-greater rejection. Today’s “in” could easily become tomorrow’s “other”, as eloquently expressed by pastor Martin Niemöller in his famous “First they came for…” statement.

This is reflected in how certain salafist groups devolved from the rejection of the non-Muslim other to declaring Muslims who have a different interpretation of Islam to theirs as the enemy within. It can also be seen in how extremist settlers have widened their attacks on Palestinians, to target Jewish-Israeli peace activists and even the Israeli army, as well as the growing segregation between the religious and secular within Israeli society.

For the sake of my son, and all our children, I hope that multiculturalism prevails. In this, we can takea leaf out of Iskander’s book, who shares his affections indiscriminately, based solely on a person’s individual merit, without regard to nationality, religion, gender, ethnicity or creed.

—

This article first appeared in Haaretz on 23 April 2013.

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De paradox van de Egyptische revolutie

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Door Osama Diab

De Egyptische revolutie was een geval van collectieve en spontane genialiteit. Maar dit succes in het verkopen van de opstand kwam op een prijs

Thursday 18 April 2013

Arabic version

Photo: © Zaza Bertrand

Twee factoren versterkten de slagkracht van de Egyptische revolutie: ten eerste was men zich volledig bewust van de impact van de beelden die de wereld werden ingestuurd en besefte men hoe belangrijk deze waren in de perceptie van de gebeurtenissen.

Men was ervan overtuigd dat deze revolutie een rijke erfenis zou nalaten. Honderdduizenden mobiele telefoons en honderden professionele camera’s registreerden elk lied, vlag, kwetsuur, dode, traan, lach, schot en gebed. De zoekopdracht ‘Egyptian revolution’ levert op Google alleen al in het Engels negen miljoen beelden op. En dan hebben we het nog niet over het aantal zoekresultaten in andere talen.

Ten tweede was er de nood aan steun. Er was het verlangen te kunnen rekenen op de sympathie, de empathie, het inzicht en de erkenning van de hele wereld.

Om succesvol te zijn en sympathie op te wekken, moest de revolutie zich inpassen in de idealen die de westerse media propageren. Aangezien men dit besefte, was er geen tekort aan Engelstalige spandoeken op het Tahrirplein, klaar om door de camera’s geregistreerd en doorgestuurd te worden.

Een van de meest bekende en centrale spandoeken op het Tahrirplein was “het volk wil de val van het regime”, het motto van de revolutie, zowel in het Arabisch als het Engels.

Een jongeman droeg een tweetalig bord waarop stond “Facebook tegen iedere tiran”, wat benadrukt dat het geschoolde, stedelijke Egyptenaren uit de middenklasse waren die deze opstand leidden. Betogers, de ene al wat vloeiender in het Engels dan de andere, waren enthousiast om de internationale media toe te spreken om de sympathie van de internationale gemeenschap te winnen.

“We zullen niet zwijgen, of je nu moslim, christen of atheist bent”, riep een salafistische manifestant in perfect Amerikaans Engels. Door het discours van de Westerse media over mensen die eruitzien als hem, is de jongeman het soort persoon naast wie men zich in een vliegtuig niet helemaal comfortabel zouvoelen. Het feit dat hij sprak zoals ‘wij’ en ‘onze’ warden deelde, bezorgde de Egyptische revolutie een gunstig imago.

“Dit is heel slecht, voor mij en mijn regering” roept een andere, oudere, man in zwaar gebroken Engels terwijl hij op weg is naar één van de meest dodelijke demonstraties, die van 28 januari 2011. “Ik heb geen eten, ik heb niets. Ik en mijn kinderen. Ik ga vandaag sterven!” Hoe kan iemand niet sympathiseren met deze ongewapende en niet-ideologische oude man, wiens enige ambitie is zichzelf en zijn kleine kinderen te kunnen voeden?

Dit is hoe een revolutie eruitziet in een tijdperk van geglobaliseerde media: de Egyptische revolutie moest de hele wereld, de media, politici, NGO’s en burgers overtuigen. Men moest ter plaatse public relations en marketingcampagnes verzorgen en leren omgaan met de media die het Tahrirplein massaal inpalmden.

Eén van de belangrijkste en sterkste beelden van de revolutie was dat van koptische christenen die een menselijke cirkel vormden rond moslims om hen te beschermen tijdens het bidden. Beelden van vrouwelijke dokters die de gewonde betogers behandelden en video’s van vreugdevolle liederen en humoristische spreekkoren hebben de harten en de geesten van miljoenen overal ter wereld beroerd.

Hoe zou een politicus kunnen verantwoorden dat hij een dergelijke egalitaire revolutie niet zou steunen? Hoe kan om het even welk systeem dat vrijheid en democratie predikt een dictator steunen tegen deze eisen in van de betogers en hun demografische samenstelling?

Photo: ©Harry Gruyaert

Aanhangers van de revolutie waren er snel bij om deze krachtige beelden te verspreiden. Deze beantwoorden nauwelijks aan de stereotypen gecreëerd door de wereldmedia en hun post-Koude-Oorlogsdiscours, waarin naties met een meerderheid aan moslims officieel de voormalige Sovjetstaten hebben vervangen als de ‘Andere’ van het Westen. Het was precies dit verwerpen van identiteitsdenken dat noodzakelijk was om Mubarak ten val te brengen. Het was het ongeplande doel en het onuitgesproken akkoord om, door nadrukkelijk nietideologisch te zijn, de wereldleiders moreel te verplichten der evolutie te steunen.

Wanneer we kijken naar de ontwikkeling van de Amerikaanse reactie tijdens die achttien dagen, wordt meteen duidelijk dat dit spontane, aan de basis ontsproten propagandaplan bijzonder doeltreffend was. In de vroege dagen van de revolutie weigerde de Amerikaanse vice-president Joe Biden Mubarak als een dictator te omschrijven, hoewel een eindeloos aantal internationale organisaties, inclusief Bidens eigen ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken, Egypte veroordeelden vanwege zijn bijzonder zwakke mensenrechtenreputatie. President Obama zelf had eerder Egyptes corrupte dictator omschreven als een ‘vriend’ en een ‘factor van stabiliteit’.

Enkele dagen later begon minister van Buitenlandse Zaken Hillary Clinton te praten over ‘hervorming’, maar nog niet over ‘verandering’, toen ze commentaar gaf over wat er diende te gebeuren in Egypte in de periode die later bekend is geworden als een revolutie.

Naar het einde van de achttien dagen toe, veranderde de Obama-administratie haar toon drastisch. Mubarak was niet langer een ‘vriend’ of een ‘factor van stabiliteit’ en in plaats van ‘hervorming’ werd er gepraat over onmiddellijk opstappen. “De transitie moet nu beginnen,” zei president Obama enkele dagen voor de val van de Egyptische dictator.

Het was, minstens ten dele, een gevolg van de kracht van het beeld. Als de minste hint van identiteitspolitiek zichtbaar was geweest op het Tahrirplein, dan zou Mubarak nu nog steeds aan de macht zijn met steun en hulp van de VS.

Als iemand dit revolutionaire festival had willen vergallen, zou de gemakkelijkste wijze geweest zijn de Israëlische of de Amerikaanse vlag te verbranden en Fox News de rest te laten doen. Men kan zich afvragen waarom Mubarak hier niet aan gedacht heeft.

De revolutie bereikte pas zijn kritische massa en keerpunt nadat duidelijk werd dat we niet méér vroegen dan de rechten die men in het Westen geniet. Wij zijn geen radicale islamisten.

Wij zijn niet antisemitisch. Wij zijn geen militante marxisten. We gebruiken Facebook net zoals u en we spreken net zo goed Engels als u. We passen niet in één van de door de media gecreëerde vooroordelen die u van ‘ons’ hebt.

Dit was een klassiek geval van collectieve intelligentie. Ik twijfel er geen seconde aan dat de meeste betogers werkelijk in deze waarden geloven, maar het talent om de revolutie te promoten en te marketen zonder media-, reclame- of PR-plan is niets minder dan een daad van collectieve en spontane genialiteit.

Een discours dat zich zo expliciet op deze ontegensprekelijk universele en nobele waarden beroept, kan toch geen weerstand opwekken?

Het addertje onder het gras

Om de steun van de wereld te winnen, gebruikten de revolutionairen een politiek correct discours over vrijheid en democratie. Het probleem zit hem echter in de aard van het concept “discours.” Elk discours impliceert namelijk een kluwen van vaak onuitgesproken conceptuele relaties tussen objecten, concepten, symbolen, beelden, waarden en axioma’s. Binnen een discours is een uitspraak over de ene waarde onlosmakelijk verbonden met een ander concept, dat op zijn beurt weer vasthangt aan een ander beeld, enzoverder.

Het is belangrijk zich bewust te zijn van dit “relationalisme” binnen elk discours, moreel systeem of waardenkader.

Binnen het discours van de liberale democratie in zijn neoliberale vorm bestaat er bijvoorbeeld een conceptuele relatie tussen het idee van “moderne, economisch gezonde natie” enerzijds en vrije handel en een gederegulariseerde economie anderzijds. Ideeën zoals zelfvoorziening,

welvaartsstaat, een betere verdeling van de welvaart, en maatregelen om de nationale industrie te beschermen worden allemaal als verouderd bestempeld. Ze worden niet meer toegestaan. Ze zijn kortweg geen onderdeel van het discours waarin we ons ingeschreven hebben. De Amerikaanse filosofe Judith Butler beschrijft discours dan ook als “de grenzen van wat aanvaarbaar is om gezegd te worden, de grenzen van de mogelijke waarheid”.

Het concept van relationalisme helpt ons te begrijpen wat er nu verkeerd zou kunnen zijn met een discours van vreedzame protesten, egalitarisme, technologisch determinisme, enzovoort. Velen in Egypte zijn akkoord met de waarden die vandaag als westers worden beschouwd, zoals gendergelijkheid, algemeen stemrecht, vrijheid van religie, enzovoort.

Anderzijds weigeren velen het westerse liberale democratische model te erkennen als de enige geldige manier om landen te besturen en een samenleving te doen functioneren. Ze willen het niet kritiekloos en blindelings overnemen zonder ervoor te zorgen dat het beantwoordt aan de ei genheden van de natie, in het bijzonder wanneer het economische luik een ernstige hypotheek legt op de mogelijkheid voor arme families om brood op de plank te brengen.

Een diplomatiek telegram, getiteld Volgende stappen om de democratie in Egypte vooruit te helpen, gelekt en gepubliceerd door Wikileaks, somt op hoe ogenschijnlijk louter humanistische waarden vaak gekoppeld zijn een economischeagenda.

“USAID’s nieuwe programma Rechtvaardigheid voor families zal NGO’s engageren om het publiek meer bewust te maken van de wettelijke rechten van vrouwen en kinderen, alsook de wettelijke diensten die beschikbaar zijn voor deze achtergestelde groepen. Deze inspanningen zullen ook stuiten op reactionaire kritiek in de trant van ‘omkoping’ en ‘bemoeienis’”, leest men in het Amerikaanse diplomatieke telegram.

De zin die onmiddellijk volgt op deze ogenschijnlijk altruïstische bezorgdheid voor Egyptische achtergestelde groepen luidt: “[We moeten] erkennen dat economische hervormingen democratische hervormingen aanvullen: we moeten het Vrijhandelsakkoord nieuw leven inblazen en advies uitbrengen aan het Congres bij de eerstvolgende politieke opening.”

We leven in een periode van volatiliteit die deels het resultaat is van een te grote aanpassing aan het westerse economische en politieke model. Egypte is bedolven onder een torenhoge schuld en is op een systematische manier verarmd door corrupte privatiseringsschema’s en slechte arbeidsomstandigheden.

Als we hier kritiek op uiten, betekent dit niet dat we tegen vrouwen- of minderhedenrechten zijn. Deze kritiek past niet gemakkelijk binnen het politiek-economische discours van de westerse liberale democratie zoals verwoord in het telegram, dat zichzelf het monopolie op dergelijke waarden toemeet.

Het westerse model is immers hét model geworden, omdat politieke en militaire macht geconcentreerd is in het Westen.

Sinds de revolutie heeft Egypte vrije en eerlijke verkiezingen beleefd, maar deze hebben alleen een inefficiënt parlement en inefficiënte opeenvolgende kabinetten opgeleverd. Dit bewijst dat verkiezingen en een ornamentele liberale democratische structuur niet per definitie de levens van tientallen miljoenen arme en gemarginaliseerde Egyptenaren zal verbeteren.

In tegendeel, de kans is zelfs groot dat hun situatie zou verslechteren.

De te grote nadruk op verkiezingen (de hoeksteen van een liberale democratie) gaf macht aan partijen en groepen die over enorme middelen beschikken. Deze stelden hen in staat om campagne te voeren en sociale netwerken te bouwen in zowel rurale gebieden als stedelijke centra.

Dit is duidelijk in het geval bij de Partij van Vrijheid en Rechtvaardigheid van de Moslimbroeders, die wordt gefinancierd door een klasse van zakenmannen-miljardairs en die erin slaagde om 47% van de parlementszetels en het presidentschap te winnen. De rijkste man van Egypte, Naguib Sawiris, slaagde er eveneens in om slechts enkele maanden na de oprichting van een politieke partij 15% van de zitjes in het parlement te behalen, ook dankzij zijn miljarden.

Deze verkozen politici hebben hard opgetreden tegen stakingen, weigerden een minimumloon op te leggen in weerwil van een gerechtelijke beslissing, en maakten geen haast bij het uitoefenen van druk op Europese regeringen om Mubaraks activa terug te geven en een deel van Egyptes zware schuld kwijt te schelden.

In plaats daarvan lenen ze geld van het IMF en andere kredietverstrekkers, wat een verwoestend effect kan hebben op de toekomst van de Egyptische economie. Erger nog, dit is de toekomst van Egyptenaren die worden opgezadeld met een schuld voor geleend geld dat ze zelf niet eens hebben kunnen uitgeven en waarvan ze niet hebben kunnen genieten. Als op schulden gebaseerde groei de toekomst van de welvarende Europese Unie op het spel zet, dan kan men zich inbeelden welk verwoestend effect dit kan hebben op arme ontwikkelingslanden.

Dit alles gebeurt terwijl andere bronnen voor de financiering van publieke uitgaven en de beperking van het begrotingstekort duidelijk voorhanden zijn.

Wist u dat bronnen dicht bij de Wereldbank schatten dat meer dan $132 miljard uit Egypte verdween tijdens het bewind van Mubarak? Wist u dat belastingsachterstallen in Egypte 65 miljard Egyptische pond bedragen? Wist u dat de grootste bedrijven in Egypte slechts 0,5% betalen, zelfs al verdienden ze miljarden nettowinsten ingevolge belastingsvrijstellingen (of beter gunsten) speciaal ontworpen voor bedrijven die dicht bij het voormalige regime stonden?

Wist u dat het Verenigd Koninkrijk weigert de activa van het Mubarak-regime te bevriezen hoewel de EU een sanctielijst had uitgevaardigd die de activa van mensen die tot het voormalige regime hoorden bevriest? Wist u dat Egypte een hoogste belastingsaanslag van 20% heeft, wat betekent dat een familie die 1000 dollar per maand verdient evenveel moet betalen als een zakenman die dat bedrag op een minuut binnenrijft?

Wist u dat als u 420 Egyptische pond (50 Euro) per maand verdient, u op 10% wordt belast terwijl sommige ondernemingen die miljoenen verdienen 0,5% betalen door belastingsmanipulatie? Zelfs de meest kapitalistische economieën hebben een progressieve belasting. De Verenigde Staten bijvoorbeeld, hét bastion van het kapitalisme, hebben een hogere belastingsaanslag van 35%.

Nog steeds zijn er verkozen islamistische parlementsleden die de IMF-narratieven herhalen en spreken over buitenlandse directe investeringen en BNP-groei als een wondermedicijn voor al onze politieke, sociale en economische problemen.

Daarbij vertonen ze een schokkend gebrek aan creativiteit en een onvermogen om buiten de lijnen van de IMF-aanbevelingen te denken. Het is het vermelden waard dat we in de jaren voorafgaand aan de revolutie getuige waren van één van Egyptes grootste economische groeiperiodes en buitenlandse directe investeringen in zijn moderne geschiedenis.

Tegelijkertijd bereikten sociale frustratie en politieke onrust hun hoogste peil uit de recente geschiedenis. Als groei en sociale vrede al niet omgekeerd evenredig zijn, dan kan men ten minste stellen dat ze zeker niet direct evenredig zijn.

Dit is hoe discours gerelateerd is aan macht en media. Het bouwt een raamwerk van wat acceptabel, legitiem en juist is, en is zodanig dwingend dat het mensen niet toelaat om buiten dit kader te denken, spreken en handelen. Zelfs als de vrijheid om buiten dit raamwerk te opereren technisch gezien bestaat, dan mag men zich verwachten aan pasklare beschuldigingen als ‘islamitisch extremisme’, ‘links radicalisme’, ‘antisemitisme’ of ‘afgunst voor de rijken’.

In een wereld die nog steeds lijdt aan een postkoloniale kater, beschrijven deze woorden van Jean-Paul Sartre, hoewel geschreven in 1961, nog steeds adequaat de keuze van de hedendaagse ‘Oriënt’ tussen algehele aanvaarding of verwerping van het westerse modernisme:

“Hun schrijvers en dichters hebben met ongelooflijk geduld geprobeerd ons uit te leggen dat onze waarden slecht strookten met de werkelijkheid waarin zij leven, dat zij deze niet volledig konden verwerpen, maar ook niet helemaal konden aanvaarden. Grof gezegd bedoelden ze: ‘u maakt van ons gedrochten: uw humanisme geeft ons een universele waarde, maar uw racistische praktijken verbijzonderen ons.’”

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Tags: arab spring, egypt, egyptian revolution, revolution, social media, social protest

The reel story of Egyptian Jewry

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In telling the story of Egypt’s vanished Jewish community, a new documentary sheds light on a forgotten chapter of history.

Friday 29 March 2013

The Jews of Egypt, the reel history of Egypt’s Jewish minority, was due to be screened in Egyptian cinemas a couple of weeks ago, after the documentary had successfully featured in a number of domestic and international festivals.

As someone who is keenly interested not only in the Arab-Israeli conflict, but also its human ramifications and implications, I was excitedly looking forward to the opportunity to see the much-awaited documentary upon my next visit to Egypt. In fact, so keen was I to view this ground-breaking documentary, and to meet its maker, that I travelled especially to Rotterdam a couple of months ago, but through some misunderstanding, director Amir Ramses did not manage to make the rendez-vous.

“I was very enthusiastic for the commercial release,” a jet-lagged Ramses told me from Cairo, shortly after getting off the plane from New York. “I thought that three years of work might finally be worth something and that the message I wanted to transmit was going to reach audiences on a larger scale.”

And the message? Through a mix of personal testimonies from Egyptian Jews in exile, statements from historians specialising in the era and archive footage, Ramses sought to shed light on a largely forgotten chapter of Egyptian history. He wanted to show that once upon a time Jews were an integral part of Egypt’s cosmopolitan social fabric and felt just as Egyptian as their Muslim and Christian compatriots.

In my view, this message is an incredibly important and relevant one. Decades of animosity and conflict have led to the redacting by both sides of the inconvenient chapters in which Arabs and Jews coexisted largely peacefully, leaving the impression that “Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia”.

Though I have personally been aware for years of the kaleidoscope of Egypt’s Jewish past, The Jews of Egypt was a golden opportunity to reacquaint a new generation of Egyptian audiences, beyond older people and a narrow intellectual elite, with this suppressed aspect of the nation’s identity.

In addition, the documentary represents some much-overdue recognition of the historical wrong committed against Egyptian Jews. Caught as they were in the crossfire of the Arab-Israeli conflict, between the rock of pan-Arabism and the hard place of Zionism, the Jews of Egypt first became ostracised and then were unfairly expelled or pressurised out of their homeland.

An Egyptian Jew I know from London, who was forced out of his homeland in his teens but still maintains ties with Egypt, shares these sentiments. “The film not only showed that Jews from Egypt felt strongly towards their time in the country and are fond of their experience there, but it would also have opened the eyes of a number of people concerning a past that seems to have been obliterated from their history,” said the man who wished for personal reasons to conceal his identity.

Sadly, however, it looked like this might not happen, after all. Even though Jews of Egypt had received the necessary green light from the censor (and had even been viewed by the minister of culture as recently as December 2012), national security stepped in at the last moment and called off the release. Whether or not the film has actually been banned was unclear.

The sudden eleventh-hour decision to stop the screening left Ramses – who, along with producer Haitham el-Khameesy, self-financed this indie production in order to maintain its independence and ensure it does not serve one agenda or the other – unsurprisingly miffed, bewildered and furious. Interpreting the move as a means to “terrorise freedom of expression and suppress creativity”, el-Khameesy has indicated their intention to sue all the relevant authorities.

And it seems that efforts by the filmmakers and their supporters, and the ensuing stink abroad, led to a reversal of the decision and the film got another green light and was set to appear in theatres last Wednesday.

“I expected harassment before I got my permit, but I was ready for that and prepared to discuss the film with censorship committees. But they gave me the permit and I was relieved,” Ramses reflected. “But for national security to do something that is constitutionally not their right, that was a total shock.”

But what is behind this mysterious move – the sort of cloak and dagger arbitrary authoritarianism that Egypt’s revolutionaries had hoped would become a thing of the past?

“I think it must be the usual paranoia of the Egyptian authorities towards the word ‘Jewish’,” Ramses hypothesises, citing as an example of this, “when you say Jewish to a policeman, it’s like saying bogeyman.”

For his part, the director of the censorship committee, Abdel-Satar Fathi, who has “supported the film all along”, says he called national security for an explanation. In confirmation of Ramses’s speculation about the state’s state of paranoia, the censor was told that “the film’s title might cause public uproar”.

The Egyptian Jew from London, who is now in his 70s, finds this contemporary distrust and hostility inexplicable and surreal. “It is ironic that when there were some 80,000 Jews in Egypt there was no rampant anti-Jewish feeling as there is today when there are hardly any Jews in the country,” he poses.

In my view, the fact that there are currently probably fewer than 100 indigenous Jews left in Egypt actually makes easier the strong anti-Jewish sentiment gripping most strata of Egyptian society. Most Egyptians never come into contact with Jews, and the only Jews they are regularly exposed to, through the media and popular culture, are two-dimensional Israelis who oppress Palestinians and deny them their rights.

This anger at Israel’s excesses towards the Palestinians has been accompanied by Arab powerlessness to do much about it. Rather than admit that Arab defeat is largely a symptom of Arab weakness and disarray, there are those who exaggerate the power of their enemy, which makes some subconsciously seek solace in the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, first floated in Tsarist Russia, relating to Jewish plots for world dominance.

In contrast, when Egypt was home to a prominent, visible and diverse Jewish community, the fact that many people knew Jews personally or saw positive Jewish role models all around them not only tempered the suspicion with which majorities often view minorities but also presented a picture of surprising harmony. In fact, it would strike many as surprising today, but Egypt, particularly then-cosmopolitan Alexandria, was regarded as a safe haven, and land of opportunity, for Jews fleeing persecution elsewhere.

Jews, perhaps unsurprisingly, were prominent in business, banking and industry – establishing Egypt’s most famous department stores and helping set up its first national bank as part of economic efforts to resist British domination.

Like Hollywood, Egyptian cinema, widely known as the Hollywood of the Middle East, was at first dominated by foreigners and minorities, partly because in the early days, people from “good families” did not go into acting and partly because of the creative insight being a relative outsider affords.

Though Jews were more often involved in production and direction, some of Egypt’s best-loved stars were Jewish. One example was the singer-actress Leila Mourad, who captivated an entire generation with her ethereal voice and girl-next-door demeanour, and whose films even brought Jews and Arabs together in mandate Palestine.

Although Mourad’s diva status was second only to that of Um Kulthum and she managed to hold on to her place in people’s hearts until she died, the Arab-Israeli conflict cast a long shadow over her later career.

She took early retirement at the peak of her fame in the mid-1950s, perhaps troubled by the Syrian-led Arab boycott of her films and music, though Egypt’s revolutionary regime defended her, and she was even briefly the first “voice of the revolution”. However, as a sign of her enduring popularity, a popular Ramadan bio-soap was made about Mourad – ironically, a Syrian production – which dealt sensitively with her Jewish heritage.

Looking back from my vantage point a couple of generations down the line, the thing that has most caught my eye as my awareness of Egyptian Jewry has deepened is just how closely involved Egyptian Jews were in Egyptian nationalism and the country’s struggle for independence.

For example, the name Yaqub Sannu might not ring many bells today, but in the 19^th century he was a big deal in Egypt’s nascent nationalistic movement. This Egyptian Free Mason and Jew, whom my brother drew my attention to, established one of the country’s first anti-imperialist publications, The Man in the Blue Glasses.

One extremely colourful revolutionary political agitator featured in Ramses’s documentary is Henri Curiel, the son of Egypt who spoke poor Arabic and the son of a wealthy banker who became a communist revolutionary. Even after he was exiled from Egypt and stripped of his nationality, Curiel continued to feel Egyptian and supported the region’s independence struggles from his base in France, especially in Algeria. According to Jews of Egypt, Curiel warned Nasser of the impending tripartite attack by France, Britain and Israel in 1956, though the Egyptian president did not take the warning seriously.

“I was surprised the most by the passion of the Jews of Egypt even after they were expelled. They never stopped loving their country. They never lost their sense of belonging,” Amir Ramses told me. “I made this film as a tribute to that time in history when Egypt was a cosmopolitan and tolerant country.”

Although there was a lot wrong with that era and I try to resist rosy-coloured nostalgia, narrow nationalism has caused Egypt and the Middle East to fall out of love with diversity and to become less tolerant towards difference. I hope in the future the region will be able to rediscover this spirit of acceptance.

This article first appeared in Haaretz on 24 March 2013.

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Tags: amir ramses, arab-israeli conflict, boycott, britain, censorship, cinema, conspiracy theories, constitution, egypt, exile, film, france, freedom of expression, history, history of egypt, israel, jews of egypt, leila mourad, nasser, palestine, syria

The clash within civilisations

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This year marks the 20th anniversary of the clash of civilizations theory, but Samuel P Huntington was wrong.

Thursday 28 March 2013

A decade has passed since the blood-drenched invasion of Iraq began, unleashing a wave of destruction not seen in that part of the world since at least the Mongol sacking of Baghdad in the mid-13th century.

Unsurprisingly, the 10th anniversary has prompted immense media attention, in the United States and Europe, as well as in Iraq itself and the broader Middle East. In light of the carnage that has ensued following that fateful decision to invade, a lot of the public debate has focused on whether the war was justified and worthwhile.

The cheerleaders of the war argue that the invasion was just, the subsequent carnage was an unfortunate but collateral consequence of a benign act of goodwill, and that errors were made in the execution of the campaign but the principle was essentially sound.

Critics, like myself, see the wholesale destruction of Iraq and the chaos besetting it – which was chillingly illustrated by the deadly car bombings which rocked Baghdad on the 10th anniversary – as clear proof that the US-led intervention was not only unjustified but flawed.

In order to understand why, we need to rewind another 10 years, back to another important anniversary which has largely fallen under the media’s radar. Through some fluke of history, the theory which largely justified the Iraq war and provided it with its ideological underpinning was formulated exactly a decade earlier.

In an incredibly influential essay published 20 years ago in Foreign Affairs, the late Samuel P Huntington first outlined his clash of civilisations theory, which he later elaborated on and fleshed out in a book published in 1996.

Huntington argued that “the fundamental source of conflict” in the post-Cold War era would be not ideological or economic but “cultural”. “The clash of civilisations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilisations will be the battle lines of the future,” the Harvard professor argued.

Huntington divided the world into some half a dozen major civilisational groups which, he posited, would clash at two levels: local “fault line conflicts” where civilisations overlap and “core state conflicts” between the major states of different civilisations.

On the 20th anniversary of this controversial theory and given how influential it has been and remains, it is useful to analyse whether or not Huntington was right. Has a clash of civilisations emerged, as Huntington predicted, over the past two decades?

Supporters of Huntington’s hypothesis answer with an unequivocal “yes”. They point to the inhumane atrocities committed in the United States by Islamic extremists on 11 September 2001, the subsequent clash with al-Qaeda, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the rise of Islamist parties during the “Arab Spring” as confirmation that a clash is underway.

Critics, like the scholar Noam Chomsky, have maintained that the clash of civilisations is simply the symptom of an empire, i.e. Pax Americana, in search of another justification for its imperial aspirations after the Cold War paradigm fell apart with the collapse of the Soviet bloc.

The late Edward Said, the renowned author of Orientalism, saw in Huntington’s theory an extension of the pseudo-scientific Orientalist scholarship which had been used for at least a couple of centuries to justify European and Western hegemony. In an essay entitled The Clash of Ignorances¸ published shortly after 9/11, Said argued that Huntington ignored “the internal dynamics and plurality of every civilisation” and “the fact that the major contest in most modern cultures concerns the definition or interpretation of each culture”.

Personally, I find that, though the idea, in one form or another, of a clash of civilisations is as old as the hills – examples include the historical notions of jihads and crusades, not to mention the idea of “civilisation” versus “barbarity” espoused by most dominant powers throughout the centuries – this does not make it any more valid or true.

Far more often than not, what has been dressed up as a clash of values is really just a clash of interests parading as something less selfish than it actually is. Although culture and ideology can, on rare occasions, lead to conflict, for the most part, societies enter into conflicts due to clashes of interests.

And in such a context, proximity is traditionally a far greater cause of friction than culture. That is why conflicts within self-identified cultural or civilisational groups are often greater than those between them. Over the centuries, Christians and Muslims have gone to war and killed more of their coreligionists than each other, as the carnage of two world wars in Europe shows all too clearly.

That would explain, for instance, why the United States decided to invade Saddam Hussein’s secular Iraq, even though it was a sworn enemy of al-Qaeda and jihadist Islam, yet is bosom buddies with Saudi Arabia, the hotbed of reactionary Wahhabism, which it exports around the region and the world, and the home of most of the hijackers who took part in the 11 September attacks.

And alliances which cut across supposed civilisational lines have an ancient pedigree. Examples include the Arabs allying themselves with the British and the French against the Turks, or the Ottomans fighting alongside the Germans in World War I against the British, French and Russians. In fact, throughout its centuries as a major power, the Ottoman Empire’s alliances shifted between various Christian European states, including France, Poland, as well as the Protestant Reformation against the Catholic House of Habsburg.

Moreover, Huntington’s hypothesis is further undermined by what I like to call the “mash of civilisations”. Each so-called civilisation is actually a volatile, constantly changing hybrid of ideas and cultural influences.

In fact, if we must group civilisations together, then I would place the West and Islam in the same group because they both share common roots in the Abrahamic tradition, not to mention the Greek and Hellenistic, Mesopotamian and Egyptian influences, as well as the modern importance of the Enlightenment, not just for Western reform movements but also for secularising and modernising movements in the Middle East. I would go so far as to say that Europe and the Middle East, especially the Mediterranean countries, have more in common with each other than they do with their co-religionists in Africa and further east in Asia.

So, if there has not been a clash of civilisations, what has emerged since the end of the Cold War?

At one level, there are the brewing clashes of interests between the great powers, as America tries to hold on to its waning global reach, Russia tries to claw back the influence it lost following the implosion of the Soviet Union and China, after years of quiet growth in the background, begins to flex its muscles on the foreign stage, both to advance its emerging “strategic interests” and for prestige.

On another level, cultures have clashed, but not between civilisations, as Huntington believed they would, but within them. This clash within civilisations is currently playing itself out most visibly in the Middle East.

In addition to the sectarian monster unleashed by the anarchy in Iraq, the revolutionary wave that has swept through the region has brought to the fore, and into sharp relief, the major fault lines and clashes within each society and, to a lesser extent, between them. There are the conflicts between the secular and religious, between majorities and minorities, between women and men, between the young and old, between modernists and traditionalists, between the haves and have-nots, and so on.

Although less pronounced, at least for the time being, these same internal tensions are being witnessed in the West, as reflected in the rising influence of Christian fundamentalism in the United States and the extreme right in Europe, as well as the large-scale social protests, from years of street battles in Greece to the Occupy Wall Street movement of the “99%”.

In Europe, particularly, class conflict is intensifying on the back of the economic crisis triggered by neo-liberal excess, as the poor and middle-classes are forced, through bailouts and austerity, to finance what has effectively become a welfare state for the rich. This is putting in jeopardy not only the much-vaunted European social model but also the EU enterprise itself.

If the European Union is not reinvented along more equitable lines and emerges out of this crisis, instead, much weakened, then it will likely leave a petty-nationalistic sized hole in the European arena which could eventually cause the conflicts currently taking place within individual countries to spill across borders.

In the second decade of the 21st century, a major challenge facing us all is not the clash of civilisations but the clash within civilisations. This internal cultural struggle is largely caused by the growing socio-economic inequalities that have emerged in just about every country in the world.

If these inequities are not addressed effectively, at both the local and global levels, then intolerance will grow and conflicts will continue to consume individual societies, with the danger that they will spill over into other countries, potentially spiraling out of control.

___

This article first appeared in The Huffington Post on 21 March 2013.

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Tags: 9/11, afghanistan, al-qaeda, arab spring, clash of civilisations, economic crisis, edward said, egypt, eu, europe, european union, foreign policy magazine, fundamentalism, hegemony, history, identity politics, invasion of iraq, iraq, iraq war, mash of civilisations, mediterranean, middle east, noam chomsky, orientalism, ottoman empire, russia, saddam hussein, samuel p huntington, saudi arabia, social protest, uk, united states, west

كيف يمكن لنجاح الثورة المصرية أن يُفشِلها؟

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بقلم أسامة دياب

استطاعت الثورة المصرية من خلال قوة الصورة إلغاء الصور النمطية التي كانت قد ترسخت في الأذهان وتكونت عنا، و لكن هناك ثمن لا بد أن يدفع في المقابل.

الاثنين ٢٥ مارس ٢٠١٣.

Dutch version

Photo: © Zaza Bertrand

أدى عاملان إلى زيادة العنصر الأدائي في الثورة المصرية: أولهما الوعي الكامل بقوة الصور التي يتم إرسالها إلى العالم وإدراك لمدى تأثيرها على تطور الأحداث. كان من المؤكد أن تلك الثورة ستترك ورائها ميراث غني، لهذا قامت مئات الألاف من كاميرات الموبايل ومئات من كاميرات وكالات الأنباء بتصوير وتسجيل كل هتاف ورفرفة علم وإصابة وحالة وفاة ودمعة وضحكة وكل طلق ناري وكل صلاة، فإذا قمت بالبحث باللغة الإنجليزية عن (الثورة المصرية) على محرك جوجل فستسفر نتائج البحث عن حوالي 9 ملايين صورة، ناهيك عن البحث باللغات الأخرى

العامل الآخر هو الاحتياج للدعم أو الرغبة في أن يتعاطف العالم مع الصراع الدائر وأن يشعر به ويدركه ويعترف بوجوده

اضطرت الثورة لضمان نجاحها ولكسب التعاطف تبني نماذج ومُثُل تروج لها وسائل الإعلام الغربية، لهذا لم يخلو ميدان التحرير من لافتات مكتوبة باللغة الإنجليزية صورتها الكاميرات وقامت بنشرها. إحدى أشهر اللافتات بميدان التحرير هي تلك التي تم تعليقها بوسط الميدان وحملت شعار الثورة الأشهر “الشعب يريد إسقاط النظام” باللغتين العربية و الإنجليزية

كما حمل أحد الشباب لافتة كتب عليها “فيسبوك على كل ظالم” باللغتين العربية والإنجليزية للتأكيد على أن الطبقة الوسطى المتعلمة هي من تقود هذه الثورة. حرص المتظاهرون على التحدث إلى وسائل الإعلام الأجنبية بالإنجليزية – بدرجات مختلفة من الإجادة – لكسب تعاطف المجتمع الدولي

هكذا صاح متظاهر سلفي بأعلى صوته مستخدماً لغة إنجليزية أمريكية ممتازة: “لن نصمت، إن كنا مسلمين أو مسيحيين أو ملحدين”. أدى خطاب وسائل الإعلام الغربية عن من يشبهون هذا الشاب إلى تصنيفه تلقائياً ضمن نوعية الناس الذين قد لا يرتاح المرء تماماً للجلوس بجوارهم في الطائرة، لكنه استطاع بحديثه مثلهم و بمشاركته لنفس القيم الإنسانية التي يؤمنون بها رسم صورة مُحببة للثورة المصرية

“صاح رجل عجوز آخر مستخدماً إنجليزية ركيكة جداً وهو يتجه إلى إحدى أخطر المظاهرات التي أقيمت في الثامن والعشرين من يناير 2011 “هذا وضع سيء، لي ولحكومتي” . “لا أملك الطعام. لا أملك أي شيء. أنا و أطفالي. سأموت اليوم!” كيف لا يتعاطف المرء مع هذا العجوز الأعزل الذي لا يحمل أي أيديولوجيات ولا يطمح سوى لإطعام نفسه وأطفاله

هذا هو الشكل الذي تتخذه الثورة في عصر عولمة وسائل الإعلام، لهذا احتاجت الثورة المصرية إلى إقناع العالم أجمع بوسائل إعلامه وسياسييه ومجتمعه المدني ومواطنيه، واحتاجت إلى القيام بحملات علاقات عامة وتسويق تلقائية وتعلم كيفية التعامل مع ميدان أثقله التواجد الإعلامي الكثيف

كانت إحدى أهم و أقوى صور الثورة عندما صنع الأقباط جدار بشري أحاط بالمسلمين وحماهم أثناء صلاتهم، كما تمكنت صور لطبيبات يعالجن إصابات المتظاهرين ومقاطع فيديو لأغاني مبهجة وهتافات طريفة من أسر قلوب وعقول الملايين حول العالم

كيف لا يساند أي سياسي ثورة كتلك، قامت لتطالب بالمساواة في الحقوق؟ كيف لأي نظام يدعو إلى الحرية والديمقراطية أن ينحاز لديكتاتور ضد متظاهرين لديهم تلك المطالب المشروعة؟

حرص المساندون للثورة على نشر تلك الصور القوية، وهي صور لا تتفق مع أي من الصور النمطية التي خلقتها وسائل الإعلام الدولية في خطابها من بعد الحرب الباردة والتي قامت من خلاله باستبدال دول الإتحاد السوفيتي السابق كغريم للغرب بالبلاد ذات الاغلبية المسلمة. هذا هو بالتحديد نوع الرفض لأي هوية سياسية الذي كان ضروري لرحيل مبارك، كان الاتفاق غير المعلن هو إحراج قادة العالم وإجبارهم على مساندة الثورة عن طريق المبالغة في عدم اعتناق أي أيديولوجية

Photo: ©Harry Gruyaert

عند النظر إلى تسلسل ردود أفعال الإدارة الأمريكية على مدار ال18 يوم، نتيقن أن تلك الخطة الدعائية الشعبية والعفوية نجحت إلى حد كبير. في أول أيام الثورة، رفض نائب رئيس الولايات المتحدة “جو بيدين” وصف مبارك بالدكتاتور رغم إدانة العديد من المنظمات الدولية – ومن ضمنها وزارة الخارجية الأمريكية نفسها – للنظام بمصر لسجله المتواضع فيما يخص حقوق الإنسان، بل أن الرئيس أوباما نفسه كان قد سبق ووصف الدكتاتور المصري الفاسد ب”الصديق” و بأنه “قوة استقرار للمنطقة”

بدأت وزيرة الخارجية الأمريكية “هيلاري كلينتون” بعد بضعة أيام في الحديث عن “الإصلاح” (و ليس “التغيير”) عند تعليقها على ما يجب حدوثه في مصر خلال ما أصبح يعرف لاحقاً بالثورة

غيرت إدارة أوباما من نبرتها تماماً قرب نهاية ال18 يوم،. ولم يعد مبارك “صديق” أو “قوة استقرار” ولم يعد الحديث عن “الإصلاح” بل عن التنحي الفوري. صرح الرئيس أوباما بأن “عملية إنتقال السلطة يجب أن تبدأ الآن” قبل سقوط الدكتاتور المصري ببضعة أيام. حدث هذا، جزئياً على الأقل، بفضل قوة الصورة. كان أبسط تلميح لوجود أي هوية سياسية في ميدان التحرير كفيل بالإبقاء على مبارك في الحكم بدعم أمريكي

كانت أبسط الطرق لتخريب هذا المهرجان الثوري هي حرق العلم الإسرائيلي أو الأمريكي وترك باقي المهمة ل”فوكس نيوز”. يتعجب المرء: كيف لم يفكر مبارك في هذا؟

لم تبلغ الثورة ذروة شعبيتها إلا بعد أن أوصل المتظاهرين رسالتهم بوضوح: نحن لا نطالب سوى بنفس الحقوق التي تتمتعون بها في الغرب. لسنا إسلاميين راديكاليين، ولسنا معاديين للسامية، ولسنا ماركسيين مسلحين. نحن مثلكم: نستخدم الفيسبوك ونجيد تحدث الإنجليزية كما أننا نختلف عن الصور النمطية التي كونتها لديكم وسائل الإعلام عنا

كان هذا مثال كلاسيكي على الذكاء الجماعي، وأنا لا أشك ولو للحظة في أن غالبية المتظاهرين كانوا يؤمنون فعلاً بتلك القيم، ولكن القدرة على تسويق الثورة والترويج لها دون أي خطة إعلامية أو إعلانية أو خطة علاقات عامة هي عمل جماعي وعفوي عبقري ينبع من موهبة فذة

من الصعب الاعتراض على الالتزام بهذا الخطاب اللائق، ولكن الخطاب السياسي عبارة عن مجموعة من الرموز، ومهما كانت مكوناته عامة وشاملة وسامية فهي ليست كيانات منفصلة تعمل في الفراغ بل هي متعلقة برموز ومفاهيم أخرى تأتي كلها عادةً في حزمة واحدة

أين إذاً العيب في ما حدث؟

ما هو إذاً الخطاب بالضبط؟ و ما مشكلة محاولة الالتزام به طالما اتفقنا مع القيم التي يروج لها؟ يصف الفيلسوف الفرنسي “ميشيل فوكو” الخطاب قائلاً: “هو مجموعة من التسلسلات والرموز”، فهو يرى أن الخطاب يحدد إطار ما يمكن أن تقوله ويكون مقبولا من قبل المؤسسات ذات السلطة والنفوذ. أما الفيلسوفة الأمريكية “جوديث باتلر” فتصف الخطاب ب “حدود الحديث المقبول، حدود الحقيقة الممكنة”

وتجيب النظرية العلائقية على السؤال المشروع حول ما يمكن أن يعيب المظاهرات السلمية ومبدأ المساواة ونظرية الحتمية التكنولوجية، إلخ

أي خطاب هو عبارة عن نظام مُكَوَن من بعض القيم المترابطة ومن المهم أن ندرك المفاهيم التي تتعلق بعضها ببعض في كل خطاب أو نظام أخلاقي أو مجموعة قيم، حيث توجد علاقات مفاهيمية بين الرموز والأفكار والمواضيع والتصريحات يشكلون معاً بنيانا من المعرفة

فعلى سبيل المثال، العلاقة المفهومية التي تربط بين الدولة الحديثة ذات الإقتصاد القوي وبين التجارة الحرة المتحررة من القيود هي علاقة مُضمنة في الخطاب الديمقراطي الليبرالي في هيئته النيوليبرالية، وهو خطاب تصبح فيه أفكار مثل الاكتفاء الذاتي أو دولة الرفاه أو تقسيم أفضل للثروة أو إجراءات حماية الصناعات الوطنية جميعها أفكار قديمة وتشكل عائقا للنمو الاقتصادي وخلق الثروة، فهي باختصار لا تشكل جزء من الخطاب الذي التزمنا به

يتفق الكثيرون مع القيم التي تعتبر في يومنا هذا قيم غربية مثل المساواة بين الجنسين، وحق الاقتراع للجميع بدون تفرقة ليشمل جميع المواطنين البالغين، وحرية العقيدة، إلخ. ولكن يرفض أيضاَ الكثيرون تبني النموذج الغربي الليبرالي الديمقراطي دون تبصر أو تفكير باعتباره الطريقة الوحيدة التي تصلح لإدارة البلاد، وباعتباره النموذج الاجتماعي والاقتصادي الأصلح دون التأكد من ملائمته لخصوصيات البلد خاصة وأن الجانب الاقتصادي منه يشكل تهديداً قوياً لقدرة العائلات الفقيرة في الحصول على الطعام وأساسيات الحياة

توضح برقية دبلوماسية بعنوان “الخطوات التالية لتحقيق التقدم الديمقراطي في مصر” سربتها ونشرتها “ويكيليكس” أن ما قد يبدو كقيم إنسانية خالصة غالباً ما يرتبط بأجندة اقتصادية وسياسية. تقول البرقية الدبلوماسية الأمريكية: “سيدفع برنامج العدالة الأسرية التابع للوكالة الأمريكية للتنمية الدولية المنظمات غير الحكومية إلى زيادة الوعي العام حول الحقوق القانونية للمرأة و الطفل بالإضافة إلى الخدمات القانونية المتاحة لتلك الفئات المتضررة. ستقابل هذه المجهودات بانتقادات رجعية تتهمها بال”رشوة” و بال”تدخل في الشؤون الداخلية”

يبدو ما سبق انه اهتمام حقيقي وغير أناني بالفئات المتضررة والمُهَمَشة في مصر، و لكن يليه تلك الجملة: “[علينا أن] نقر بأن الإصلاحات الاقتصادية مُكملة للإصلاح الديمقراطي: علينا أن نحيي اتفاقية التجارة الحرة ونُعلم الكونجرس بها في أقرب فرصة ممكنة.” مصر دولة تقيدها الديون وتم إقفارها بشكل ممنهج عن طريق خطط الخصخصة واستغلال العمالة. انتقادنا لهذا لا يعني أننا ضد حقوق المرأة أو الأقليات، و لكنه انتقاد لا يتناسب مع خطاب الديمقراطية الليبرالية الغربية الموجود بالبرقية والذي يسمح لنفسه باحتكار تلك القيم

نعيش في مرحلة من القضايا المُعلقة نتجت جزئياً من الالتزام الزائد بالنموذج الاقتصادي والسياسي الغربي. القوة السياسية والعسكرية تتركز في الغرب، لهذا أصبحت القيم الغربية خصوصا في الجانب الاقتصادي بديهية لا يمكن التشكيك فيها. يشرح “فوكو” قائلاً: “القوة تنتج المعرفة … القوة والمعرفة تؤديان أحدهما للأخرى … لا توجد علاقة قوة دون التكوين المترابط لحقل معرفي … ولا توجد معرفة لا تستلزم وجود وتكوين علاقات قوة”. شهدت مصر منذ الثورة انتخابات حرة ونزيهة ولكنها لم تسفر سوى عن برلمان غير كفء ثم عن حكومات ووزارات غير كفء وهو ما يثبت أن حتى ولو كانت عملية عد الأصوات نزيهة، وحتى ولو كان النظام مُزين ببنية ليبرالية ديمقراطية، فهذا كله لن يحسن من حياة ملايين الفقراء والمهمشين من المصريين، بل في الغالب سيزيدوها سوءا وفقرا

أعطى الاهتمام الزائد بالانتخابات (وهي حجر زاوية الديمقراطية الليبرالية) قوة وسلطة لمجموعات تمتلك موارد ضخمة مكنتها من تنظيم حملات سياسية ومن تأسيس شبكات اجتماعية في المناطق الريفية والمدن. ثروتهم هي التي أدت إلى اتصالهم المباشر بالمجموعات المعنية. يظهر هذا جلياً مع حزب الحرية و العدالة التابع للإخوان المسلمين والذي تموله طبقة من رجال الأعمال فاحشي الثراء، ونجح الحزب في الحصول على 47% من البرلمان بالإضافة إلى كرسي الرئاسة. كما نجح أغنى أغنياء مصر نجيب ساويرس في الحصول بفضل ملايينه على 15% من البرلمان و ذلك بعد بضعة أشهر من تأسيس حزبه السياسي

قام هؤلاء السياسيين المُنتَخًبين بقمع الإضرابات العمالية، ورفضوا فرض حد أدنى للدخل رغم وجود حكم محكمة بذلك، وبدلاً من الضغط على الحكومات الأوروبية لاسترجاع الأموال التي سرقها مبارك وإسقاط بعض من ديون مصر اتجهوا للاقتراض من صندوق النقد الدولي ومُقرِضين آخرين وهو ما قد يدمر الاقتصاد المصري مُستقبلاً، بل ومستقبل المصريين الذين ستغرقهم ديون لم ينفقوها ولم يستفيدوا منها، فإذا كان النمو الاقتصادي المعتمد على القروض يشكل خطراً على بلاد الإتحاد الأوروبي الغنية، علينا أن نتخيل مدى الدمار الذي قد يسببه للبلدان الفقيرة النامية

يحدث كل هذا حين تتوفر بوضوح مصادر أخرى لتمويل الإنفاق الحكومي و التقليل من عجز الموازنة

هل تعلم أن مصادر قريبة للبنك الدولي قدرت الأموال التي اختفت من مصر في عهد مبارك بأكثر من 132 مليار دولار؟ و هل تعلم أن الضرائب المتأخرة في مصر تُقدر ب65 مليار جنيه مصري؟ و هل تعلم أن بعض أكبر الشركات في مصر تدفع ضرائب قليلة جداً تصل إلى 0.5 % رغم أن أرباحها تقدر بالمليارات نتيجة لإعفاءات ضريبية (أو بالأحرى جمائل) صممت خصيصاً لرجال الأعمال القريبين من النظام السابق؟

هل تعلم أن المملكة المتحدة ترفض تجميد حسابات نظام مبارك على الرغم من إصدار الإتحاد الأوروبي لقائمة بالحسابات التي تخص النظام السابق و المطلوب تجميدها؟

هل تعلم أن أعلى شريحة ضريبية في مصر هي 20 %، مما يعني أن العائلة التي تربح ألف دولار شهرياً ورجل الأعمال الذي يربح نفس هذا المبلغ في الدقيقة الواحدة يدفعون نفس الضريبة؟ و هل تعلم أن الفرد الذي يربح 420 جنيه مصري (60 يورو) شهرياً يدفع 10 % من دخله للضرائب بينما تدفع بعض الشركات التي تربح الميارات 0.5 % عن طريق التلاعب الضريبي؟ حتى أكثر الاقتصادات رأسمالية تستخدم نظام تصاعدي للضرائب، فعلى سبيل المثال، في الولايات المتحدة، حصن الرأسمالية، أعلى شريحة ضريبية هي 35 %. لازلنا نرى نوابا إسلاميين مُنتًخًبين يرددون نفس روايات صندوق النقد الدولي ويتحدثون عن الاستثمار الأجنبي المباشر ونمو الناتج المحلي الإجمالي كما لو كانا الحل الشامل لجميع مشاكلنا السياسية والاجتماعية و الاقتصادية مفتقرين إلى أي قدرة إبتكارية أو أي قدرة على التفكير خارج إطار توصيات صندوق النقد الدولي

من الجدير بالذكر أن مصر شهدت في السنوات التي السابقة على أكبر نمو اقتصادي و أكبر تدفق للاستثمار الأجنبي في تاريخها المعاصر، تزامنا مع أعلى مستوى من الإحباط الاجتماعي والاضطراب السياسي تشهده في تاريخها الحديث. فالنمو الاقتصادي والسلام الاجتماعي إن لم يكونا متناسبان عكسياً هم، على الأقل ودون شك، ليسا متناسبان طردياً

هذه هي العلاقة التي تربط الخطاب بالقوة ووسائل الإعلام، فهو يبني إطار لتحديد كل ما هو مقبول وشرعي وصحيح ويمنع الناس من العمل خارجه. و حتى لو أتيحت عملياً حرية العمل خارج هذا الإطار فسوف يقابل هذا باتهامات جاهزة من نوعية “التطرف الإسلامي” أو “اليسارية الراديكالية” أو “معاداة السامية” أو “حسد الأغنياء”. تنطبق هذه الكلمات ل”جان بول سارتر”، على الرغم من إنها تعود إلى عام 1961، على الاختيار الذي تواجهه بلاد الشرق في يومنا هذا بين القبول أو الرفض الكامل لحداثة الغرب في عالم لا يزال يعاني من أثار الاستعمار والعقلانية الغربية الحديثة: “حاول كُتابهم و شُعرائهم، بصبر كبير، أن يشرحوا لنا أن قيمنا لا تنطبق مع الحقائق التي يعيشونها يومياً، و أنهم لا يستطيعون رفضها كُلياً ولكنهم لا يستطيعون أيضاً هضمها. كانوا يقولون باختصار: أنتم تصنعون منا مسوخ، فلسفتكم الإنسانية تدعي أننا وباقي العالم واحد ولكن أساليبكم العنصرية تُفرقنا.”

This essay first appeared in Cairopolis, a book and photography exhibition about the Egyptian revolution.

الاثنين ٢٥ مارس ٢٠١٣

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Tags: arab spring, egypt, egyptian revolution, revolution, social media, social protest

Tahrir Square: For the sake of the forsaken

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By Osama Diab

For ordinary Egyptians, Tahrir is now a terrifying black hole, but for its marginalised occupiers, it is a liberator from political and social tyranny.

Wednesday 27 February 2013

Tahrir has become a black hole for ordinary Egyptians but a space of liberty for the marginalised. photo: ©Khaled Diab

“Do you like what’s happening in Tahrir?” taxi drivers ask me everyday on my way back from work, which is near the world-famous square. Fed up with this discussion and my inability to make any “acceptable” argument prompted me to consider moving somewhere that was within walking distance from my office.

For someone who has supported the revolution from the very beginning and throughout its different stages, and against the various counterrevolutionary forces – the remnants of the Mubarak regime, the military and the Muslim Brotherhood – this period has been the most difficult when it comes to trying to sell and promote the revolution.

Any frequent visitor to Tahrir will notice a change in its demographic composition. The face of this highly symbolic square and its surrounding area has changed beyond recognition over the past two years. Before the revolution erupted, Tahrir was a symbol of state might and prestige, with high-ranking police officers aggressively managing the traffic flow of cars and pedestrians through and around the capital’s most strategic spot.

Within a kilometre of Tahrir in every direction is the highest concentration of state institutions in the country. The monolithic symbol of state bureaucracy, the Mugama’a, the parliament with its two houses, a large number of ministries (including the monstrous Ministry of Interior) are all located on the different ends of the Tahrir square area. The neighbourhood is also home to some of Egypt’s oldest and most luxurious five-star hotels overlooking the Nile, not to mention the famous Egyptian museum, the Arab league building and the former ruling National Democratic Party’s headquarters.

How did this area of potent political power and tight state control descend into a state of lawlessness is beyond most people’s comprehension. Many Egyptians now choose to avoid the area altogether while others are curious about who occupies and controls it. The motivation behind the recent clashes with the police during the revolution’s second anniversary were unclear even to the most competent of political analysts and to opposition forces. It is a defining characteristic of a revolution for events to move faster than the ability of most people to grasp them.

Many of those who occupy and control Egypt’s most institution-laden area are the country’s forsaken: street vendors, homeless teenagers and street children. They have replaced the generals, the police informants and government politicians who used to be in control just two years ago.

Tahrir moved from being the establishment’s headquarters to an area that is becoming rife with anti-establishment behaviour. It attracts the homeless, including children, rebel female activists, homosexuals, street vendors, substance abusers, etc. The groups who were the most marginalised for different reasons have found a refuge in an area completely liberated from oppressive state and societal authority. The occupation of Egypt most strategic square kilometre is a reminder of a triumph of the oppressed over the oppressor. For the outsider, Tahrir might have turned into a frightening, dark, and dirty black hole but for its occupiers it’s a breeze of freedom manifested in the absence of unjust authority.

The changing demographic make-up of Tahrir Square has turned it into a different world. No longer does it relate to the outer world where the state is gradually reemerging and playing its typical role of trying to control and dominate the public sphere. While the revolution outside of Tahrir is mostly defined as its first 18 days, in Tahrir, it has no clear start or end. It’s an ongoing feud with the authorities, society and the state. It is the fight of the marginalised to claim, even to grab, their share of the public sphere.

The revolution is no longer a well-packaged commodity produced by the so-called “Facebook generation”. It’s no longer a unified movement of educated and politically aware young voices who are able to organise, brand, rebrand and promote the revolution as a “civilised”, acceptable and legitimate movement in a near-Utopian setting.

Some people’s dislike of the current Tahrir occupation, and their disquiet towards its occupants, is partly classist and partly practical, because of the inconvenience to the flow of traffic they cause for commuters on their way to work. However, for the marginalised of Tahrir, this negativity is a proof of life, an affirmation of the viability and effectiveness of their actions. Unlike the Facebook revolutionaries, Tahrir’s occupiers have no desire to please society or cater to its norms. Their struggle, in a way, is against the social order, and so upsetting polite society is something for them to aspire to.

The dominant and privileged classes of society have acknowledged these groups’ wretched existence for the first time. Finally, they are beginning to ask, Who are these people?. We denounce and disapprove of violence but did we listen to them when they were peaceful? Were they given any other option to be heard other than through the sound of their stones? Is this in a way not our violence echoed and thrown back at us?

For the “Facebook generation”, the revolution and the occupation of Tahrir was a means to an end that involved a vision for a freer society. An integral part of their strategy was to engage the wider community and convince it of the revolution and cater to its socially acceptable norms, which is why the social impact of the 18-day revolution was rather limited, despite its remarkable political impact.

On the other hand, for the marginalised of today’s Tahrir, who operate outside the societal framework, the revolution is the end, not a means. They for the most part lack the skills and the social acceptability to engage with and persuade the larger community of the rightness of their struggle. For that reason, they don’t aim for a better world, but just a tiny square of the world where they exercise a degree of control and enjoy a sense of ownership, even if it’s over a space that is frightening, dark and dirty to others.

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Tags: arab league, arab spring, children, egypt, egyptian revolution, facebook, feminism, freedom, homosexual, marginalised, mubarak, muslim brotherhood, national democratic party, nile, rebel, revolution, society, tahrir, tahrir square, teenagers

Reading between the lines of the Middle Eastern media

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Despite its bottom ranking in the Press Freedom Index, the Middle Eastern media is freer than it appears at first sight.

Saturday 16 February 2013

Despite all the sacrifices made by citizens and journalists across the Middle East and North Africa, the region has come in bottom of the global media freedom league, according to the recently released 2013 Press Freedom Index (PFI).

Though not entirely surprising, this unenviable distinction is a dispiriting reality check for how far the region still has to go before it delivers the freedoms coveted and demanded by its citizens – at least, that is how the current situation as reflected by the PFI league table seems at first sight.

The bottom 10 contains two Middle Eastern countries: Syria (placed in 176^th position) and Iran (174^th). Surpassed only by the truly terrible trio of Eritrea, North Korea and Turkmenistan, Syria, which for decades has not been a bastion of media freedom, has seen its track record worsen significantly ever since it erupted into a bloody civil war in which journalists, like civilians, have been targeted, mainly by the government, but also by opposition forces.

In all, four journalists were killed in Syria in 2012, and a further 41 media professionals and netizens were imprisoned. This made Syria the most dangerous country in the world to be a journalist, according to Reporters sans frontiers (RSF), the organisation behind the index.

As an indication of the sorry state of the region, the highest scoring MENA country only managed 77^th place. Surprisingly for many, this number one spot goes not to Israel, the self-styled only democracy in the Middle East, nor to Lebanon, long regarded as the capital of the freest Arab press and its most vibrant publishing sector, but to the small emirate of Kuwait.

In addition, despite having a population of just 2.8 million, Kuwait is home to a broad range of quality dailies and weeklies of varying political stripes and, according to RSF, the most liberal press legislation in the region.

While Kuwait seems to be for the large part practising and not preaching when it comes to its media, the same cannot be said for nearby Qatar, which occupies the 110^th position in the PFI ranking. While al-Jazeera, which often exhibits greater editorial freedom than certain segments of the Western media, has revolutionised the Arab world’s staid media, providing those who previously had no access to a free media an open window on the world, and has been boldly and enthusiastically at the frontline of the revolutionary wave sweeping the region, the domestic media in Qatar remains tame and subservient to the ruling elite.

This has resulted in Qatar suffering from a form of cognitive dissonance, with the government at once defending al-Jazeera’s editorial freedom, even occasionally to the detriment of relations with Arab and Western allies, yet not tolerating dissent from its domestic media. Likewise, this daring channel which walks the walk abroad dares not talk the talk at home, exhibiting “restraint, even self-censorship”, in the words of RSF. Or as one journalist friend put it, “al-Jazeera’s motto is to speak truth to power, except the one that pays the bills”.

Defenders of al-Jazeera sometimes claim that the news channel is not practising self-censorship when it comes to domestic Qatari affairs but rather that the tiny land of 1.7 million is a backwater where little of interest to regional and global viewers ever happens. While there is some merit to this view, there are plenty of Qatar-related issues that would interest a broader audience, such as its restrictive media laws, its sluggish progress towards democratisation, not to mention the controversial presence of a US airbase there.

The ultimate test of al-Jazeera’s vaunted independence would be how it would report on events if Qatar caught the revolutionary bug. Possible indications of how this might play out are provided by neighbouring Bahrain, whose uprising, Bahraini opposition figures complain, has received relatively little coverage.

In fact, since the Arab Spring broke out, a wave of allegations, including from discontented ex-reporters with the network, has emerged that al-Jazeera’s once enviable independent stance has become increasingly subservient to backroom manipulation from the palace, including, in an echo of the traditional practices of state-owned Arab channels, the re-editing of a report on a UN debate on Syria to lead with the comments of Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani – you know, the hereditary leader who deposed his father to gain power over that backwater which doesn’t normally merit media coverage.

Despite its poor showing, Qatar is still two places ahead of Israel (112^th place). This low ranking is bound to bewilder, bemuse and even anger many Israelis. But I believe it is both justified and unjustified.

It is justified because of military censorship and the severe restrictions Israel imposes on Israeli, Palestinian and foreign journalists working in the occupied Palestinian territories. In addition, the Israeli military bombed two buildings housing media in Gaza during last November’s Gaza conflict.

Moreover, not only are Israeli journalists not allowed to operate there, Palestinian journalists are often harassed. It sometimes seems that Palestinian journalists are under siege from all directions, faced as they are with the double whammy of Israeli and domestic repression, especially in Gaza. Fortunately, as Fatah and Hamas try to mend fences, the situation is improving slowly, and Palestine has risen eight places to the 146^th spot.

Israel’s handling of the media in the West Bank and Gaza caused its ranking to plummet 20 positions because RSF decided to combine the “Israel extraterritorial” score with its domestic one. Some will cry foul at this apparent sleight of hand, but Israel, as an occupying power, has responsibilities to guarantee fundamental rights in the Palestinian territories. Moreover, if Israel can consider making denial of the occupation an official policy, then why can’t RSF hold it accountable?

Even without including the extraterritorial element, Israel would still rank an uninspiring 92, way, way, way below its declared obligation of being a “light unto the nations”, as David Ben-Gurion claimed.

That said, RSF readily acknowledges that Israeli journalists “enjoy real freedom of expression”. And from my experience working with Haaretz and other Israeli media and the time I spent practising my profession in Jerusalem, I would broadly agree. Personally, I have never had my work censored and I have been given space to express some ideas very critical of Israel.

Even dissidents acknowledge Israel’s pluralistic tradition, at least towards its Jewish citizens, though they express fears about the spate of new anti-freedom laws that have been passed recently, such as the anti-boycott law currently before the Supreme Court, and the ‘Nakba Law’, which outlaws the commemoration of what Palestinians and Arabs call the ‘Catastrophe’ of 1948 in public institutions.

“When I studied [the Nakba], I didn’t face the law, I didn’t face the secret service, I faced the community,” the dissident Israeli academic Ilan Pappé told me in an interview some months ago. Though he acknowledges that the Israeli system once tolerated a broad margin of dissent, this, he fears, is changing. “[Israel] is becoming a mukhabarat state. I mean Israel is becoming a state of the old Middle East, of the old Arab World.”

A surprising number of Israelis I know share this idea of regional convergence. And there are plenty of signs that the Arab world is catching up with Israel – and in a way that this index cannot capture.

Although Kuwait scores the highest in the PFI, I believe the greatest promise for a free media lies not in the Gulf but in the revolutionary states, especially Egypt (158^th place) and Tunisia (138^th).

This is because certain intangibles cannot be captured in the PFI’s subjective scoring system, based as it is on the assessments of various local and International observers, which means that countries with a more critical culture could score more poorly than countries which are less critical. It also does not take into account qualitative criteria, such as the actual content, as well as the plurality, accuracy and scope of the reporting and commentary in the media, and its daring.

This translates into the fact that although no Kuwaiti journalists were arrested last year, the profession as a whole tends to self-censor to stay within the carefully delineated “red lines”, while attempts by Mubarak, the army and the Muslim Brotherhood to impose restrictions in Egypt through intimidations and periodic crackdowns, have been met with defiance and open rebellion by much of the independent media.

“When Kuwait comes ahead of Egypt, this confounds me,” Hisham Kassem, a veteran Egyptian publisher and democracy advocate admitted to me amid the bare concrete and dust in the future offices of his ambitious new media project in Cairo a few months ago. “If rulers in the Gulf were exposed to the same level of attacks that Mubarak was in his last years, then heads would roll.”

Mubarak, the military, Morsi and his Muslim Brothers have all tried to revert to politics as more or less usual, proving that denial is more than a river in Egypt. But despite their best efforts to do their worst, the genie is out of the bottle. And it is this revolution of the mind and heart, and whether it can be sustained, that holds the key to the future of the region.

Surprising as it may sound, Israel’s domestic arrangement was once held up by Arab reformers as an example of the freedom they should strive for – and they are striving for that liberty. Today, it is the turn of Israelis to learn from their neighbours and overcome their complacency to defend their hard-won rights from further corrosion and turn the tide back.

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This article first appeared in Haaretz on 11 February 2013.

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Tags: arab spring, arab world, bahrain, cairo, censorship, civil war, david ben-gurion, democracy, democracy in the middle east, democratisation, dissent, dissident, egypt, fatah, freedom of expression, gaza, hamas, hisham kassem, ilan pappe, independent media, iran, israel, lebanon, middle east, mubarak, muslim brotherhood, nakba, north africa, north korea, palestine, press freedom, press freedom index, rebel, rebellion, reporters sans frontiers, repression, revolution, syria, tunisia, west bank

Egypt’s women of mass destruction

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Does a gaff about rural women’s breasts belie the belief among Egypt’s new Islamist leadership that women are the source of all society’s ills?

Wednesday 13 February 2013

When it comes to confessionals, Egypt’s unpopular prime minister Hisham Qandil has redefined the term “making a clean breast of things”. With the country in the grips of a new wave of protests and street clashes and the economy in tatters, the premier decided to get a vital matter off his chest during an open meeting with the media: rural women’s breast.

“There are villages in Egypt in the 21st century where children get diarrhoea [because] the mother nurses them and out of ignorance does not undertake personal hygiene of her breasts,” he said, to the visible discomfort of his audience, especially the women in it.

Qandil’s remarks have been met with widespread derision and mockery in Egypt’s famously sarcastic social and independent media, with many requesting advice from the PM on other health and domestic issues. “A question to his eminence the prime minister,” one twitter user wrote, “can I wash my boy’s clothes with his father’s white galabiya or will the colours bleed?”

“Mum says she wants the recipe for Balah el-Sham in your next press conference,” another requested.

“Soon, they’ll be broadcasting Qandil’s press conferences on Fatafeat (a cookery channel),” one wit predicted.

There are other unexpected causes of the runs, one commenter revealed: “I’m the one who got diarrhoea when I realised you were Egypt’s prime minister.” And this observer is not alone: millions of Egyptians view this former irrigation minister as Egypt’s new secretary of state for irritation.

Although stage fright – or performance anxiety – caused by speaking before the tame cameras of Egypt’s state television may have caused Qandil to confuse women’s nipples with the teats of baby bottles, there is the possibility, however faint, that the prime minister is privy to some groundbreaking research which the rest of us humble mortals are unaware of.

After all, unlike the “ignorant peasants” he lambasts, Qandil has a master’s degree and a PhD in agricultural engineering from two different US universities, though one is located in Utah, where his views of science may have been coloured by the local culture. If “creationist” pseudoscience can posit that the universe was created less than 10,000 years ago and advocate what I call the “Fred Flintstone” theory of the Jurassic age, why can’t Qandil find a causal link between dirty boobs and the runs?

However, a cursory perusal of the scientific literature on breastfeeding uncovers no connection between the cleanliness of a mother’s breasts and diarrhoea in her infant. In fact, mother’s milk is described by doctors as “liquid gold” and is a good preventer of and antidote against diarrhoea.

Qandil’s remarks confirm previous theories that denial truly is a river running through the minds of Egyptian officials.

But wouldn’t life be so much easier for the new PM if his theory were correct? Then, instead of being forced to grapple with the problems his government has inherited from the former regime – poverty, pollution, unhygienic water supplies, poor nutrition, high illiteracy – he could solve the daunting challenge of high infant mortality in the countryside by simply going online and ordering millions of packets of antibacterial wipes or, more ambitiously yet, install a power shower in each rural mud-brick home.

The cynic in me suspects that this could be what is behind Qandil’s gaff: the desire to divert attention from his government’s failure to do anything constructive about, and find simplistic, quick fixes for the country’s nagging socio-economic problems.

This interpretation would actually be a relief in comparison with the prospect that Qandil, a supposedly highly educated man, actually believes what he said. But I fear that the prime minister may well have been deadly serious.

His outburst is reflective of the new Islamist leadership’s – and the conservative constituency they represent – obsession with women and the female body, and their apparent conviction that all society’s ills can be traced back to a woman’s breasts and vagina, and a family’s and society’s honour hangs on that flimsy thread known as the hymen.

This reality about Egypt’s body politic was on full display during the recent controversy surrounding the nude Egyptian protester, Aliaa ElMahdy, whose naked body was transformed by conservatives into some kind of biological WMD – a dirty bomb – amid suggestions that she could singlehandedly obliterate Egypt’s social fabric.

Interestingly, from a psychological perspective, is how religious conservatives appear to be obsessed by what they find most reprehensible, and fantasise, like the “Desert Fathers” did of Satan tempting them away from their solitude with sexual dreams, about the female body.

An extreme, and extremely warped, example of this was the infamous and widely condemned fatwa by a cleric of al-Azhar who creatively resolved the conservative conundrum over mixed workplaces by suggesting women breastfeed their male colleagues, thereby becoming their “mothers”.

Rather than the “penis envy” Freud developed, it would appear that Egypt, and patriarchal society in general, is obsessed with breast and vagina envy. Echoing the “War on Women” across the Atlantic, Islamists, particularly ultra-conservative Salafists, have launched a far more vicious offensive against Egyptian women, which has played itself out on the streets, in the form of violence, including the rape, of female protesters and then blaming the victim for the crime she endured.

But Egyptian women and their allies have not taken this passively, and have been out in force demanding their rights – and granting them full equality will be good both for women and society as a whole, despite the anxieties of the patriarchy.

—

This article first appeared in The Huffington Post on 7 February 2013.

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Tags: azhar, belief, children, creationism, egypt, fatwa, feminism, freud, gender, hisham qandil, honour, hymen, infants, islam, islamist, media, parenting, patriarchy, politics, rape, salafi, science, sex, sin, usa, women

The naked truth about Egypt’s body politic

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One young woman’s daring nude protests are unlikely to emancipate Egyptian women, but will they actually hurt the cause of freedom and equality?

Monday 7 January 2013

Photo: FEMEN

“Sharia is not a constitution” is a sentence that many Egyptian secularists and progressives would, under normal circumstances, wholeheartedly agree with. However, when these words are scrawled in lipstick red on the totally naked body – except for glasses and a headband of flowers – of a young Egyptian activist, then the medium suddenly eclipses the message, especially in a society as conservative as Egypt’s.

Aliaa ElMahdy, 21, was protesting, with European feminists in Stockholm, Egypt’s controversial draft constitution ahead of a referendum which appears to have approved it, despite incredibly low voter turnout. But this wasn’t the first time that ElMahdy had used her naked body to try to expose the hypocrisy of Egypt’s body politic. She had already gained notoriety and stirred up controversy in 2011 when she posted naked images of herself on her blog to express her opposition to the growing influence of Islamists and to demand her full freedom of expression.

An old joke claims that the best way for a woman to please a man on a date is simply to turn up naked. In contrast, it would seem that the best way to outrage the patriarchal male order is to protest in the nude – judging by the insults, threatened legal action and even some death threats which the nude activist received.

Personally, I have long been bewildered and sometimes outraged by the amount of outrage the human body, especially the female form of it, and sex can provoke. For instance, a US president can be impeached for lying about his sexual relations but not apparently for lying to start a war. Likewise, at a time of massive revolutionary ferment, how society can find the time or interest to obsess over an amateur black-and-white photo of a solitary nude woman on her personal blog is beyond me?

Of course, if even in some liberal societies, nudity can still offend many, I can understand that in a society where the vast majority of women now cover their heads in one way or another, that nakedness can cause distress. But there is more to it than that. After all, nudity is a mouse click away for millions of Egyptians and, as one observer pointed out, there is reportedly a popular niche in pornography involving women in hijab and even niqab (the full face veil). Moreover, semi-nudity and sexually suggestive imagery is on billboards, television screens and cinemas everywhere you turn in Egypt.

The trouble with Aliaa is that her photos were too subversive: they were naked but not sexy, and they were saying “fuck off” and not “fuck me”. Her nude protest against the constitution was similarly seditious: she was using a tool many would regard as immoral to deliver a highly moral and principled message.

So, though many Egyptians may agree with her message, few approve of her means. In fact, revolutionaries and secularists have been tripping over themselves to give ElMahdy a full dressing down.

This is partly out of genuine disapproval. Egyptians are generally conditioned to see nudity as a sign of licentiousness and debauchery, and so when a young activist strips in protest, they reach the “inescapable” conclusion that she is either bad or mad, or possibly both.

Many leftists regard ElMahdy as self-absorbed and selfish and that she, through her reckless actions, has potentially set the cause of female emancipation back years. And they have a point – up to a point.

ElMahdy’s actions are unlikely to sway many, if any, ordinary Egyptians to the cause of greater freedom in Egypt, and may even strengthen the dictatorship of, and through, the masses.

Religious and social conservatives and bigots have used her political striptease as proof made flesh of the “corrupting” influence of secularism – which has become something of a dirty word in Egypt since Islamists successfully and inaccurately equated it with atheism – and that the only way to combat this is by curtailing personal and political freedoms.

In addition, the fact that ElMahdy’s most vocal defenders have mainly, but not exclusively, been expatriate Egyptians and Europeans has played up to the paranoid idea promoted by the former and current regime that the revolution is an anti-Egyptian foreign conspiracy designed to shred the country’s social fabric and destroy it by stripping it of its moral rectitude.

And since a family’s, and by extension, a society’s honour and strength, lies, for some bizarre reason, between the legs of women, ElMahdy has been transformed by the patriarchy into a biological WMD – a dirty bomb, you could say – and has helped them cement the traditional view of women as highly volatile sex bombs who will spontaneously explode upon contact with greater freedom.

Activists fear that this will hurt the aspirations of Egyptian women seeking equality with men and fighting against discrimination. But is this enough to abandon ElMahdy?

On this issue, Egyptian democracy activists are caught between a rock and a hard place. Defend ElMahdy’s right to do what she did and this will be equated with agreeing with her actions. Criticise her or stay silent and be guilty of curtailing freedom of expression yourself.

In 2011, ElMahdy confessed that she was shocked by how the April 6 Youth Movement, which was one of the main secular, youth-led dynamos behind the revolution, had issued a statement not only clarifying that she was not part of their organisation, which is correct, but also that they do not accept “atheism.”

“Where is the democracy and liberalism they preach to the world? They only feed what the public wants to hear for their political ambitions,” she complained at the time.

That said, it is unfair to single out ElMahdy, who does not possess any political affiliation nor does she claim to speak for anyone beside herself. Just as she is not single-handedly destroying Egypt’s traditional social fabric, as conservatives claim, the blame for the apparent setback secularism and feminism are facing in Egypt cannot be placed solely on her shoulders.

Had Aliaa not stripped, it would have made very little difference to the outcome of the draft constitution – it is still incredibly unpopular and uninspiring, as reflected in the low voter turnout and the huge demonstrations. Had Aliaa kept her clothes on, it would not have deterred Islamists from their project to roll back whatever hard-earned freedoms Egyptian women have gained – they would simply have ignored her.

What this episode reflects is how, despite opposing the revolution and not taking part in it, Islamists have become more emboldened and, at least, apparently powerful. It also highlights how in spite of the fact that secular and oft-young revolutionaries have instigated a process of radical change, many still remain apologetic for their convictions and allow themselves to be browbeating and intimidated by religious conservatives.

The attitude seems to be one of, “if you can’t beat them, join them”, and so secularists have increasingly appropriated some of the rhetoric of the Islamists. But what some have failed to notice is that the Islamists, in order to survive, have also had to appropriate the secular discourse of democracy and freedom.

Another problem with this approach is that as Islamists gain confidence they are becoming more militant once more, and progressives may soon discover that the only option left will be to “beat” them. And the Islamists, who have been rapidly planting the seeds for their own downfall, are unwittingly providing pluralist secularists with plenty of opportunities to steer Egypt towards a more tolerant and inclusive future.

As the polarisation between conservative and progressive forces in society grows, persuasion and bridge-building will become increasingly necessary, but so will confrontation, especially on issues of principle and fundamental freedoms.

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This article first appeared in Haaretz on 2 January 2013.

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