Alaa Al Aswani: Have we lost the battle of change in Egypt?

Alaa Al Aswani: Have we lost the battle of change in Egypt?!

[Browser translation here -- original at DW.]
There is a state of frustration among the revolutionaries in Egypt because they feel that the revolution they have made has been stolen twice. Once when the Muslim Brothers betrayed them and colluded with the military council against the revolution in return for their coming to power, then on June 30 there was a real revolutionary wave demanding an early presidential election against a president who canceled the law by the constitutional declaration. Then the old regime jumped on events and created a repressive military dictatorship that represented the counterrevolution. Have we lost the battle of change in Egypt and ended up? Apart from emotional slogans and phrases we will try to answer with a few objective facts: 

Alaa al-Aswani is a tireless advocate for democracy in 

Egypt. He speaks to all who seek more democratic 

alternatives to authoritarian systems.

First : the nature of the revolution

Revolution is a unique moment in human behavior in which people forget their personal interests and are ready to die for freedom and dignity. Revolution differs from protesting against a particular decision or uprising in order to improve living conditions, revolution aimed at radical change of state and society. The phrase "the people want to topple the regime," echoed by millions in the January revolution, meant not only the change of Hosni Mubarak but the overthrow of all old ways of thinking and behavior. 38 per cent of Egyptians are under the age of 35 years. These young people revolted not only because they reject the situation, but because they reject the way their parents deal with these situations. While parents see the solution to a contract in the Gulf for wealth creation, the youth of the revolution rejected individual solutions and insisted on changing their country. The Sisi system is dominated by known revolutionary names, who are thrown into prison and seek to break their will with solitary confinement and torture.

Major Generals Egypt's rulers do not understand that torture may destroy the revolutionary life but does not eliminate the revolution because it is an idea and ideas do not die. The millions who forced Hosni Mubarak to step down and forced the military council to try Mubarak are still alive and are in every family, every city, every village and every neighborhood. The future will be the property of these young people and not the property of the elderly rulers by virtue of the laws of nature and history.

Second : Díaz vs Sisi
The dictator Porfirio Díaz

He ruled Mexico with a fist of iron from 1884 until 1911 and when he took power he called a meeting attended by all the ministers and then grabbed his left hand with a loaf of bread and with his right hand a heavy stick and said to those present:

Here is my way of ruling: This bread will be accessible to all citizens, but any citizen who asks for more than bread will love this stick on his head.

This was Diath's equation: to deprive the people of their political rights and to grant them jobs, housing and education. Many rulers have applied the Diath equation and have settled in the government for years, but the Sisi system does not apply the formula of bread or stick, but applies the equation of stick or stick. It grants privileges to the categories on which it relies on its control, while it does not care about the suffering of the majority of the people, because the powerful machine of repression is capable of crushing anyone who opens his mouth to oppose injustice. Dependence on repression alone has never succeeded in establishing any political system. People are a double-edged sword. At some point people will realize that repression will fall on them anyway and they will have nothing to lose.

Third : The date of validity of the Propaganda

The Sisi system uses an old-fashioned propaganda machine based on full media control and direction, and gives media space to a group of "political mentors" who explain to the people aspects of the genius of the leader and the seriousness of conspiracies made by traitors and agents (of course anyone who opposes the leader or does not recognize his genius).

This type of propaganda was common for decades and was used by Nazi, fascist, socialist, Baathist and Nasserist regimes, but it was simply no longer valid in the time of the communications revolution. The Sisi system has spent billions on propaganda so that the minds of the Egyptians have the required specifications. The propaganda has succeeded a little at first, but it is losing its validity day after day because the citizen can not believe the propaganda of the regime and lies its daily suffering. The copy of the propaganda that the Sisi regime is implementing is actually poor. Who look at us every night of television rather than being an industry of public opinion turned into cartoon characters that make people laugh and bewildered.

The Egyptian revolution has not achieved democracy yet, but it has created a new awareness in society and given the Egyptians a new vision of the world that made them rethink everything, from their false sanctification to religious preachers who turned out to be charlatans and even discovered that corruption everywhere even football management and their realization that Egypt Will only advance separation of religion from the state and the return of the military to barracks. These are the lessons of the revolution that taught us what we want and how to be the state that we will establish.

Historians say that "contemporary veil" in the sense that when we live events less our ability to see them in their historical context. The revolution may not occur, but if it happens, it is never defeated and it is impossible for the situation to return to what it was before the revolution. A few years in the calculation of history is just a moment in the lives of peoples. Those who rule Egypt now have not read history and will soon learn that the revolution is impossible to eliminate because it may sometimes be broken but in the end it must triumph and achieve its objectives.

Democracy is the solution.

Alaa Al-Aswany "Who Supports Hassanein Rashid?"

Who supports Hassanein Rashid?

In his article in DW Arabia Alaa al-Aswani writes about the case of Hassanein Rashid.
Hassanein Rachid was the subject of international media attention this week. He is a 32-year-old British Muslim citizen who works as a computer programmer and teaches religious lessons at mosques in England. Hassanein was convinced of the ideas of the extremist "Islamic state organization" and used his experience as a computer engineer to set up secret groups on the Internet where he and his colleagues planned terrorist attacks to kill as many English "infidels" as possible. In addition to shooting and dropping bombs, Hassanein called for innovative ways to kill unbelievers such as poisoning fruit and ice cream in restaurants and food shops. He then called for the killing of Prince George, the grandson of the Queen of Britain, a child under the age of five, but Hassanein considered killing him a legitimate duty. The address of the school where Prince George is learning and called for his death early in the morning when he entered school.

Alaa al-Aswani is a tireless advocate for democracy in 

Egypt. He speaks to all who seek more democratic 

alternatives to authoritarian systems.

Many commentators have taken revenge and asked why we mourn the victims of Western terrorism and do not mourn the Arab victims killed by the US military. Some even reminded me of the Algerian victims killed by French colonialism. Such anomalous thinking assumes that we either mourn the Western victims or the Arab victims, although we must mourn any innocent person if he is unjustly killed regardless of his religion and gender. The most dangerous thing in this thinking is that it adopts the logic of terrorists. It considers that all Westerners are responsible for crimes committed by some US military soldiers.

The most basic rules of justice are that responsibility is personal. Everyone is responsible only for what he does and not what others do. But those who think of retaliation do not recognize personal responsibility and adopt the logic of collective responsibility against Westerners, just as the extreme right in the West considers Muslims responsible for terrorist crimes because they are Muslims Like them.

The racist terrorists and rightists all espouse the principle of collective responsibility. Here, we discover the paradoxical position of these retaliation. They are blaming the victims of terrorism from the Westerners, because in their opinion they are all responsible for the crimes of the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan. At the same time, when these Muslims are persecuted in Western societies, they protest that it is unfair to be treated in this way because they are Muslims because Not every Muslim is a terrorist. That is, they apply collective responsibility to Westerners and refuse to apply them to themselves.

The comments I have read on the subject of Hassanein Rachid have proved that some of us are still mentally absent from the concept of justice, which is regrettable but natural because we grew up in tyrannical societies and no one treats us fairly, so sometimes it is difficult for us to treat others with justice we did not know.

The worst thing that has been revealed by the comments is that many of us evade recognition that Islamic heritage (not Islam itself) actually carries ideas that incite violence and terrorism. After every terrorist operation in which innocent victims fall in our country or in the West, we usually stop with wonderful words about the tolerance of Islam and we enthusiastically assert that the terrorists represent only themselves and Islam is innocent. We simply escape from confronting the truth. Those who kill innocents in the name of Islam are based on their crimes to doctrinal opinions, which no one will discuss and refute. Anyone reading the rule of killing unbelievers in Islamic jurisprudence will discover that we will not eliminate terrorism unless we get rid of this jurisprudence written by human beings like us centuries ago and we were able as Muslims to create a new chapter compatible with civilization and respects human rights regardless of religion and gender.

Democracy is the solution

Alaa Al-Aswany -- Do You Support the Sovereign Republic?

In the March 19, 2011 referendum that followed Mubarak's deposition, there were two strange phenomena about Egyptians' behavior: first, they rallied and queued to vote (which confirms that their departure from the previous elections was due to their knowledge that they were forged). The second phenomenon is that people have forced senior state officials to stand with them in the queue. This was something new for officials who are used to ignoring queues and going directly to vote, but people have so firmly blocked them that the governor of Cairo did not accept the idea of ​​standing in line and he left without casting his vote. In the same period leaked the registration of the director of security of the lake, speaking with his officers, saying:

- Whatever happens you will remain the masters of the country.

The term "masters of the country" was repeated by a great figure in the regime, who said clearly:

- Yes, it is our children's right to inherit our positions because we are masters of the country and others follow.

If the Egyptian revolution has one goal, it is that all Egyptians are before the law. That the law should preserve the rights of the lesser Egyptians and that senior officials, including the President of the Republic, should be held accountable. Seven years after the revolution, Egypt has become worse than Mubarak. In Egypt we only use the term "sovereign" when we talk about intelligence, army and police.

The meaning of the sovereign authority is that it takes decisions that are not subject to the law. The world knows the parliamentary republic and the presidential republic, but we in Egypt are living in a "sovereign" republic governed by a privileged class of sovereigns with privileges that make them above law and accountability. It is known that there are groups of sovereigns who do not pay traffic violations. Tax laws are applied strictly to young professionals and employees. The wealthy can always pay the fees of senior accountants for tax evasion.

The law on maximum wages in the state became a dead letter after the employees of sovereigns were excluded from its application. Last week, parliament approved a law that gave President Sisi the right to choose who wants senior military leaders to enjoy the financial privileges of diplomats, ministers and military all the more dangerous that these The lucky leaders will be immune from any legal accountability without the approval of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. If a commander killed a person, then the public prosecutor may not investigate him unless he is approved by the army command. If there is no agreement, there will be no investigation and no case.

This law is undoubtedly the strangest in the history of Egypt and it undermines the idea of ​​the state from the ground because it grants the president the right to immunize certain persons according to his will so that they are not subject to the law to which the rest of the citizens are subject. It is the sovereign republic that governs us. The law in Egypt is not applied but is used against people without others. After the Sisi took power, the Egyptians were surprised by the reservation of Abutrike's funds and the inclusion of his name in the lists of terrorism. The intelligence-directed media launched a strong campaign against Abu Treka accusing him of treason and financing terrorist groups. His own money, Abbotrecke fought a long legal battle that ended with his victory when the Court of Cassation ruled that his name be removed from the lists of terrorism and his case reviewed before another Chamber.

It is strange that the media Wael Al-Barashi has announced in his television program about negotiations between Abutrek and officials who are demanding the player to make a public apology to Mister Tantawi because he was furious with Abutrike when he once refused to shake hands with him. The crime of Abu Trika, the real is not financing terrorism, but angered Marshal Tantawi and when Tantawi angered all the organs of the state and oppressed Abutrekha and Nklt and reserved for his money and almost received him in prison had not left Egypt. If Abutrique wants to satisfy the state, he must satisfy Tantawi because Tantawi is the state. Can a society advance under these concepts? Those who rule Egypt have not read history, even if they read it to realize that any country can never live by building bridges and roads, but rather by respecting human rights.

Nationalism can not be achieved by the songs, dance reviews and emotional words of the president, but the patriotism means that the state treats its citizens with justice and respect. The deterioration suffered by Egyptians is mainly due to injustice and corruption, not to the increase in population and lack of resources, Sisi said. The fact that a few people enjoy sovereignty over the rest of the people is the shortest way to the deterioration of society because it divides the people into a few arrogant and humiliated and humiliated majority.

Dear Egyptian citizen
Do you support this sovereign republic? If you support them, you are a sovereign and defend your privileges, but you accept that you remain loyal to the country's masters and recognize that you are less than them and do not equal rights with them. You are not entitled to complain that you are receiving the degrading treatment that you deserve because you agreed to it. But if you reject the sovereign republic, you do not need someone to guide you to the path. I reject injustice and continue to seek justice and freedom no matter what the price you pay.

Democracy is the solution

Via The Root -- Cops Are White People's Cousins

Curated for my blog from The Root. And if you don't know about The Root there's not much I can tell you here. You gotta lot to learn.

Cops Are White People's Cousins

Michael HarriotSunday 1:23pm
Filed to:WHITE PEOPLE CALLING THE POLICE ON BLACK PEOPLE

University Of Central Florida Police officer Pablo Vargas
receives a hug from Christine Gigico

Most of the time, life reveals the truth with a gradual slowness that allows us to grasp difficult concepts. But on a rare occasion, the universe will take mud and make itself a brick with the sole purpose of hurling it at your head.
The following is an approximate excerpt from a conversation I had last night about the not-so-new trend of white people calling the cops on black people:

Him: You shouldn’t say it like that. You don’t want to make people hesitant to call the police. You don’t hesitate when you call the police, right?
Me: I’ve never called the police.
Him: Never?
Me: Never. I didn’t realize that until just now. Now that I think about it, I don’t ever remember being around when anyone called the police.
Him: So who would you call if you needed help?
Me: My cousins. Duuuuh
Him: I don’t mean moving a couch, nigga. I mean like if someone was breaking into your house or your car shut off on a dark road.
Me: Same answer.

That’s when it hit me:
Police are white people’s cousins.

I have always found that it is easier to understand complex concepts if you distill them down to an apt analogy. For instance, I finally accepted Taylor Swift’s remake of “September” by analogizing it to being born with an inverted anus on the side of your head. Her music sounds like the whole world is shitting in your ear.

Your cousins always have your back. While I have never personally reached out to a family member when I noticed a suspicious-looking dude napping in my college dormitory or lingering at my job behind the counter at Starbucks, I can guarantee you that someone reading this has seen someone looking at them strangely and called a cousin to ask: “Do you know this nigga?”

Just think about it. If you happened upon a cookout, who is the first person you’d call? Your cousins! Perhaps BBQ Becky simply wanted to invite her cousins to the impromptu family reunion. Maybe 911 is white people’s speed-dial for cousin Chad and we were all overreacting.

#CookingOutWhileBlack: White Woman
Calls Cops on Black People Cooking
Out in Oakland, Calif., Park

Every black family has one person whom they consider to be the “smart cousin.” It is such a universal truth that political pundit and truth-teller Angela Rye changed her Twitter handle to “Cousin Angela” (and recently, NOT yo Cousin Angela) after I gave her that nickname and black people immediately understood the reference. Among the Harriots, I serve as the family’s personal Google search bar. They call me whenever they want to know anything.

Even though I am not a lawyer, my cousin Metia calls me when she has legal questions, just like the mayonnaise dollop nicknamed #PermitPatty did when she dialed 911 to ask if an 8-year-old needed a license to sell water outside her apartment complex.

And most families believe you shouldn’t publicly air the family’s dirty laundry. Maybe that’s why white people push back so hard against the facts that prove cops shoot and kill black people disproportionately. They know it’s true, but they can’t snitch on their cousins.

I certainly understand that line of thinking. We all have a cousin who everyone knows is fucked up, but we love them anyway. Most of us have a family member who has a criminal past, suffers from substance abuse or just is a generally fucked up person. You can laugh about it among your aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews. But if someone disparages your cousin, you warn them to keep fam’s name out of their mouth.

White people are the same way with the police. To white people, all cops are heroes who would never shoot someone unless they truly feared for their lives just like all your cousins are fine, upstanding citizens who never once combined their $3 with your $6 to buy 3 mice from the pet store and put them in your neighbor’s mailbox to pay her back for telling your mom and aunt she saw you two sneaking out of the window to perform in your junior high school’s talent show...

Allegedly.

If you’ve ever been around a black family, you realize that we feel most comfortable around our cousins in the same way that white people are set at ease by the presence of the police. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been around white people and wish I had an official cousin escort.

It all makes sense now.

So whenever you wonder why that person who looks like a bottle of Elmer’s glue wearing wraparound sunglasses seems so eager to have the police around, remember that boys in blue are not law enforcement officers to white people. To us, they’re dangerous strangers, but Caucasians call the cops in their time of need because, when the police show up, for white people...

It’s a family reunion.

Michael Harriot  World-renowned wypipologist. Getter and doer of "it." Never reneged, never will. Last real negus alive.  TwitterPosts

~~~~~

I started a collection of links along the same theme but it became too long to manage. It started with a now-famous event at Starbucks. 

How do you say "Sexism" in Arabic?

In his article for DW Arabia, Alaa Al-Aswani asks when the Arabs translate the word SEXISM?
- "It's true six but better than 100 men"
POLICY 19.06.2018 (Browser translation)

Alaa Al-Aswani: When does the world respect us?

- "Sibek from the words of women"
- "Bravo .. Int Talaat Dakr (male) hard"
- "And God Almighty Olesk scarves and Ikadk in the house as the women"
POLICY 29.05.2018
Alaa Al-Aswani: "Do we need the clergy?"

These are examples of ordinary phrases that we often mention in our daily conversations and hear in the street and in TV series, and often see them as objectionable, although they bear unfortunate regret for women as examples of cowardice and helplessness. Such talk is socially rejected in the West and is described as SEXISM

Meaning "belief, expression or behavior on the basis that gender difference leads to a difference in human rights or capabilities".

We have not yet translated this term into Arabic because we are simply practicing women's deception constantly and we do not see a flaw in that.

Read the Arab history You will find countless examples of contempt for women, when the last of the kings of Andalusia (Abu Abdullah Muhammad XII) was sent to his city Granada with a last look before leaving and wept. Then his mother said to him:

- Abak like women on a king did not obey him like men

Once again, our culture paints the image of a courageous man who is capable of protecting the homeland and of establishing the image of a helpless and trivial woman who can not do anything except cry. The whole world despised women in ancient times, but the civilized world has completely eliminated the inferior view of women, but we still suffer from them in the Arab world. The woman's contempt is also due to our religious heritage. The opinion of most jurists in Islam is that the eldest girl does not marry herself, but requires a man's agent to marry her. Moreover, the testimony of the woman before the judge is not limited to the limits or the punishment. With other women, and the jurists explain these provisions that women are weak nerves and suffer from a lack of reason makes them closer to confusion and forgetfulness must be taken testimony of two women together.

It is true that Islam has given women many rights in ancient times, but in our times, jurisprudential rulings (not religion itself) often seem unjust to women. It is absurd to discuss in the 21st century whether women are equal to men in capabilities. It is enough to recall that the most powerful European political figure now is Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. In Britain, in the Falklands War of 1982, Margaret Thatcher, Which was then led by generals, no doubt in their male and female.

The measure of our respect for women lies in our perception of them. Do we consider a woman a complete man who happened to be a female and that man is a complete man who happened to be male? Do we educate our daughters to be the priority in life to learn and work or tell our daughters that the most important thing in the world to get a suitable groom ..? The pressure on the Arab girl from the society and from her family if she reached 30 and did not get married and that negative social outlook of divorced women as a failure or easy to achieve and glorify the mental image of the widow who cancels her needs as a woman and dedicated to raising her children. All these phenomena confirm that we are still far from respecting women as a human being full of abilities and rights.

Since the end of the 19th century, Arab women have struggled to free themselves from the constraints of underdevelopment. In Egypt, women have been deprived of their right to education, work and voting. The Egyptian woman has been stripped of the Turkish burqa imposed on her in a ceremony attended by the leader Saad Zaghloul in which he said that Egypt will not be liberated without women Egyptian In 1933 Egypt celebrated its whole generosity as the first pilot club in Egypt and Africa.

In 1952, the military took control of Egypt and the same happened in most Arab countries where the foreign occupation ended with national occupation by means of dictatorial regimes (royal or military). The price of oil rose by the October war in the 1970s to give great economic power to the Gulf regimes Alliances between Wahhabi rulers and sheikhs. Millions of dollars have been spent promoting Wahhabi thought, which considers women a source of seduction, a tool for sexual pleasure, a machine to have children, a servant to her husband's house, and any other job.

Can women be liberated in a homeland that suffers from tyranny. We must distinguish between the real emancipation of women, which accompanies real renaissance in society, and the "formal" emancipation of women, which takes place through authoritarian measures taken by the dictator to beautify his repressive regime without causing a real change in the prevailing reactionary culture.

The Saudi Crown Prince has made several decisions that grant women some of their rights and a degree of openness. At the same time, he has tightened repression against his opponents, accusing them of treason and imprisoning them, including Saudi women who have been demanding women's rights for decades. The same is happening in Egypt. Al-Sisi, who practices an unprecedented repression against his opponents, gives many positions to women to appear enlightened. Women can not be liberated alone in a society that is oppressed. We can not isolate the issue of women from issues of freedoms and human rights. The real struggle for women's liberation is never separated from the struggle to liberate the people from tyranny.

Democracy is the solution