I have a European
friend whose family belongs to Bohemia region in the Czech Republic. He lives in
the Austrian capital; Vienna since he was born. He is thoroughly and well acquainted
with the Islamic and Arabic cultural and civilized issues… also with the
current events in the Arab countries, especially the ones that witnessed public
revolutions since 2011.
Through his vast
and profound knowledge, he talked to me feeling a bit embarrassed and
apologizing in advance. In doing so, it seemed as if he was influenced by our
oriental behaviors and manners. He said: “I thought thoroughly about what is
going on in your countries and found that you – meaning we in the Arab world –
do live your time because your Hijri calendar started at the beginning of the
second third of the fifteenth century… meaning that you now live the same
circumstances of Europe at the beginning of the fifteenth century of the Gregorian
calendar…”
“… I wondered that you and a big bunch of
Arab and Egyptian intellectuals are not considering well these historical
circumstances you are going through… you call for supremacy of contemporary
revolutionary and enlightening ideas… but in doing such thing, you are absolutely
illogical in dealing with your society!”
My friend; the European
Austrian citizen added wondering: “why don’t you accept that burning the
historical eras and jumping over them by ignoring their causes and giving a
blind eye about their facts is nothing but a wasted effort… the most dangerous
of the outcome of such thing is losing the concepts of those modernizing and
enlightening ideas and having the society feeling aversion to such ideas… since
it is known historically that societies tend to feel more comfortable with the
ideas and ways of thinking they are already familiar with… even if they
revolted against injustice and tyranny”.
I said to my
foreign friend: elaborate please.
The man went
explaining: “you – the Arab and Egyptian elite bunch of intellectuals – forgot
that some of the European societies made it to the renaissance, enlightenment
and modernization era along with the manifestations of all that… most notable
of those manifestations is keeping the religious belief as a personal relation
between man and God without guardianship of anyone and consequently separating
between the clergy and religious references that connect to the church and its
theological heritage and between public life events… such achievement; reaching
the renaissance era, was connected to other developments in science, scientific
application, economy and social relations…”
“… We did not jump from the theological
clergy hegemony to the modern civil state just for criticizing clergy men and
refuting theological references… but we have been through long decades of
transformation from the era of feudalism and In-kind economy to the bourgeoisie
era and Cash economy… such transformation was done in parallel with political social
revolutions… another scientific technological ones… and third philosophical
intellectual…”
“… We have been
through long religious wars and other ones regarding the strategic domains,
areas of influence and conflict of interests and roles… our ancestors
challenged nature and so they discovered what lies in the far horizon… they
circled the earth and discovered continents we didn’t know about before… to the
rest of what Europe witnessed of massive changes through its modern age extending
from the fifteenth century to the twentieth one”.
My friend
continued: “your society is going through a historical era… where muslim
brotherhood, salafists and all who adopt the same ideology including those who
claim to be the voice of Islamic enlightenment and modernization… all those best
represent the cultural and political aspects of this era that some used to
describe as underdevelopment… since it is the era in which values and thought
systems that do belong to the European medieval ages and even to the beginning
and maybe the middle of the sixteenth century widely spread...”
My European
Austrian friend started to ask me stating questions like: don’t you live in a
society that believes in superstition that is different to faith occult… it
also believes in lazy dependence or Tawakol which is different to doing
your best and trusting God or Tawakkol… such society also does not
believe in the values of work, production, discipline, cleanliness, respecting
public property and respecting the status and role of women… moreover, it does
not acknowledge the rights of others believing in different religions… and even
those who adopt different schools of faith… actually, such society denies those
people their rights and assaults their worship places and properties…”
“… aren’t in-kind
and cash bribes the most decisive factor in winning elections… such action is
also committed by those who claim to represent Islam; meaning clergy men like
those of Europe in the medieval ages in a way or another?”
My friend
continued until he asked stating: “aren’t those figures that you once thought
they represent a break-through in the course of Islamic Dawaa in particular and
the cultural life in general are those who spearhead the campaigns that attack
and undermine the role of your national army and distort its history… they also
lead all efforts aiming at questioning the beliefs of other people… in accusing
the Christians of conspiring against the country… in describing security
agencies and all who disagree to them or reveal their false claims by being
traitors… those claims that proved to be false and fraud and are no different in
their essence to claims of salafists and Jihadi leaders?”
Then I said: yes…
I swear you’re right… we have all what you said and even more!
My foreign friend
then said: “then why have you wondered that muslim brotherhood are the most
flagrant authoritarian example of such retardation spread everywhere?!”.
Translated into English by: Dalia Elnaggar
Translated into English by: Dalia Elnaggar
This article was
published in Al Ahram newspaper on November 7, 2013.
To see the original
article, go to:
#alahram #ahmed_elgammal #muslim_brotherhood #history
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