The Arab ministers of foreign affairs held an emergency meeting today in Cairo where they declared that they would fight ISISI/ISL/IS with all possible ways joining officially that international coalition forming to fight the pseudo caliphate in Levant.
It is a good decision but one must ask : How will these countries fight IS when their regimes , their dictatorship corrupted regimes helped in founding such organization and feed it with angry fighters ??
How will these countries fight IS and its thought ? I am not speaking about the military police solution that has never put an end in our time to radical terrorist groups and the examples are many worldwide starting with Nazis , Taliban and Al-Qaeda. I am speaking about the social remedies.
Are we going to fool ourselves that IS' radicalism is another product of the Wahabi thought originated in Saudi Arabia and spread throught the Gulf money and media ? Are we going to fool ourselves and neglect the fact that our sheikhs and our political regime reject to modernize the religious discourse as well political discourse for fear they would lose power over the masses ?? Are we going to fool ourselves on how the Shiites are attacks in the mainstream media as agents of Iran and how for decades the Kurds are considered evil Israeli supporters who want to divide Iraq ? Do I need to speak about women's rights in the Arab world ? Do I need to speak about the human rights records of the Arab countries when it comes to freedoms ?
I will speak about my country Egypt : We have still got a sectarian religious discourse in mosques and schools. Just in one year , a film , books and a TV show were banned in Egypt because of so-called public manners and religious traditions. We got a president who declared himself as a protector of vice and general manners during the presidential elections. Dar el-Ifta is still speaking about online chat between men and women.
The media is crying for the displacements of Iraqi Christians and Yazidis when it doesnot dare to speak about the internal displacement of Christian families according to the old traditional judiciary sponsored by the government whenever a fight breaks between a Muslim and Christian !!!
Do I need to speak about Shiites or Baha'is in Egypt ? I know about that incident Where there was that young man who was traveling last month to Sharm El-Sheikh when he was stopped and was verbally abused because he is a Baha'i in a security checkpoint. The officer told the young man to convert to Islam.That officer is a representative of the Egyptian state for God's sake !! Egyptian Monuments are destroyed thanks to corruption and there no is outcry in the media like what happened to Iraqi Monuments on the hands of IS
It is not a big secret that ignorance, poverty , injustice and above them dictatorship contribute directly in spreading radicalism and in our case fundamentalism. Frustrated young men who lose their way and get decieved by promises of paradise in the after life instead of hell they live on a daily basis failed countries that once had a great history. Of course when it comes to IS I would add "frustrating sick young men who love to behead people and take selfies with the corpses "
Ironically current Arab regimes like the current Egyptian regime thank God for ISIS. Making the majority of people using media accept the police state and choose security over democracy and liberty for fear of ISIS and its speard. Of course those people will not get none in the end.
Dictatorship police states and Organizations like IS are two faces for one coin.They need each other to survive. It is true that terrorism and radicalism also exist in established democracy but not like in our part of the world.
" You want democracy ? See how democracy worked fine in Egypt , Democracy is an act of blasphemy" I read those words in the old IS' Twitter star Islam Yakan and I see how he and his terrorist organization are using the catastrophe we had last year to attract angry Islamists especially to their side wickedly. It is worth to mention that Yakan and the IS consider ousted MB Mohamed Morsi as an infidel who should be killed because he followed democracy.
In our Islamic history we met many groups like IS that ended and vanished but for some reason I am worried and I take their promises to so-called to liberate Egypt seriously even more now because I know current regime which is built upon Mubarak's regime is actually a fragile old 60 years old regime that tries to survive in a crazy time.
And yes what I want to say that in our part of the world , democracy ,justice and freedom of thought and expression will help in combating sick thought in more powerful way than military campaigns on the long run.
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Zeinobia, you go on and on listing reasons for IS's radicalism, all the while ignoring the elephants in the room: The Quran, and Islam itself.
ReplyDeleteOh, and since you ask, yes, I wish you would talk about women's rights. Don't forget female genital mutilation (fgm). Egypt, after all, is the world headquarters for fgm. No country has a higher rate.
Good and brave words, Zeinobia. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteZ,
ReplyDeleteThe Middle East problems would ease if many others thought like you. Democracy can be implemented in countries which have social and ethical maturity. Even in mature countries, Democracy is a work in process and is not easy to manage. Unfortunately, there are governments which do not want the difficult path to govern but take the easy brutal way which is 'My way or no way'.
Islam cannot remain static through time but must reform and reinvent itself because we live in a global village and are influenced by each other.
Finally, The Saudi family is spearheading and financing the anti-ISIL campaign to protect itself from them.....the same monsters they themselves created.
The Canadian.
The dictatorships are basically useful idiots for the IS. It is in part due to their repression, torture chambers, gulags, brutality, and promotion of deprivation that the IS has emerged and gained the level of appeal it has. Had the region become more democratic and free, movements like the IS would be substantially less powerful.
ReplyDeleteThe dictatorships play into IS's propaganda that allege democracy to be an impossible fraud. Turning politics into a brutish all-out force based contest makes it almost inevitable that extremely brutal movements will come to challenge existing autocracies. The idea that somehow opposition to governments like those in Syria, Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain can erase all opposition and ensure mental uniformity is a delusion. The only question is what form the opposition will take in these places. The Arab Spring presented one excellent example, especially in Tunisia. The IS presents an abominable alternative that does not aim at real liberation. Can anyone seriously prefer the governments of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or the IS to Tunisia's democracy? Obviously, some do, but it is certain that most do not. Tunisia lacks a military of an oppressive nature and has a workable relation between religion and state. It is a somewhat religious country but with religious freedom and without compulsory practice.