Saturday, May 8, 2010

Our Local Gandhi

Dear Joseph Mayton wrote 'The Mean streets of Cairo" at  The Guardian's Comment is free which caused a lot of a stir and anger in the Egyptian blogosphere and twitterville. Mayton wrote what he thinks that we should try other  peaceful alternatives than protesting considering the catastrophic results of the 6th April and 13th April protests. Mayton thinks that we should take lessons from international figures like MLK JR and Gandhi especially they adopted peaceful protesting style. It is not only Joe but others began to say we should adopt revolution Gandhi style like Saad El-Din Ibrahim and Amr Shobaky lately in Al Masry Al Youm not to mention I found several westerners also say that we should follow Gandhi's footsteps.

I waited all that time so people chill down and we discuss it because it does not harm.

First of all we must clear something , our protests are peaceful nonviolent , setting examples like Gandhi and MLK JR does not mean our protests are violent , they turn violent from the regime's side not from our side. Already we are tired of being beaten and photographed around the world as the world will not help us and we can't wait an external help from outside in the same way and the examples on this are too many to be citied. We have already tried the civil disobedience in an early step from two years ago if you remember as the wonderful 6th of April strike , this is an early step that should the regime that the people can really do it. All those strikes and sit ins across Egypt indicate by time we can reach to the level of complete civil disobedience. For the record Mohamed ElBaradei and other opposition icons like Ayman Nour and others consider this option but as last resort. Most people in Egypt care for their jobs , for the food of their kids and they do not want to lose their jobs because of some fancy men in suits who speak in TV channels about democratic reforms but they are ready to have a strike or have sleep in the streets for days for a sit in to get extra LE 200 over their LE 300 salary per month.

Mayton may be does not know before MLK JR and the African American community started their boycott campaign launching the civil rights movement in the States , in 1919 Egyptians boycotted everything British and everything supported the occupation in the country because it is not a foreign occupation but rather our own Egyptian regime and we are not a minority unfortunately but a whole nation.

Egypt is not India under the British occupation , we do not fight a foreign occupation , we fight a terrible Egyptian regime nor it is segregated America  so clearly these two examples despite the good intention of Mayton are not the best in the first place. Politically we are speaking about completely three different countries facing different challenges in three different times.

Second of all I understand when Mayton mentions examples like Gandhi but I do not understand when Saad El Din Ibrahim and Amr El-Shobaky ignore our own political history in the 19th and 20th centuries ; we got wonderful examples from Sharif Pasha to Orabi to Mustafa Kamel to Saad Zaghlol for God sake. It is clearly that despite having a long history , we do not learn from it and from the mistakes and the triumphs of our ancestors like those wonderful men I mentioned above. Most people ignore the fact that Kamel had inspired the Irish independence movement and Zaghlol himself had contact with Gandhi inspiring him because the Egyptians represented by Saad and his delegation  managed to get our partial independence from UK and after his death Safia Zaghlol and Nahas Pasha continued kept this contact with Gandhi.

I just hope all the current political icons in Egypt learn from those great patriots in the past who did not have the privileges of the communication technology when the illiteracy level in the country was more than 80%.

Why does not Saad El-Din Ibrahim learn from Kamel who roamed Europe for the Egyptian cause realizing there was no hope to depend on the West that cared and still cares for its political and economic interests above all still he did not lose hope and said his famous words :

No despair with life and no life with despair

Of course I do not refuse learning from others' experiences and mistakes as well but let's agree on something we should look for once back to learn and know where we screwed at , we have already wasted 30 years from our history.

3 comments:

  1. I don't think that civil disobedience or any other sort of civilian antagonism will change the status quo in Egypt because of the brutality of the regime and the massive power of its security apparatus.
    I don't know why Zeinab forgot about our only successful revolution, or coup d'état, which was backed and welcomed by most Egyptians.
    In my opinion, our military is our only hope in restoring civil order, national unity, and enforce a secular state based on democracy, social justice and human rights.

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  2. Thanks, I like your projection on our own history and our own struggle for freedom. Indeed we have a glorious history to learn, alas they don't teach children any. Let's just remember that many of modern history heroes like Zaghlol was secular and that didn't do us much good too. So learn from history, preserve your identity and roots. We don't need to be secular to struggle, keeping the fine line between religion and politics is hard but only for the daring and the only answer to freedom, not disgracing religion.

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  3. Hazem said...

    "I don't think that civil disobedience or any other sort of civilian antagonism will change the status quo in Egypt because of the brutality of the regime and the massive power of its security apparatus."

    Unfortunately, I have to fully agree with you.


    Hazem said...

    "I don't know why Zeinab forgot about our only successful revolution, or coup d'état, which was backed and welcomed by most Egyptians.
    In my opinion, our military is our only hope in restoring civil order, national unity, and enforce a secular state based on democracy, social justice and human rights."

    At this I have to disagree.You said the ONLY successful,forgetting to mention the TRUE , SUCCESSFUL 1919 REVOLUTION not the 1952 COUP D'ETAT so- called revolution.Also ,I do not believe at all that the military is the solution..it is simply the Military who destroyed it ..!!! The true solution will come from the educated ,I mean those whom we call the CULTURAL SOCEITY,provided that they try to touch the everyday life of normal people.

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