Trouble In Egypt
An explosion has taken place in the ancient area of Al Hussein-Cairo, Egypt, the number of killed and wounded is still unsettled. How the bomb was exploded is not exactly specified. It’s the most glorified and valued area for Egyptian and every Muslim; for both Sunni Muslim and Shiite Muslim this place is highly sacred. It’s the place where prayer is practiced every day, and it’s the place where Al Hussein (Prophet grand son) is believed to be buried. It is also the place of an important market and center of business where hundreds of Egyptians make a living on selling goods and offering services to visitors. It is well known that the place is a preferred spot for Egyptians and foreigners to spend an evening, says one Egyptian.
The news agencies are saying it was a militant Islamic group.
“Muslims usually comes to this place seeking spiritual calmness and peace of soul, not it’s ridiculous to claim that a cowered act like this would be made by a Muslim or some one who understand and believe what Islam is,” says this Muslim. He believes it was Mossad, the intelligence arm of the Israeli government.
But consider this. If it was done by an Islamic group why would an Islamic do such a thing? Here is one answer.
I know next to nothing about Islam but it just so happens that I just finished reading Bernard Lewis’ 2002 book “What Went Wrong? The Clash Between Islam and Modernity In the Middle East.” He takes 105 pages to itemize, often from journals and diaries, the gradual contacts of Islamics with the West, from the beginning of Islam, and the resulting modernizing influences of the West over the centuries on the Middle East. (This book was written for the Western reader so my apologies for copying much of what may already be known.) Then he goes on to say:
“One of these Christian terms that passed into common usage was ‘alamani, later ‘alamani’ (don’t know how to do accents etc. on the computer) literally meaning “worldly” from ‘alam,’ world. This word served as the equivalent of temporal, secular and lay alike. A later loan-translation, rubani, from ruh, spirit, served as it’s couterpart. More recently, it’s Christian origin and etmology forgotten, alamani has been revocalized ‘ilmani, derived from ‘ilim, science and misunderstood to denote the doctrine of those who presume to pit human science against divine revelation. It has become a favorite blanket term used by both radical and traditional religious writers to denote what they see as foreign, neo-pagan, and generally anti-Islamic ideas, imported by Western propagandists and missionaries and their local dupes and agents, to subvert Islamic society and the end the rule of the sharia. The source of this evil is variously located in Europe or America, in Judaism, Christianity and communism. The solution is the same for all of these–to remove the alien and pagan laws and customs imposed by foreign imperialists and native reformers, and restore the only true law, the all-embracing law of God. The proponents of this doctrine won power in Iran in 1979. They are, increasingly, a force to be reckoned with in other Muslim countries.
In the secularization of the West, God was twice dethroned and replaced–as the source of sovereignty by the people, as the object of worship by the nation. Both of these ideas were alien to Islam, but in the course of the 19th century they became more familiar, and in the 20th they became dominant among the Westernized intelligentia who, for a while, ruled many if not most Muslim states. In a nation-state defined by the country over which it ruled or the nation that constituted it’s population, a secular state was in principle possible. Only one Muslim state, the Turkish republic, formally adopted secularism as a principle and enacted the removal of Islam from the constitution and the abrogation of the sharia, which ceased to be part of the law of the land.
……
More recently, there has been a strong reaction against these changes. A whole series of Islamic radical and militant movements, loosely and inaccurately designated as “fundamentalist” share the objective of undoing the secularizing reforms of the last century, abolishing the imported codes of law and the social customs that came with them and returning to the Holy Law of Islam and an Islamic political order. In three countries, Iran, Afghanistan, and Sudan, these forces have gained power. In several others the exercise growing influence and a number of governments have begun to reintroduce sharia law, whether from conviction or–among the more conservative regimes–as a precaution. Even nationalism and patriotism, which after some initial opposition from pious Muslims had begun to be generally accepted, are now once again questioned and sometimes even denounced as anti-Islamic.
….
In the literature of the Muslim radicals and militants the enemy has been variously defined. Sometimes he is the Jew or Zionist, sometimes the Christian or missionary, sometimes the Western imperialist, sometimes–less frequently–the Russian or other communist. But their primary enemies, and the most immediate object of their campaigns and attacks, are the NATIVE SECULARIZERS–those who have tried to weaken or modify the Islamic basis of the state by introducing secular schools and universites, secular laws and courts, and thus excluding Islam and its professional exponents from the two major areas of education and justice. The arch-enemy for most of them is Kemal Ataturk…Characters as diverse as King Faruq and Presidents Nasser and Sadat in Egypt, Hafiz al-Asad in Syria and Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the Shah of Persia and the kings and princes of Arabia, were denounced as the most dangerous enemies of Islam, the enemies from within.
The issue was defined with striking clarity in a widely circulated booklet by Muhammad ‘Abd al-Salam Faraj, the ideological guide of the group that murdered President Sadat of Egypt:
‘Fighting the near enemy is more important than fighting the distant enemy. In jihad the blood of the Muslims must flow until victory is achieved. But the question now arises: is this victory for the benefit of an existing Islamic state, or is it for the benefit of the existing infidel regime? And is it a strengthening of the foundations of this regime which deviates from the law of God? These rulers only exploit the opportunity offered to them by nationalist ideas of some Muslims, in order to accomplish purposes which are not Islamic, despite their outward appearance of Islam. The struggle of a jihad must be under Muslim auspices and under Muslim leadership, and concerning this there is no dispute. The cause of the existence of imperialism in the lands of Islam lies in these self-same rulers. To begin the struggle against imperialism would be a work that is neither glorious nor useful, but only a waste of time. It is our duty to concentrate on our Islamic cause, which means first and foremost establishing God’s law in our own country, and causing the word of God to prevail. There can be no doubt that the first battlefield of the jihad is the extirpation of these infidel leaderships and their replacement by a perfect Islamic order. From this will come release.’
Today, obviously, not every Islamic militant would agree. The “Other” has again become the enemy…so it appears the battle is on or another or both fronts for one or another of these groups.
But not all Muslims, Lewis says, see the struggle in these terms. “For growing numbers, the issue is not religion or nationality but the right to live their own lives under a responsible government. For them the prime enemy is not the outsider, be he defined as foreigner, as infidel, or as imperialist, but their own rulers, regimes that maintain themselves by tyranny at home and terrorism abroad and have failed by every measure of governmental achievement except survival. They receive little help from those who should be their natural allies but who prefer to deal with corrupt tyrants, provided that they are amenable…” And one guess as to who Lewis is referring to here. As one observer of the U.S. said, “they may be bastards, but at least they are our bastards.” And this in my view is a source of much of the anger by any number of interests including the various political enemies of Mubarak. The question to ask is, in whose interest is it to destabilize Egypt where just maybe Mubarak (and his successors) can be overthrown.
Tags: Egypt, Middle East, Reading
Zoe
So first, utilizing most Microsoft Word/Windows applications, how to apply the most common accents:
CTR + ‘, the letter
á, é, í, ó, ú
Á, É, Í, Ó, Ú
CTR + `(accent grave), the letter
à, è, ì, ò, ù
À, È, Ì, Ò, Ù
CTR + SHIFT + ^(caret), the letter
â, ê, î, ô, û
Â, Ê, Î, Ô, Û
CTR + SHIFT + :(colon), the letter
ä, ë, ï, ö, ü, ÿ
Ä, Ë, Ï, Ö¸Ü, Ÿ
CTR + SHIFT + ~(tilde), the letter
ã, ñ, õ
Ã, Ñ, Õ
CTR + , (comma), c or C
ç, Ç