Public libraries… key to renaissance and modernization

While I was reading an article for ambassador and intellectual Mr. Abdel-Ra’ouf ar-Ridi in last Friday’s Al Ahram newspaper edition, I remembered what I read long time ago about the European renaissance and how one of the most important features at the beginning and set off of this renaissance was the efforts exerted by the Medici family that ruled Tuscany and Florence at the beginning of the modern era. This family believed and practiced the civilization and cultural role of wealth and responsibility of managing the society affairs. The princes of this family were famous for assuming such role, atop of them was prince Lorenzo the magnificent about whom it was said that he declared his intention to sell the furniture of Medici family houses to continue building the public libraries in Tuscany and Florence.

Ambassador ar-Ridi wrote about sources of terrorism and focused on the role of public libraries in building the civilization and cultural renaissance in Egypt… and of course the scientific and technical ones… he inaugurated the invitation to start building a thousand public libraries in Egypt… here I excerpt part of his article: “… since Egypt’s situation now is not only deteriorated in the public libraries’ field, but in the field of scientific research… as per the index of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Egypt lies almost at the last rank preceded by all other Arab countries except for Algeria and Yemen… as to the UAE, it occupies the first rank with Jordan following it in the second place”.

From this space of opinion pages of Al Ahram, I agree to this invitation and call upon everyone interested in the renaissance of this country to do the same thing so that this invitation sent by ambassador ar-Ridi can reach president Sisi to support the initiative of building a thousand public libraries in Egypt and issuing a law that makes reading a basic right for every citizen and having a public library a fundamental right for every human community… especially that there are many nations that precede us in such field… for example, there is a public library for every 28 thousand people in India… also, Iran has achieved better than this… and the Zionist state is even more and more advanced in such regard.

In my opinion, the hope in achieving the renaissance of our country in all fields starts by building the citizens’ awareness of their important role in achieving such hope… it is also known that building and increasing awareness is qualitatively and quantitatively connected to culture… we also know that means of reading have developed and that it is now available to have a flash memory, the one you can attach to your keys’ ring, which can hold hundreds of books in all fields… for this reason, I have already called more than once in my writings and TV interviews to start a campaign titled “a flash memory for every class”… this flash memory shall include well-chosen books regarding subjects and level to match the age range of those who shall read them.

I would like also to widen the scope of the invitation to include all the well-offs of Egypt and all civil communities; whether political parties, non-governmental organizations and all their likes in the countryside, desert and small towns to share in a collective work and go to the ministry of domestic development, that our good fortune happened to bring a great scientist and pioneering expert in the scientific and IT field on top of it, to start establishing the public libraries nationwide… next to reading and listening rooms, there shall be other halls for seminars and theatrical and artistic performances in general… and so, all who cannot find space to practice such activities in schools and universities shall go to these libraries… in doing so, the public libraries will turn into focal points of collective and creativity activities in all Egypt… side by side with youth clubs and residences of public culture… here I wonder about the current status of these two since we are about to fulfill our hope in building the renaissance of our country!

Ambassador ar-Ridi, that 80-years-old young man full of energy with his agile mind always wondering, has exerted a big and distinguished effort in the field of establishing and fostering public libraries so that they do not disappear with time… and he is still trying hard to fulfill the hope of working on building the first thousand public libraries so that we can have one for every hundred thousand Egyptian citizens… such thing might seem unachievable if we compared the percentage to other countries we mentioned above however we hope we can begin the journey of thousand miles with a single step… this step is the establishment of thousand libraries.

In such regard, the brave city of Suez is waiting to be the first one of the governorates’ capitals to have such public library as a first step… I knew that the land is already available… only the entity that will fund such project is left… as to the content of the library, ambassador ar-Ridi has promised to provide all support to have an international level of quality… and so I ask Mr. Hesham esh-Sherif; minister of domestic development to foster such project so that the efforts of providing the possibilities of building the public library of Suez are done under the auspices of the ministry.

Translated into English by: Dalia Elnaggar

This article was published in Al Ahram newspaper on April 20, 2017.

To see the original article, go to:

http://ahmadelgammal.blogspot.com.eg/2017/04/blog-post_20.html

#alahram #ahmed_elgammal #Egypt #culture #renaissance #1000_libraries_project

Sultan Al-Qasimi…”about Egypt and culture”

For many considerations that I believe are objective… with some of them have to do with the composition and stances of Shiekh Dr. Sultan bin Muhammed Al-Qasimi; ruler of Sharjah Emirate and member of the Supreme Council of the United Arab Emirates’ rulers… and with some others to do with Egypt; its role, status and hope… also, these words of Shiekh Al-Qasimi, which I am going to excerpt, are inseparable of the current circumstances our country is going through… these circumstances which I think are very critical… so I ask your permission to excerpt some texts of Sheikh Al-Qasimi from an interview of him published in the UAE’s newspapers on October 24, 2016.

Shiekh Al-Qasimi talked about the role of the Arab Republic of Egypt and said: “Egypt’s nature is different to that of other nations… as the situation in Egypt now is like the body that is recovering from some issues it suffers… and this recovering requires a lot of efforts… because the population is not few… 90 million people is a big nation regarding the problems and challenges Egypt faces from abroad; from the east, south and north… the president of the Arab Republic of Egypt; Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi is a man of responsibility and he wants to find solutions… he is like the surgeon with a scalpel in his hand to cut the body open… not to cause pain; but to remedy… remedy here, amidst these circumstances and current events, needs patience… and so, I assure you that Egypt is coming back and strong… but after we are done with the calamity in Syria and Iraq… in Egypt, we have all the good… in Egypt, we have an army that can defend the Arab nation… Egypt can run ten million fighters with one military order… so, I tell you… in Egypt, we can find the supporting back and security…

We could see that in other countries, enemies were able to miss with their compositions and divide whole nations into Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen, and Yazidis… in doing so, they were able to dismantle them like Israel hopes… but they could and will not do this in Egypt… because the Egyptian composition has been always, throughout history, free of such rifts… despite what Egypt’s enemies did to hit its cohesive composition, they were and will not be able to do what they did to the other nations.

This shall tell us about the reason why our enemies succeeded in dismantling some countries… because there was no common factor gathering the peoples of these nations… and so, we should stick to the most important factor we have in common among us… that is the Arab Nationality… so that we can be able to protect each other… and so, again I say, Egypt is coming back”.

For many years, Dr. Sultan has assigned himself the task of reviving the Arab culture… and so, he speaks of his cultural project saying: “at the beginning of the Union of the Emirates, we had education, commerce, agriculture, fishing and many fields available in the state… but the culture was not there… because the role of culture is to add… it’s not a source itself… I have my project which I have been working on since 1982… and I am still going on developing it… Sharjah has something to add everyday in the cultural domain… I myself follow the smallest details of these events… I have my own program regarding this… this project is not only in the Emirate of Sharjah or the state of the UAE… my cultural project is the Arab culture… and so, if I want to achieve any renaissance in such domain, I have to initiate this renaissance in the backbone of this region… and Egypt is the backbone in many fields… any work faces problems… consequently, work requires stability… also, work shall be grasped through repetition… and so, I have been working very hard in this cultural project since tens of years until this moment… but I am telling you, I have not achieved what I want yet… we should not hasten making culture… because culture is about accumulations that have to be perceived by the human mind… and so, we have to train the human mind on such discipline”.

Another text I excerpt of Shiekh Dr. Sultan Al-Qasimi: “despite all the current events that have caused depression to many people, I do not feel depressed… because when we look at the life of nations, we realize very well that what is happening now is an emergency… and there have always been many emergencies through time; whether bad or good, as time is changing like the sea… we shall not fear these changes… despite they sometimes bring death to our sons and throw their bodies on the European shores, we should be patient and strong… as what we have been through during the time of Mongols and Turks was much painful than this”.

This was the vision of a man who sees the whole picture in Egypt and the Arab nation from a specific angle; that is the perspective of the man-in-charge who knows well what responsibility means …

Some may get surprised that this Arab ruler is optimistic despite all the gloomy depression looming over the region… but going through the context of his words about the secret of such optimism, we find ourselves before a vision that is based, first, second and last, on culture… culture here is about building the human and making balance between the enlightened mind and the alerted sensitive conscience… the corner stone of such culture is “Egypt is coming back” and “it is the base in any future plans”…

I have known Shiekh Dr. Sultan Al-Qasimi since 37 years exactly… and so, I am not about to narrate what he and Sharjah offered for culture; whether in literature, arts or history… by providing sources, references, and documents… also, what was offered for motherhood, childhood, women and youth in more than one country… moreover, what was offered in certain fields in our beloved Egypt and other Arab countries… since he utterly refuses to talk about this…

I remember his clear decisive answer regarding such thing when some tried to publish what was offered to Egypt during his visit… he gave the example of a noble man who was tied and then his enemies asked people to pelt him with stones… then those who love him came and throw him with flowers while crying, thinking they declare their love to him this way… but actually, this is not true because pelting is pelting… even if by flowers.

Translated into English by: Dalia Elnaggar

This article was published in Al Ahram newspaper on October 27, 2016.

To see the original article, go to:

http://ahmadelgammal.blogspot.com.eg/2016/10/blog-post_28.html

#alahram #ahmed_elgammal #sultan_alqasimi #Egypt #UAE #sharjah #culture #cultural_renaissance

Toward an Egyptian cultural renaissance

Before going into today’s issue; that is the necessity to have an initiative launched by intellectuals to establish a movement to revive the Egyptian culture and which goes in the same context with what I wrote two weeks ago… I find myself facing a real, yet funny, dilemma… as many of my village residents and others in nearby villages and also many of my acquaintances think that since I write regularly in important newspapers and I’m an almost regular guest at the Egyptian TV and some satellite channels’ talk shows… and since I adopt a political and cultural discourse that is pro-June 30 revolution and president Sis… and I always value and feel grateful for the role of the Egyptian army in our current critical time… they think that means I’m a very important public figure who has many powerful connections enabling him to appoint a young man or woman in a job or get someone treated in a certain hospital for free… in general, they believe I can solve whatever problem and that my requests to officials in charge will be responded to immediately since I adopt such a loyal supporting stance to the ruling regime.

People in general look for anyone who can help them find solutions for their personal or collective problems… but they cannot believe that I, and many others, are not even invited to the president’s meetings with intellectuals, journalists and others… we even don’t know who are being invited and on what basis those invited are chosen.

What I do know is that if this invitation is coming from an official entity like the ministry of culture and its minister, I will never ever be invited… and reasons are many… most importantly because the minister do not like many of those who used to know him closely in the past… however, such disregard have and will never dissuade us away from the uncompromising stances we had and still believe in… as it’s a matter of nation’s fate and coming generations’ future… I believe one shall always do his best until the last moment, otherwise, he deserves not to be human… I just wish that our folks can excuse us if we couldn’t help them.

As to today’s issue, it has to do with what I have already written about before in my article titled “Sisi and history”… as I called upon the president to open our country’s institutions for the Arab scientists and intellectuals coming from Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Libya and that this shall help us establish an Egyptian cultural renaissance.

As it was proved that awareness is raised by culture side by side with – if not prior to – the economic and social circumstances… we can establish mega projects in more than one field, however, all these projects are prone to failure if those working in such projects are not fully aware of the nations’ priorities and future necessities… moreover, we can say that any pretender – especially those who believe that religion is in contrast with science and progress – can destroy people’s awareness by spreading a false Fatwa claiming to have a religious reference from a sacred verse.

It was also proved that the employees – especially those working in the field of culture – however high positions they have including the minister himself, they cannot establish an Egyptian cultural renaissance with clear targets and that is scheduled on phases… this mission shall be assigned to national intellectuals of all groups, ideologies and specializations.

Now, those who have known and dealt with hundreds of intellectuals have the right to inquire: why have we failed in establishing a comprehensive cultural renaissance movement which we can distribute tasks and roles and bear responsibility toward renovating out-of-time cultural concepts and changing them if necessary?... why don’t we adopt the theory of quantitative accumulation in our cultural life?

What I want to say here is that Egypt have witnessed many attempts of comprehensive cultural renaissances since the end of the 18^th century… but those attempts looked like waves that soon crashed once they hit the shore of our social structure… meaning since the attempts of Hassan el-Attar, Rifa'a al-Tahtawi… and later came Muhammed Abdo and those who followed him… and reaching to that wave of the sixties when we had dreams of having statues overlooking water canals of the Nile River and of having a theater in every hamlet.

We still remember the strong campaign that stood in the face of the muslim brotherhood culture minster… and how such large gathering of resilient intellectuals and artists led to total change… but again, everything came back as if nothing happened, even with the current minister, who was known to belong to the progressive forces as he used to declare when he was a journalist… and maybe the reason is what my late friend and great satirist Mahmoud es-Sa’adani used to say in his writings: “but… everything later changed…”… that journalist, now a minister, changed after he experienced the high positions starting from journalistic editing management, to agencies management and finally made it to be a minister…

Back to our point, I believe we should start first by bridging the gaps between renaissance eras… to finally have a continuous graphical line with ups and down and not distant separated dwarfed lines representing our cultural movement.

Those groups claiming to have religious reference – like muslim brotherhood, salafists and their likes – are the only winners of our current alarming cultural tardiness and the chaotic situation of intellectuals… it’s the perfect environment for their twisted ideas to thrive and fill the space left.

We shall continue later.

Translated into English by: Dalia Elnaggar

This article was published in Al Ahram newspaper on September 15, 2016.

To see the original article, go to:

http://ahmadelgammal.blogspot.com.eg/2016/09/blog-post_53.html

#alahram #ahmed_elgammal #Egypt #culture #cultural_renaissance