Our immune system…. third injury

Mawaled in Egypt

I wrote before about the precancerous condition of muslim brotherhood and salafists striking and taking command of Egypt’s body and mind. I also mentioned injuries inflicted with our Egyptian national immune system allowing that cancer to spread. The first injury detected was duplicity of education system after failed attempts attained by both Muhammed Ali Pasha and later Gamal Abdel Nasser to reform the old mosque of al-Azhar. Another injury was represented in the disruption of Egyptian history continuity depicted as adjacent dwarfed lines instead of a continuous one with ups and downs, meaning that accumulation could have been achieved and change guaranteed if it wasn’t for that disruption.

Today I mention a third injury that wreaked our Egyptian immune system; what I call Egyptians’ migration to oil-rich countries, meaning migration of millions of Egyptians either temporarily for a pre-decided set of years or permanently by immigration and visiting Egypt frequently where many left their families bahind in homeland and travelled. This migration was not a coincidence or a surprise for it started relatively long ago when professional teachers, physicians, and engineers travelled to the Arab countries especially those of the Arabian Peninsula; now states of the Gulf Cooperation Council in addition to Yemen, and later Iraq, Sudan and Syria joined as well. The Egyptian treasury used to fund and pay for the salaries or differences in salaries for those travelling. It also used to send in-kind aid like school supplies including notebooks, books, pencils, and even rubber erasers.

It was until Infitah[1] phoenix landed on our beloved country prior to the first half of the seventies when the October, 1973 war prompted the high prices of oil and its revenues in turn. After the war, hundreds of thousands of young men; those who were residing in trenches since the 1967 defeat until victory was achieved, came out searching for the outcome of their victory achieved in blood, souls, and knowledge. They were disappointed when they saw their triumph stolen and eaten away by Infitah tycoons. It was then when the tragedy of crunching lower and middle classes started… land and construction materials’ prices went high, deal was set between all parties of the Egyptian, regional, and international mafia; between those of the executive and parliamentary authorities at that time, then-head of state president Anwar Sadat, and private sector tycoons with its then-famous fat cats on one side, and other regional parties who had vengeance with the July, 1952 regime on the other side. Other international parties had vengeance as well, not to mention their earnest endeavors to reshape the region making sure no other Nasser is born, and also for the Hebrew state to stay the ultimate and only power in the region. This era had a name that best describes its nature; the era of Cash or Cashism. Massive amounts of money of aid, loans, and money transferred by expatriate Egyptians flooded. All those fortunes were stolen and transferred overseas while part of it was used to build a cemented wall extending from Sinai shores in the east to Matrouh[2] in the west.

The nation’s savings hard-earned by its people migrating to the Arab oil-rich countries turned into apartments and chalets inhabited for a month or less a year. Tens of billions of hard currency were squandered over toilettes, kitchens, and buildings, and thus, industries like ceramics, sanitary equipments, moquette, and other consumable goods thrived, such industries that do not establish any industrial renaissance in the proper sense of the word. Air-conditioners replaced Mashrabiyat[3] and wooden windows since buildings’ facades transformed into wide sheets of glass and aluminum, turning homes into closed glasshouses where germs can proliferate and human and family warmth is missing!

Spread of individual salvation philosophy was the greatest calamity that hit the Egyptian conscience and later mentality. Adopting the malicious doctrine of “end justifies the means”– no matter this end is – led to violating laws, traditions, ethics, and religions’ true teachings.

People turned into machines collecting money, tools for acquisitions, and even into consumption-addict creatures in the broad sense of consumption; normal, luxurious, and extravagantly lavish. Disputes used to run in public and secretly, no matter right or wrong, about dreams possible to come true or fancy illusions as to living neighborhoods, apartments’ areas, chalets, gold, diamond, vacations, high-end clothes… etc. Genie of acquisition and showing-off was unleashed to squander what was left in our Egyptian conscience; that conscience that was once a solid mixture of patriotism, moderate consumption behavior, and high morals such as the one saying that any human is evaluated by his work, productivity, knowledge, culture, strong will, and freedom of his country. It was the philosophy of individual salvation set up by Infitah policies and consecrated by Egyptians’ migration to oil-rich countries that contributed to destroying the Egyptian middle class, killing its awareness and amputating its progress-seeking leg for its other underdevelopment-mired one to inflate, as it is said that bourgeoisie has a leg walking forward and another desperate to go back.

With that philosophy clearly represented by a development-inhibiting set of values came the disaster that can be described in all superlative words and expressions; that is cultural submission by Egyptians for the economically strong and predominant; that is oil-rich countries.

It’s not a matter of chauvinism or narrow-minded fanaticism but merely the historical truth that Egypt has been dominating for long time. It’s a fact stated in history exactly like the fact that Christianity came to Egypt from Palestine and Levant countries, and that Islam came to Egypt from the Arab Peninsula, and that using irrigation tools more developed than Shadoof[4] was adapted from the Greeks and Romans like Tanboor[5] and Saqieya[6]… etc. Egypt, and for centuries, has been spreading its soft power in all fields even in what came to it from abroad when Egypt reproduced it again in a new version. The Arianism belief in Christianity and moderate interpretation school in Islam were examples of this, not to mention Egypt’s contributions to the Greek philosophy and the Roman culture. Egypt had also its military might that didn’t adopt aggression or invading other countries as a doctrine but rather was for protection and security even if distances were far. Egypt had its economic might as well that was known to all around when it was unlimitedly generous that money was called Masari[7] as derived from the word Masr[8]. Egypt, and for long times, has been a pioneering centre for hymns and church melodies, Inshad[9], Sufi Tawasheeh[10] and supplications, Quran reciting, and schools of Qira’at[11], not to mention music, singing, folklore dancing, oriental dancing, musical composing, telling jokes, light sense of humor, pioneering in parliamentary life, setting up universities and research centres, and many other unlimited fields. But as we all know, even a worm will turn, Egypt underwent circumstances like any other society that was once standing in the foreground for long times and later declined and degradation took place.

We shall continue talking about cultural dependency that wrecked our Egyptian national immune system later.

Translated into English by: Dalia Elnaggar

This article was published in Al Ahram newspaper on February 11, 2016.

To see the original Arabic version, go to:

http://www.ahram.org.eg/NewsQ/476072.aspx

#alahram#ahmed_elgammal#our_Egyptian_immune_system#Egypt#Egyptian_migration_to_Arab_oil_rich_countries#infitah#Sadat

---

[1] Infitah: (Arabic: إنفتاح) the Arabic word for the open door policy adopted by President Sadat in the years following 1973 October war. (Source: Wikipedia)

[2] Matrouh Governorate: (Arabic: محافظة مطروح) is one of the governorates of Egypt. Located in the north-western part of the country, it borders Libya. Its capital is Marsa Matrouh. (Source: Wikipedia)

[3] Mashrabiyat is plural of Mashrabiya or Shanasheel: (Arabic: مشربية  or  شناشيل‎) is the Arabic term given to a type of projecting oriel window enclosed with carved wood latticework located on the second storey of a building or higher, often lined with stained glass. The mashrabiya (sometimes shanshool or rushan) is an element of traditional Arabic architecture used since the Middle Ages up to the mid-20th century. It is mostly used on the street side of the building; however, it may also be used internally on the Sahn (courtyard) side.

Mashrabiyas were mostly used in houses and palaces although sometimes in public buildings such as hospitals, inns, schools and government buildings. They are found mostly in the Mashriq – i.e. the eastern part of the Arab world, but some types of similar windows are also found in the Maghreb (the western part of the Arab world). They are very prevalent in Iraq, the Levant, Hejaz and Egypt. They are mostly found in urban settings and rarely in rural areas. Basra is often called "the city of Shanasheel". (Source: Wikipedia)

[4] Shadoof: (Arabic: شادوف) is an irrigation tool. A less common English translation is swape and it is also called a well pole, well sweep. or simply a sweep in the US. It uses a bucket attached to a lever with a fulcrum fixed in the ground. The shadoof was an early tool used by Mesopotamian and Nile River peoples to draw water. It is still used in many areas of Africa and Asia and very common in rural areas of India such as in the Bhojpuri belt of the Ganges plain where it is named "dhenki". (Source: Wikipedia)

[5] Tanboor: (Arabic: طنبور) also called The Archimedes screw, the Archimedean screw, or screwpump, is a machine historically used for transferring water from a low-lying body of water into irrigation ditches. Water is pumped by turning a screw-shaped surface inside a pipe. (Source: Wikipedia)

[6] Saqieya: alternative spelling sakieh or saqiya: (Arabic: ساقية‎) is a mechanical water lifting device which uses buckets, jars, or scoops fastened either directly to a vertical wheel, or to an endless belt activated by such a wheel. The vertical wheel is itself attached by a drive shaft to a horizontal wheel, which is traditionally set in motion by animal power (oxen, donkeys, etc.) Because it is not using the power of flowing water, the saqieya is different from a noria and any other type of water-wheel. It is still used in India, Egypt and other parts of the Middle East, and in the Iberian Peninsula and the Balearic Islands. It may have been invented in Hellenistic Egypt, Persia or India. (Source: Wikipedia)

[7] Masari: (Arabic: مصاري) the word used to name money in Arabic in some Arab countries.

[8] Masr: (Arabic: مصر) the Arabic word for Egypt.

[9] Inshad: (Arabic: إنشاد) a kind of chanting that makes musical sound with the voice. It’s found in both Islamic and Christian heritage.

[10] Tawasheeh: (Arabic: تواشيح) A form of postclassical form of Arabic poetry arranged in stanzas and an Islamic music genres emerged in Egypt.

[11] In Islam, Qira'at (Arabic: علم القراءات) which means literally the readings, terminologically means the method of recitation. Traditionally, there are 10 recognised schools of Qira'at, and each one derives its name from a famous reader of Quran recitation. (Source: Wikipedia)

Our immune system… second injury

I’m trying to detect another reason for the collapse of our Egyptian immune system in facing cancer of extremism and religion-proclaimed terrorism. I have already written about the precancerous condition’s spreading and taking command of our society. I also wrote about what I think was the first injury inflicted with our Egyptian immune system; that is duplicity of education system; Azhari[1] and modern, where the latter was established by Muhammed Ali Pasha[2], then ruler of Egypt, after his failure to fulfill Sheikh Hassan Al-attar[3]’s reform vision, that great man who called for developing and reforming education in the old mosque; al-Azhar. Such duplicity in education has led to another parallel duplicity in culture and conscience as I have detailed in last week’s article.

Today, I will write about what I think was the second injury that wreaked our Egyptian national immune system; that is the constant state of change inflicted with Egypt, as a society, in the time period extending from the collapse of Muhammed Ali Pasha’s attempt to modernize Egypt in the 19^th century until now, that change that hasn’t resulted in stability or completion of any other attempt to modernize our country. Thereby, it’s more accurate to be described as a state of discontinuity between each attempt and its normal development, and between attempts one another.

In depicting the movement of our history in a graphical form, we would find ourselves standing before non-continuous adjacent dwarfed lines representing the political, economic, and sociological aspects of our society, while it’s supposed to be a continuous line, with ups and downs, apexes and bottoms, albeit continuous. Without digging deep in our history, it’s ok to mention that the deterioration that wreaked Egypt prior to the Greek invasion had different interpretations. Away from causes lying behind it, we can detect a clear rift between pre-Greek-invasion Egypt and post-Greek-invasion Egypt, followed by the roman, and then by the Islamic Arabic one. Jumping forward to the modern era, we will discover that Muhammed Ali’s attempt to modernize Egypt has come to an end and even collapsed as per the consequences of the Convention of London on 1840, atop of those consequences was scaling down the Egyptian army. Afterwards came Isma’il Pasha[4]’s attempt that too came to a failure due to severe foreign debts and interference that paved the way for the British occupation to take place and make a clear disruption between Muhammed Ali descendants’ ruling eras until this dynasty was ousted of power by the revolution of the 23^rd July, 1952, which in turn failed to achieve its targets after it was hit by the 1967 defeat. Thereby, laying down foundations of liberalism and free market economy in society prior to 1952 was not complete and so was the attempt to adopt socialism in the hope of building a multi-party social democracy that came to an end after 1967.

After 1967 came Sadat, and later followed by his hand-picked successor Mubarak – they adopted the same policies in my opinion – where there was an attempt to go back to political liberalism and free economy. However, it was a botched one as despotism was mingled with corruption making it impossible to go any further, and then the revolution of the 25^th of January, 2011 erupted putting an end to that past era. And here we are still trying to move again from despotism and corruption, followed by a sectarian muslim brotherhood fascism, in the hope of finding our way to fascism-free political liberalism and national capitalism void of despotism and corruption.

That disruption in Egypt political and economic history had direct impact on its social structure as a clear class structure was not given due time to form in order to allow class conflict among society’s three classes; low, medium, and high, to take place on clear basis with each aware of its interests. What is more dangerous is that such political and economic deformations have resulted in an ugly sociological distortion represented in a new class that took benefit of despotism and corruption. That class had put everything at stake and traded in everything flouting all constitutional, legal, and ethical constraints that control the society’s social balance. This distortion has transferred as well to state institutions and could be noticed in the deeply-rooted rife corruption we witnessed and suffered, starting from the presidential palace to the least-ranked employee in a cooperative or a retail complex!

The right question to ask here is has this disruption hit all aspects in the Egyptian life? The immediate answer is “no”, because resistance pockets have been vigilant at the cultural level, in the broad sense of the word culture, especially that this disruption was due to foreign interference or presence, and therefore the national cause was always present and raging against occupying our land or breaking our will. That was when resistance movement had started since the Greek invasion and a new phenomenon of migration and finding refuge in the desert to form resistance teams was witnessed. Monasticism movement was more or less a continuation of this phenomenon. Resistance diversified between acting positive and another negative one by turning the back to all the ruler’s desires or actions. Connected chains representing the Egyptian resistance movement could be detected throughout ages until the disaster took place when the religion-proclaimed cancer took command of the cultural infrastructure of our country and came to power to declare they were going to stay for at least five coming centuries.

Such disruption in the political-economic sides along with its devastating effect on the social side – especially with the absence or delay in forming a clear class structure – was most notably and negatively demonstrated in hitting or dismantling the Egyptian middle-class, considered as the “dynamo” of the historical movement in view of many interested in social history. Some were of the view that a project seeking structure of the middle-class took place in the sixties. However, such project has suffered a severe blow by the unbridled economic Infitah[5]era that followed. That era was associated as well with migration of millions of Egyptians to oil-rich Arab counties. That was when the most devastating damage inflicted with the Egyptians’ culture occurred, but this matter deserves to be discussed in details in the coming article.

Translated into English by: Dalia Elnaggar

This article was published in Al Ahram on February 2^nd, 2016.

 To see the original Arabic version, go to:

http://www.ahram.org.eg/NewsQ/474696.aspx

#alahram#ahmed_elgammal#our_immune_system#Egypt#1952#1967#infitah#egyptian_middle_class#60s

---

[1] Azhari: (Arabic: أزهري) related to al-Azhar.

[2] Muhammad Ali Pasha: (Arabic: محمد علي باشا‎) (4 March 1769 – 2 August 1849) was an Ottoman Albanian commander in the Ottoman army, who rose to the rank of Pasha, and became Wali, and self-declared Khedive of Egypt and Sudan with the Ottomans' temporary approval. Though not a modern nationalist, he is regarded as the founder of modern Egypt because of the dramatic reforms in the military, economic and cultural spheres that he instituted. He also ruled Levantine territories outside Egypt. The dynasty that he established would rule Egypt and Sudan until the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 led by Muhammad Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser. (Source: Wikipedia)

[3] Hassan al-Attar: (Arabic: حسن العطار) an ex-chief of al-Azhar (1830-1835) who excelled in literature and modern sciences – which was rare among Azhar clerics at that time – and the first voice calling for reforming al-Azhar and education nationwide. He contributed to establishing high-tech educational institutions in Egypt like the schools of Alsun (languages), medicine, engineering, and others. One of his famous sayings was “we need to change our country and renew its knowledge”. Due to his good relationship with then-ruler of Egypt – Muhammed Ali Pasha– he urged him to dispatch students in scholarships to Europe in order to acquire knowledge.

[4] Isma'il Pasha: (Arabic: إسماعيل باشا), known as Ismail the Magnificent (31 December 1830 – 2 March 1895), was the Khedive of Egypt and Sudan from 1863 to 1879, when he was removed at the behest of the United Kingdom. Sharing the ambitious outlook of his grandfather, Muhammad Ali Pasha, he greatly modernized Egypt and Sudan during his reign, investing heavily in industrial and economic development, urbanisation, and the expansion of the country's boundaries in Africa. His philosophy can be glimpsed at in a statement that he made in 1879: "My country is no longer in Africa; we are now part of Europe. It is therefore natural for us to abandon our former ways and to adopt a new system adapted to our social conditions". (Source: Wikipedia)

[5] Infitah: (Arabic: إنفتاح) the Arabic word for the open door policy adopted by President Sadat in the years following 1973 October war. (Source: Wikipedia)