Dr. Gamal Hassan, the psychiatry medicine consultant in the UK and distinguished Egyptian novelist, has disagreed with me over the harms that hit our Egyptian immune system. I mentioned some of these harms in previous articles regarding how such extremist terrorist Cancer, called muslim brotherhood, spread through our Egyptian society.
She said: “Dear friend…
let me disagree with you, despite your accuracy in describing the harms you
listed before; I believe the other side of the chaos we witness these days is
our resistance to survive the upheaval that is hitting the whole world due to
corrupt souls of mankind on all levels. This is only the Egyptian episode of
this series. Remember how Egyptians turned the June, 5 1967 defeat into perseverance
in June, 9 and 10 of the same year and through the war of attrition until the
great victory in October, 6 1973. Hope is born out of pain. We have hope in
God. Hope exists as long as God exists, and God is eternal”. These were Dr.
Gamal Hassan’s words.
I agree with her.
Despite the harms that hit our Egyptian immune system, especially what affected
its cultural and human existence in the core, I believe our beloved country possesses
all resistance and renaissance factors.
It’s what Egyptians did
throughout their history; they resisted, as deterioration and decline have hit
our country throughout Egypt history; ancient, middle, modern, and
contemporary. And if a general equation is to represent and predict movement of
our Egyptian history, it will be a sine wave signal fluctuating between
deterioration and renaissance. But, at that time, the nation was able to face
these challenges and stand against such deterioration. In this article, we will
continue talking about our Egyptian immune system by writing about resilience factors
and our ability to start over.
What Dr. Hassan said
about June, 5 defeat and what later followed when Egyptian people resisted and
fought bravely until October, 6 victory was achieved, goes directly in the
heart of what I said before. As there is great difference between harm caused
by a sudden hit with a big club that keeps you paralyzed for a period of time,
and other harm caused by cancer stealthily sneaking into your blood and bones
until it takes control of all your body. The latter is a malignant disease that
keeps eating your healthy cells unceasingly until it’s too late to recover. That’s
why we were able to resist after the defeat; our Egyptian national immune
system was still functioning well; its ability to resist and fight was
represented in our ardent patriotic will. But later our ability to resist
weakened because harm this time was caused by cancerous cells that spread
through the Egyptian body itself; those malignant cells that took command of
our country until they came to power!
Another major harm that
targeted our collective immune system was the profoundly-misleading mix between
reaching a solution to the Palestinian cause against the Hebrew state and
colonial Zionist occupation, and destroying the geographical, historical,
cultural and civilized constituents of our Egyptian patriotism. The concept
behind this is that all that may contradict with such approach to deal with the
Zionists has to be exterminated and is considered against free thinking and
economic interests necessities governed by regional and international balance
of powers. Such concept backs the Hebrew state to be the most powerful state in
the region. In this way, gaining satisfaction and approval of the so-called
state became the golden gate for the heart and soul, and treasury as well, of
the USA.
In this context, terms
of patriotism, nationalism, Arab nation, third world, and global liberation
movement were mocked. Not only were these terms mocked as definitions, but as
concepts as well, such concepts that played a role we may disagree about how
important it was in our country’s history, but it did exist. Those who
“committed” such mix went far in attacking others and even widened their circles
of influence until they became in control of some media and journalistic
outlets. People reacted to such diverged national stances by repulsion and so
the public opinion was divided, clearing the way for the extremist terrorist
religion-dressed cancer to pass through our social depth.
That worked well for the
benefit of the extremist religious perspective that has no definition for
homeland in its dictionary. In their opinion, their religion is homeland, Quran
is the constitution; and legacy of al-Banna[1], Qutb[2], al-Mawdudi[3], al-Albani[4], Ibn Taymiyyah[5], and others are their
doctrine and nothing else.
If we added to all the above-mentioned
the deteriorated education system; cinema, theater, and TV drama poor works and
low production; absence of popular cultural centres; and civil society communities
and non-governmental organizations funded by parties aiming at dismantling
Egypt and hitting its national compositions in the core, such organizations and
groups that went wild and became stronger than the central state in many
fields, we would realize the tragic ordeal we have now.
Challenges like foreign
invasion and occupation of our country or any other Arab state, with the
Palestinian cause in the heart of all this, have been great stimuli of our
Egyptian will to react and resist in all battle fields. But the enemy became a
friend, and then an ally, and later a master that has the right to grant and deny
through the USA gate.
And so, one finds
himself facing a great challenge; that is searching for our lost Egyptian
immune system and inquiring how to reactivate it in order to work as usual.
Translated into English by: Dalia Elnaggar
Translated into English by: Dalia Elnaggar
This article was
published in Al Ahram newspaper on March 3, 2016.
To see the original
Arabic version, go to:
#Al-Ahram#Ahmed-Elgammal#immune_system#Egypt#cancer#muslim_brotherhood#usa#israel#Palestine#palestinian_cause#challenge#zionism#occupation#Arabs#Arab_nation#third_world#global_liberation_movement#nationalism#concepts#hebrew_state#middle_east#gamal_hassan#Egyptian_history#october_6_1973#june_5_1967#resistance#resiliance#hope#victory
[1] Hassan
al-Banna: (Arabic: حسن البنا) (14
October 1906 – 12 February 1949) founder of the Muslim Brotherhood.
[2] Sayyid
Qutb: (Arabic: سيد قطب) (9
October 1906 – 29 August 1966) was a leading member of the Egyptian muslim brotherhood. Qutb is considered to be
responsible for the extremist ideology adopted by the muslim brotherhood.
[3] Al-Mawdudi: (Arabic: أبو الأعلى المودودي) (25 September 1903 – 22 September 1979), was an
Indian-Pakistani islamist . He strove not
only to revive Islam as a renewer of the religion, but to propagate "true
Islam", a remedy for the weakness from which Islam had suffered over the
centuries. He believed that politics was essential for Islam and that it was
necessary to institute sharia and preserve Islamic culture from what he saw as the
evils of secularism, nationalism, and women's emancipation. (Source: Wikipedia)
[4] Al-Albani: (Arabic: محمد نصر الدين الألباني) (1914 – October 2, 1999) was an Albanian Islamic scholar who specialized in the fields of hadith and fiqh. He is recognized as one of the leading figures in
Salafism. (Source: Wikipedia)
[5] Aḥmad
ibn Taymiyyah (Arabic: ابن تيمية) known
as Ibn Taymiyyah (22 January 1263 - 26 September 1328) was an Islamic
scholar, theologian and logician.
He lived during the troubled times of the Mongol
invasions, much of the time in Damascus. He was a member of the school founded by Ahmad ibn
Hanbal and is considered by his
followers, along with Ibn Qudamah, as one of the two most significant proponents of Hanbalism. Ibn Taymiyyah sought the return of Sunni Islam to what he viewed as earlier interpretations of the Qur'an and the Sunnah.(source:
Wikipedia)
