After this accident of the martyrdom of archpriest Sama’an
Shehata and the injury that inflicted another priest on the hands of a savage
criminal, I had to postpone my writing over Mr. Amr Moussa’s memoirs… as the
accident is much more dangerous to be described as a criminal act based on
misunderstanding of religion or demonic practice of religiosity… or even a
representation of the bloody hatred that blinds conscience… this accident, in my
opinion, is a shock revealing acute problems we kept hiding in many ways, yet,
they are still present in our life.
Our society is pious by nature and religion is deep
rooted in its composition… actually, this is not true… for if we tried to
monitor, in general or in details, the amount of what is not religiosity and
what has nothing to do with religion in the behavior of the society, no one would
have bragged that we have any deep-rooted religiosity or religion… including fields
we once thought are almost impossible to suffer any deficiency… revealing such
deficiency in those fields is due to the officials of the Administrative
Control Authority (ACA) whom, once the president gave his orders to them to do
their job, corruption started to unfold in places reaching to the level of
ministers, chiefs of agencies, and judiciary men… not to mention the
universities, research institutions, and endowments… after the president talked
openly about corruption in the municipalities and hospitals.
It is really shocking that one finds a researcher,
scholar, or university professor who managed to convince his mind, heart, and conscience
that copying-pasting the work of another researcher, a book written in a
foreign language, an old periodical, or information taken from the internet is
a legal act thinking that no one will discover his mean deed.
The same shocking thing one may find in a physician
and professor in a prestigious Egyptian university – unfortunately, I was the
victim this time – whom you resort to for the devastating pain you have in your
backbone and knees… then you find him suggesting a therapy he does with his own
hands and also overpricing his fees whenever he sees you agreeing because of
your severe pain while Quran is being recited out loud in his office… and the
result is zero of course.
If anyone of those, who became many like weevils
infesting wheat, has a tiny amount of religiosity or any other amount of religious
convictions, it would have prevented him from committing the deeds he thought the positive
law will not punish him for.
Another phenomenon of fake religiosity we have is the
billions we spend over visiting the holy lands to perform the Sunna of Umra
or the religious obligation of pilgrimage or Hajj and which our country
is in bad need of… we cannot say anything about this; performing Umra
and Hajj… however, this turned into just a way to appease one’s guilt with
money laundry in the core of it.
This is the point… as I am sure that all those who
violated the laws defining the heights and spaces of buildings in Heliopolis, Nasr
City, and the cities that followed them – I hope the newly established cities
are not on the way for the same fate – enjoy those titles of Hajj or Hajja[1]
and who became professional in performing Umra every year or even
several times a year… for this reason, a new trend was made just for them and
which is not present in any other religion on earth; that is categorizing
performing Umra or Hajj according to the social class… and so,
one finds a poor kind of Hajj for the poor… another touristic… third
luxurious… forth lux… fifth super lux… sixth super super lux and fast… and of
course, each one has a different price… and so, one finds some performing the
religious obligation while they sleep on asphalt and have the sky over them…
and others who perform it in luxury in a way I cannot describe as I haven’t experienced
it… then they, men and women, come back cheerful as the “counter of sins” is
set to “zero” once again like the moment when they were born… and so they start
again… and whenever the counter is full with sins, again they rush to launder
their conscience and money.
Now, let’s go to those who damage the asphalt road, that
costed a lot of money paid from the taxes incurred by the poor people and which
demanded hard efforts exerted by those who paved it well in the scorching
summer or harsh winter, in order to have a sewage connection for a building or
a mosque while both of them are built illegally.
In addition to those who dredge the land, block the
Nile, burn rice straws and car wheels… etc. after all that and more, one finds
those who brag of the deep-rooted religiosity and entrenched religion.
Then we come to the most evil thing; that is the evil
bunch of those who call themselves salafists… atop of them those whom I wrote a
lot about like Yasser Burhami, Abo Ishak al-Howeini, and all their likes… who
became popular over TV, newspapers, and “Youtube” and who keep yelling with Fatwas
stating the blasphemy of those who are not Muslims declaring that they mean the
Christians in specific since I haven’t heard a single one of them talking about
the Zionists of the Jews.
Yes, we wrote and republished what we wrote wondering
why the state institutions leave such people run loose without punishment over what
they say… asking if there is something hidden we do not know and which enabled
them to blackmail the government and state institutions to let them produce
such criminals that savage beasts cannot do what they do?
In a nutshell, let us admit for once that what we have
is fake religiosity… and that our connection to religion was proved to be disconnected…
otherwise, we wouldn’t have made it to this scene we have right now; a human
wearing a religious costume and holding a cross and who did not have a weapon
or hurt anyone and who worshipped God… a man guiding people to the way of God
and to have good peaceful morals… running in panic as one holding a knife was chasing
him until he caught and stabbed him to death while people were present in the
street in abundance but no one stopped him.
What kind of deep-rooted religiosity or entrenched
religion do we have in a society where this scene and the above-mentioned
phenomena take place?!
Translated into English by: Dalia Elnaggar
This article was published in
Almasry alyoum newspaper on October 18, 2017.
To see the original article,
go to:
#almasry_alyoum
#ahmed_elgammal #Egypt #religion #religiosity
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