USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re- “A People’s Revolution and Not a Crisis or Coup” (Nawal El Saadawi).

Re- "A People's Revolution and Not a Crisis or Coup" (Nawal El Saadawi).

Some more criticism of Egypt's trigger-happy military:

The Muslim Brotherhood's Silent Martyrs Lie Soaked In Blood

Apart from being arrested once in Alexandria, I only have pleasant memories of my half year in Egypt, fond memories of the faithful at Abul Abbas Mosque in Alexandria and the al-Rifai mosque in Cairo...fond memories of the late Abu Wafa al-Taftazani, Professor of Philosophy at  of the University of Cairo a Rifai Sheikh and head of the Sufi Council of Egypt...

I should hope that in this rumination, selective as I am, I am not out cycling in the dark or cycling blindfolded just because I read someplace that "love is blind".

The focus is on the on-going carnage in Egypt and what el Saadawi, arguably not the great grandmother or the grand old lady of Modern Egyptian or African Literature opined in her "A people's Revolution and Not a Crisis or Coup".

For a real discussion or debate, I should like to pit Tariq Ramadan against el-Saadawi a vocal spokesperson for women's rights in Egypt  and a committed anti/FGM activist - so it would be man against equal rights woman, and leave them to iron it out, see who comes out on top, which would be left standing.

Writers have a special high standing in Egypt – Naguib Mahfouz was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature  - although this forum tends to ignore him when talking about African Literature  - perhaps because he wrote in his mother tongue Arabic (same language as the Quran) whilst people in this forum mostly focus on  those who write in other tongues. When I started my study of Islam and enquired from my closest Muslim friends about Mahfouz's "Children of Gebelawi" in which Moses, Jesus and Muhammad hang out in the same Cairo Ghetto - I was told that Mahfouz was "an evil man" and that I should stay away from him. I got the same answer when I asked another friend - Sheikh Sadiq, a Professor of Islam from Najaf about Nader Shah who organised that debate between the Shia and the Sunni in 1746 - he told me the same thing that Nader Shah was "an evil man."

Evil men. I wonder what the same people would say about el-Sisi. Maybe that he's going to go to hell?

One of the problems is that African writers (including those made in Egypt, which is in Africa) are often approached as if on the basis of their fiction or fantasy poetry alone, they deserved to be reckoned as prophets or consulted like the oracle of Delphi or a priest or priestess of Ifa Divination and their every word  highly regarded as prophetic when talking about or diagnosing or sooth-saying about their countries or world events as in this case about what's happening in Egypt right now; and sometimes as in the case of el-Saadawi, talking some sense but admixtured with a great deal of nonsense because although she has said elsewhere that "Nothing is more perilous than truth in a world that lies", some of what she has said here is far, far from anything that could be called "truth" - at least not the kind of truth that is equateable with what she read in the Quran.

Since her article was first published on the 5^th of July 2013 and probably penned on the 4^th of July when we were celebrating the 237^th anniversary America's Independence,we can safely conclude that as optimistic as she was when she wrote that article she was not gifted with the requisite kind of prophetic insight to have foreseen the military's killing sprees since she penned that article.  Apparently she did not anticipate the military's massacre of the 5^th of July or the massacre of the 27^th of July and the subsequent massacres of August 13th -14^th and the ongoing massacres of the well-equipped Egyptian military's war being waged on the democratically elected president Morsi's' supporters and other anti- coup sympathisers.

So, I find myself concurring with Professor Harrow and with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention:

 In Egypt one side is saying:

"WE are the other people"

 And the other side is also raging, a chorus of voices and street and mosque protests:

"WE are the other people too!"

 If only el Saadawi could talk about the Egyptian people, the way that Victor Jara sang about the Chilean people then she would be talking with a more human heart. It's not that her side should slaughter all the guys on the other side in the name of justice, Human Rights and equality and win a revolution of the beeble ... 

Just heard Hamdi Hassan explaining on SwedishTV4 news that one of the reasons why it's difficult to estimate the accurate death toll at the hands of the trigger-happy military is that Muslims prefer to bury their dead as quickly as possible within twenty four hours – they don't want their dead to be tampered with, dragged to the morgue etc – and so those numbers disappear from the daily count.

Human Rights Watch Egypt and indeed the whole world is very concerned about the escalating number of Egyptians that have been shot in the head and chest.  Ammar Badie the son of Mohamed Badie the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood currently detained by El-Sisi's military, was shot dead earlier today.

What we see on a world wide scale is the world's Muslim population being systematically reduced - decimated  every step of the way by all these wars - terrorism and war -  and first and foremost it's some of the most able-bodied and zealous Muslim youths that are the cannon fodder in Egypt, in Iraq, in Pakistan, in Afghanistan, in Lebanon, in Syria and not so long ago in Algeria and Somalia, Tunisia, Libya not to forget the doings of Boko Haram in Nigeria.

Right now it looks like at the top of El-Sisi's agenda is the annihilation of the Muslim Brotherhood – to reduce them in number and influence as a political force and social grassroots organisation in Egypt and in this he seems to have the whole-hearted support of the Egyptian Copts who do not want to abide by Jesus' gospel advice:

^" But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you,"

but instead would like to see the last of the Muslim Brotherhood far from their neighbourhoods. Good news for them: El-Sisi says that the Egyptian state is going to re-build their burned down churches. It's a great pity that El-Sisi  & the Egyptian military are not going to bring back to life all the pro-Morsi Egyptians that they have killed these past few days, in cold blood.

El-Sisi and his military men are nonplussed and unfazed by the president of the United States dangling the $1.5 billion aid carrot under their greedy military noses and threatening to withhold all of it if El-Sisi and his trigger-happy and unelected interim government do not behave themselves and stop murdering the Egyptian people.  However, at this stage, for El Sisi and the military's economic empire, $1.5 billion is but a pittance in the bucket when the combined might of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates are offering their anti -Muslim Brotherhood brothers-in-distress a whopping $12 billion to eradicate the al-Ikhwan al-Muslimeen.

 El Sisi is in effect saying that he can do without the US's $1.5 – although the cancellation of the joint military exercise is a serious blow to the Egyptian Military's prestige.

Still on the Egyptian army, Ok so the Egyptian Army has its own vast economic interest to take care of  - to defend and protect – but how united is the Egyptian army?  Don't the soldiers in that army have relatives in the Muslim Brotherhood or among the many anti-military coup demonstrators and who are being so mercilessly slaughtered?  Are there any Copts in the Egyptian military?

Naguib Sawiris one of Egypt's richest men - a Copt – was asked on CNN whether he was financing el-Sisi's interim govt. He replied that he wasn't doing that and that it was the govt's duty to maintain law and order, omitting to add "by any means possible" and as I listened to him I thought, "And you've got someone like him, to be your god!"

In my view, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus should all be protesting about the Egyptian army's excessive killings...

You guess is as good as mine, but I have a feeling that the West wouldn't mind if it was the Copts in power in Egypt. _ in which case they would both be speaking the same language – the language of "the holy trinity"...

Some anti-Muslim Brotherhood voices:

Frontpage Magazine

Israel  of course  - from the Israeli point of view  (Israel is Egypt's next door neighbour – only the Sinai separates them and they been to war several times, the last time in 1973 – which the Egyptian army is still telling the Egyptian people that they won)  worse than the Muslim Brotherhood re-gaining power in Egypt would be Hamas ( an ideological affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters in Egypt) gaining power  and ruling in Gaza, Judea and Samaria – that would be a nightmare...

Let us pray

We Sweden

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