Somali Piracy

One of my articles on Somali piracy was published on Bikya Masr.

Enjoy.

End of the Middle East?

An article from Asia Times Online from May 8, 2007 caught my interest the other day.

Titled "Are the Arabs already extinct?" Asia Times Online columnist Spengler mercilessly divulged a starling state-of-being of the Arabs and all those in the Middle East. The esteemed columnists introduces Adonis, a Syrian poet who laments that "[Arabs] have become extinct ... We have the masses of people, but a people becomes extinct when it no longer has a creative capacity, and the capacity to change its world".

One may shrug off the poet and criticize Spengler for taking a literary comment too far, but the article delves much deeper. For example, the Arab world "translates only a fifth as many books per year as does Greece, with a 30th of the population. Arab writers of global stature are a tiny number, and their importance is disproportionately great." Indeed these figures alone place much doubt upon the capacity of the Arab world to integrate into the vastly diversifying and mobile world around them.

Adonis places some blame upon Islam which "not only suppresses the possibility of poetic expression... but with it the capacity of the individual to have a personality. It is an astonishing, terrifying, and absolute indictment of [Arab] culture." I cannot say whether this perspective from one poet stands true in Syria as well as Morocco, Indonesia, or Senegal, all prominent Muslim societies. To call Islam the root of societal decline is an incredibly dubious claim. However, from what I have seen in Egypt and in the United States, I must agree with certain aspects of Spengler and Adonis' claim on the suppression of expression.

Riding on the Cairo subway one always notices a number of people reading. An Arab society is a literate one regardless of whether or not it is consuming foreign thoughts and expressions. (They may still be functionally illiterate, the inability to read beyond the text in order to interpret and critique for themselves... something many Americans have succumb to) Yet, the vast majority of the people reading on the subway are reading the Koran. A vast jump from the DC metro where vast numbers of people seem to read newspapers or works of fiction. Interpret this as you wish.

Another feature is in the way in which many Muslims in the United States preach "plural monoculturalism", a term I came across in works by Amartya Sen. Many Muslim organizations in the United States (especially student ones) utilize the shield of pluralism against any critiques or criticism against the Arab/Muslim world and religion. They accept the benefits of a plural society but refuse to alter their interactions with other cultures within this plural society. This seems like a bigoted conclusion by someone outside the Muslim community, but this is the predicament of Muslim communities in Europe and the Americas. It is essentially what Sarkozy points out in his (in)famous remark. Plural monoculturalism is divisive and we eventually end up with a society that is exremely suspicious of one another. Domestic terrorism in Britain is an advanced symptom of this issue.

While I am on the issue, I have noticed that Muslim student organizations that have observed often utilize the defense that terrorists and insurgents are not acting in accordance with their faith. I have always felt that this was a double edged argument. It indicates that there is a certain way in which a person of the Muslim faith should act. It does not offer an alternative individual identity other than being Muslim. This would mean that a terrorist who is Muslim can only have a single misguided purpose of purging the world of sinners and apostates. Nationalism, political and economic equity, and dignity cannot be the primary motivating factors. Of course many claim to represent Islam when committing acts of terror, but to extensively classify how a Muslim should act like is a means of devolving into gross puritanicalism before which many American muslims will appear hypocritical.

Back to the Arab world, the issue of uncreative construction is one which branches from society and culture into politics and economics. A more open and discursive society is necessary.

In terms of where Egypt can start... before we even get into fair elections and ridding the country of the dreadfully inefficient subsidies... the government needs to bring down its bloody knuckles upon those that harrass women. When half of one's country is left without proper dignity on the streets, discourse or anything will get nowhere. Only stagnation.

It's really all about the West, isn't it?

Amidst angry calls for their governments to do more about the treatment of Muslims in the West, the Middle Easterners have been remarkably silent on the treatment of Uyghur people in China. If the death of one Egyptian woman in Dresden should provoke such furor, then the deaths of many Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang should have provoked a more violent reaction towards the People's Republic.

If one looks back at all the recent international incidents involving mass demonstrations and public censures in the Middle East they are predominantly, if not solely, targeted towards the "West".

Danish Cartoon Scandal, the El Sherbini murder, Muslim veil issue, etc. The Muslim world seems so focused on the abuses on the Muslim faith and faithfuls, but when the Chinese authorities crack down on the Uyghurs there is little to no reaction from the parts of the world that were burning flags and throwing projectiles at western embassies days before. Why is there such a disproportionate focus on the abstract West?

Professor Sreeram Chaulia concluded in an Asia Times Online article that this phenomenon existed because of:

"complicated construction of enemies by Islamists... when atrocities or slights are seen to be committed against Islam and its adherents in a European or North American country, they confirm the pre-existing prejudices and hatreds nursed by the Muslim street and its instigators in positions of power... China does not fit neatly into the binary jihadist classification of the world into dar-ul-Islam (a land where Islamic laws are followed and the ruler is a Muslim) and dar-ul-Harb (a land ruled by infidels and where Muslims suffer)."

Funny considering that the Mongols and forces from the East did as much to bring ruin to the "golden age" of Islam as did the Ottoman Turks and in due time the French and British.

In short, it seems as though the proclaimed Muslim internationalists are doing a great disservice to their own great cause of Muslim solidarity. In the end it's all about hiding their own socio-economic inadequacies than about God or people. If only hating the west generated more dollars... is that an oxymoron?

Middle East, Europe, and their mob mentalities

On July 1st, Marwa El Sherbini was murdered in Dresden by a racist. The Egyptian, Middle Eastern, and Muslim responses have shown how easily mobs can be incited to march in step to the drums of hate. This in turn will bring equally negative responses from the far right denizens of Europe who are increasingly turning towards nationalism and protectionism. We have all taken a giant leap in the wrong direction.

The seeds of this rift have become more evident earlier this summer when the Dutch, British, and other denizens of the EU opted to elect some members of the far right nationalist parties to represent their states in the European parliament. All this amidst increasing tensions surrounding Sarkozy's statements surrounding the Muslim veil.

Mob mentality does not merely signify the narrowing of one's own identity, but the narrowing of others' identities regardless of the others' desires to prioritize one identity above another. Simply put, it's a form of oppression.

11 days after the tragic death of Mrs. El Sherbini, Shia Muslim Pakistani student activists marched in a protest rally in Karachi, burning German, Israeli and American flags. There could be no better example of an incensed mob attempting to make "Western" nations indistinguishable. (The spectacle of a flag burning deserves more anthropological and philosophical analysis - much like Foucault's analysis of the scaffold)

According to Al-Ahram newspaper Mrs. El Sherbini's brother declared that "The assailant should be sent to Egypt and stand trial in an Egyptian court; otherwise [Marwa El Sherbini]'s blood will have been shed in vain... Diplomatic relations with Germany should be broken off, and the trial should be held in an international court at the very least... The government is not doing anything more than it has to... their reaction is merely proportionate to the size of the incident."

Alright, one may say that this is the voice of a distraught brother in a house full of bereaved, but his outrageous demands are supported by the empathetic Egyptian masses. This is the mob's demand for justice most familiar to them (and why should they expect less in a society where tortures and deaths are so whimsically bestowed by the most generous leader - a comment for later)

This far fetched anti-western rhetoric is aimed at not just the one crazed German man who went berserk, but also at all the Germans who testified on behalf of Mrs. El Sherbini, Bosnian Muslims, and German Muslims of Turkish descent... Who and what is this "West" that the Middle East points to?

El Sherbini family is not the only one using the vague identity to materialize a monster which does not really exist. In the opinions of Khaled Abu Bakr, the lawyer representing the family of Marwa El Sherbini: "Apparently the Western media's (apparently he reads all of them) depiction of Muslims as aggressors and terrorists has so blinded German people that they could not see that this Muslim woman was being attacked,"

Well said, then what about the murder of a 50-year-old German man in Istanbul on the 20th? The Germans accept the fact that a crazed Turk committed a vile act and we do not see German students burning Turkish, Iranian, and Egyptian flags on the streets of Munich calling for the German government to take things out of proportion. The German people have all the rights to be incensed, but they react based on precedents set by the political system within the country. A rational people with a rational political system. Something that will hopefully prevent further victories for the ultra nationalists in the future elections for the EU.

Interestingly enough, I hardly believe every Egyptian fuming over the death of Mrs. El Sherbini cares about her. I think the public is having fun with hate, with the sudden sense of purpose and the opportunity to be publically enraged. This taste for unity and anger may bring much more anti-western rhetoric, but there also will be a time when all the anger and rage of the Egyptian people spill inwords at their own dysfunctional political system.

This whole "murder of an Arab woman by the West" drama shows the public's capacity to overract in a normally complacent nation of Egypt. But when the dust settles, expect nothing less than sheer brutality and pain. Democracy would be something too stable for the unleashed beasts of anarchy.

Ah, what is your cruel, crude, and arbitrary judicial system doing to you now Mr. Mubarak?