Three Articles and One Message

Today's issue of Modern Discussion is so rich. It took me hours to read this fully nutritious meal of thought. Yet, I've chosen only 3 of these articles to discuss here, as they are more or less tackling the same issue that is one of my major concerns, that is the relation between our cultural, political, scientific, economical and intellectual deterioration, on one hand, and the current "religious" fanaticism, on the other.

First, there is the beautiful, brief, research-like article by Amal Fouad Ebeid entitled The Entaglement of the Political, the Ideological and the Religious. Ebeid chose to investigate into the origins of this entaglement in our Arab world and why we failed in getting out of this dilemma which the west had suffered from during the Middle Ages. She found out that instead of learning the lesson of establishing a harmonious existence, where those three forces can have their seperate spheres without clashing with one another, we tend to insist on this distructive entaglement. Certain groups of each sphere find this chaos very beneficial that they would do everything possible to maintain the status quo and push the mobs into rejecting any form of enlightenment. She traces the historical sequence of such groups and how they used this as a tool for hindering the advancement of their nations, while blocking the road to knowledge and healthy cultural interaction. [click to read article]

The same approach was utilised by Said Elqemany in his article The Brotherhood and Its Islamic Solution. He explains how the Islamic Jihad which was originally a way of gathering the scattered pieces of a tribal Arab Peninsula, for the aim of creating a stong unified nation was later on used as a method for occupation. He then moves on to clarify how this has served to cover up many crimes in the dress of Islam, up to the present terrorist groups and their ideological stance. He also discusses the fact that some Sheikhs are against the idea of national loyalty, giving periority to religious and sectarian groups. (An idea I had earlier discussed in my post Whatever Happened to National Loyalty.) Elqemany concludes by showing how the Brotherhood operates in Egypt using the same methods in spreading a deformed version of Islam, one that is extreme and aims at political hegemony. [click to read article]

The third article is what we can call a "black comedy;" a highly sarcastic piece by George Faik, entitled O Secularits! Learn from Us How to Build a Civilization. He adopts the persona of a religious fanatic who only sees the ugly face of the West and fails to see the ugliness of his own society. He makes fun of how we keep cursing the corrupted ethical basis of foreign societies while we don't seek to learn from what their modern civilization has to offer. Very hilarious article that makes you want to laugh and cry at the same time. [click to read article]

So what is the message?.. I leave that to my intelligent readers.