Tuesday, April 17, 2007

The Fish that Rotted from its Tail

The Story:
The Egyptian Book Authority decides to re-issue a cultural magazine (Ibda3). The editor in chief of this publication is the renowned Egyptian Poet Ahmed Abdel Motie Hegazy. While the magazine is in print a worker realised -somehow- that the issue contains a poem that undermines God!! So, the print workers -acting out of pure faith- decide to stop printing the magazine. Furthermore they decide to take an extra step and attempted to BURN the, in stock, printed issues!!
The story does not end here. When this matter came to the papers, everyone wondered how could this be done by Print Workers who, obviously, are not qualified to assess literary works. The president of the authority decided to back-up the workers and stopped the publication. Here the News Story ends and begins the never ending story.

More and more prejudices and judgements are seeping into our quotidian lives. Everyone pretending to protect tradition or, more importantly, religion is judging -and sometime acting against- what is contrary to his own personal believes. What made it even worse and on the Verge of catastrophe is the people behind the judgments. Who are the people currently shaping our lives and believes?

- Simple workers with minimal or no education are all over tourism. They are judging and influencing everything from Tourists dress codes to beach drinking habits.
- Small employees and or clerks in National TV (yes it still exists!) are ultimately the ones deciding on the content of the Series/Programs produced. Also, they interfere to censorship old Egyptian movies produced back in the 1950's and 1960's.
- Cairo urban planning and traffic control plans are devised by junior police officers and municipality administrators.
The list goes on and on from education content, government schools, health, agriculture,... and ends up by the Print Workers who are now acting as my intellectual guardians.

Since the military rule began in Egypt (it is still ongoing by the way) and subsequent governments went through a very persistent effort to minimise the cultured/intellectual/ specialists roles in our society.
The regime always preferred "the people of trust over the people of knowledge."
After more than 40 years, this where we are: A country where the government only protects itself, a silent knowing minority with absolutely no input to the masses and a majority boiling with rage waiting to snap at anything.
Even if this thing is just a poem.