Two big things happen normally to human beings during our
waking hours. First, we are conscious of what is currently unfolding around us.
Second, we constantly sweep our memory in search of events that may have happened
in the past, that would explain what we see happen today.
And it happened that in the fast moving events preoccupying
the world at this time, I was able to connect these events to matters that left
an impression on me since the decade of the 1950s. That was the time when I was
attending a French school in my pre-teen and early teen years. And it was the
time that I learned about the French version of history with regard to England 's
repression of freedom at some point in its history.
The Christian Brothers who were teaching us said that
English thinkers fled their homeland and went to Holland where they were accorded the freedom
they needed to write about any subject they wanted. What they did not tell us,
and I subsequently discovered from my research, was that England
eventually opened its system to welcome free inquiry. And because this happened
at a time when France was
turning repressive, it was the French thinkers who were now fleeing to England
for the opportunity to express themselves freely.
Our family then moved back to Egypt , the country of my birth. It
was a little less than a year after the 1956 Anglo-French attack on the
country. And that is where I started listening to the multitude of pirate radio
stations as they poured oceans of venom against the Nasser regime, a man that
was so popular in Egypt ,
the pirates sounded more like hopeless clowns. And then I learned of something
else. Dissidents who were loyal to the Egyptian monarchy that Nasser had
toppled, resided in England
and were behind some of the pirate stations.
In fact, Nasser warned the
British government that those dissidents were known to the Egyptian
authorities, that they had a criminal past and that they will one day turn
against their benefactors. The Brits responded that Nasser
did not understand the concept of freedom, let alone appreciate its
transformative effect on people. Freedom, they lectured him, will turn these
people into saints. Well, it is now obvious that the British were trying to
replicate the history of European struggles with freedom, but what worked for Europe centuries ago has failed now. And the question is
why?
The answer, as I see it, is that the Europeans did what they
did with honesty. They believed in what they were preaching which made it so
that the actions they took corresponded with the goals they aimed for. Now,
however, freedom is used as an excuse not to spread freedom but to spread chaos
so as to hurt someone. And that someone can be an individual such as Nasser, a
country such as Egypt
or an ethnic group such as the Arabs or a religious group such as the Muslims.
Sixty years have elapsed since the decade of the 1950s and
very few things have changed since, but that was enough to complicate the
situation more than it ever was. You can see the effect of this in the article
that was written by Robert S. Leiken under the title: “Britain Finally Faces Up
to Its Homegrown Jihadist Problem” and the subtitle: “Scotland yard estimates
that at least 500 Britons have joined Islamic State.” It was published in the
Wall Street Journal on September 8, 2014.
You read the article and find in it not one iota of
something that would be useful to people who might be trying to understand what
is going on, or might be searching for a solution. So you try to find the
purpose for which this article was written, and come to the conclusion that it
was meant to highlight one personality whose mention outside a proper context
would hurt Egypt .
Why would someone want to do that? Well, Egypt is
rebounding after three difficult years. Those who celebrated its demise
prematurely and were drooling about the blood they thought was going to flow
like the Nile River as promised in the Old Testament became disappointed. And
so, they now console themselves by barking their frustration at the country
that failed to deliver on their fantasy.