I suggest that before you continue to read this piece, you
first read an article that was published in the National Review Online on May
19, 2012. It was written by Andrew C. McCarthy under the title: “From Democracy
to Sharia” and the subtitle: “The 'Arab Spring' shows that democratic process
is useless without democratic culture.” The reason why I wish you would read
him first is that I want you to get a feel of what it's like to be exposed to
an article like that before seeing the other side to the story. Then, by all
means, go ahead and read the other side.
Whether you are a Christian living in Egypt or a
Christian of Egyptian origin living abroad, you learn that there is a thing or
two you need to keep an eye on. If you live in Egypt ,
the thing you dread the most is that some highly placed character in Europe or
in America
will dare to speak in your name or dare to say something to the effect that you
need protection or dare to utter an idiocy of the sort you will find in the
book of morons. In fact, the only protection that the Christians of Egypt need
is that of being shielded from the meddling of a foreign self-styled mentally
challenged do-gooder poking his crooked nose in their affairs.
If you are a Christian of Egyptian origin living in a place
like Canada ,
the thing that opens your eye is when you are mistaken for a Muslim -- which is
what happens every time you join a new aggregation. This is when you learn what
it means to be treated like dirt or close to it. But if and when the
aggregation surrounding you learns that you are a Christian, you get hit with
the second eye opening experience. Have you guessed what it is, my friend? It
is that they try to draft you into their relentless effort to explode a sectarian
war somewhere in the Arab or the Muslim world, preferably Egypt .
Knowing this, you may now understand why I tolerate, even
welcome an article such as that of Andrew McCarthy. I welcome it because there
is only one way to attenuate the damage that he and people like him inflict on
the civilized world. It is that when they become this extreme in their views,
they begin the process of defeating themselves by themselves. What is worth
noting here is that the author is a former prosecutor which means he was
trained as a lawyer. And part of the training that lawyers receive is something
known in the acting profession as the method. This is what sends actors to
glory and sends lawyers to dishonor.
Before taking up a role, an actor of the Marlon Brando
stature learns as much as he can about the character he is about to play. He
does so by living the life of that character -- be it a contemporary one or a
historical one -- until he can psyche himself into believing that he is the
reincarnation of the person. Similarly, in order to sympathize with the cause
of his client, a lawyer does exactly the same thing. And this is why you may at
times hear a lawyer say something like: “we did not commit the offense we are
charged with.”
It can also happen that a lawyer is not in a courtroom
defending a client but out in the world defending a cause. And this is where
you see some truly weird effects. They are due to the fact that a cause is an
abstract concept which the lawyer has no choice but to personify in his mind. He
does this by imagining the cause to be a living person, and he treats it as
such. He then imagines himself defending a most saintly victim that was wronged
by the most evil aggressor. And this is the weird effect you see in the
McCarthy article.
Before I get into the heavy stuff, let me start with
something light that is also informative to those who do not speak Arabic.
Somewhere in the middle of the McCarthy article, you encounter this sentence:
“'Islamophobia' was coined by the Muslim Brotherhood and seamlessly adopted by
its Western confederates.” Well, my friend, I can say categorically that
nothing can be more false than this, more ignorant or more reckless. The
English expression is made of two words: Islam and phobia. This is common in
the Western languages but not in Arabic. Thus, what the author has said is
something that is purely out of his imagination.
But let me assure you that now -- only now – some Arab
journalists are beginning to experiment with this manner of coining new
expressions. But so far, they are only doing it in the field of technology. One
such expression is hydroelectric. You see, the word electricity in Arabic is
pronounced “kahraba”, and water is pronounced “ma-e”. And so they coined the
word “kahroma-e” to refer to the hydroelectric power stations. Now, do yourself
a favor and find someone that has left the Arab world more than three years ago
and has not kept in touch. Ask them if this word means anything to them. They
will say it means nothing. Now, let me tell you that the word Islamophobia has
no counterpart in Arabic.
So then, what did happen? Well, what I saw happen was that
for many decades, some people on this continent started to attack the Arabs and
the Muslims in the most virulent fashion you can imagine. The Arabs and the
Muslims in their world did not seem to notice the trend till one of them wrote
that there is a strain of “Ada-e
lel-islam” which literally translates into “enmity towards Islam.” These are
the words they use to express what they see happen here if and when they turn
their attention to such matters which is – not once in a blue moon – but once
in every two or three blue moons. It is that these people would not give a hoot
what the idiots over here say about them. Thus, for McCarthy to make it sound like
he knows something his readers do not know is to show the world that he is a
fake, ignorant and reckless individual.
That was the light stuff; now the heavy stuff. You read the
article several times over to try and make sense of what he is trying to describe
as being the Arab and/or Muslim democracy. But you feel like he is deliberately
torturing you with nonsense. And so, you give up trying to understand this part
of his presentation to ask yourself: But what does he understand democracy to
mean? You go over the article one more time and find only this: “American
Democracy … a culture of liberty … that predated … the Revolution … the
Constitution … the first federal elections.” That's it? Is this sufficient to
define a concept as complex as democracy? All he says is that democracy is a
culture of liberty? But what is culture and what is liberty?
Tired and disheartened, you try to guess what kind of
liberty he is talking about. According to him, is it American liberty when a
pastor goes on television and tells the flock they must worship the Jew like a
God? Is it American liberty when the Congress of dogs fails to get anything
done to save the country from falling over the cliff but rushes to pass bills
by a near unanimous vote when they serve the interests of Israel ? Is it
American liberty when the prime minister of a foreign little fart comes to
urinate on the rug of the Oval Office then goes to get a standing ovation in
the Congress of dogs?
No, this guy has no idea what democracy means. He could not
write one paragraph that would please even a high school teacher. But he wants
you to believe he is a neocon which may mean something that is as yet
undefined. For now, we have to view him simply as an old con artist who is out
of his league writing about subjects that are way above his head.