Adonis Diaries

Exiting Mosques every Friday and scanding Allah wa Akbar: Is NOT my kind of Freedom Revolution

I agree that it is no longer a great sight watching these masses swarming the streets after Friday prayers and shouting “Allah wa Akbar, badna nghawer al nizam“. Civil citizens have to refrain supporting these mindless singing of “Allah wa Akbar” and participate in these frenzied demonstrations that encourage the zealot pseudo leaders behind these activities.

I don’t feel any relief hearing one of these insurgent launching a rocket missile and shouting: “It is Allah’s hand that is guiding the missile…” Or this picture of a youth holding a rocket launcher preparing to activate it and shouting: “Takbir” and these hysteric and emotionally over tired companions chanting: “Allah wa Akbar”

I agree that other waves of mass disobedience movements should reignite against these theocratic movements that replaced dictators in power…

It is no longer acceptable, after the courageous and sustained uprising in the Arab States, to permit islamic fundamentalists harass and molest the liberal thinking citizens on the ground that man destiny is guided by Allah…Liberal citizens, artists, musicians, theater actors, teachers…should react fast to any innuendoes that they are impious people to be arrested if they persist in their professions…

In revolutions, you have morally engaged intelligentsia: They know that their virulent denunciations of the abuse of power in all aspect of the social/political structure are ground to be harassed, imprisoned, but deep down they are confident that the system will refrain from assassinating them…

These morally engaged intelligentsia say: “We are tired of repeating our thesis for reform and change…We have said all we had to say…Things are pretty clear, and all that is needed is to get moving into the act of changing the system…” But these intelligentsia are waiting for Godot to show them the way to participate in mass disobedience uprising.  They are in the dark of “who can ignite any kinds of uprising?”

There is no harm of repeating well thought-out engaged programs for reform and change. There is no harm in repeating the description of how the little people are struggling to survive…

The Algerian author Ali Chibani described the many stages of the successive Algerian uprising since Algeria Independence. From the kabile minority movement demanding that their Berber language be officially recognized, to the extremist Moslem Brotherhood movement who won the municipal election in 1988 and were violently suppressed by the military with the full support of the Western democracies…

The intelligentsia who get “eliminated with utmost prejudice” are those connected with the people, who learned to connect with people, and who managed to disseminate their engagement to the little people.  You don’t see many authors targeted for assassination: People don’t read and don’t swap books. In Algeria, university students are forbidden to get in with books not relevant to their course materials…The climate of culture does not encourage reading, and foreign  books are not entering the borders that easily, books that coaxthe  reflective power on existential questions…

The “enemies” are the roving theater leaders, moving from town to town, erecting their makeshift stage in locations were the little people converge to: They initiate moving fairs of culture and awareness, and circles for discussions

The”‘enemies” are the popular singers and musicians…

The enemies are the popular poets, singing in the dialect of the regions…

The enemies are those leaders who discovered means to connect face to face with the people

The last paragraph of Ali Chibany is disheartening:

“In order to tame the enduring military dictatorship in Algeria, it is imperative to figure out how to get rid of the overwhelming power and ingerance of the military institutions.  No one knows how to go about this objective…”

There is no harm of repeating well thought-out engaged programs for reform and change. There is no harm in repeating the description of how the little people are struggling to survive…

What is badly needed are detailed programs that define and offer operational guiding manuals for the abstract concepts of liberty, freedom, democracy…

What kind of freedom of expressions are mostly wanted, and how to go about establishing institutions and organizations that can sustain the drive and the spirit of freedom of opinions…

What is meant by Liberty? Are we talking of lack of opportunities and choices as we grow in educational programs, in prospect for talents, for working after graduation…?

What are the basic opportunities and choices that associations should focus on at the preliminary stages of a revolution?

Revolutions in the actual developed States had thought out pragmatic programs and project for the equality among the strata of the people and genders in education, health, equal opportunities at work and salaries…years before the mass uprising ignited.

You have the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the Romantic cultural periods that set the ground work for reforms and change…

Most of the uprisings failed and were crushed in the short-term, but the programs for reforms were carried out by the successive governments, the programs and policies were executed and applied after the first fire was put down…

What pragmatic programs the “Arab Spring” uprising had discussed prior to the revolution?  The liberal civic movements failed to generate useful day-dreaming detailed projects of what society needs and how to go about establishing institutions to sustain the projects of eliminating the abuses, indignities and humiliating behavior of the power-to-be.

All that we got is the arrival of the theocratic Moslem Brotherhood movements to power, carrying out reductive, ready-made day-to-day prohibition laws and detailed descriptions of corporal punishment…