Adonis Diaries

Who is Ahmad? (Feb. 18, 2010)

            Ahmad commented on a news brief on the internet.  The story was that the daughter of late Egyptian King Farouk, Ferial, died in Switzerland; she was married to a Swiss Jean Pierre Perreten and had a daughter.  Well, Ahmad was mostly interested to know if Ferial’s husband and daughter converted to Islam and had pronounced Islam’s profession of faith.

            Who is Ahmad?  Most probably Ahmad lives in an urban center (more than 50% of people in the Arab World live in cities); he is under the age of 30 (60% of Arabs are in that age range); Ahmad can read and write with difficulty (100 million Arabs are illiterate). Who is Ahmad?  He is probably out of a job or just one of the millions of redundant civil servants (over 20 millions are practically jobless). Ahmad is one of the poor classes with definite positions on social values. Ahmad is one of those who gave up learning, despise cultural events, and abhors scientific facts and reasoning (over 50% of physicians and 25% of engineers immigrated to greener pastures): competence is rare currency.

            Who is Ahmad?  He is one of the egalitarian Moslem citizens, equal in ignorance and adept at listening to Karadawi on cable Al Jazira.  Ahmad could easily be recruited by one of the Al Qaeda-like organizations, for a few hundreds of dollars and some sweet religious encouragement to attack unorthodox citizens.

Note: This profile of Ahmad was written by a Palestinian Hassan Khader on internet.