US Muslim travels to the Middle East and has eyes opened...

This is an essay in the current issue of Granta (hat tip: Instapundit) bq. 'I set off for Egypt convinced that, unlike America, there was no corruption and hypocrisy in the Arab Muslim world and that it bore no responsibility for its own appalling condition. I wanted only to be an expatriate novelist, a dissident, and to enjoy the celebrity of being a convert in a Muslim country.' Murad Kalam on how the reality he found was very different. bq. During the six months leading up to the Iraq war, I was living in Cairo. And more: bq. As a Muslim in Amercia I was already used to being treated with ignorance and suspicion and now I was increasingly sickened by the prospect of a reckless but inevitable war in Iraq. Of course, I was impossibly naive: the Middle East existed for me, like all things Islamic, in a sort of exotic orientalist ether of veiled women, the Ka�ba and the Virgins of Paradise. I set off for Egypt convinced that, unlike America, there was no corruption and hypocrisy in the Arab Muslim world and that it bore no responsibility for its own appalling condition. People told me that Egypt was, like its Muslim neighbours, a ruthless dictatorship, but until I lived there I refused to admit this to myself. I wanted only to be an expatriate novelist, a dissident, and to enjoy the celebrity of being a convert in a Muslim country. bq. For a week I managed to persist in the happy belief that I was not living in a brutal police state. As I took a wild, honking Peugeot taxi along the Nile my driver would laugh and curse at the campaign posters of the Egyptian president, displayed at every block, which bore the absurd slogan MUBAREK: YES! YES! I took no notice as I stared wide-eyed through my window at a horizon of needle-shaped minarets suspended in the Cairo smog. And more: bq. My mood began to shift. On the Internet I followed the case of Dr Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a prominent Egyptian advocate of democracy, who was locked away in a dusty Cairo prison for criticizing the government. I began to notice at every street corner the groups of scowling Egyptian soldiers in black berets, shouldering worn Kalashnikovs. bq. Across the street from my flat in downtown Cairo, I smoked shisha and drank coffee every day with all my new Egyptian friends at the Caf� Riche; it was famous as an old haunt of Saddam Hussein during his days as a student at Cairo University. My Egyptian friends refused to believe me when I told them the war would come early next year. The French or the UN would stop the war, they promised, even when this seemed hopeless. But my friends who were mostly tour operators�self-described street hustlers who modelled themselves after American rappers�seemed not to care about the problems which seemed so obvious to me: the coming war, the declining Egyptian pound, the crowded, overpopulated streets, the incompetence of the government at everything but putting down dissent. The war would come or it would not. Only Allah knew. The police were brutal, the ministers stole the people�s money, everyone, doctor, lawyer, bowab, imam, bureaucrat would rob you the moment you turned your back. Of course, nothing in Cairo quite worked. But what could they do? And more: bq. I went to Saudi Arabia to perform the hajj. When I tried to confirm my ticket to Mecca, the fully veiled Egyptian woman at the Egypt Air counter charged me a non-existent �confirmation tax��her attempt to swindle me occurring just moments after the noon call to prayer. I wondered why she bothered to wear a headscarf at all. bq. In Mecca, I found the same mixture of confusion, oppression and apathy I thought I had left behind in Egypt. But as in Egypt, nothing worked, even at the blessed hajj, for we were visitors not to an Islamic state but to yet another cynical Arab kleptocracy which only pretended to adhere to the true ideals of Islam. bq. The Saudis couldn�t even organize the hajj safely. Each day, as I performed the rituals of the hajj, I was part of massed crowds of Muslims from all over the world: Turks and Pakistanis, Nigerians, Malaysians, Arabs. We would shamble forward without order or seeming direction, endangering lives as we knocked over women, the lame and the elderly in our hurry to get from one ritual to the next. Once, in a street so filled with pilgrims that I could not take one step forward, I was forced to jump into the back of a truck to avoid being killed in a stampede. And more: bq. The mutawan, the dreaded Saudi religious police who enforce the rigid observance of Wahhabi Islam, patrolled the streets, beating or arresting anyone they caught missing a prayer; it was impossible ever to know if the native Meccans prayed out of genuine piety or to avoid a whipping. And more: bq. I fled home the next week, leaving all my illusions of the Arab world in my Cairo flat. I couldn�t wait to be in America again. On the long flight home, I promised myself I would never accept anything less than full democracy for my fellow Muslims in the Arab world or apologize for the tyranny that now masquerades as Islam. bq. Yet, for all the hypocrisy and suffering I witnessed during my time in Egypt, it was impossible to ignore the sincerity of the poor and righteous and the depth of the belief of Muslims and Copts alike. I studied Islam with a village sheikh from Giza; I watched shop owners feed strangers during the nights of Ramadan; the local beggars, men who should have lost all hope, prayed each day without fail on tattered sheets of cardboard. It is only because of these expressions of true spirituality that I never lost my faith. bq. Even now, I can remember the dread in the faces of my Egyptian friends at what would become of their lives. Could it be, that the fascism which once bubbled up in Europe has now invaded the Middle East and that in our time, all hope for the true Islamic values of freedom, modernity and equality in the Muslim world lies not in the East, but in the West? Emphasis mine - this is an interesting question... You never hear moderate Muslims denouncing the radicals and terrorists. Simple reason really, they value their lives and those of their friends and family. What if true reform were to come from Muslims living in the West exporting the leadership and influence once the Mad Mullah's have been toppled as they will be...

October 2022

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
            1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30 31          

Environment and Climate
AccuWeather
Cliff Mass Weather Blog
Climate Depot
Ice Age Now
ICECAP
Jennifer Marohasy
Solar Cycle 24
Space Weather
Watts Up With That?


Science and Medicine
Junk Science
Life in the Fast Lane
Luboš Motl
Medgadget
Next Big Future
PhysOrg.com


Geek Stuff
Ars Technica
Boing Boing
Don Lancaster's Guru's Lair
Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories
FAIL Blog
Hack a Day
Kevin Kelly - Cool Tools
Neatorama
Slashdot: News for nerds
The Register
The Daily WTF


Comics
Achewood
The Argyle Sweater
Chip Bok
Broadside Cartoons
Day by Day
Dilbert
Medium Large
Michael Ramirez
Prickly City
Tundra
User Friendly
Vexarr
What The Duck
Wondermark
xkcd


NO WAI! WTF?¿?¿
Awkward Family Photos
Cake Wrecks
Not Always Right
Sober in a Nightclub
You Drive What?


Business and Economics
The Austrian Economists
Carpe Diem
Coyote Blog


Photography and Art
Digital Photography Review
DIYPhotography
James Gurney
Joe McNally's Blog
PetaPixel
photo.net
Shorpy
Strobist
The Online Photographer


Blogrolling
A Western Heart
AMCGLTD.COM
American Digest
The AnarchAngel
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Babalu Blog
Belmont Club
Bayou Renaissance Man
Classical Values
Cobb
Cold Fury
David Limbaugh
Defense Technology
Doug Ross @ Journal
Grouchy Old Cripple
Instapundit
iowahawk
Irons in the Fire
James Lileks
Lowering the Bar
Maggie's Farm
Marginal Revolution
Michael J. Totten
Mostly Cajun
Neanderpundit
neo-neocon
Power Line
ProfessorBainbridge.com
Questions and Observations
Rachel Lucas
Roger L. Simon
Samizdata.net
Sense of Events
Sound Politics
The Strata-Sphere
The Smallest Minority
The Volokh Conspiracy
Tim Blair
Velociworld
Weasel Zippers
WILLisms.com
Wizbang


Gone but not Forgotten...
A Coyote at the Dog Show
Bad Eagle
Steven DenBeste
democrats give conservatives indigestion
Allah
BigPictureSmallOffice
Cox and Forkum
The Diplomad
Priorities & Frivolities
Gut Rumbles
Mean Mr. Mustard 2.0
MegaPundit
Masamune
Neptunus Lex
Other Side of Kim
Publicola
Ramblings' Journal
Sgt. Stryker
shining full plate and a good broadsword
A Physicist's Perspective
The Daily Demarche
Wayne's Online Newsletter

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by DaveH published on January 14, 2004 12:36 PM.

Dang! My image is shot... was the previous entry in this blog.

Al Gore versus the Environment is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

Monthly Archives

Pages

OpenID accepted here Learn more about OpenID
Powered by Movable Type 5.2.9