He who doesn’t deserve to live…

This video (via dear Rasha) is from the musical Notre Dame De Paris based on the novel by the same name by Victor Hugo. The story, along with the music of course, always strikes me deeply. Seeing what westerners accuse Arabs or Easterners with based deeply in the western soul since the Middle Ages.

How pure beauty can be seen as pure impurity. How all what matters is being a virgin. How can a corrupted person have all the authority to destroy this beauty as long as it didn’t obey his lustful needs. How are some people are just driven by their sexual needs. How can all the people obey blindly the human high authority and destroy this beauty under the same accusations of protecting purity and other so called social holy wars to preserve morality.

 Who will cast the first stone at her, he who does not deserve to live…

Accept the other? Be the other Part Two

As many westerners call for Arab/Eastern accepting “the other”, what do they mean by accepting? Do you mean accepting their mere existence? Do you mean discovering them? Do you mean discussing the deep cultural / religious details? Do you mean mingling between the cultures? Do you mean absorbing one culture in the other?

Let me explain 2 sides of a coin in the Egyptian society, the 2 extremes. We have extremely religious people who require some rituals to be strictly done so that you are in the “righteous” side, like having a long beard with a short galabeyya or whatever. We have extremely non-religious people who think religious people are so wrong and “regressive” so they want to require their neighborhood to do some rituals strictly like forcing them to drink wine, have premarital sex when they don’t want, either that or they don’t believe in freedom, etc..

Both are extremists in a way or another, both do not view freedom as a way of living. Both do not see the other, they just want to be “the one”, “the ONLY one”.

The same applies between people from different countries, though one thing adds here is the stereotypes between different people like I mentioned in the beginning of my last post. BUT, there are still a major difference westerners usually do not realize till they visit countries like Egypt or other countries in the Middle East.

I heard many stories about racism against Arabs, Muslims, Eastern people in general in Europe or the states. Racism not just through extra security measures issues by the governments, but worse, racial actions committed by normal citizens, and they are not a few incidents. Hate crimes are illegal by law, but they are there, they happen, they exist, they exist with a considerable ratio.

When westerners come to the Middle East, and they feel the hospitality they receive, not only from their hosts, but from the average citizen, when the opposite isn’t usually happening, at least not in the same “warmth”.

There is a story of an American Jew who visited Saudi Arabia where you can read here, and how he was thrilled by the tolerance he experienced. This is a very awkward situation to think of from a western point of view. An American Jew going to Saudi Arabia, just imagine that? He is not dead yet? Nope! Those was his own words:

Every man was generous, seemed delighted to be talking with an American, was open-minded or at least willing to have a frank conversation.

See?

Accept the other? Part One

In the past days I was enjoying the company of some Danish and Egyptian artists. Artists of different kinds, music, food, photography, you can summarize it as just Art. We kept talking about Egypt and Denmark, the Egyptians and the Danes. We kept exploring each other, from different aspects. And in the same time, we mingled with average people, who might not always share the same views, or the same perspectives.

And as time kept passing by, I began to think. We always notice people talking about “the other”, accepting “the other”, communicating with “the other”, discovering “the other”. Is that expression really right? Should this expression exist in the first place? Are people around the world that different?

The Danes told me how some of them are still believing in the stereotype that Egypt is a desert with pyramids, with people travelling by camels. And I know Egyptians whose only information about Denmark is the Muhammad’s cartoons. Stereotypes stereotypes stereotypes, stereotypes everywhere and allover. If you considered a discussion starting point that every country or every country’s people believe in some kind of stereotype image of other country’s people, how will you continue the discussion about accepting?