Why Do I Write?
by Tarek Heggy
I write in order to instill in the minds and souls of all the Arabic
speaking people :
- The fact that although the outside world will harbor animosities towards us at times, and will work to further its own interests most of the time, our problems, in their entirety, originate inside our country and can only be solved internally. We alone are responsible for those problems and for the fact that they remain unsolved. The excessive belief in the conspiracy theory is a confession of our impotence and an admission of the supremacy of others in the face of our ineffectiveness.
the most noble, sublime and civilized achievements of mankind.
- The value of civil society, as the most effective mechanism for public
participation in public life.
- That the negative perception of women in some cultures is disgraceful. Not
only do women constitute half the population but, far more important, they
are the mothers who rear future generations. As such, they are a valuable
societal asset, and a society that does not grant its women full rights in
all fields cannot hope to realize its full potential.
- That effective and creative modern management is the only way to achieve
progress. The sad reality, though, is that there is a dearth of human
resources trained in the techniques of modern management.
- That Anwar Sadat's historic choice to move the Arab/Israeli conflict from
the battlefield to the negotiation table was the only way to reach a
reasonable settlement of a conflict that has been used for too long as an
excuse to delay democracy and development.
- That our educational systems are in need of an overall revolution. As it
now stands, the system only produces citizens who are totally incapable of
facing the challenges of the age. Repeated claims by some that a process of
reforming our educational system is currently underway are grossly
exaggerated, as borne out by the quality of graduates produced by the
system.
- That the tolerant and peaceful brand of moderate Islam has been subjected
to attacks on many fronts. The attacks came from a trinity made up of the
Wahabi faith, a doctrinaire approach to religion, and the omnipotence of the
petrodollar that has funded an Iinterpretation of slam fundamentally
different from the gentle Islam practiced in a number of Arabic speaking
societies and which has enabled the sons and daughters of a number of our
societies to coexist with others over the years.
- That Egypt's Copts and the region's non-Muslims are not second class
citizens, that they are as entitled to full citizenship rights as its Muslim
population and that all the problems they are facing can and must be solved.
- That there are shortcomings in Western culture, but it is an essential
rung on the ladder of human civilization. To oppose Western culture is to
oppose science, development and civilization.
- That we have to curb our tendency to indulge in excessive self-praise and
to glorify our past achievements. We have to learn to criticize ourselves
and to accept criticism from others. We have to try to break out of our
subjective culture into a more objective one.
- That the deification of officials is one of the major sources of our
problem-filled reality… and the responsibility here lies with us as
individuals.
- That our media institutions need to be radically reformed in line with the
requirements of the age. The changes required are not in the formal aspects
or the number of television channels operated by our state television, but
in the substance of the media message. If education is the reform tool in
the long-term, the media is the ideal tool by which awareness can be raised
in the short-term.
- That we learn to engage in self-criticism because unless we are willing to
do so, we will not discover the roots of the ills we complain of today.
- The defense of the values of knowledge and imaginative thinking, of
linking up with the collective human civilizing experience, of accepting the
Other and of opening wide the doors that were kept tightly shut throughout
the 'fifties and 'sixties.
- That the debilitating disease of self-aggrandizement should not come to
afflict us. Its most obvious symptoms, vainglorious posturing and a tendency
to regard ourselves as distinct from and superior to everybody else, are
manifested constantly in our written and spoken words. This overweening
self-satisfaction is not only unhealthy but totally unjustified, based as it
is on an inability to distinguish between the glories of our past and the
realities of our present. Moreover, it is to be questioned whether it is
truly indicative of a sense of superiority or of something altogether
different. And what is the role of the Goebbels-style information media in
engendering and fostering this negative phenomenon?
- That each Arabic speaking country must concentrate on putting its own
house in order by building a strong, successful socially stable and modern
educational and cultural infrastructure, instead of continuing to give
priority, as it has been doing since the 'fifties, to its external role. For
no country can play an effective external role in the absence of a strong
and stable internal structure.
- That we must defend freedom of belief, but not in the context of a
theocratic culture that places our destinies in the hands of men of
religion. No society should allow its affairs to be run by clerics who are,
by their nature and regardless of the religion to which they belong, opposed
to progress.
- That there is the possibility of a new culture of peace, one in which the
countries of the region will learn to live together and Israel and its
neighbors can work out settlements along the lines of what the French and
Germans succeeded in doing less than fifty years after the end of World War
II. In promoting the notion of peace, I point out that it is only when the
region moves from a dynamic of conflict to one of peace that real democracy
will spread throughout the Middle East.
- That knowledge and culture are universal, the common heritage of all
humankind, and that opening the door to both is a prerequisite for reform.
- That we must end the Goebbels-style propaganda machines operating in Egypt
and the Arab world and their dangerous manipulation of public opinion.
- That only market economics can bring about the economic takeoff to which
we, the Arabic speaking people aspires and that the main players in the
world of market economics are huge private corporations based on
institutional structures and run according to the latest techniques of
modern management, human resource and marketing sciences, not privately held
organizations whose familiarity with the tools of business is limited to
public relations, specifically, to the cultivation of close relations with
decision-making circles.
- That we must instill in the minds of the sons and daughters of our Arabic
speaking societies (especially in the minds of the young) that where there
is a will there is a way and that, armed with a solid formation and
determination, they can achieve anything.
In a word, I write for the sake of a modern, thriving and stable Arabic
speaking region, at peace with itself and with the outside world, integrated
into the mainstream of science, innovation, humanity and the civilizing
process. The future does not exist as such; it is a product of what we
create today.