In the heated den of the Greek Club on Emad el-Din Street in downtown Cairo, sweating bodies heave and move to the infectious beats of reggaeton fused with the beat of a tabla, as Amr Haha, DJ Figo and Sadat swing their mics back and forth, bantering, ad-libbing and cheering. One takes a swig out of his Stella, another dips the mic into the sea of eager hands as the jolly crowd sings along to the simple, lewd lyrics of “Aha el shibshib daa’!” or “F****, I’ve lost my slippers!”

Haha’s lyrics are profoundly profane; his specialty of Arabic electronic music is called “mahraganat,” which literally translates to “festival music.” The high-pitched, auto tuned vocals are as vulgar as they are exciting, and together with the infectious beat laced with a sample of a pop or rap song melody, they create an irresistibly energetic and raw sound. This music is the counter attack to the likes of Tamer Hosny and Amr Diab, the other side of the coin to main stream Arabic pop in all its clean-cut, generic and bubble-wrapped glory. While Hosny and Diab spend millions on their music videos and perfectly tanned biceps, their lyrics follow generic themes that fail to address and engage the average man on the street the way that mahraganat songs do.

Just the fact that Haha and his friends use the lewd term ‘aha’ in their song’s title is enough to garner shocked and fascinated attention – as well as over 2 million hits on their YouTube clip: it is outrageous, audacious to even consider swearing in a song – and in Arabic at that –when Egyptian listeners have become so oversaturated with the same old lyrics about loving, longing, losing, wanting, etc. If anything, the lyrics are refreshing, the music is joyous, and mahraganat packages an alternative music scene that is more relevant, more real than Egyptian pop music.

This is the music of the streets of Cairo, of the taxi drivers and microbuses. It filters out from the colorfully lit boats over the Nile, and from the delivery motorbikes zipping through the spider web of stagnant Cairo traffic. It is the music played in street weddings, in Cairo suburbs that you may have never heard of like Matareya, Sabteya and Amareya. While many hail these musicians as heroes and idols, you will not hear their songs on Nile FM or their homemade music videos on TV just yet.

Haha and his crew of Sadat and Figo sing and dance all night long on uninhibited energy; synchronizing moves, dancing on the speakers, and hypnotizing their fascinated, writhing audience of tourists who have made their pilgrimage to Emad el-Din Street for an exciting night of festival music.

Increasingly, there is a migration of middle class listeners to the realm of mahraganat music; perhaps because it is refreshingly authentic and the other side to the coin of the revolutionary anthems saturating the airwaves in Egypt for the past fifteen months. Then again, perhaps it is the sheer simplicity of the music’s formula: it distracts you, shocks you and compels you to dance; but the lyrics have substance to them.

“Amr Haha and his friends are genuine shaabi singers; they have a high sense of aesthetics, beats and sophistication,” says twenty-nine-year-old Kareem, one of the audience members at the Greek Club.

Kareem’s favorite part of Haha’s performance is when the group intersperses their lyrics with the slogan “yasqut yasqut hokm al-‘askar” or “down, down with military rule.” Repeatedly and spontaneously, like a bout of turrets, they flit between lyrics about flirtatious girls and lewd, aggressive political chants that have the crowd enthralled and cheering with joy. Those eager for another dose of reckless singing and boundless energy make their way to After Eight every Saturday, where Haha and his collaborators have a regular gig in the dark, smoke-filled space. 

              
                                               [Wezza performing. Image from “Underground/On the Surface.”]

Haha is not the only name breaking onto the middle class’s music scene. Twenty-three-year-old DJ Ortega and his friends Oka and Wezza call themselves “Tamanya Fil Meya” or eight percent. Tamanya Fil Meya are the subject of a documentary feature by Egyptian filmmaker Salma El Tarzi “Underground/On the Surface/Raise Your Hand if You Love God,” due out in early 2013. The film follows the singers in the Cairo suburb of Matareya as they talk about their struggles as artists and their identity that is completed embedded in their neighborhood.

Best known for their song “Haty Bosa Ya Bet,” (also known as “Al-wesada al-khalya”) Tamanya Fil Meya have a more sophisticated sound and structure to their music than Haha – at least, according to 34-year-old El Tarzi. Though she was first introduced to mahraganat music via Haha’s famous “shibshib,” she found Ortega’s depth, humor and modesty to be the more compelling ingredients for quality music.

In their lyrics, in their film with El Tarzi and when they talk to me, they constantly reference their background and their neighborhood; both of which compel and shape their musical identity. They are completely aware that they are making class-based music; in this case music by poor Egyptians for poor Egyptians.

In a short clip from the feature film, Ortega says: “We have four social segments in Egypt: poorer than poor, poor, middle class and upper class. We are happy to be part of the poorer than poor, but we do and sing as we want.”

“Do you know why they call it shaabi music,” his friend Oka asks. “It is because it belongs to the people, to the poor.”

“They are who they are and they like where they come from,” El Tarzi explains. “If they lose that or clean up their image, people will stop liking them. If Matareya stops listening to Ortega, then Zamalek will soon follow and stop listening. If they reject their roots they will lose what makes them special.”

In their song “Ana Aslan Gamed,” Tamanya Fil Meya members sing about their neighborhood, about faith and superstition, envy and the evil eye, and black magic. The lyrics flow like a conversation about an average day in their life as Oka, Ortega and Wezza take turns in singing verses, while the others echo or call out to their neighborhood. In fact, the structure of their songs and the flow of their singing are very similar to rap music: street culture, roots, pride, ego and prayer combined with a heavy rhythm and a raw energy.

“There’s something salacious about listening to mahraganat music,” says Twenty-seven-year-old Sarah, who first heard Ortega’s music in a taxicab and bought it from the driver for ten Egyptian pounds. “The energy is contagious, but at the same time, you are very conscious that you are listening to music that is not meant for you. I feel a combination of guilt and intrigue when watching them sing or listening to their words. It is like a whole other world that I had no idea existed.”

Despite the lack of sophisticated recording studios or high production videos, Tamanya Fil Meya have collectively over a million hits on YouTube with their various homemade videos or amateur footage of their festivals. In one video, Ortega raps freestyle “Everyone knows us from the bawab [doorman] to the beh [wealthy]” and that seems to be true today, as their most famous song “Haty Bosa Ya Bet” is increasingly played and embraced by many of the middle class Egyptians I meet. News of their concert at the DCAF music festival in downtown Cairo last April spread like wildfire through the intellectual crowd of artists, writers, foreign journalists, filmmakers and activists, many of whom were eager to see a replication of the shaabi atmosphere at the concert.

              
                             [Performance by artists Okka and Ortega. Image from “Underground/On the Surface.”]

El Tarzi admits that a concert’s atmosphere is completely different from a shaabi wedding. “Of course a wedding is more vibrant and alive. It is incredible; it is so energetic, it is close to a rave party. But I think DCAF was good exposure; they deserve to be introduced to new listeners but I would not want them to play regularly at After Eight. They are real artists, not just a fun weekly pastime.”

Kareem disagrees with the concept of a shaabi concert, especially with musicians like Ortega or Haha.

“At DCAF, they found themselves on a stage separated from the crowd; that is obstructive to their music and energy,” he says. “These musicians have to be immersed in the crowd, dancing, smoking, drinking, and feeding off the people’s energy. It should have the same value and vibe as shaabi weddings.”

“Mahraganat music is honest, you say whatever you want,” Ortega explains to me. “We write songs specifically for the people we are performing for, whether it is a wedding or birthday; we personalize the lyrics. That is why people like us.”

“I challenge anyone who makes mahraganat music to try to imitate our style,” says Wezza, the eldest of the crew and the self-proclaimed older brother. “People steal our lyrics all the time and we know who they are; but no one can imitate our flow. We have substance to our songs.”

إن نتائج الجولة الأولى من الانتخابات الرئاسيّة المصريّة كانت مفاجئة في عدة مسائل، أبرزها تأهل أحمد شفيق لانتخابات الرئاسة وليس عمرو موسى، وتأهل محمد مرسي وليس عبد المنعم أبو الفتوح، وصعود نجم حمدين صباحي؛ وهذا يعني أن حدة المنافسة والاستقطاب ستبلغ الذروة في يومي 16 و17 حزيران لاختيار رئيس مصر. هل سيكون الرئيس القادم مرشح النظام القديم، أم مرشح الإخوان المسلمين، وإذا كان الأخير هو الفائز، فهل سيحصل على الرئاسة بعد ائتلاف مع قوى الثورة أو معظمها أم دون ائتلافها معها، أم سيعقد صفقة مع المجلس العسكري تعطي الجيش مكانة مميزة في الدستور، كما حصل بُعيد الثورة حين اتفقوا معه على الإعلان الدستوري وتركوا الميدان، وحاولوا احتكار كل شيء، واستعاضوا عنه بالبرلمان الذين حصلوا فيه على أكثرية؟

ما يهمّنا في هذا المقال هو البحث في تأثير الانتخابات الرئاسيّة المصريّة على المصالحة الفلسطينيّة، لأن ما يجري في مصر – كونها دولة محوريّة- يؤثر بقوة على كل المنطقة بصورة عامة، وعلى القضيّة الفلسطينيّة وملف المصالحة بصورة خاصة.

كان من المفاجئ يوم الأحد 20 أيّار توقيع عزام الأحمد وموسى أبو مرزوق على ملحق تنفيذي لـ"إعلان الدوحة" قبل أقل من 48 ساعة على الانتخابات الرئاسيّة المصريّة، والسؤال الذي طرح نفسه: لماذا لم يتم الانتظار حتى رؤية هويّة الرئيس الجديد؟

الجواب المحتمل إنّ الفريقين المتنازعين يحركهما نزعات متعارضة بين الأمل برئيس مصري مناسب لهذا الطرف أو ذاك (عمرو موسى أو أحمد شفيق لصالح "فتح"، ومحمد مرسي أو عبد المنعم أبو الفتوح لصالح "حماس")، وخوف كل طرف من نجاح رئيس مصري حليف للطرف الآخر، وسط مؤشرات كانت تشير عشيّة الانتخابات إلى أنّ مرشح الإخوان ليس في المقدمة وأن عمرو موسى له حظ أكبر من أحمد شفيق.

الآن الصورة باتت أوضح، ولا أقول واضحة، والسيناريوهات المحتملة كما يأتي:

السيناريو الأول: فوز أحمد شفيق بالرئاسة، وهذا يعني بالنسبة لـ"حماس"، في أحسن الأحوال، بقاء الوضع على ما هو عليه الآن من الناحية الجوهريّة، أو عودته إلى ما كان عليه في عهد حسني مبارك، وهو يعني استمرار وجود نظام سيواصل دعم "فتح" والمنظمة والرئيس "أبو مازن"، ويعادي "حماس" حينًا ويحاول أن يحتويها حينًا آخر، وفي هذه الحالة يستمر وضع المصالحة على حاله ما بين مد وجزر دون اختراق نوعي، كما سيستمر معبر رفح على ما هو عليه تخفيفًا أو تشديدًا دون تغيير جوهري حاسم.

وفي هذا السيناريو ستستمر مصر في الحفاظ على معاهدة السلام، ودعم ما يسمى "عملية السلام"، والسعي إلى استئناف المفاوضات بين الجانبين الفلسطيني والإسرائيلي دون التزام قاطع بتلبية المطالب الفلسطينية المتعلقة بوقف الاستيطان وقيام دولة فلسطينية على حدود 67 وإطلاق سراح الأسرى.

السيناريو الثاني: فوز محمد مرسي، وهذا يعني أنّ "حماس" ستصبح في وضع أفضل، لأن الرئيس المصري سيكون إلى جانبها، وهذا سيؤدي إلى موقف مصري مختلف في ملف المصالحة أميل إلى "حماس"، وفتح معبر رفح، وفتح الطريق أمام حصولها على الشرعيّة العربيّة والدوليّة. أما بالنسبة لعمليّة السلام والمفاوضات، فالأرجح أنها ستواصل جمودها لفترة لا يعلم مداها إلا الله.

السيناريو الثالث: فوز محمد مرسي ضمن ائتلاف يضم قوى الثورة أو معظمها، على أساس دستور توافقي وقيام دولة مدنيّة ديمقراطيّة تعدديّة، وهذا يعني أنّ الرئيس المصري في هذه الحالة سيكون على مسافة واحدة من الفصائل الفلسطينيّة المختلفة، وستلعب مصر دورًا فاعلًا على المدى المباشر في ملف المصالحة يساعد على تحقيقها، ودورًا مختلفًا على المديين المتوسط والبعيد في ملف القضيّة الفلسطينيّة، وفيما يتعلق بالصراع العربي – الإسرائيلي. 

السيناريو الرابع: دخول حمدين صباحي سباق الرئاسة في جولة الإعادة بعد الأخذ بطعوناته المقدمة إلى اللجنة العليا للانتخابات، أو بانسحاب محمد مرسي، أو بفوزه عند الإعلان الرسمي النهائي للمرحلة الأولى، وهذا، إن حدث، سيحمله إلى القصر الجمهوري بصورة شبه مؤكدة، ما سيفتح الطريق أمام نهضة مصرية، وبالتالي عربيّة وفلسطينيّة ستعود بالفوائد الجمّة على القضية الفلسطينية، بما في ذلك ملف المصالحة.

السيناريو الخامس: حدوث تطورات سيئة – لا سمح الله – تَدْخُل فيها مصر في المجهول، بحيث لا تستكمل الانتخابات أو تُلغى، أو أن يكون هناك انقلاب عسكري قبل الانتخابات أو بعدها، يؤدي إلى تجدد الثورة، وربما إلى الحرب الأهليّة والفوضى. وفي هذه الحالة ستضيع القضيّة الفلسطينيّة وتتبدد الحقوق الفلسطينيّة. وهذا السيناريو مستبعد لأن مصر بعد الثورة لا يمكن أن تعود إلى ما قبلها أو إلى وضع أسوأ مما كانت عليه، ولكنّه سيناريو لا يمكن إسقاطه من الحُسبان.

لن تكتمل الصورة حول انعكاسات ما يجري في مصر على القضية الفلسطينية، بما في ذلك ملف المصالحة، دون إدراك أنّ أيَ رئيس مصري قادم، حتى لو كان مرشح الإخوان المسلمين، لن يستطيع إلغاء معاهدة السلام المصريّة – الإسرائيليّة، أو قطع العلاقات بشكل نهائي مع إسرائيل؛ لأنه سيرث مشاكل اقتصاديّة اجتماعيّة أمنيّة هائلة ستجعله يركز على حلها، وما يتطلبه ذلك من المساهمة في توفير الاستقرار الإقليمي، الذي من دونه لا يمكن الحصول على الدعم الدولي الضروري لتجاوز الوضع الراهن الذي تمر به مصر، والذي يهدد استمراره حدوث كوارث لا تبقي ولا تذر.

أقصى ما يمكن أن يطرحه الرئيس المصري القادم تعديل في معاهدة السلام مع إسرائيل، أو المطالبة بتنفيذ كل بنودها، ولكن العلاقة المصرية – الإسرائيليّة ستبقى على المدى المباشر، وإن بفتور على مستوى التمثيل وتبادل السفارات والعلاقات التجاريّ، أمّا على المدى البعيد فسيتوقف كل شيء على نجاح الثورة المصرية في تحقيق أهدافها أو فشلها.

فالرئيس القادم إذا كان إسلاميًّا متحالفًا مع "حماس"، سيطالبها إما - على الأرجح- بمواصلة اعتدالها حتى لا تكون عقبة في طريق الاستقرار الإقليمي، ونسج العلاقات الأميركيّة مع الحكم الإسلامي الجديد، وهذا ما حدث بالفعل بعد صعود الإسلام السياسي، حيث نصح الإخوانُ "حماسَ" بإبداء المرونة السياسية والتقدم على طريق المصالحة، أو لن يعطيها سوى تصريحات يمكن أن تدفعها للمزيد من التشدد، بما يجعلها أكثر ابتعادًا عن إنجاز المصالحة.

تبقى نقطة في منتهى الأهمية، هي أنه بغض النظر عن نتيجة الانتخابات الرئاسيّة، فإن الموقف المصري بعد الثورة لن يكون حِكرًا على فرد واحد، سواء ديكتاتور (مستبد أو ملهم)، وإنما حصيلة التوازن الجديد الذي يتشكل بين الرئاسة والحكومة والبرلمان والجيش والرأي العام. هذا التوازن هو الذي سيحدد مستقبل مصر وعلاقاتها مع جيرانها، ومنهم إسرائيل، وموقفها مع القضيّة الفلسطينيّة بشكل عام، والفصائل الفلسطينيّة بشكل خاص. 

إن "حماس" تتطلع كثيرًا، وبمبالغة، إلى علاقتها بمصر، وإلى دعمها، خصوصًا بعد ابتعادها عن سوريا وإيران وعدم انفتاح السعوديّة وبقيّة دول الخليج، باستثناء قطر، عليها حتى الآن على الأقل. 

و"فتح" تخشى كثيرا من خسران الحليف المصري، لذا من الصعب جدًا أن يحدث اختراق نوعي في ملف المصالحة دون أن تتضح الصورة ومعرفة إلى أين تسير مصر، وهذا لا يمكن أن يتضح إلا بعد الجولة الثانيّة من انتخابات الرئاسة وبعد وضع الدستور الجديد، وبعد قبول الأطراف المصريّة بقواعد اللعبة الديمقراطيّة السلميّة التي تحدد لكل طرف وزنه وحجمه، وبعد أن تكف الأطراف الفلسطينية عن السعي للهيمنة والسير وراء الأوهام والمراهنة على الآخرين.

تأسيسًا على ما سبق، فإن المصلحة الوطنية الفلسطينية العليا وإبقاء القضية الفلسطينية حاضرة في وقت انشغال مصر وغيرها من البلدان العربية بأوضاعها الداخلية تقتضي المراهنة على الذات أولًا، وقبل كل شيء، وعدم مراهنة طرفي الانقسام أو أحدهما على استئناف المفاوضات الثنائية، أو على هيمنة طرف فلسطيني لوحده على القيادة الفلسطينية التي أوصلتانا إلى تعميق الاحتلال والاستيطان والانقسام، أو على ما يجري في مصر وغيرها من البلدان العربية بالرغم من أهميته الإستراتيجية، لأن القدرة الفلسطينية على توظيفه لصالح الفلسطينيين ستكون متعذرة إذا لم يكن العامل الفلسطيني موحدًا وفاعلًا واستمر الانقسام الذي يقضي على أي أمل بتحقيق الحقوق الفلسطينية.

[عن جريدة "السفير" اللبنانية.]

  لقد تابع الكثيرون باهتمام كبير إقدام السيد بيرام ولد اعبيدي— لاحظوا حتى الاسم يحمل رواسب زمن العبودية التي يناضل ضدها بيرام—على إحراق مختارات من كتب الفقه المالكي المسؤولة، حسب زعمه، عن استمرار الرق في بلده لما تمده به من غطاء شرعي. لقد نفذ رفقة كوكبة من أعضاء جمعية "مبادرة من أجل الانعتاق من العبودية" في الثامن والعشرين من شهر أبريل تهديده عقب صلاة الجمعة على مرأى ومسمع من الكل قصد إثارة الانتباه إلى استمرار العبودية التي مازالت تعاني منها فئة واسعة من الموريتانيين ذوي الأصول الافريقية. ويقدر عدد العبيد في ربوع البلاد بعشرات بل مئات الآلاف حسب المصادر المختلفة والتي يجب التعامل مع المعلومات الواردة فيها بحذر شديد. فالأرقام تختلف، انخفاضاً وارتفاعاً، حسب المصادر وموقع اصطفاف أصحابها بسبب تضارب مصالح المعنيين بهذا الشأن وغياب إحصائيات رسمية حقيقية نستطيع الاستناد عليها بكل ثقة، غير أن الأكيد هو أن العبودية موجودة في موريتانيا رغم إنهائها رسمياً سنة 1981 من قبل الرئيس ولد هيدالله، ورغم إقرار قانون يجرمها منذ سنة 2007.  

بيرام ولد إعبيدي هو ناشط حقوقي موريتاني أسس ويترأس الجمعية غير الحكومية الغير معترف بها من قبل السلطات الموريتانية، "مباردة من أجل الانعتاق من العبودية"، منذ سنة 2007، وهو وجه معروف بتدخلاته الجريئة في الإعلام المحلي والدولي ولا يلوك لسانه عند تناول قضايا العبودية والتمييز العرقي وانتهاك حقوق الانسان في بلده. مافتئ ولد اعبيدي يضع اليد على الجرح النازف لموريتانيا في كل المحافل التي أُتيحت له فرصة التواجد بها، ولا يفوت فرصة إلا وتحدث فيها عن معاناة فئة من مواطنيه من جور الدولة والمجتمع. ولد اعبيدي معروف في موريتانيا لا كرئيس للجمعية السالفة الذكر فحسب ولكن أيضا بانخراطه في العمل السياسي في صفوف المعارضة وعمله على تفعيل المشاركة المدنية في الحياة السياسية في أفق تأسيس بلد ديمقراطي يسع جميع مواطنيه ويمتعهم بحقوق المواطنة الكاملة؛ فمطالبه واضحة إذ ينتظر "من السلطات العمومية أن تطلب العفو باسم الدولة من كل ضحايا الابتزاز والعبودية، وأن تعاقب كل الجناة، وأن تعطى تعليمات للإدارة الترابية والسلطات القضائية ووكلائهم لملاحقة كل ممارسي الرق وتطبيق القانون، وأن تعترف ... للحراطين بحقوقهم، وأن تتوقف عن حماية المجرمين". فالنظام السياسي في موريتانيا نظام قائم على التمييز بين الحراطين (أغلبية السكان في رأيه) وبين الطبقة العربية-الأمازيغية المورسكية الماسكة بزمام السلطة في البلد. القضاء على العبودية بالنسبة له يمر بدمقرطة البلاد ومنح الحراطين حقوقهم الوطنية على قدم المساواة مع المكونات الأخرى التي يتشكل منها النسيج الاجتماعي الموريتاني. كما أنه معروف بمعارضته الشديدة لنظام الرئيس محمد ولد عبد العزيز، ويعد من الداعين إلى ثورة، على غرار الثورات العربية ضد هذا النظام. فعداؤه لسياسات الطبقة السياسية الحاكمة واضح في كل المقابلات الصحفية التي أجريت معه داخل وخارج موريتانيا باللغتين " العربية والفرنسية بل وأطلق على حكومة الرئيس ولد عبد العزير اسم " حكم البيظان".

بيرام يحارب في كل الجبهات السياسية والحقوقية بل ولم تسلم المؤسسة الدينية من نقذه اللاذع في بلد معروف بتدينه وبكثرة أهل العلوم الشرعية فيه. فهو لم يخف أبداً اتهامه للعلماء والفقهاء، باعتبارهم طرفاً مساهماً في استمرار العبودية، كما يتضح من هذه المقتطف من حوار مطول مترجم من الفرنسية إلى العربية: "موقف غالبية العلماء وقادة الرأي الديني حول قضية العبودية لا يرضي أي حرطاني ولا أي موريتاني عادل. يجب أن يكون ذلك واضحاً للجميع. أنا أقول بصوت عال وقوي ما يـُـتمتم به الكثيرون. وأتحمل حتى النهاية مسؤولية مواجهة رجال الدين المرتشين الجديرين بالعيش في عصر آخر. كذلك أئمة وعلماء الجيوب والبطون. إنهم رجال يرعوْن الغموض ويرفضون شجب العبودية بشكل لا لبس فيه، ويدفنون رؤوسهم وراء اللعب بالكلمات والحيّل بغية إطالة أمد ممارسات غير مبررة وغير قابلة للتبرير...وأقول لهم أنه مادام قادتهم ورموزهم الروحية يشكلون – من خلال الفتوى والقرارات- سندا للجلادين كعمر البشير وللنظام ولممارسي الرق الموريتانيين فسنظل ندافع عن الضحايا، وبالتالي سنقف أبدا في وجوههم هم".

هذا الموقف يلتقي وبشكل مثير للاهتمام مع اتهام الدكتور محمد بن المختار الشنقيطي للفقهاء بتلاعب أقلامهم " تلاعباًُ غريباًُ بالنص القرآني مرة ليرسخوا التفاوت في أقدس حقوق الإنسان وآكدها، وهو حق الحياة". إلا أن ولد اعبيدي لم يكتف بنقد علماء الدين فقط إذ تجاوزهم إلى نقد الموقف المتخاذل لليسار الموريتاني من العبودية معتبراً إياه " يساراًُ استرقاقياً ذا خطابٍ خبيثٍ". أما القوميون العرب فهم، في نظره، فاشيون و لا يميز بينهم وبين الآخرين في تبريرهم للعبودية. هذا غيض من فيض المواقف القوية لهذا الناشط الحقوقي والسياسي "الذي يطلق النار على كل ما يتحرك". وويقبع في السجن بالعاصمة نواكشوط منذ التاسع والعشرين من شهر أبريل/نيسان؛ عقب إحراقه المثير للجدل لكتب الفقه المالكي في الشارع العام ويواجه تهماً ثقيلةً منها "انتهاك القيم الاسلامية للشعب الموريتاني" و"زعزعة أمن الدولة" . هذه التهم في حد ذاتها مؤشر مسبق على العقوبات القاسية التي تنتظره على يد القضاء الموريتاني. خاصة وأن خصومته السياسية مع الرئيس ولد عبد العزير معروفة على رؤوس الأشهاد ولقد حرص الرئيس نفسه على وعد المتظاهرين بـأن "الدولة ستتخذ الإجراءات اللازمة لحماية مقدسات الشعب"، مما يؤشر ضمنيا على أن حق المواطنين في الحرية والانعتاق من العبودية لا يرقى إلى مستوى المقدسات. وإذا تمت إدانتهم، فإن بيرام ولد اعبيدي وتسعة ناشطين آخرين، قد يواجهون الحكم بالإعدام أو السجن مع الاشغال الشاقة مدى الحياة.

لقد نجح بيرام ولد اعبيدي في جلب الاهتمام الإعلامي إلى مأساة الكثير من مواطنيه السود الذين يعيشون إما في العبودية بكل ما تحمله الكلمة من معنى أو في مرتبة اجتماعية دنيا في مجتمع مازال يميز بين البيض والسود وفق تراتبية قبلية هرمية تميز بين الحسانيين والمرابطين والزناكة والحراطين والعبيد. فالحل الراديكالي—سواء اختلفنا أو اتفقنا معه—الذي لجأت إليه "جمعية الانعتاق من العبودية" يجد تفسيره في كونه خطوة استفزازية مدروسة لا ترمي إلى انتهاك حرمة الدين الاسلامي بقدر ما هي استغاثة ذكية تمس المعتقد الديني للمؤمنين في الصميم وتدعوهم إلى التفكر أكثر في وجود هذه الممارسة السمجة في المجتمع. فالدين لا يمكن أن يسمح باسترقاق الناس وقد ولدتهم أمهاتهم أحراراُ. فحرص الناس على احترام تعالم الدين يجب أن يحول بينهم وبين امتلاك أو السكوت على امتلاك العبيد. بمعنى أن إحراق الكتب ليس غاية في نفسه بل هو وسيلة لاستفزاز أولئك الذين يستكينون إلى التعاليم التي تتضمنها، رغم أنها اجتهادات وآراء تمت بلورتها في زمن غير زمننا هذا، لرفع الحرج عن ضمائرهم على الرغم من علمهم أن تعاليمها انتهت بانتهاء الزمن الذي كتبت فيه. فالاجتهادات التي تتضمنها ويستند عليها البعض لتبرير امتلاك العبيد هي آراء أناس يخطئون ويصيبون ولكن اجتهاداتهم لا يجب أن تلزم الناس في الوقت الراهن.

كشف هذا الحرق عن نفاق العلماء والمجتمع على حد سواء. فالظاهر أنه ليس هناك تمييز بين أولوية حرية الانسان وحقه في الحياة الكريمة التي كرسها تطور الانسانية نحو المدنية والتقدم وبين نصوص قابلة للعدل والتجريح ليؤخذ منها ما هو صالح ويترك ما ليس كذلك. فعوضاً عن انصباب فكر "المؤمنين" على تجريم العبودية واحتقار مالكي العبيد والدعوة إلى محاكمتهم، اعتقلوا الرسول ولم يقرأوا الرسالة. فالرسالة واضحة وجلية وهي وجود فئة من الناس استلبت إرادتها وحرمت من حقها في تقرير مصيرها وتعيش في القرن العشرين محرومة من آدميتها. الإسلام نفسه لا يزكي مثل هذا السلوك إذ أن المساواة بين الناس من أعز المبادئ إليه.

 إحراق كتب الفقه المالكي أدى إلى الكثير من ردود الفعل في الساحة السياسية الموريتانية بين مؤيد ومعارض. ويهمنا هنا استعراض آراء ثلاثة من العلماء الموريتانيين المعروفين. فالشيخ والعالم الموريتاني أحمد المهدي فقيه لم ير في عمل بيرام زندقةً ولا كفراً في فتوى لموقع تقدمي  "رفع الحرج عما فعل بيرام" قال: "إن ما قام به السيد برام في الجمعة الماضية، من حرق لمجموعة من الكتب الفقهية، لا يعتبر كفراً ولا ردة، ولا يعتبر فسوقاً ولا زندقة. لا سيما إذا علمنا أن الكتب التي أحرقت ما زال يجري حولها كثير من الجدل في الأوساط العلمية والمجامع الفقهية، حيث شكك كثير من العلماء في صحة نسبة المدونة إلى الإمام مالك..." بل إنه واصل مرافعته الفكرية ليعيد الاجتهاد إلى مكانه الطبيعي بالقول إن " هذه الكتب التي أحرقت، ليست مقدسة قطعاً، وليست قرآناً ولا سنة، وأنها مجرد كتب ألفها أشخاص بمحض اجتهادهم، وكتبوها بأيديهم، ومنهم أميون لا يعلمون الكتاب إلا أماني وإن هم إلا يظنون. وأن هذه الكتب ألفت في عصر غير عصرنا وفي مصر غير مصرنا، وأن الناس الذين ألفت هذه الكتب فيما به الفتوى عندهم، قد تخلصوا منها ورموها خلفهم... صار بإمكاننا أن نناقش حرق هذه الكتب أو دفنها". أما العالم الموريتاني الآخر الذي أدلى بدلوه في هذه القضية فهو أحمد ولد هين ولد مولود الذي أصدر فتوى بعنوان  "محرقة الكتب فسوق وجهالة" ؛ ومن جملة ما جاء فيها أن " حرق الكتب استخفافاً وَوَسمها بالنخاسة والطعن في أعراض العلماء...إذا لم يكن فسوقاً وجرأة على دين الله تعالى..فلا يوجد فُسوق في الدنيا!! ومن استحله مستخفاً بكتب الإسلام مع قيام الجحة فقد وقف على باب الرّدة والزندقة ويخشى عليه من حبوط العمل وسوء الخاتمة"، قبل أن يتهم المنظمات الحقوقية بمولاة الغرب، زاعما أنه "لا يكمن أبداً أن نحسن الظن بمنظمات"حقوقية" تحتمي بالغرب وتسند ظهرها فيه وتواليه،...ثم تتجرأ على حرق كتب الإسلام في مشهد مخزٍ ومذل".

الرأي الثالث هو الذي عبر عنه الدكتور محمد بن المختار الشنقيطي بعنوان "قصة العبودية في كتب المالكية"؛ إذ يقول إن الأوْلى "من حرق الكتب الفقهية باستفزاز والدفاع عنها بانفعال هو قراءتها بعيون مفتوحة، تميز بين الدين والتدين، وبين الشريعة والفقه، وبين الوحي والتاريخ. فالأمر ليس حدثاً عابراً في بلد قصيَّ، وإنما هو في جوهره أمر مستقبل الإسلام في عصر الحرية"، ويؤكد بأن "فقهنا الموروث –وهو كسب بشري لا وحيٌ منزل- ليس كله عدلاً ولا رحمةً ولا مصلحةً ولا حكمةً. بل هو حاصل تفاعل فهمِ الفقهاء للوحي مع المواريث الاجتماعية والثقافية السابقة على الإسلام، ومع واقع القهر الاجتماعي الذي ساد في عصرهم". هذه القراءات الثلاث تبين مدى الانقسام الموجود في المجتمع الموريتاني حول طريقة احتجاج بيرام على اجتهادات فقهية الحاجة إلى تحيينها واضحة لتتماشى مع روح عصرنا، ولكن الأهم في الفتويين الاولى والثانية تحاشيهما التطرق للمشكل الجوهري الذي يؤرق الكل والذي بسببه قام بيرام وجماعته بفعلته. فالعبودية لم يذكرها أي منهما لا تصريحاً ولاضمناً. إغفال قد ينم عن الحرج أو عدم الرغبة في الخوض في موضوع شائك يقسم المجتمع.

إذا استثنينا عبودية الكفيل المقننة في الخليج، فموريتانيا هي البلد العربي الوحيد الذي مازالت تستمر العبودية فيه بمفهومها التقليدي (هناك بطبيعة الحال ما يسمى " بالرق الابيض ولكن هذا مختلف)؛ ببساطة "ملك الانسان لأخيه الإنسان" والتصرف فيه كبضاعة قابلة للبيع والشراء، والإرث بين الأصول والفروع دون أن يكون للموروث أي قرارٍ في تقرير مصيره الذي يحدده مالكه (سيده). يتحول الإنسان في هذه الممارسة إلى "شيء" قابل للتصرف فيه دون إرادته لأن القانون والعرف، الفاسديْن غالبا، يعاملانه على هذا الأساس، ويسلبان منه الحق في الوجود.  فانتشار الفساد السياسي وغياب الإرادة السياسية وتركيبة المجتمع القبلية وامتداد الأراضي الموريتانية على مساحات صحراوية شاسعة واعتبار امتلاك العبيد نوعا  الترف يدل على علو المكانةالاجتماعية والسياسية "للسيد"، كلها من العوامل التي تؤدي إلى استمرار هذه الممارسة المحرمة دوليا ووطنيا أيضا. فمحاربة ممارسة مقبولة في المجتمع كالعبودية أمر صعب يتطلب الكثير من النضال الحقوقي والتربوي، كمكمل للتجريم القانوني، لتفكيك المسلمات الدينية والاجتماعية التي تسوغها وتشرعنها في المجتمع.

فالمجتمع الموريتاني اليوم مدعو إلى وضع حدٍّ لهذه الممارسة الشائنة التي لا يقبلها عقل ولا منطق في عالمٍ يفترض أنه متحضر ويجب أن تنقرض فيه بقايا سلوكيات تنتمي إلى القرون الوسطى. فأن يملك شخص شخصاً آخر ويقرر نيابة عنه ويحدد مستقبله ومستقبل أبنائه وذريته، ممارسة لا يمكن إلا أن تكون منبوذةً ومستنكرةً من كل ذي عفة وحس إنساني، سواء كان في الغرب أو الشرق، بغض النظر عن تدينه من عدمه. ومن يؤمن بالحرية والمساواة بين بني البشر كقيم كونية لا يمكنه إلا أن يفهم رمزية مبادرة بيرام ولد اعبيدي، الذي يجب أن نذكر بالمناسبة بأنه مسلم ومبادرته حفزها وعيه الاسلامي حسب قوله،الرامية إلى الاجهاز على السند الشرعي الذي يستدل به المدافعون عن استرقاق الناس وتملك بعضهم لبعضٍ. إلا أنه للأسف بدلاً من أن ينصب النقاش على العبودية المشينة في بلدٍ عربيٍّ مسلمٍ تم توجيه سهام النقد لصاحب المبادرة وتم تسيير المسيرات وتجييش الناس للتظاهر ضد إحراق كتب اختلف حتى علماء الدين الموريتانيين أنفسهم في صحة نسبتها إلى أصحابها. فعوضاُ من انصباب النقاش على القضية الجوهرية تمت اللعب على المشاعر الدينية للموريتانيين ووظف الإعلام سطوته لشيطنة المدافعين عن حقوق الإنسان بترديد الاسطوانة القديمة-الجديدة كالعمالة للغرب وتنفيذ أجندة معادية للإسلام.  

العبودية الفردية في موريتانيا تستحق النضال والالتزام الحقوقي السلمي الذي يقوم به بيرام وغيره من المناضلين الحقوقيين الذين سبقوه. كما أنها تستحق أن يتم تناولها في إطار عبوديةٍ أشمل وأعم لها منظروها ومشرعنوها ومؤسساتها والمنافحون عنها تحت مسمياتٍ مختلفةٍ. فهذا الاستعباد الفردي له أبعاد جماعية أعمق ومن تجلياتها الاستعباد السياسي الجماعي المنتشر في كثيرٍ من بقع الوطن العربي، إذ أن شعوباً وجماعاتٍ بكاملها تورث وتنتقل من شخصٍ إلى آخر دون أن يكون لها رأي في هذا الميراث. فهناك من يرث الدولة وهناك من يرث الحزب وهناك من يرث الزعامة، ويرثونها بمن فيها. وبالتالي فعندما يبادر بيرام إلى إحراق الكتب التي يرى أنها تزكي العبودية في بلده فإنه يروم جذب الأنظار إلى العبودية في مختلف أشكالها ومستوياتها وتجليتها التي عادة ما يتم إلباسها لبوساُ دينيا لتسويغها وضمان استمراريتها كنسق حياتي مقبول.
 

Maaike Voorhoeve, editor, Family Law in Islam: Divorce, Marriage and Women in the Muslim World. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2012.

Jadaliyya (J): What led you to edit this book?

Maaike Voorhoeve (MV): When I started my PhD on the contemporary application of Tunisian family law by Tunisian judges, my idea was as follows: the Tunisian family code deviates significantly from Islamic law, and therefore it is interesting to examine if judges apply the code, or whether they apply Islamic law instead. This approach was informed by other studies on family law in the Muslim world that focus on the relationship between legislation and Islam. But during my fieldwork, I realized that the presumption that there is such a dichotomy is actually a prejudice, and that I should let go of this idea in order to be able to see what was going on. I needed to enter the field with a clean mind, without any thoughts about Islam, or even custom, whatsoever. I think that in the end, I got to actually see much more than if I had held on to this prejudice, and I felt like I should somehow spread the word that we should stop looking at law (and other institutions and practices) in the region through the “Islam”-lens.

But of course, I was not the first to have this illumination. In the writings of Baudouin Dupret, among others, this idea comes to the forefront. This is why I decided to bring together academics who work on family law in the region and who apply what I call a “bottom-up approach,” in the sense that they try to look at what is going on in the field of marriage and divorce with an open mind. I organized two panels on family law at the World Congress for Middle East Studies (WOCMES) in Barcelona in the summer of 2010, which was a great success, in the sense that I felt that I had found soul-mates. Therefore, I decided to take it one step further, to bring our approach to a larger audience than the WOCMES one, and to make a book out of it. A number of the papers presented at the conference were transformed into chapters for the book, which I. B. Tauris decided to publish.

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures does the book address?

MV: All our contributions are about matters of marriage and divorce, but each focuses on a particular country in the region (Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, and Yemen). The book is divided into two parts: the first part talks about public debates on family law reforms, and the second part talks about practices of judges, lawyers, and litigants. All contributions apply the “bottom-up approach,” in the sense that all contributions look at what people do. The authors have different backgrounds, ranging from law to anthropology and political science. But I think that all are informed by sociological and anthropological methods and literature, mainly ethnography.

J: Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

MV: Just like any other academic, I surely hope that this book shall reach a larger audience than academia alone. Family law in the Muslim world is a hot topic in public debates in the West and in the region itself, and I think that it is a duty for academics not so much to participate in such debates, but to contribute to them by providing data and theoretical frameworks to address these topics. In that way, we can hopefully ensure that the people who are participating in these debates are informed. In the case of this book, we hope to inform people of what the situation is like in practice.

[Maaike Voorhoeve. Image via the author.]

For example: in the West, many people still think that every issue in the Muslim region is governed by Islam, especially questions of marriage and divorce. This image is often accompanied by the idea that since Islam governs everything, there must be huge inequalities between men and women. But what the chapters in the book on public debates demonstrate is that on the one hand, the role of Islam in legislation is highly contested in the countries themselves, where factions in society call for a “secularization” of the law, and that the Islam-argument can be used to enhance gender equality. By giving insight into practices and debates, this book opens the way to a more nuanced image of law in the region.

As the world seems to be particularly interested in the region after the “Arab uprisings,” we hope that we can reach an even larger audience than when we started with our project; indeed, although all the contributions address the situation from before the uprisings, the topic is even more timely nowadays, as the aftermath of the “revolutions” is characterized by intensified debates on personal status law.

J: What other projects are you working on now?

MV: I am currently working on several legal aspects of the “revolution” in Tunisia, again with a bottom-up approach. I recently finished an article about how people in Tunisia wish to deal with the crimes committed by the Ben Ali regime, focusing not only on human rights offences but also on corruption. I’m also looking at debates on women’s rights after the revolution, and I’m currently writing an article on “political” justice, namely the recent development that courts are taking a very “conservative” stance towards issues of nudity, blasphemy, etc.—for example, by convicting two men to seven and a half years imprisonment for their cartoons of Mohammed that they published on Facebook. Beginning in September 2012, I will be affiliated with Harvard, where I shall study the public debates on the role of Islamic law in the new Tunisian constitution.

Excerpt from Family Law in Islam: Divorce, Marriage and Women in the Muslim World

From the Introduction (by Baudouin Dupret and Maaike Voorhoeve)

Since they were mainly considered an offspring of the jurisprudential corpus called “Islamic law,” the many legal systems of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) used to be treated in terms of their relationship to Islam. The direct outcome of this tendency was to ascribe overarching importance to Islam in the inception and organization of the law, and to minimize those specificities of each country which had proceeded from the historical and social circumstances of their recent development. In other words, Islam’s influence was overemphasized, while the impact of socio-political transformation was neglected. […] Focusing on the theme of Islamic law, researchers forgot to consider that the law is a daily and ordinary activity, with litigants trying to settle their problems and professionals carrying out their jobs. Legal activities are performed for all practical purposes, and therefore their study must primarily consist of the description of what people do when using legal provisions and institutions. To put it bluntly, law is first of all a conflict-resolution or guarantee-setting device, not the symbolic reflection of society’s unconscious.

…

…the descriptive approach […] restricts itself to the task of examining how Islam is invoked and referred to by those people who, at some point in their daily life, orient their talk and actions towards it. In that sense, Islam cannot be found outside its practice, and describing something as “Islamic” is to ascribe to it the quality of being closely related to Islam, whatever the “something” in question. Thus “Islamic law” corresponds to what people consider as specifically Islamic in the law, independent of any consideration about the truth of such a claim.[1]

People address the issue of sharia for very different purposes. When demanding its implementation in a country, activists address a legal theme for political purposes. When assessing whether a law is in conformity with Article 2 of the Egyptian Constitution, which stipulates that “the principles of sharia are the main source of legislation,” the Egyptian Supreme Constitutional Court deals with the same theme for judicial and constitutional purposes. And when the heading of a Western newspaper states that the stoning of an Iranian woman “is a symbolic issue, but it is at the same time the whole sharia that is questionable” (Le Soir, 28 August 2010), it is clear that the journalist’s purpose is related to the ongoing debate in Europe on the so-called “clash of civilizations.” An adequate description of how different people address the issue of sharia shows that the latter is not seen in the same light—or as “the same thing”—simply because the same word is used. To put it in a different way, people are oriented towards the notion of sharia in a way that is sensitive to the context in which it is used and to the practice in which they are engaged.

Such contexts are, broadly speaking, of two types. On the one hand there is the context of ongoing public debates, where the issue of law is a theme and a resource for addressing a matter that is not specifically legal. On the other hand, there is the legal context as such, where law is a textual source, an achievement and a practice. In other words, there is a discourse on the law and a discourse of the law, i.e. law as a topic and law as a performance: and there is a huge gap between these two conceptions of law. This gap is not related to a difference in the substance of what is at stake, but to a difference in the goal-orientation of the protagonists, i.e. what we call their practical purposes. Doing politics is very different from adjudicating; writing an open editorial aims at something other than formulating a plea; claiming that sharia is a kind of Pole Star of a regime’s legitimacy is technically and consequentially different from the search for fiqh-based solutions in the formulation and implementation of a ruling; and so on. When not taking these fundamental differences into account—an omission that comes about merely by sticking to the words people utter without looking at what they are doing when they utter them—research misses the phenomenon it purports to explore. It remains fascinated by the power of terms endowed with an intrinsic, essential meaning, independent of their practical uses. Thus, for instance, the Arabic word tashri‘ is supposed to convey a reference to the divine on the sole basis of its etymology[2]—“referring to sharia” (shari‘a)—while a competent look into contemporary legal systems shows that the word has the direct, obvious sense of “legislation.” Similarly, it is supposed that the Islamic state is intrinsically instable, because the etymology of the Arabic word used to capture this institution (dawla) conveys the notion of a cyclic change (see Bernard Lewis).[3] Phrased in an anthropological way, the same cultural concept has resulted in attributing intrinsic meanings to words such as haqq, which are deemed to convey the power of their supposed linguistic “origins” (see Geertz), instead of simply expressing ideas related to the context of their uses (e.g. the “right” to do this or that, or one of God’s names, or the “truth” of a statement).[4]

Instead of deriving the meaning of words from assumptions about their etymology, research should arrive at a description of what people do in actual contexts. However, this does not mean that words are devoid of any importance, that talk is opposed to action, or that, in the sphere of law, there is a conflict between “living law” and state law. Indeed, there is a classical dichotomy in socio-legal studies that opposes the law set out in codes, rulings and jurisprudence to the law as it can be observed in action, that is, when performed by flesh-and-blood human beings. Although this distinction stems from a positive intent—that one should not merely stick to legal formulations in order to study the law—it queers researchers’ pitch by artificially severing legal practice from one of their main resources, i.e. legal texts. The law is mostly performed through direct or indirect references to formal sources, which protagonists use to orient themselves in choosing a way forward. This issue of rule-following, which has been much debated in philosophy, can be dealt with, when turning to more empirical contexts, through the notion of “instructed action.”[5] Instead of considering that legal rules and legal practice each work autonomously, it suggests that they can indeed be distinguished analytically, but empirically function in an interdependent way: a rule is always a rule-instructing-an-action (since a rule alone has no existence but on paper) and the action is always an action-as-constrained-by-a-rule (since an action cannot be characterized as legal if it has no connection to a rule). This mode of describing the law has the double advantage of doing justice to the teleological formulation of legal rules—i.e. which aim at being implemented—and to the legal protagonists’ systematic referencing of them—whether to apply or evade them.

NOTES

[1] Baudouin Dupret, Adjudication in Action (Aldershot, 2011).
[2] See the Encyclopaedia of Islam, second edition.
[3] Bernard Lewis, Le langage politique de l'Islam (Paris, 1988).
[4] Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (New York, 1983).
[5] Eric Livingston, An Anthropology of Reading (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1995) and Baudouin Dupret, Adjudication in Action (Aldershot, 2011).

[Excerpted from Family Law in Islam: Divorce, Marriage and Women in the Muslim World, edited by Maaike Voorhoeve, by permission of the editor. Copyright editorial selections and introduction © 2012 Maaike Voorhoeve. For more information, or to purchase this book, please click here.]

إنك لا تجني من الشوك العنب والدولة المستبدة لا تنجب الحرية، إنما الحرية تولد من رحم الأحرار. وهل يمكن لدولة تعتقل أكثر من ١٪ من مجمل مواطنيها وتغيبهم وراء ضوء الشمس في سجون الرأي ومصادرة الحرية وتنكل بهم لتجعلهم عبرة لمن يعشق الحرية ويسعى لها أن تتغنى بالحرية أو حتى ترسم رسماً كروكياً لها؟ هل يمكن لنظام كهذا أن يهب للناس حريتهم التي كفلها الله لهم؟ وهل يمكن لدولة كهذه أن تسير بشعبها على صراط العدالة والعيش المشترك؟ لا أظن ذلك.
 
إن كنا نفهم ذلك بالسليقة، فعلينا أن نفهم أن كل قانون يستصدره الاستبداد إنما يسير ضمن الهدف الأوحد وهو بقاء التسلط ودوام الدكتاتورية، ويهدف لأن يغيب الوعي لدى المواطن ولأن تموت الرغبة لديه في الديمقراطية والحياة الكريمة. وعلينا أن نفهم أنه لو ولدت في مثل هذه الأجواء هيئات أو جمعيات تماماً كتلك التي نراها لدى الشعوب المتمدنة المتحضرة، فهي لا تهدف إلى محاكاة تلك الشعوب في مضامين ما تعيشه من قيم ديمقراطية وتعايش مشترك، فما هي إلا أسلوب جديد من أساليب الضحك على الذقون لبقاء التسلط عن طريق مخدرات إرضاء الشعوب بشيء من شكليات الحرية.
 
ففي الوقت الذي تصادر فيه الحريات على المكشوف وتلعب فيه الصحافة لعبة الحكاواتي ضد المتظاهرين المطالبين بالحرية في المنطقة الشرقية والغربية، يجتمع عدد من كبار الصحافة وأرباب الإعلام في جزيرة العرب تحت مظلة ما يسمى هيئة الصحفيين السعوديين بحثاً لهم عن رئيس ينتخبونه! وعن دور يلعبونه على أنفسهم قبل أن يصدقه عامة الناس. ألا تعجب معي أيها القارئ لنقابة بلا نقباء! ألم يكن الأجدر بالمجتمعين أن يعلنوا حدادهم على صلب الحرية طيلة العقود الماضية؟ حيث لم يكن لهم يوماً لسان كباقي البشر!
 
عذراً يا مشايخ الصحف والمجلات، لقد أنجبت لكم وزارة الإعلام هيئة على شكل تابوت خشبي. فما تكونون وأنتم بداخله؟ تتناقشون حول تسمية الهيئة وتحاولون الزحف باسمها إلى اتحاد للصحفيين خجلين من أن تسموها تسمية الدول الحية وشبه الحية بـ "نقابة صحافيين" خوفاً من أن تجرحوا مشاعر أصحاب المعالي والسمو إذ لا نقابة إلا نقابتهم ولا رأي إلا ما رأوا! فما فائدة هذا التجمع إذا كان تجمعاً  زاحفاً زحفاً جيولوجياً  نحو الحرية بدلاً  من أن يكون سائراً إليها بخطىً ثابتة راسخة مطمئنة؟
 
وإذا كنتم رجال صحافة ولم تتحدثوا عن حرية الآخرين وعن حقهم في الكلمة، ولم تعتصموا يوماً للمناداة باسم كل الصادقين الذين صدحوا من أجل الحرية، ولم تطالبوا بلسان طلق غير ذي علق بأبسط الحقوق، فهذا يعني أن تجمعكم هذا خارج خريطة الحرية وبعيداً عن مضامينها، ولا علاقة لكم بأي تجمع يتعلق بالصحافة إلا في الشكل فقط. عذراً لكم أيها السادة، فكل الأحرار قد واراهم الاستبداد في مقابر الأحياء، فعن أي هيئة تتحدثون؟

The Arab world has forever changed, and so has the media. Some would argue governance, as we've known it, is also changing. Business is certainly changing; in fact, the whole world might just be changing too. The question is, is social media the catalyst? My simple answer is yes.

For just over a year now, I've been fortunate enough to be immersed in a series of chaotic and fateful events that had deprived me of sleep, catapulted my career, but most importantly connected me through social media, at times intimately, to my shared generation of Arab brothers and sisters fighting for their right to self-determination.

After decades of oppression and dictatorship, a revolutionary spirit, led primarily by the region's youth, and fueled by social media, has risen across the Middle East and North Africa, challenging the governments in power, their relations with the West, and the role of religion, women and democracy in society.

But it has also challenged, perhaps unintentionally, the mainstream media.

Last fall I had the privilege to speak at the Google Zeitgeist conference in Phoenix, Arizona about Arab youth reclaiming their identity and right to self-determination. But this could not have been accomplished with such a relentless pace had it not been for the democratization of media and proliferation of platforms for political and social mobilization.

Social media connected these young Arabs to like-minded individuals, across the region, and beyond, but perhaps most importantly with the media -- highlighting the limitations of parachute journalism, which is as ineffective as it is costly. Instead, it offered them a new source for news-gathering, social-media, via a platform that President Bush once infamously coined "The Internets."

Just as the Arab world is going through a period of revolution, the media is undergoing its own symbiotic revolution. There has been much speculation as to how central a role social media has played in catalyzing the Arab Revolution or the Global Occupy Movement. But little has been discussed about its role in spurring the media revolution.

Last week while giving this address at Google Zeitgeist UK, I got in bed early and was watching a rerun of Men in Black on the obscenely large TV in my room when a flurry of tweets caught my eye. I watched as photos and a livestream of anti-war protesters clashing with police at the NATO summit streamed through to my laptop from Chicago.

Within minutes another live stream from Lebanon Al Jadeed website popped up in my Twitter feed documenting RPG and machine gunfire that lasted for five hours as the conflict in Syria manifested itself in Beirut's streets. The worst violence in well over a decade, and then some. There I was, aggregating tweets and live video, calling up sources on the ground and curating the story, using crowdsourced maps to track the violence. I was basically using social media as a news-gathering tool and pushing it out to 12,000 Twitter followers in real-time in over 141 countries. Essentially, my own mini-publishing platform.

I would stay up until 3 a.m. in somewhat of a late-night ménage a trois, except instead of lovers, it was my laptop and phone, both of which I'm a little too in love with. (Seriously, my family has had interventions with me about it. But that's another story all together.)

For decades, leaders in media and governments have championed the ordinary citizen's right to information as a fundamental human right. For just as long, in the Arab world, citizens have been deprived and denied that very right.

Fifty percent of the world is under 30. In the Arab world it is about 70 percent. These young people have turned to the Internet to engage with others, share grievances and mobilize to challenge the status quo. Since then, we've seen that spirit of civic engagement spill from the virtual realm to the streets. As the Internet penetration grew and economic situation worsened, millions of young, unemployed, but educated youth acted out -- including one notable man in Tunisia, Mohamed Bouazizi, whose story I'm sure you are familiar with. If not, let me Google that for you.

That same week, I had arrived in D.C. to help launch The Stream for Al Jazeera, an award-winning interactive talk show that aimed to tap into conversations already happening on social media and leverage their voices to tell unreported stories. I stumbled across the hashtag, "Sidibouzid" -- the town that Mohamad Bouazizi was from. Immediately, I called up hundred of photos, and videos showing students protesting, police abuses and sporadic gunfire.

Within a matter of minutes I was able to interview a student via Skype who told me school was canceled. He sent me photos of a protester whose head had been blown off in a hospital. I tried to look on the wires to corroborate the video, but there was nothing in the wires.

There I was, watching this horrible gruesome video, knowing in my gut it was real, unable to find a source confirming it in mainstream media, and wondering where the hell is the story?

As the messages went viral, protests broke out across the world showing solidarity with Tunisia in Switzerland, Egypt, Algeria, Berlin and even London. I realized the beginning of a revolution was unfolding and I, thanks to Social Media, had a front-row seat.

For more than a week I watched the story unfold, speaking to activists, using Facebook, Skype and Twitter, as protests turned bloody. It wasn't until January 11, 2011, with Ben Ali's regime on the verge of collapse, that Time magazine finally found the story.

Despite social media's challenging of the state's intimidation and targeting of journalists, Bahrain, Syria, and Egypt and many others continue to crackdown on dissent. But through citizen reports and mobilization on social media, their stories could not be suppressed.

Google didn't play a small part, working with Twitter to launch Speak-2-Tweet -- allowing voice messages from mobile phones to be translated into tweets to share information from the ground in Egypt when the Internet was shutdown. Still, according to Freedom House, overall global freedom of the press did not decline for the first time in eight years. Social media has played a huge role.

Above is a short clip from a show we did on The Stream that won a Royal Television Society Award for "Innovative News" for its in-depth analysis of the struggle between government loyalists and opposition supporters in Bahrain. The girl on Skype in the video is Zainab Al Khawaja, the daughter of Abdulhadi al Khawaja, the head of Bahrain's Center for Human Rights who has recently ended a hunger strike for over 100 days.

You may have noticed that she accused Bahrain's crown prince of torture. While this allegation was the first time it was being made on television, she and thousands more had made it for months on Twitter and Facebook, and it's also worth mentioning that we booked her (and many other guests) through Twitter. As she made the allegations, my heart skipped a beat, and the producer in the gallery came into my ear piece, repeating, "Oh, shit. Oh shit!" -- so I made it a point to mention before we thanked our guests that we'd be following her tweets the next day in an effort to protect her.

This show included two guests on Skype, a Google hangout with six members from across the world and thousands on Twitter tweeting in to challenge what was being said in the studio. That is the magic of social media. Twitter alone has changed the way we, as global citizens, communicate and the way wars are covered, especially when governments ban journalists from entry to the country. Twitter ultimately becomes the wires.

In this democratized media environment, where the authoritative is drowned out by the masses, and immediacy and transparency trump objectivity, videos documenting demolitions and disfigurements expose enough in real time for us to grasp the reality based on sheer volume, even when what we are seeing is not instantly verifiable.

Even in the face of a death toll reportedly upwards of 12,000, potentially, much higher, the Syrian government officials and Assad supporters with whom I have spoken both on Al Jazeera both on and off camera seem to echo one refrain: "Where is the proof?" they ask me.

When Syria refuses to allow international journalists in to cover the story, where does the burden of truth or proof rest? Does it rest with the activists who are documenting destruction and sharing it with the world through social media or with the government, which is actively trying to shut the world out?

You can doubt the veracity of one video (of a man being buried alive perhaps) but not thousands.

It is true, these tools are also used as propaganda and often activists, whether intentionally or not, exaggerate death tolls. We've also seen spambots on Twitter, the Syria Electronic Army and the cyber battles that ensued, reflecting the battles in the streets. But still, we can and should comb through and develop methods to curate the content on these platforms because there are stories dying to be told, with the raw footage to back them.

Everyday while at The Stream, we would sift through hundreds of videos sent from Syria, and specifically Bahrain, where activists had set up webcams in Shia villages to document police abuses, cops throwing tear gas into homes from the roofs, breaking car windows and worse. Al Jazeera was banned, journalists were detained, but the pictures kept streaming in through social media.

But rather than simply use their materials to tell stories, we decided to open up the editorial process, using Storify for example. Storify assumes we are all media consumers and producers, and is being integrated in newsrooms across the world. Reuters even tried to build their own version.

The New York Times called our coverage "Al Jazeera's moment." But this was not Al Jazeera's moment. This was the people's moment. Al Jazeera, like social media, played a crucial role in amplifying and accelerating the voices of those protesting in the streets -- connecting them with millions of others in the region and billions more the world over.

A few months ago I resigned from Al Jazeera because a truly disruptive project came up that I couldn't turn down. At Zeitgeist last year, I met Arianna Huffington, who went on stage right after my speech. In her insightful comments on the schizophrenic media identity crisis, she refered to "The Ahmed Model," which was certainly surprising to me since I myself was not even aware of this model that I had apparently coined, but the point is, she and I saw eye-to-eye on a lot of things, including the fallacy of objectivity and how transparency, participation and empowerment can trump that calling. Truth, transparency and accountability should trump objectivity. The pursuit of as many angles and voices should replace this notion of getting one sides perspective and the other's sides, disregarding countless others.

Fast forward six months from the Google conference.

There I was in Vienna, giving my mum a foot rub as any good Arab son might do, and the phone rang. It was Arianna. After a lengthy phone conversation, I knew that I had to be part of her new online streaming network, an opportunity to take what I'd learned at The Stream to the next level, and then some.

The project is called HuffPost Live, and aims to disrupt the current TV media environment, which is failing us. This summer we will be launching an online live-streaming network that uses HuffPost's stories, editors, reporters, bloggers and community as its real-time script. At the heart of it will be a platform that leverages the voices of our community rather than the same old talking heads.

The democratization of the Arab world, or any society, is directly related to the democratization of its media. We must all recognize that collaboration should trump competition, democratization should trump authoritarianism. It took us at the Huffington Post seven years to generate 100 million comments from our community. It took us six months (the last six months) to get to 150 million comments. The time, is simply now.

So often on TV news shows they discuss the hottest thing, the current thing, but they never spend time digging deeper to talk about the thing about the thing. That's what we will aim to do. Our segments will be as long or as short as they need to be to sustain the conversation. We won't be limited by the usual time-constrains of TV.

But perhaps most importantly, rather than just booking the usual talking head suspects as guests, we've built into our website and mobile platforms multiple ways for our users to engage with the network -- including coming on and joining us live as a guest. The idea being that the more we call on you the more nuanced the conversation will be.

The news is best delivered when it is done so in an interactive and democratic fashion, and in fact, it is more accurate when the newsgathering process is opened up to the masses. The internet, namely social media, has amplified the voices of the individual.

We do not want or need to be told what is relevant, or newsworthy. Stories are ubiquitous, they are all around us and involve all of us. We know what is relevant from what we see around us, what we all as news consumers and producers experience. After all, the people affected by a story on the ground are the ones who are most invested in the story. So they want to get it right.

It is not easy to make sense of the madness in millions of tweets, photos and videos; there is no style guide for tapping into the endless social stream, but if I know anything, we'd all be fools to turn inwards or turn backwards, rather than reach out and turn to the people who have stories worth telling, and sharing, and yes even tweeting.

[This article was originally published in the Huffington Post] 

[This is a roundup of news articles and other materials circulating on Syria and reflects a wide variety of opinions. It does not reflect the views of the Syria Page Editors or of Jadaliyya. You may send your own recommendations for inclusion in each week's roundup to syria@jadaliyya.com by Monday night of every week] 

Regional and International perspectives

Jeffrey Feltman Leaks Again Al-Akhbar publishes a partial transcript of the meeting minutes between Jeffrey Feltman and Lebanese officials.

Arab Economist Samir Aita: impact of international sanctions on Syria Aita deplores the fact that the sanctions affect the Syrian people while it remains unknown how much the government suffer from them.

Beyond Bashar Syria’s Rebels are Facing far More Significant Resistance Charles Rizk outlines some of the economic and political interests that tie Iran, Russia and China to Syria.

Venezuela breaks embargo against Syria anew

Imperialism and the Left

Going Rogue: America's Unconventional Warfare in the Mideast  Sharmine Narwani on how to destabilize a country by provoking its peaceful majority

West's Undermining UN Paves Way for  NATO Syrian Intervention Tony Catarluci wonders why media outlets rely on unknown “activists” rather than the U.N. observers on the ground.

"The Salvador Option For Syria" Michel Chossudovsky discusses Diplomat Robert Ford’s experience in Iraq before being posted in Syria two months before the uprising.

Daylight Massacre Response to the Houla events: “If regional and world powers have any sense of ethics or humanity, the least they could do is keep quiet and desist from issuing empty statements.”

On Syrian narratives

BBC Engages In Anti-Syria Propaganda? Truth behind BBC’s vicious tactic An instance of a problematic and inaccurate coverage of the Houla killings.

Robert Fisk: The West is horrified by children's slaughter now. Soon we'll forget Fisk’s pessimistic account of the Houla events, which he parallels with the Algerian War.

Will Al Qaeda cement its foothold in Syria? Fawaz E. Gerges fears the Houla killings will bring a stronger extremist involvement in Syria.

How can Peace be Brought to Syria? Al-Jazeera’s Inside Syria guests discuss what could be done for Syria following the Houla “massacre.”

Inside Syria:

Syria’s Dignity Strike: City Merchants Speak People had contradictory explanations as to what happened on the day of the Dignity Strike.

Syrian Television: What Should we Watch Tonight? An overview of the Syrian channels’ coverage of Syria, where the pro and anti-regime outlets are fighting a “media war is as important as the battles on the ground.

Syria’s Growing Economic Challenge Yazigi’s argument that the geography of the Syrian uprising reflects the economic and social crisis faced by the Syrian population since the early 1980s

The Kurdish Question: A General Approach Badrakhan Ali advocates for the creation of a new citizenship and equality that encompasses the Kurdish identity in the form of a pluralistic society.

Syria After the Massacre Patrick Cockburn talks about the mood in Syria after the Houla events.

Policy and Reports

How Washington Lost Syria In his policy report, Gary Gambil writes that it is too late in the Obama administration to stop the regime from “slugging it out.”

Syria: UN Inquiry Should Investigate Houla Killings  Human Rights Watch wants the U.N. to investigate further the Houla killings.                                                                                                   

Art and social media

Syracuse University Filmmaker Killed in Syria The New York Times publishes a piece in memory of Basel Shahade, his art and role in the Syrian uprising.                                                                        

Malek Jandali: An Ode to Revolt Portrait of Syrian pianist Malek Jandali and his personal involvement in the Syrian revolution

Arabic:

وطنية النظام والوطنية الجديدة 
Michel Kilo writes about the difference between the regime’s nationalism and the new nationalism that the revolution has created.  

نظرة على الثورة السورية 
National Coordination Committee for the Forces of Democratic Change in Syria presents an overview of the Syrian revolution.                                                             

المشكلة في الإعلام السوري
Fayez Sarah writes about the problems in the Syrian media despite the new “reforms” that the regime has enacted in this sector.  

تقرير للامم المتحدة يتهم القوات السورية والمعارضة “بانتهاكات خطيرة”
Reuters : A United Nations report accuses both the Syrian regime and the opposition of serious abuses. 

من أجل هذا خرجنا… 
Rim Fleihan recounts her story with a journalist who had been arrested and brutalized by the Syrian regime for writing an article in her defense. 

خيار كوسوفو
Munther Khaddam writes that there have been talks in the international community about an *unlikely* "Kosovo choice" as an alternative to the Anan initiative, in the case that the latter fails.

“حرائر انخل”… نساء… في زمن الثورة
The Damascus bureau on the role of the women of Enkel, Daraa in the Syrian revolution= 

مقابلة| سلامة كيلة: الثورات مدرسة في الممارسة والوعي
Al-Akhbar’s Sarah Al-Quda interviews Palestinian-Syrian thinker and writer Salam Kayla on the Arab uprisings.  

مجزرة الحولة وثقافة الجزار
Subhi Hadidi on the Al-Hola massacre.

سوريا.. من الوريد إلى الوريد
Nasri Al-Sayegh argues that, in spite of all of the hardships that both the regime and the opposition have created in Syria, the revolution goes on.                                                                                            

آصف شوكت: احتمالات غياب لا يقصم ظهر النظام
Subhi Hadidi : the *possible* absence of Al-Asad’s brother-in-law Asef Shawkat will not break the regime’s back.

هذا الشريط ضمن سلسة من الأفلام تنشرها ”جدلية“ بالإتفاق مع موقع ”العربي الحر“ ومن انتاجه. توثق هذه الأفلام الوثائقية القصيرة التي تتراوح مدتها بين دقيقتين إلى ثلاث دقائق لجوانب في الحياة اليومية لهؤلاء الذين تتحدث عنهم، وتبعات الثورات العربية سلباً وايجاباً على حياتهم. تتبع الكاميرات حيوات أفراد من أجيال وطبقات مختلفة، سواء كانوا من المدينة أو الريف، أغنياء أو فقراء. كما تحاول تتبع نشاطاتهم في مختلف المناطق العربية والتي يصعب عبور حدودها لأسباب معروفة.

 ”حائرة والحجاب“ هو عنوان الشريط التالي الذي تدور أحداثه حول الفتاة اللبنانية حائرة سليم، 21 سنة. قرّرت حائرة عندما كانت في التاسعة من عمرها ارتداء الحجاب ولكنها سرعان ما تراجعت عن هذا القرار وأرادت خلع الحجاب في اليوم التالي. إلا أن والدتها رفضت ذلك فوجدت الصبّية الصغيرة نفسها محجبة لمدة 12 عاماً. انتسبت حائرة إلى كليّة الفنون الجميلة في بيروت التي انتقلت للعيش فيها بعد إكمال تحصيلها الثانوي. في آذار 2011، خلال الثورات العربية، قرّرت حائرة أنّ الوقت حان للقيام بثورتها الخاصة، فخلعت حجابها في 17 اذار متحديّة بذلك عائلتها ومحيطها المتدين. وهي الآن تتابع ثورتها الخاصة عبر المسرح والفنون، حيث تهيّئ عملاً مسرحياً وفيلماً وثائقيّاً عن الهوية.

This video is part of an ongoing series presented in cooperation with Al-Arabi Al-Hor. The films, which are produced by Al-Arabi Al-Hor, portray the daily lives of its featured individuals, following the positive and negative effects of the Arab uprisings on them. The camera follows individuals of different generations and classes, whether from urban centers or rural areas, in rich neighborhoods or poor slums. The films also portray their activities across different Arab regions, the borders of which are difficult to cross for reasons that are well known.

The below video is entiteld Haera Unveiled. Coming from south Lebanon, Haera Sleem is a twenty-one-year-old Lebanese Shiite who decided to wear the veil when she was nine years old. The next day, Haera decided to take it off. However, Haera's mother, a religious woman, opposed her will, and the girl found herself wearing something that was not hers for the next twelve years. When she finished school, Haera came to Beirut and joined the acting courses in the Institute of Fine Arts. In March 2011, in the midst of the Arab uprisings, as well as the “Laic” demonstrations in Lebanon, she decided it was time to make her own revolution. On the 17 March 2011, she took off her veil, challenging her family, the religious community, and society. Haera’s life radically changed. She feels she is very true to herself now. She was very active in protesting against the sectarian system in Lebanon until she was disappointed by the leaders of these demonstrations. She is today pushing forth her own daily revolution through theater and art.

[This is a roundup of news articles and other materials circulating on the Maghreb and reflects a wide variety of opinions. It does not reflect the views of the Maghreb Page Editors or of Jadaliyya. You may send your own recommendations for inclusion in each week's roundup to maghreb@jadaliyya.com by Sunday night of every week.]

 Algeria

"Cnisel : la fraude confirmée"-'Honest observers' contrast with otherwise fraudulent elections. 

“أعضاء البرلمان الجزائري الجديد يؤدون القسم الدستورى”-Accusations of one-party rule disrupt assembly's oath ceremony. 

“Warda al-Jazairia obituary” - Highlights of the singer's life, including her encounters with rebellion.  

Libya

"ما بعد ليبيا للإتصالات والتقنية : وضع الإنترنت في ليبيا" - High internet prices and poor availability threaten to hinder economic and social development. 

"The delay in elections and optimism in Libya" - Despite sustained rumors of postponement, citizens remain hopeful as elections approach.

“الطبقة الوسطى ودورها في بناء الدولة .. بقلم/ خالد إبزيم”- Burgeoning middle class, particularly professors, scholars, writers, and legal professionals, are eager to contribute to the intellectual foundation of Libya's development. 

"ليبيا تتصارع لاحترام موعد الانتخابات" - Disagreement with seat distribution may stall elections, despite Abdul Jalil's reassurances. 

Mauritania

“RE: Mauritanians in Northern Mali”- Overview of recent Mauritanian military strategies against AQIM. 

“Mauritania: Student Scandal Rocks Presidential Palace” - Students claim former president of Nouakchott University attempted to bribe them to give up their protests.  

Morocco

“Manifestation du 27 à Casa : un succès et après?” - Unemployed graduates, students, members of the March 20th movement and other disgruntled sectors of society merged to voice their demands for democratic reform, fair economic practices, and social equality.

“Morocco: Stalling Economy” - Superficial modifications to the 2012 budget reflect Government's static policies and failure to implement substantive reform. 

“Healthcare Provision and Reforms in Morocco” - Historical examination of the development and failures of Morocco's healthcare. 

“Morocco: Independent Media Losing Foothold” - Government's '"Public Media Guidelines" purportedly intend to increase Arabic language use and ignites debate on the potential social influence of 'Islamists.'

“Maroc, pays de l’absurdité et de l’impunité” - "Exceptionalism," tradition, and ritual used to justify monarchal policies.  

“15 Moroccan Poets on ‘Big Bridge’”- A compilation of select works from diverse Moroccan poets.  

Tunisia 

“Dix raisons pour aimer la dictature, dix raisons pour haïr la démocratie” - Satirical enumération of democracy's  pitfalls. 

"أصحاب الشهادات المعطّلون عن العمل : إحتجاجات و مقترحات"- Video coverage of protests held by unemployed graduates. 

"قراءة في كف تونس وكشف المستقبل" - Reflections on the presentation and impact of developing political concerns in Tunisia.  

“Tunisia: Injured of the Uprising Urgently Need Care” - Human Rights Watch urges the Tunisian government to fulfill its responsibility to the revolution's injured by providing them with medical services as well as reparations. 

“Hunger Strike of Tunisian Blogger Trigger Wave of Support” - Confiscation of a Nawaat contributor's cameras resonates with citizens weary of corruption.   

Recent Jadaliyya articles on the Maghreb

 حوار شامل مع المفكر المغربي عبد الله العروي

العناوين الكثيرة يمكن أن نضعها لآلاف من صفحات الكتابة، ورقية وضوئية، وتخطيطات كتاب وارد، عن الوردة "أميرة الغناء العربي" (1939-2012). لقب صنعته الصحافة بعد فيلمها الثاني"أميرة العرب"(1963). كأن نقول "الأميرة والمنفى"، "الأميرة والنضال"، "الأميرة والعسكر"، "الأميرة والحب"، "الأميرة والأيام"، "الأميرة والغربة"، الأميرة والوطن". إنها هي فصول سيرة الوردة الكبيرة.

نامت الوردة النوم الطويل. تجمد الزمن غدت الذاكرة محملة بالعبير الفواح والربيع المنتظر. فصول الوردة لم تكن ربيعاً، فهي أكملت دورات فصول السنة جزءاً من قدرية السيرة وارتياد المستحيل. نازلت كل فصولها واضعة في كل منها بصمة الصوت والروح. يؤرخ الجزء الوافر من الغناء العربي، وغناء كثير من الشعوب، في الشعر والرقص، عدا ما تواترته المعابد في طقوس الصلاة والاحتفال، في مواسم المناسبات عند الحقول ورمال البراري وسيوف البحار، لكن تبدى الغناء العربي عبر تسجيلاته في مطلع القرن العشرين منذ عام 1905.

اللحظة سجلت لشيخ يقتعد الخلود. يوسف المنيلاوي الواسم أسطواناته بـ"سمع الملوك". حفظت فنون السمر متواترة عن عصورها العربية من خليجها "فن الصوت" إلى محيطها "النوبة الندلسية"، عابرة طريق المقام العراقي، والقد الحلبي، والمجس الحجازي، والدان اليماني، والدور المصري، ودارت في عصور"طرب السلطنة". إنها عصور "القيان والعالمة والشيخة والملاية" صف طويل تحوّل طويلاً من دور طقوسي يعدِّهن سليلات "بنات طارق"، وطائفات"ذي الخلصة" إلى مستوى المهنة والاحتراف في عصر " المطربة والمرتلة"، ولا ينقص ذا وذاك الدور الحضاري صانع الذاكرة قدْر الذوق قدْر المزاج.
بدت لحظة النصف الأول من القرن العشرين "تعميم السماع" بالاستحضار عبر الأسطوانة والإذاعة إذا عز حضور الحفلة في وصلاتها واستديوهاتها حتى لحظة"استبقاء المشهدية" المقطِّرة "لحظة الطرب" في أعتى ارتجالاتها وتمايز مزاجاتها.

بدا عصر "سلطنة الطرب" متجسد عن تحولات بلاط"اللهو والملاهي"  نحو ساحات "الغناء والإنشاد"، فانشق صف حفيدات القيان في العوالم والشيخات بمبة العوادة وصديقة الملاية، وحفيدات"بنات طارق وذي الخلصة" في المطربات والسلطانات تجسّد الذِّكر في ألمظ ومنيرة المهدية. استكملت الوصلة في الأسطوانة والإذاعة تكثيف السماع مختصراً كل الحواس يتشهى النغم في الحرف والصوت والآلة والآهة وصدى الأكف والتطييب. يتحول الجسد إلى حنجرة أو الحنجرة تقول الجسد. كما تقول اليد الآلة. والآلة تقول الصوت وأظلاله.

في عصر السلطنة تلغى الحواس وتختصر في الأذن العاشقة تستدني الزخارف والحليات والعُرَب. تدويرات الصوت وانزلاقاته، ومنازله العالية ومواطئه الهاوية. الحنجرة شجرة. مدياتها الأغصان، وزخارفها التعريشات. العطاء صيد الوارفة. حملت بعض الأصوات ذلك العصر منقولاً بالتواتر والمشافهة، واستحكام "سلطنات الطرب" بطقسها وتهاليلها حالات الوجد الأقصى الناقل حناياه من القصيدة والموال والموشح والدور. أوصلته إلى عصارات أجوافه استنفاد الصم الخوالد.
طلول جلت سيول الطرب وجدت متون الكلمة والنغم حناجرها بنحاسها وذهبها من لاميات محمد القبانجي وأصوات عوض دوخي، ومطولات أم كلثوم، ومجسات محمد علي سندي، ودانات محمد جمعة خان، ونوبات صليحة. 

الصوت سيد العصور. يخرج العصر عن العصر. يذهب إلى ما يجهل خارجاً مما عرف. نثرت بذور أسمهان وليلى مراد الخروج من "المستحيل الطربي" رغم استحكام الأصول في الحنجرتين بدءاً من ظلال الأصول في استعارة الاسم أسمهان لآمال بنت فهد الأطرش، وليلى لليلي ابنة زكي مراد.

خرجتا بعصر الاصطدام بـ"الحداثة الأولية" وضعتا للطرب تصفيات عدة. نحو تعبير وهمس الخروج من الغلظة والجفوة في ماري الجميلة ومطربة القطرين فتحية أحمد أو مكملاتهما سعاد محمد ونور الهدى نحو الرقة والأناقة تأسيس حنجرة العالم الخروج من عهد الحارات والقرى نحو مدن العصور الوسيطة. تراث مشرق تحدى الزمن. كمُن وعاد مصفى. خلايا تعيد اقتسام ماضيها بحاضرها.

لكل حنجرة مقاطفها وغنائمها من الظواهر والبواطن بعضها ظاهر على فيروز ونجاة وفائزة أحمد، وباطن في الوردة ثم بنات "إمارة الغناء الجديدة"  من سميرة سعيد حتى أنغام.
لقب الإمارة بلا منحة ولا توسيم. إنه تملّك ناصية الأداء الذي عطف تاريخ الغناء العربي ليؤسس "قيم التحرر" من منمنمات الطرب العثماني وفسيفساء الموشحات وخرجاتها نحو مناجاة الروح في واقعها الصامد وحلمها الثوري. هذا الخروج من صوت التدوير نحو صوت التعبير .عنصر يحضر على عنصر. جاءت الوردة والفيروز بأناهما لم يكن الصوت ظل النغم صار النغم ولداً من رحم الحنجرة. هكذا قالت تجربة العاصي والبليغ. صار الصوت لحم الأغنية. إمرة الإلهام تكشفت عن عطاياها. 

سجلت سيرة سينمائية "ألمظ وعبده الحمولي"(1962) مسؤولية الحنجرة من عصر القينة إلى عصر المغنية بدت" لعبة الأيام"(1962) مسيرة النغم المتحرر. ألم تحرّر رياض السنباطي حين أيقظت نسيانه؟!. غابت الوردة (1962-1972) بقي الضوع والشذا والعبير يؤلف"لعبة الأيام" ربيع كل عام. يجبر خاطر شم النسيم كل نيسان. عادت الوردة (1972) بـ"العيون السود" بعد "الليل الطويل" في الدور والقد. وضعت التجربة على قدميها لم تكن ملغومة عن الواقع ومشفرة على الزمن والذات.

سيرة أم كلثوم تختصر نهاية القاطرة زمن التاسع عشر في زخرفيات الغريزة واستيهامات الوجد في الذكرى لا الذاكرة. الوجع لا الحنان. الطرب لا التعبير. بدا الوطن رغيفاً والقلب تفاحة. سيرة وردة تعبّد طريق القرن العشرين في حالات النفس، وتطلعات الهوية في الحب لا الغزل. المأساة لا الطرب. الحالة لا الشهوة. بدا الوطن قلباً والحب وطناً.

في الطريق الجديد لا يكتفى بالفوز والنجاة. بل الطموح والتحدي. تشابهت الطرق والظروف بين الفيروز والوردة. شرط المهنة شراكة عائلية. القبيلة تنكسر إذا أحلافها خالفت اقتسام الحلم والمستقبل. وعد"بترا"(1978) عزف الثورة في قلب الغابرين، و"آن الأوان" (2006) صيحة تجلى صداها نهاية العام 2010. "اللحظة خطيرة، دعوا الكراسي تسمع أصوات الشارع" قالت الوردة. تنكسر الأواني إذا لم تنضح. ولكن للفيروز لمعانه كما للوردة عبيرها.. 

العبير لم يكسر. والحلم لم يقتل. غربة بنت مدلج قالت: هناك ألف مدلج! "ناطورة المفاتيح"(1972)، وقالت "التمرحنة"(1975) في قلب الوردة أن الغريب " شاعر وطبيب". شاعر الصوت وطبيب الأيام. يموت عسكر وتنهار مدن. الأوطان لا تموت. الأصوات خالدة. جرح "لبنان الحب"(1983) هو جرح "سافرت القضية"(1968) الجزائرية. تمتحن القلوب في صدع الحب وشقائه. في رجائه وبلائه. يكابر العاصي ويندم البليغ. يَعْرق الفيروز بالذكرى، وتَشْقى الوردة المسامحة.

حفر التعبير مساراته في المرئي يؤسِّس صورة العصر الذي صار لا الذي كان. عصر التحرر من الزمان والمكان الذي يختصره السماه في طرب في انفعال. إنه حوار جديد بين الذات والأمل، الروح والهوية، الممكن والمستحيل. قاد الحب والتجربة مسيرة الحنجرة. الإرادة تقهر الصعب حتى إن لم تكتمل المعجزة. 

تقبض الحنجرة على سيرة الإلهام. الحنجرة تقول الآلة. تقول الذهن. زياد سر العاصي"وحدن (1976)". الشرنوبي سر البليغ " بتونس بيك" (1992). الحنين عنوان الفيروز. التسامح عنوان الوردة. يجرح البيانو رنين الفيروز. تُسْقى الكمنجة عطش الوردة."إيه فيه أمل" (2010) يحمل قلب الفيروز إلى العاصي، و"اللي ضاع من عمري"(2011) حكاية الوردة في البد والختام. تنزل الظلال على الفيروز، ويجمد الزمن في قلب الوردة.

"شادي" في حنجرة الفيروز لم يمت وإنما تجمد الزمن في القلب ثلوجاً. بينما الورد ينام داخلاً في الأسطورة. لا يسقط ولا ينكسر. لا يمرض ولا يحتجب. حين تركت الفيروز حنجرتها لجبران وحملت الناي. الوردة أنطقت الربابة شذا. سيرة الوتر في ذاكرة عبد الرحيم منصور في حيرة البليغ. الحنجرة صارت سيدة الظروف والحالات. الأميرة الوردة النائمة سيدة القرن العشرين. ملهمة الحناجر لقرون آتية. تفيق على العبير الخالد.

[The following statement was released by Comrades from Cairo on 1 June 2012.]

Egypt’s Elections under Military Rule: Join Our Resistance to the Counter-Revolution

To you at whose side we struggle,

From the beginning of the Egyptian revolution, the powers that be have launched a vicious counter-revolution to contain our struggle and subsume it by drowning the people’s voices in a process of meaningless, piecemeal political reforms. This process aimed at deflecting the path of revolution and the Egyptian people’s demands for "bread, freedom and social justice." Only 18 days into our revolution, and since we forced Mubarak out of power, the discourse of the political classes and the infrastructure of the elites, including both state and private media, continues to privilege discussions of rotating Ministers, cabinet reshuffles, referendums, committees, constitutions and most glaringly, parliamentary and now presidential elections.

Our choice from the very beginning was to reject in their entirety the regime's attempts to drag the people’s revolution into a farcical dialogue with the counter-revolution shrouded in the discourse of a "democratic process" which neither promotes the demands of the revolution nor represents any substantial, real democracy. Thus our revolution continues, and must continue.

Egyptians now find themselves in a vulnerable moment. Official political discourse would have the world believe that the technologies of democracy presently spell a choice between ‘two evils’. These are: Ahmed Shafiq, who guarantees the consolidation of the outgoing regime and its return with a vengeance, openly promising a criminal assault on the revolution under the fascist spectres of ‘security’ and ‘stability’, and the false promise of protection for religious minorities (against whom the regime systematically stages assault and isolation as part of its fear-mongering campaigns); and Mohamed Morsi, the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood whom we are expected to imagine might ‘save’ us from the ‘old regime’ through the myths of cultural renaissance - all while consolidating its financial stronghold and the regional capitalist hegemony that fosters and depends on it for a climate of rampant exploitation of Egypt’s people and their resources. This consolidation, we are certain, will be accompanied by the subsequent marshalling of the military apparatus to protect the emboldened ruling class of the Muslim Brotherhood from the wrath and revolt of its victims: the multitude whom the leaders of the organization have historically fought by condemning and outlawing our struggles for livelihood, dignity and equality.

According to election officials, most voters themselves (75%) have chosen neither Shafiq nor Morsi in the first round of elections. We refuse to recognize the choice of “lesser of two evils” when these evils masquerade in equal measure for the same regime. We believe there is another choice. And in times where perceived common sense is as far from the truth as can be, we find the need to speak out once again.

We perceive the affair of presidential elections in Egypt as an attempt by the as yet prevailing military junta and its counter-revolutionary forces to garner international legitimacy to cement the existing regime and deliver more lethal blows to the Egyptian revolution. We ask you to join us in resisting the logic of this process that seeks to further entrench the counter-revolution.

Our struggle does not exist in isolation from yours.

What is revolution, but the immediate and uncompromising rejection of the status quo: of militarized power, exploitation, class stratification, and relentless police violence—just to name a few of the most basic and cancerous features of society in the present moment. These structural realities are not unique to Egypt or the Egyptian revolution. In both the South and the North communities resist what we are meant to accept without questioning, rising up against the narrow realist perspective that tells us that democracy is merely choosing the lesser of ‘two evils’, and that the election of either represents a choice in government rather than what it is: an affirmation of the only government that exists - that of unbridled, repressive and dehumanizing capitalist relations. We stand in solidarity with the masses of precarious and endangered people who have chosen to defend their being from an aggressive global system that is in crisis; indeed, a sputtering system that, in its twilight hours, reaches for unprecedented levels of surveillance, militarization and violence to quell our insurrections.

We must make clear that despite the fact of the international political establishment’s praise of the ‘democratic’ nature of the first round of the Egyptian presidential elections, we strongly and categorically reject the outcome of these elections for they do not represent the desires of the Egyptian people that fought in the January 25th Revolution.

Furthermore, we categorically reject the elections themselves in principle, for the following reasons:

1. Even by the standards of the deceased and irrelevant systems of representation that once existed in the Global North, no ‘free and fair elections’ can take place under the supervision of a power-hungry military junta, vying relentlessly for continued political domination and the protection of their vast economic empire, so relentlessly, indeed, that no constitution exists to define the powers of any presidency. How can we tolerate a military dictatorship’s supervision of any political process when thousands of Egyptians continue to languish in the dungeons of military prison after undergoing arbitrary arrest, campaigns of systematic torture, and exceptional military tribunals.
2. The abuse of law in favor of the power mongering of the ruling military generals: in order to run the junta's preferred candidate, former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq, the Supreme Presidential Electoral Commission has simply and blatantly disregarded the law of political exclusion recently passed in order to ban the candidacy of any members of Mubarak’s regime from running in the presidential elections.
3. The absurdity of unlimited power concentrated in the hands of an electoral commission made up of central figures from the Mubarak era who are meant to supervise a ‘democratic’ process.
4. The vague programs marketed by the most strongly backed candidates fly in the face of the values and object of the revolution, the very reason why we are even having these elections today and the cause for which over a thousand martyrs gave their lives: "bread, freedom and social justice."

If these elections take place and are internationally recognized the regime will have received the world’s stamp of approval to make void everything the revolution stands for. If these elections are to pass while we remain silent, we believe the coming regime will license itself to hunt us down, lock us up and torture us in an attempt to quell all forms of resistance to its very raison d'être.

We continue on our revolutionary path committed to resisting military rule and putting an end to military tribunals for civilians and the release of all detainees in military prisons. We continue to struggle in the workplace, in schools and universities and with popular committees in our neighborhoods. But our fight is as much against the governments and systems supporting the regime that suppresses us. We are determined to audit loan agreements that did and continue to occur between international financial institutions or foreign governments with a regime that claims to represent us while thriving from exploiting and repressing us. We call on you to join us in our struggle against the reinforcements of the counter-revolution. How will you stand in solidarity with us? If we are under attack, you are also under attack for our battle is a global one against the forces that seek our obedience and suppression.

We stand with the ongoing revolution, a revolution that will only be realized by the strength, community and persistence of the people; not through a poisonous referendum for military rule.

Comrades from Cairo (comradesfromcairo@gmail.com)

“I will do everything I can to grow a field in the dessert”

- Haidar Swaid, Member of the Garbage Collectors Syndicate

In both the foreign and local press, conventional frameworks for understanding the uprising in Yemen locate its popular impetus within two main social groupings: the disaffected middle-class urban youth, who first occupied the streets and squares and called for an end to both corruption and the ruling regime; and tribesmen and political party members, who soon joined them in solidarity and common cause. They also note the ongoing Houthi and Southern movements whose narratives of subjugation were unevenly, and now unsuccessfully, incorporated into the broader national frameworks of the revolution. However, these narratives have failed to account for the important role which strikes, demonstrations, and other actions of civil disobedience by organized workers played in the build-up to the uprising and in the continued struggle for the social, political, and economic transformation of Yemen.

In 2008, numerous strikes by port workers, teachers, laborers, and professors took place in cities throughout Yemen. Oil workers were among the most active in the years preceding the 2011 uprising. Strikers were able to shutdown oilfields, refineries, and pipelines in March 2009, April 2010, August 2009, and October 2010. The significant cost of work stoppages succeeded in extracting periodic concessions from the Yemeni regime. These short-lived victories, coupled with the regime’s violent response to the strikes—which included the use of live ammunition against protesting workers and the mass incarceration of union members—had a chilling effect on all but the most organized of labor activism. Yet, the industrial action of these and other workers demonstrated that collective struggle could enact positive change. This awareness of political opportunity culminated in the nationwide general strike of May 2010, which forced the regime to the negotiating table and procured conditional, if fleeting, improvements for public sector workers.

The uprising rejuvenated labor activism in early 2011 and strikes spread to paralyze state, private, and nonprofit institutions such as Yemenia Airways, Saada Radio, Al-Thawrah Hospital in Taiz, the Yemeni Air Force, the Yemen Bank of Reconstruction and Development, the Central Organization of Control and Audit, and the Red Crescent Society in Sana’a. Generally, strikers have demanded higher wages, better working conditions, general reforms, and the removal of the corrupt heads of these institutions.

These demonstrations and strikes continue to sweep Yemeni cities. In May 2012 alone, work stoppages were held in Sana’a, Taiz, Hodeida, Saada and Aden, where a strike by the seaport workers of DP World has paralyzed the port. DP World, a Dubai-based state-owned company that was awarded the contract to run the seaport in 2008, is being accused of deliberate mismanagement in order to drive ocean-bound commerce to the Emirate. In Sana’a, employees at the Ministry of Youth and Sports have been protesting daily against corruption in the ministry and demanding the removal of the minister.

A Story of Struggle and Success

The most visible and widespread labor struggle during the uprising has been that of the garbage collectors, who managed to organize and sustain an on-and-off long nationwide strike, which lasted up to three months in certain cities. Piles of red, blue, green, and yellow plastic trash bags spilled into the streets throughout Yemen, filling the cities with the unbearable stench of filth and decay. Significantly, the workers framed their grievances in terms of both economic exploitation and social inequality. The majority of sanitation workers belong to an ostracized social group which self-identifies as al-muhammashin (the marginalized), but is more commonly and derogatorily known as al-akhdam (the servants). As their struggle was integrated into broader national narratives of suffering, the gross inequities of their situation became more commonly recognized and sympathized with, in spite of continued, and considerable, discrimination.

This protest was not the first of its kind. Garbage collectors have gone on strike five times since 1993 to demand higher wages. While they managed to secure wage increases from $0.93 to $3.80 per day, they have also incurred the heavy cost of imprisonment of labor union members for weeks and sometimes months. This increase in wages technically puts them above the poverty line, but they continue to work under extremely insecure and harsh conditions with the lowest wages for public sector employees.

Garbage collectors have an exceptional employment status. They report to state officials within the Office of Sanitation and Labor, but they have neither employment contracts nor monthly salaries. Instead, they work through daily contracts, which allows the state to avoid paying them employee benefits. Haidar Swaid, a member of the garbage collectors union, listed the conditions of those contracts to include “no vacation days, no holidays, no social or medical insurance, and the years of work do not count toward promotion.” Additionally, they receive no pay raises or end of year bonuses. “A man who has worked eighteen years is like the man who started work yesterday,” he decried. The precarious nature of the work is enhanced for women, who are not entitled to maternity leave and so often find themselves forced to work while pregnant and caring for infants. Since the state also fails to respect labor laws, those same infants are likely to find themselves employed as street cleaners before they reach their teenage years. Sexual harassment and rape of female street cleaners is also a common occurrence, as the public visibility and low social prestige of the work adds to their vulnerability.

This work-place insecurity is compounded by the social discrimination that the marginalized face. Housing is particularly difficult to secure, with few willing to rent to them. As a result, the majority of garbage collectors and street cleaners find themselves living in impoverished slum areas that lack basic services, including sewage, water, and electricity. Former President Saleh had promised garbage collectors, as with other public sector employees, land for housing, but that promise has yet to be fulfilled. “Garbage collectors are not less important than the soldiers who give their lives. Garbage collectors give their souls. They have not been greedy with their country, why has their country been greedy with them?” asked Mohammed Al-Githry, head of the Yemeni Confederation of Labor Unions.

Equal Rights for All Workers

Since March 2012, the labor strikes have aimed to pressure the new transitional government to grant garbage workers fulltime employment contracts with benefits and better work conditions. In response, Prime Minister Mohammed Basindawa passed a decree on April 12, 2012 that granted fulltime employment rights, health benefits, and vacation days to garbage collectors. Members of the marginalized community attribute this success to labor union organizing. A member of the union, in turn, attributes this success to “garbage” itself. “A strike that makes garbage fill the country is the best weapon we have” said Haidar Swaid.

The decree is a positive step toward achieving employment equality and social justice. It is also an encouraging move in the ongoing fight against corruption, since managers will now have a harder time issuing fake temporary contracts that they can cash in themselves. However, legal reform alone cannot effect real change. As with many laws in Yemen, implementation and accountability are often lacking. The previous regime had already passed Laws 292 and 517 in April 2008, both of which decreed fulltime employment and benefits for garbage collectors. Unfortunately, these laws were never implemented.

Yet, Basindawa’s latest decree just might prove to be the exception to the rule. There are some promising signs, such as the ministerial committee that has been created to initiate and oversee the implementation process. The committee is now conducting surveys and collecting information on garbage collectors and uploading information into a central database in preparation for the implementation phase. Many are complaining about the unnecessary length of this process. “We ask them to expedite the process of implementation,” said Mohammed Al-Marzooqi, head of the garbage collectors syndicate. According to a government official, the delay is due to the time it takes to gather and verify information on the twenty thousand workers nationwide and then to provide these workers with identification cards.

State-Worker Relations

While the process is taking longer than expected, state officials have recognized the need to show appreciation to their diligent workers. For the first time in Sana’a’s history, state officials publically acknowledged the garbage collectors in an official ceremony. On Saturday, 12 May 2012, the Sana’a local council, the Office of Sanitation and Labor, and the labor union organized the first celebration honoring thirty “cleaning soldiers.” The celebration included reciting poems and playing music. Some workers received honorary certificates for the “best employees of the year,” while others were given bonuses for Labor Day.

In a symbolic show of appreciation and encouragement in mid-April 2012, state officials, including the Prime Minister and the Minister of Human Rights, went to the streets with brooms to begin a citizen cleaning campaign. “This was a good gesture, I had never seen any state official hold a broom on television before,” said Mohammed Ali, a thirty-two-year old garbage collector. “The signs of our successful strike have started to show,” he added.

Another assuring sign is the inclusion of representatives from the marginalized community—who make up the majority of garbage collectors—in the National Dialogue, set up under the post-uprising transition plan to accommodate voices from different segments of the population. The marginalized are prepared to participate in the process and have called on their fellow citizens to make the fight against social discrimination a prominent issue on the agenda of the transitional government by encouraging Yemeni legislature to adopt laws criminalizing discrimination and implementing equal rights for workers.

The struggle continues

Garbage collectors have finally been able to get through to Yemeni citizens and move public opinion toward their struggle. Their plight has also attracted the attention of the media as state and nonprofit institutions have started to sponsor numerous projects to help the marginalized community. Yet skepticism still looms in the minds of many. “We heard a lot of talk by government and NGOs about new housing projects and humanitarian aid for the marginalized community. But this is all just talk, and exploitation of our situation. We have not seen the implementation,” said union member Yahya Al-Qahm.

Labor activists have historically played an important role in the struggle for a more just Yemeni society, often mobilizing despite the guarantee of violent repression. While campaigns for worker rights, specifically of garbage collectors, have now become a popular media topic, they often lack substantive popular and institutional support. It is important that community and union leaders, citizen advocates, and rights groups not be seduced by the media hype. Rather, they must follow through on the implementation of the numerous promises made by the government, continue to mobilize for equal rights for all workers, and demand the criminalization of discrimination and racism. Most importantly, as the country moves forward through this transformative period, Yemenis must seize the opportunity to establish new political alliances and coalitions and consolidate the hard-won rights and freedoms to which the 2011 uprising gave birth.

Hundreds of protesters marched on Tahrir today, calling for the execution of presidential candidate General Ahmad Shafiq, Mubarak's former prime minister and head of the air force. The demonstrators accused the ruling Supreme Council of Armed Forces of rigging the vote in the first round of elections. 

[Abu Mustafa, father of one of the martyrs who fell on Egypt's Friday of Anger, 28 January 2011, taking part in protests in Tahrir Square. Image by Hossam El-Hamalawy]

The migration of Keralites to the Arab Gulf region has generated various forms of translocal political moorings in the host countries. They are translocal in the sense that they are impacted by even the minutest currents within the political intricacies and specificities of Kerala politics, yet are increasingly identified and consumed by the migrants from Kerala—popularly known as Malayalees—in the Gulf. This article elucidates the ways in which Kerala politics, as a “translocal” entity, are being perceived and produced by expatriate Malayalees and their organizations within the political constraints of the Gulf monarchies. 

A plethora of organizations make visible the role Malayalees purportedly play in preserving the continuity of Kerala politics in the Gulf. By extending the scope of application of Kerala-centric politics in the Arabian Peninsula, these organizations produce a radical re-imagining of the conventional notions of territoriality associated with local politics. What is happening is not simply the extension of political discourse beyond regional and national boundaries, but also the production, through this extension, of an avenue of expression for the otherwise politically silenced Malayalee expatriates. With novel political explorations and community practices, they attempt to overcome the political insensibilities of the Gulf monarchies in a subtle manner. With politics in the host communities being hostile to foreigner participation and determined exclusively by citizenship rights, the extension of Kerala-centric politics becomes a gravitational force connecting up with a large immigrant population. 

Being connected politically to issues of the homeland, Malayalees have constructed a new political space into which they have clandestinely brought ideologies and political doctrines that are otherwise prohibited by the local dynasties. Interestingly, while most of these political expressions are not officially sanctioned or recognized, they do not invite unfriendly and intolerant reactions from the host in most of the GCC states. This is particularly significant when it happens in countries where all sorts of political organizations remain illegal and political associations of any sort can result in imprisonment or immediate deportation. 

Although it is placed within an imaginative setting, the expatriate Malayalees now look to this re-fashioned politics to give themselves a coherent identity and a national narrative in order to compensate for the lack of space in the receiving countries’ politics. It may not directly address political alienation from the political process in host places, but it creates new forms of politics whose dynamics have, under translocality, brought forth a diverse set of innovative political practices in both the Gulf and Kerala. 

Malayalee politics in the Gulf, together with linkages with the home country’s politics, eventually metamorphose into specialized polities within the host countries with the capacity to create new forms of political space. Such political spaces exist outside formal institutions, thus allowing for the creation of important forms of popular politics. The state never fully understands the everyday experience of this popular politics. Operating from within permissible legal boundaries, their activities never pose any real threat to the state. In order to understand how translocal Kerala politics operate, attention must be paid to the ways in which the various sorts of formal and informal Malayalee associations and networks achieve this liminally potent position, with minimum encounter with the domestic political and social institutions. 

Re-figuring “Political Space”?

Translocal Kerala politics may be seen as an expression of political nostalgia that motivates ordinary workers to maintain affiliation with their homeland. Sometimes political nostalgia becomes a life-world, required for the social reproduction of a group in an inhospitable atmosphere. Malayalee migrants in the Gulf are largely composed of young males in their twenties or thirties coming from the underdeveloped but politically vibrant region of Malabar. Having this background, they carry forward its political legacies and create a replica of the political world from which they come, though it is one that finds no substantial resonance among the natives. As this politics is predominantly Kerala-centric, each political development in Kerala makes a ripple in the Gulf. This is very much evident from the popularity of new social movements, whereby single-issue-oriented responses revolving around particular social and political issues in Kerala have captured the popular imagination of Keralites in the Gulf. Kerala-centric environmental and human rights groups are active in creating new forms of politics that hinge on signature campaigns, protest meetings, and street plays in response to the sensitive issues taking place in Kerala, though the scope of such demonstrations may always be limited to the four walls of labor camps. Except on rare occasions—such as the 1992 staging of a play by Malayalee theatre activists in Sharjah that incurred the wrath of the regime for its allegedly blasphemous content—governments in the GCC countries are unaware of the serious political content of these demonstrations.

The problems that Indian workers in the Gulf face also find a place on the agenda of Malayalee organizations. Over the last decade, several movements have emerged that are covertly dedicated to fighting the exploitation of Indian workers, a central issue that the old movements have not been able to take up. While the old movements provide a venue for participating in diasporic cultural activities, the new movements tend to deal clandestinely with highly sensitive topics like human rights. These movements—especially after the recent South Asian labor unrest in the Gulf against exploitation and low wages—have begun to expand their scope of activities beyond ethnic and linguistic boundaries in order to address the common concerns of the South Asian laborers.

Apart from being organized politically, there is a burgeoning trend to organize along caste lines. Each identity-based organization in Kerala maintains frontal organizations in the Gulf. The caste-based networks in the Gulf often become a rallying point, especially for newcomers, as affiliation with these organizations may help one to obtain a position in government offices or in prestigious private organizations. Some of these networks may be informal in nature, but they have successfully taken the same route as the triumphant trade networks like Marwaris and Banias in running partnership business.

The Malayalee associations in the Gulf, whether nonaligned with regard to Kerala-based political parties or receiving patronage from them, serve as a bridge between movements in Kerala and the Gulf. Almost all the major political outfits in Kerala—ranging from the Indian National Congress (INC) and the ruling party at both the state and national-level, to the outlawed Maoists—maintain frontal organizations in the Gulf, operating secretly through unofficial and obscured modes that escape the censorial attention of the host. Regional parties based in Kerala, like the Muslim League and the Kerala Congress, enjoy more popularity than national parties such as the Indian National Congress. The Kerala Muslim Cultural Center (KMCC), a frontal organization of the Muslim League, is the largest outfit with the highest number of local units. The Communist Party of India (CPIM) treats its frontal organizations in different Gulf countries on par with district committees in Kerala. Interestingly, two warring factions within the CPI(M), led by two senior leaders, V.S. Achutanandan and Pinarayi Vijayan, have found a place in the Gulf politics.

Reverberations in Kerala Politics

Back in Kerala, Gulf Malayalee politics has a multiplicity of sites in which to operate. The state’s major political outfits increasingly seek the moral, financial, and political support of their compatriots residing in the Gulf. Politicians and politically motivated religious figures from Kerala are some of the frequent travelers who visit Malayalees abroad and appeal for monetary and moral backing for their organizations. They also motivate migrants to travel home for elections and become involved in Kerala politics.

At about the same time, the Gulf Malayalees also began to use their demographic power in Kerala politics. The result has been the emergence of a growing army of Non Resident Indians (NRI)-turned politicians, who are less inclined to associate themselves permanently with any political party. Thomas Chandy (known popularly as Kuwait Chandy) and Manjalamkuzhi Ali, two NRI-turned-Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) of Kerala, represent this new breed of politicians. Both depend less on state or party funds and gain enormous amount of popularity and influence among the voters through a wide range of welfare packages being implemented through their private funds. Both act like parallel forms of local self-government and spend a lot on providing basic facilities to the people, seldom depending on government funds allotted for the MLAs for infrastructure development. Being the representatives of constituencies dominated by poor peasants, Chandy and Ali’s contributions, as well as the employment opportunities they provide to their compatriots in the Gulf, always reflect in electoral victory.   

The political connection serves as a form of social assertion and popular acceptance for the rich among the Gulf Malayalees. With their newly acquired economic status, they keep politicians across the left-right continuum in their pockets in order to advance their own economic and political interests. Malayalee Gulf businessmen have great influence in Kerala politics and their political tactics have been brilliantly pragmatic, switching support between the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front and the INC-led United Democratic Front at various times. The present developments in fact suggest that Kerala’s political parties began to recognize the potential of translocal Malayalee politics. However, the actual degree to which the reproduction of Kerala politics in the diasporic set up finds substantial resonance in the host societies remains largely questionable.   

As a person who grew up in a diasporic Palestinian family, there have always been symbols around me that reminded me of Palestine. My grandparents’ homes are adorned with them; from framed pictures of gateways in Jerusalem’s Old City, to mini sculptures of the Dome of the Rock mosque, they are all remnants of their memory of an occupied homeland. Such symbols were all intelligible to me except for one relic that I could not comprehend at the time, as a teenager still educating myself on a long and convoluted history. This relic was an image of a boy with short spikes for hair, his hands crossed, with only his back visible; it was not necessarily a beautiful illustration, but his picture sprung up often.

The boy’s image was always coupled with something related to the Palestinian struggle; therefore, it was clear that this was a highly iconic symbol in the Palestinian collective identity. I was embarrassed to not be aware of him, but I eventually mustered up the courage to ask my aunt about him. I found out that his name is Handala, and he is a cartoon created by the late Naji Al-Ali, a Palestinian political cartoonist.

Al-Ali was displaced from his home village of Al-Shajara during the Nakba, or the catastrophe, that displaced over 750,000 indigenous Palestinians during the creation of the Israeli settler-colonial state in 1948; this process of ethnic cleansing continues today. Thus, Zionist militias destroyed Al-Shajara, along with 480 other Palestinian villages. Al-Ali’s family’s expulsion from their homeland forced them to live in the Ain Al-Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon; it was an event that shaped his entire life and political consciousness, and one for which he never saw justice.

Al-Ali expressed his feelings of loss and exile through art. Time magazine once dubbed him a man that “draws with human bones.” With these human bones, Al-Ali created Handala, both to symbolize his own lost childhood in the refugee camps, on a personal level, and to symbolize resistance to all forms of oppression. Born a Palestinian, Handala is meant not only to represent Palestinian resistance to colonial Zionism, but evolved to represent a more universal human consciousness. 

This cartoon boy is meant to be ten years old: Naji Al-Ali’s age upon his expulsion from Palestine. A kind of colonized counterpart to Peter Pan, Handala is frozen in time, as Al-Ali noted that he ceased to age after the Palestinian exodus of 1948. He is supposed to be seventy-four-years old by now, but the tragedy he suffered has suspended him in a state in which “the laws of nature do not apply to him.” Handala is simultaneously theWretched of the Earth, the colonized, the poor, the oppressed, and the exiled; his bare feet illustrate the poverty experienced in the refugee camps and, as such, his class consciousness. The similar but antipodal Disney character lives in a land of fantasy, a magical world where a child can remain the same for eternity; yet for Handala, his kind of Neverland is one created by a colonial anti-fantasy, and when one is liberated, they can age, flourish, and finally live a childhood. Peter Pan is metaphorically Handala’s opposite; the former constantly chooses to be a child, the latter is dying to age.

The word “Handala” in Arabic literally means “bitterness,” as it is also the name of a shrub that grows in the desert, and Al-Ali meant for the name to reflect the tides of the Arab world. Handala’s existence continues, despite his creator’s passing. As long as the now five to seven million Palestinian refugees remain where they are, and as long as the Israeli apartheid system continues, Handala will remain ten years old, and will continue his sumoud (defiance) against them. We saw him this year when over 2,500 Palestinian Handalas in Israeli prisons went on hunger strike, we continue to see him as Palestinians protest against the occupation, and we still see him wafting in the refugee camps which have continued to exist, their residents waiting to return to their permanent livelihoods. He was there when Palestinians and allies took part in a Global March to Jerusalem this year, as well as when refugees in Lebanon were shot and killed by Israeli forces when they tried to return home on the Nakba day commemoration of last year. He was the one refugee that also attempted to return and yelled,“I’m going back to my country!” as he was detained. He is, at once, both the physical and sentimental key that the internally and externally displaced Palestinians still hold. 

This potent symbol’s clutched hands and back facing the world are intended by its artist to be an affront to solutions presented to Palestinians in “the American way.” Indeed, these solutions are offered to this day, including the non-existent two-state solution in the name of a realpolitik that would safeguard the continued existence of a settler-colonial, apartheid state.

Handala’s sumoud will not go unrewarded, despite all of the counter-forces that are trying to suppress his liberation. For example, U.S. Senator Mark Kirk’s recently passed resolution which labels only Palestinians “directly displaced” by Israeli ethnic cleansing in 1948, but not their descendants, as ‘refugees,’ will not harm the continued demand for the Right of Return. This was a violent act, especially coming from the government that maintains its stream of funding to the Israeli state that has caused and continued the Palestinian exile in refugee camps. Such a policy would trim the number of Palestinians with refugee status significantly, from the United State’s perspective, and cut funding they receive through the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). It would also blatantly attempt to drop the (International Law-guaranteed) right of Palestinian refugees to return to their ancestral homeland, by suggesting that only a minority of them are refugees.

Al-Ali’s signature cartoon is multi-faceted, but most importantly, he is indigenous; not presenting a “claim” to Palestinian land, as some have suggested, but showcasing a material reality caused by a continuous project of exile. He is the foil to Peter Pan: a person with agency despite hegemonic attempts to suppress him and his identity. Indeed, he is a boy who does not espouse a smile or visceral contentment, but has a just cause that has garnered allies the world over.

He stands, with his bare feet and crossed hands, against anything that would sell short his right to full justice. He knows that indigeneity is not something to be determined by the white man by way of the “international community,” and that the memories, the stories passed on for generations, and the land that the Palestinians once lived upon will not vanish. He knows that the last sixty-four years of human resilience were not futile. His experience with the Nakba is not historical or a distant memory; but it is on going. It is a past and current wrong that needs righting. It is an experience that has rendered millions of children with an inability to age. Indeed, it is not an “event” as such, but an everyday fact. 

Legislation, such as this recent Senate bill, which tries to erase the Palestinian Handala as an indigenous person with a right to live in his ancestral homeland, are both an affirmation of the threat he poses to white supremacy and the need to facilitate his disappearance. As American indigenous scholar Andrea Smith writes in her “Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy,” indigenous people must “always be disappearing, in order to allow non-indigenous peoples rightful claim over this land. Through this logic of genocide, non-Native peoples then become the rightful inheritors of all that was indigenous-land, resources, indigenous spirituality, or culture.” This disappearance of native peoples is thus endemic to any colonial ideology, including Israeli and American colonialism. Therefore, the native’s voice, his continued existence as such, and his demand for justice must be sidelined, ignored, and made invisible.

In light of such attempts to bring about his disappearance, Handala’s strongest weapon is the politics of memory. As Joseph Massad writes in his piece titled “Resisting the Nakba,” the Palestinian people have “succeeded in overthrowing Zionist official memory.” He writes: 

For Zionists, the very name “Palestinian” functions as some magical incantation that could obliterate them at the existential level. They are not necessarily wrong in their impression, for the name Palestinian is itself the strongest form of resistance against their official memory. The name “Palestinian” has also been generative of continuities in Palestinian culture and life, in Palestinian identity and nationality, things that Israel had hoped it obliterated completely and whose survival will always threaten its mnemonic operation of inventing a fictional memory of non-Palestine, of non-Palestinians.

Thereby, this renders his very existence as a Palestinian an undeniably potent challenge to Zionism’s colonial construction of the invisibility of the indigenous population. Hence, the re-writing of reality and history of Palestine as a fantastical “land without a people for a people without a land,” attempts to construct settlers as indigenous and vice versa. 

The existence of the Palestinian Handala, the refugee, the exiled, and the indigenous makes the Right of Return the most important tenet of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. It is the central demand for confronting historical and current injustices. Therefore, the economic and political pressure on Israel must not and cannot stop until the refugees return to their homeland. This right remains at the core of Palestinian demands, as Dr. Salman Abu-Sitta put it, “It is sacred because no force or miracle will convince the Palestinians that the land they and their ancestors lived on for centuries is not theirs.” It is a right that seeks to mitigate the wrongs imposed on Palestine in the form of settler-colonialism, ethnic cleansing, military occupation, inhumane siege, and apartheid, and to create a land where people can live in equality without colonial privileges given to a part of the population.

Handala stands on the precipice. His feet will soon experience the warmth of shoes. His body will cease to stand still, but will move, will march, and will return. He will finally be able to use his key. He will be animate, and he will witness the checkpoints, the walls, and the guns dissolve. He will see the elevation of the human spirit. 

The Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish was quoted as saying, “We have triumphed over the plan to expel us from history.” Indeed, Handala has triumphed, his existence can no longer be denied, and his return is inevitable. Thereby, Handala’s Neverland is not a fantasy, nor a dream, and neither is it a request. It is a promise that he will grow older, that the laws of nature will apply to him, and soon. Fairuz put it beautifully in her song, “Sanarji’ou Yawman,” when she sings, “We will return, the nightingale told me.” 

The nightingale affirmed it to me.

A few months ago analysts started talking about “the deep state” of Egypt.  They were referring to the forces that have resisted the sweep or revolution and made the path to change and transformation both difficult and unclear.

The deep state is comprised of the security and administrative apparatuses and the interests and values that they represent and support that had begun to consistently endanger the future of a new Egypt.  It is truly astonishing that anyone was astonished to note that a counter-revolution was on the horizon!

The new political elites of Egypt, whether those installed in parliament or others adored by the media and respected by the public, have been naively complacent about this deep state.

For example, parliament did not get round to passing a law that curtails the political rights of the old guard until the nominations for presidential candidates had actually happened and the elections committee was about to terminate its deliberations on the eligibility of presidential candidates.

Only then did parliament literally make up a law on the hoof. In what was a sad day for Egyptian legislation, parliamentarians made a bizarre show of their frustrations and fears at the candidacy of Ahmed Shafiq as they trampled on constitutional principles and passed what turned out to be an in-effective law.

Could they have not realised that the ‘deep state lay in waiting?  Why did they not pre-empt this deep state? Why did they wait to react to its emergence? But it is not only parliamentarians who are at fault.  The recent presidential election illustrates the extent to which chasm that is appearing in the country.

Why did ten million Egyptians vote for the two strong political movements and forces that pre-existed the revolution? Why are court verdicts and sentences lenient with some and harsh on others? Why are people desirous of safety and of stability over change and transformation? The answers may be that the deep state is at work! There are three possible explanations for this stand off and for the intransience of this force in society.

The first concerns the immediate post revolutionary moment. During the celebrations and while basking in the glory of victory, the revolutionaries trusted in their own strength and prowess and forgot the urgency of the moment. They spent the spring of 2011 on television and the lecture circuits instead of in deep and disciplined work on capitalising on their courageous accomplishments and on the sacrifices of those who lost life and limb. Instead of consolidating, the revolutionaries dispersed.

No organised political force emerged to challenge the deep state at a serious level. It was all media talk and not about institutions or processes but about individuals and anecdotes. The revolution began to seem cliquish and personality driven thus permitting a revival of old political elites.

The second explanation concerns the nature of the Egyptian deep state itself. Despite what is often said to the contrary, Egypt is a country of institutions, procedures and processes. Revolution can remove a fragment of the edifice of the state but cannot do away with the whole structure. When a prominent left winger called for the destruction of the state itself as a necessary step towards revolution and transformation, the public and the formal political parties and politicians were worried and disenchanted.  No one in Egypt wants a blood bath or purges that may unjustly injure or dispossess the innocent. However the state in Egypt can only be transformed through a systematic and methodical engagement with its functions, values, and processes.  Otherwise and regardless of who is in parliament or in vogue, the state will guard its own interests and powers. To date none of the rising stars of politics have understood nor seriously problematised the state as a political agent .

This has meant that the ‘deep state’ has remained unchallenged.

The third element concerns the current political leadership in Egypt. Parliament, parties, presidential candidates, commissions and committees have failed to lead, give hope, forge a vision or rise above their limited (not to say petty) peeves and ambitions. No capable set of hands or heads has emerged to enable us to transition and transform. People have therefore looked back rather than forward since for millions there seems to be nothing to look forward to.

The heady days of what seemed like a quick and clear victory of protestors over president is long over.  The days when the families of martyrs were toasted and revered or when youth were applauded and championed are long gone. The deep state is back in the game but so are the millions who first started this road to a new Egypt. The ruling that freed senior officers of the ministry of interior has been met with anger and will not pass in peace. If a new revolution is brewing, I hope that this time the lessons of the past have been learnt and that politicians and protestors engage with and try to make peace with the Egyptian state so as to rid the state of its demons and rid the country of the elements that seek to keep it in turmoil and in despair. 

[Developed in partnership with Ahram Online.]

[This is a roundup of news articles and other materials circulating on Egypt and reflects a wide variety of opinions. It does not reflect the views of the Egypt Page Editors or of Jadaliyya. You may send your own recommendations for inclusion in each week's roundup to egypt@jadaliyya.com by Sunday night of every week.] 

“Protests continue Egypt-wide in response to Mubarak trial verdicts”
Protesters plan to continue sit-ins in Cairo, Alexandria, Suez and Mansoura.

“Morsy capitalizes on Mubarak verdict in campaign”
Mohamed Morsy tries to benefit from public anger after the court acquits all but two defendants in Mubarak case.

“#Tahrir is back with lots of anger everywhere !!”
Zenobia talks about Saturday’s large demonstrations against the Mubarak trial verdict.

“Mubarak arrives at Tora prison after refusing to disembark helicopter”
After court verdict, Mubarak transferred to Tora prison and coaxed out of the helicopter.

“Egypt and the fear of authoritarian relapse”
Michael Hanna argues that the struggle between Egyptian politicians for short-term gains will not result in lasting change for Egypt.

“After the elections: What role for Egypt’s military?”
Salma Shukrallah asks political analysts and activists to predict what role the army will assume after a new president is elected.

“The unsaid in second round negotiations”
Issandr El Amrani criticizes the proposal of a national charter initiated by some secular forces.

“Remaining presidential contenders offer little hope to Egypt’s Christians”
Heba Afify says for many Christians the run-off will be a choice of “preferred oppressor.”

“Egypt: Mubarak verdict fails to deliver full justice”
Amnesty International officials say Hosni Mubarak’s sentence was a step forward, but the acquittal of the other defendants left many still demanding justice.

“Coptic figures deny links to Shafiq’s electoral success, fear polarization”
Copts try to deny allegations that the minority voted en masse for Ahmed Shafiq.

“Shafik vs Morsy: Who will win based on round 1 numbers?”
The Big Pharaoh suggests two scenarios for the upcoming presidential run-off.

“Minerva’s owl flies at dusk: A quick reading of Egypt’s presidential vote”
Hani Shukrallah offers an in-depth analysis of the first-round results of the presidential election.

“At this stage, Shafiq disqualification nearly impossible”
Legal experts say that presidential candidate Ahmed Shafiq cannot be disqualified, as some have hoped.

“Egyptian Elections: Choose None of The Above”
A campaign for boycotting the presidential run-off gains momentum.

“Why accept these elections?”
Issandr El Amrani argues against boycotting the presidential run-off.

“Appeals court upholds three-year sentence for Coptic student defaming Islam”
A 16-year-old Christian will serve a three-year sentence for posting on Facebook cartoons “ridiculing” Islam.

“Rights group requests investigation into Morsy’s statements ‘against Copts’”
The Egyptian Center for Human Rights accuses Mohamed Morsi of fueling sectarianism by claiming that Christians of betraying the revolution.

“Thousands protest against Egyptian election results; Shafiq HQ set on fire”
Protests erupt in Cairo after official announcement of first-round results which confirm a run-off between Mohamed Morsi and Ahmed Shafiq.

“Mursi’s speech tickles political groups’ appetite for concessions”
After Mohamed Morsi’s speech aimed at alleviating fears of secular political powers, some are still not convinced.

“Egyptian Is Counting on Worries of Elites”
At a formal lunch organized by the American Chamber of Commerce, Ahmed Shafiq expresses admiration for Hosni Mubarak.

“Egypt's Presidential Choice Stirs Deep Concerns in Washington”
Barbara Slavin says the Egyptian presidential elections are worrying the Obama administration, although its officials have refrained from commenting on it.

“A day in the life of Hosni Mubarak behind bars”
An article in an Egyptian daily claims to have details about the daily routine of Hosni Mubarak under arrest in the International Medical Center.

In Arabic:

 “نص "وثيقة الاتفاق الوطني" المعروضة من القوى السياسية على مرشحي الرئاسة”
Public figures sign a “National Consensus” document against the presidential run-off between Ahmed Shafiq and Mohamed Morsy.

“انتخاب شفيق.. الشعب المصري لا يمثل إلا نفسه”
Ahmed Samir talks about the possibility of Ahmed Shafiq’s victory in the presidential run-off.

“سلطان يدعو «مرسي وأبو الفتوح وصباحي» لحضور جلسة البرلمان اليوم لتشكيل مجلس رئاسي”
Essam Sultan calls on former presidential candidates Abd El-Moneim Abou El-Fotouh and Hamdin Sabahy to form a presidential council.

“جمال مبارك الرئيس القادم”
Mohamed Amin expresses comments on the verdict of the Mubarak trial.

“معتمر أمين يكتب: أقراء.. ثورة «2»”
Moatamer Amin makes an analogy between experiences of the Prophet and the current political situation in Egypt.

“مـا وراء أزمـة الجمعية التأسيسية”
Mohamed Qanawi discusses the persistent crisis with the Constituent Assembly and the constitution-writing process.

“الهروب إلى الأخلاق”
Hassan Hanafi warns against use of religious rhetoric in the public and political matters.

“تحالف ثلاثى بين حملات ابوالفتوح وصباحى وعلى لكشف مخالفات العملية الانتخابية فى الجولة الاولى”
The campaigns of Hamdeen Sabahi, Abd El-Moneim Abou El-Fotouh and Khalid Ali come up with a joint statement after first-round results are announced.

“رسمياً.. الإعادة بين مرسى وشفيق.. ورفض طعون المرشحين المعترضين”
On Monday the Supreme Electoral Commission declares the official results of the first round and rejects the appeals of presidential candidates over voting irregularities.

Recent Jadaliyya articles on Egypt:

Anti-Shafiq Protest in Tahrir

Egypt’s Elections under Military Rule: Join Our Resistance to the Counter-Revolution

Egyptian Electoral Time Machine

"We Are the Eight Percent": Inside Egypt's Underground Shaabi Music Scene 

I look in the dragonfly's eye, and I see the mountains over my shoulder--- Issa

Bahrain is a small country, and though the story of its own trials and troubles during the past year and a half is intrinsically valuable, it also tells a bigger story, about bigger countries. Small countries, distant provinces, and overlooked corners of empire—places on which metropolitan elites look with condescension, if they ever even bother to—often better reveal the truths of geopolitical power than is possible in the sheltered metropole. Take the example of the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia—part of the Chagos Archipelago—and its indigenous inhabitants, the Chagossians. Diego Garcia is like Bahrain a place most Americans have never heard of. Labeled a “Strategic Island” by British and US Cold War planners, its population was expelled and transferred hundreds of miles away to Mauritius in the 1960s, their home appropriated for an American military base. As the anthropologists David Vine and Laura Jeffery have shown, this was, and continues to be, justified in US national security discourses by representing these islands as conveniently “sparsely populated.” Expulsion of Chagossians was not of great concern both because of the fact that their island was “strategic” and their population “measured only in the hundreds.”[i] The expulsions, which resulted in “abject poverty” and marginalization on Mauritius, were further legitimized by constructing Chagossians as “transient contract workers with no connection to the islands.”[ii]

Today, unaccountable criminality is being visited on the people of another usually forgotten periphery of empire. In Bahrain, tyrannization of the people also depends on the two aforementioned factors, fictions told about the victims and the condescension and hypocrisy of great powers. Instead of fictions about “transient workers,” however, we are presented with myths about violent Shias seeking the overthrow of the state, of the potential chaos triggered by Iranian influence in the Sunni Arab countries, of threats to vital oil supplies should democracy emerge on the borders of Saudi Arabia. And, ultimately, Bahrain is too small a fish to risk destabilizing a region of far more consequential Western allies. During and after the uprisings that began on 14 February 2011, the security forces of Al Khalifa, Bahrain’s royal family, began arresting doctors who were treating injured demonstrators. Treason and spreading lies about the monarchy were among pretexts for the arrests and the inevitable beatings and torture to which the doctors were subjected. Western countries have generally ignored this, because, as the Bahraini neurosurgeon Dr. Nabeel Hamid, one of the doctors arrested by the security forces, notes:

…what’s happening in Bahrain is so small compared to other countries, like Syria or Libya… I’m not denying that what happens in Syria is much, much worse, but also in Bahrain there is a situation which is really getting worse and worse. And if you don’t really stop it here, it may get really, really bad in the future. So you have the chance now to treat it and treat it quite nicely, and so you don’t have to wait until the violence just propagates [sic] out of control.

Since May of this year, thousands of people have been protesting in Manama for the release of prisoners such as the hunger striker Abdulhadi Khawaja and human rights activist Nabil Rajab, along with seven hundred other political prisoners who languish in Al Khalifa’s prisons, people arrested simply for things they have said, meetings they have attended, or for calling for peaceful demonstrations. Meanwhile, the Formula One Grand Prix, hosted by Al Khalifa as part of its makeover of Bahrain as a resort for Western expatriates, went on without delay or mention of the political situation. At around the same time, the Bahraini Crown Prince, Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa met with Hillary Clinton in Washington to finalize a multimillion dollar weapons package for the Gulf monarchy. 

One of Bahrain’s proverbial mountains, the gray eminences that circumscribe its destiny, is clearly the United States, whose fifth naval fleet, crucial to the militarized “security” of the oil-rich Gulf, resides on the tiny Gulf island. But Saudi Arabia also rises mighty in the Bahraini “dragonfly’s eye.” Indeed, the interests of the Americans and Saudis, by which I mean American oil and military-corporate interests and Al Saud family, are nearly identical. This even translates into the metaphors by which the Saudis conceptualize their relationships with their satellites in the Gulf Cooperation Council. Bahrain, as a Saudi diplomat recently put it, is Saudi Arabia’s Cuba. Like the United States’ jealous attempts to monopolize Cuba’s foreign and domestic conditions, Saudi Arabia will not tolerate any developments in Bahrain (or its other Gulf vassals) that it cannot control. 

As the historian and Saudi Arabia expert Toby Craig Jones put it in a recent essay, American officials have worked with Saudi Arabia in a particularly passionate attachment—as George Washington might ruefully say—for a number of reasons. Among these are the protection of the “political economy of oil,” in which high revenues are produced from the manufacturing of oil’s scarcity, and also, the recycling of oil revenues through the US economy. American weapons and security corporations, writes Jones, have been special beneficiaries of this arrangement, with Saudi Arabia routinely spending about ten percent of its annual oil revenues, or ten billion dollars annually, on US-made weapons. These weapons, writes Jones, “have been used most effectively not in regional conflict, but rather in the oppression of domestic forces of opposition. Indeed, it has been the domestic security forces, the kingdom’s counterrevolutionary authorities, that have been most clearly served by the American-Saudi military relationship.”

This kind of military spending is also characteristic of the small Saudi satellites in the Gulf, none more so than Bahrain. Since 2001, the tiny emirate has increased its overall military spending by 117.5 percent, by far the highest figure among both Arab countries and Israel. Its average increase in military spending since 2001, 8.3 percent, is exceeded only by Qatar. Beginning around the same time, in the early 2000s, a selective naturalization policy favoring Sunnis was instituted, and electoral districts were redrawn to ensure that the Shia never achieve a majority in a reorganized Bahraini parliament. While the aforementioned figures on military spending do not paint too specific a picture about the purposes or objectives of such spending, it is difficult to imagine—given what we know from the Saudi case already discussed and the larger story of the security state in the Arab region—that Bahraini military spending is not intended primarily for internal control and domestic repression. As noted by the highly informative website “Religion and Politics in Bahrain,” the increase in military spending along with the naturalization and jerrymandering projects coincided with attempts by regime non-hardliners, such as King Hamad and Crown Prince Salman, at modest (neo)liberal reforms and economic diversification—political and economic ways of addressing popular discontent. Hardliners viewed this as a threat. For them, the Shia cannot be incorporated into the political system for they seek to take over the state. Reforms only encourage them. Thus, hardliners have pursued a two-pronged approach. First, marginalize the Shia. Exclude them from substantive participation in the polity through, for example, the naturalization policies favoring Sunnis. And second, persuade Sunnis that relations with Shia are a zero-sum game and that monarchy is the best servant of Sunni interests. What “Bahrain's disproportionately high increases in military spending from 2001 to 2011 would seem to suggest,” then, is “that the country was hedging its bets against the possibility that King Hamad's reform initiative would fail to achieve the political peace that it promised, an interpretation supported by other preventive initiatives launched around the same time.”

This is a doubly hedged bet. When the state’s own repressive instruments fail, call in big brother Saudi Arabia. This happened on 14 March 2011, when a violent crackdown that resulted in the death of four protesters failed to quell unrest in Manama. As Madawi Al Rasheed relates in a powerful analysis of the Saudi counterrevolution, Saudi troops and security forces, accompanied by a “tactically insignificant but symbolically meaningful United Arab Emirates commitment,” (and, eventually, troops from Kuwait and Qatar) came to rescue the Al Khalifa. She elaborates, “Peninsula Shield, a GCC military force, would be used for the first time, not to defend the six founding member states from external enemies but to quash a rebellion against one of their ruling families.” The official US response to this has been silence. One unofficial statement, however, was at least unintentionally honest about the US view. As Al Rasheed reports, the former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Chas Freeman, in a lecture to the Asia Business Forum in Riyadh in March 2011, referred to the Bahraini protesters as an “unruly mob” and praised the Saudis for so swiftly and courageously responding to the “Iranian threat.”

The struggles of Bahrainis—Shias in particular but also reform-minded Sunnis—have been, like those of the other Arab uprisings, courageous and inspiring. Activists such as Abdulhadi Al Khawaja, Nabil Rajab, and many others have risked their lives for fundamental principles of equal citizenship rights. Doctors such as Nabil Hamid have doggedly attempted to fulfill their medical and moral obligations to care for the injured and broken bodies of these protesters, reaping in the process a whirlwind of vengeance and repression by the Bahraini security services. These are the most important stories of the Bahraini uprising, and our focus should be on them.  But as an American social scientist, a Middle East and Gulf scholar—and in fact, simply as an American citizen—I feel obligated to ask what the responsibility of the United States is in what is happening in Bahrain. The path and the struggle for the Bahrainis is clear, urgent, and immediate, and the stakes in this struggle, I hope, are clarified here. But what is it for Americans? For ultimately, as citizens of the world’s militarily most powerful state, with a deep investment and thus complicity in propping up Al Saud and its satellites, Americans bear some of the responsibility for what is happening in Bahrain. Sadly, to say the least, the chances for a frank discussion of American foreign policy emerging from within the US political establishment are virtually nonexistent.

On 28 May, I—and, I am sure, the many other Americans repelled by Washington’s endless wars and the morally stunted culture they have spawned—endured another annual Memorial Day, in which the narratives and commemorations by our political class mentioned only Americans. As if further evidence were needed, “our dead” were the only ones, as Judith Butler would say, that were grievable. Not the millions of Iraqi dead and displaced, thanks to the previous two, murderous decades that we have visited on their country, not the Afghani, Pakistani, and Yemeni dead, thanks to our courageous drones. President Obama invited the nation to renarrate the Vietnam War as a heroic episode in the epic of American martial valor. The millions of dead, napalmed, and displaced Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians? Not, remotely, grievable. Not even mentionable. These are all far worse than what is occurring in Bahrain. What hope is there that we will ever take what is going on in Bahrain—let alone elsewhere—with any sense of responsibility, which implies imagination? None, unless the Occupy Movement or any other social movements to which it may give rise somehow manage to flower into a genuine and fundamental critique of the US state. In the meantime and more feasibly, we could start by rethinking our “passionate attachments” in the Gulf, among other things by educating ourselves about their human effects. This would, of course, necessitate a rethinking of the merits of the US military-industrial complex and its contributions, or lack thereof, to security, both “ours” and that of “others.” This means, in turn, exercising our imagination, seeing the interconnections between “us” and “them,” between our choices and lifestyles and others’ life chances. It also means asking who, specifically, benefits, and who does not, from particular political-economic arrangements such as the political economy of oil. Meanwhile, people of imagination and courage—such as the Bahrainis—continue to put their lives at risk to carve zones of human dignity from within the mountains of cynicism.