by MEMRI
In an in-depth interview, Egyptian author Sayyid Al-Qemany said that Egypt was "in the garbage bin of nations" because of the stagnation of its mentality. "Our people is controlled by a Wahhabi mentality, Al-Qemany said, adding that a Wahhabi is "a criminal with a divine license." "Using one's mind has become a crime," he told the interviewer. "We need to reform our mentality regarding religion and everything else." The interview was posted on the Internet on August 20, 2015. Following are excerpts:
Sayyid Al-Qemany: "We will suffer from the consequences of the 1967 war."
Interviewer: "Are you suffering to the sense of defeat, or to the
arrogance and our feeling that we are something special..."
Sayyid Al-Qemany: "I'm talking about our defeat and about realizing that we
are worthless, that we are the dregs of the Earth's nations. I was still a
student when I said that we were in the garbage bin of nations. We are in the
garbage bin of nations, and we don't even know it. We feel as if we are like
the Pharaohs, like Ramesses, and so on.
[…]
"No matter what you do, as long as your
mentality, your way of thinking, remains static, in one place, without going
anywhere... Abd Al-Nasser is gone, and along comes Sadat, Sadat is gone, and
along comes [actress] Layla Mourad... The result is one and the same."
[…]
Interviewer: "We are always talking about colonialism. You say that
colonialism and benefits..."
Sayyid Al-Qemany: "Great benefits! Now look, son. If we held a bid, looking
for someone to colonize us, nobody would come. If I asked Great Britain to come
and colonize us again, they wouldn't come. We are a liability.
"[If they had come], they would have fixed
everything. Our railroad was the greatest railroad in the world. The train was
the most magnificent and the most punctual. It was the pride of Egypt. Who
built it? The British. We did the actual work, but if the British hadn't been
there, we wouldn't have done that either. If European civilization had not come
to America, the Indians would still be lighting fire with stones. Why are we so
upset if someone civilized comes and occupies us? They are more capable than we
are. We are told that colonialism is the reason for our backwardness. That is
not true.
[…]
"When the [Arab Spring] events took place
in Tunisia, I was asked whether I expected this to happen in Egypt. I said that
I hoped it would not. I said that our people is controlled by a Wahhabi
mentality. The entire people is Wahhabi. What is a Wahhabi? A criminal with a
license, a divine license. Our Lord gives him a license to be a criminal.
[…]
"Unfortunately, our culture is built upon
lies, and our history is a fabrication. This has ruined our memory. A colleague
said to me that the Muslim Brotherhood should rise to power, so that people
would feel what it was like, and would then chuck them forever. I asked him:
Haven't we been trying them for 1,400 years? He said: 'The people has no memory,
because what students learn as school is not the truth.'
"They are told about the glory of the
caliphate and the greatness of the Islamic nation… The focus is on the nation
and on its greatness, at the expense of the citizen. That's one problem. The
nation is great, and Islam is great, and it does not matter who gets chopped to
pieces underneath. It does not matter if the citizen gets chopped to pieces, if
he gets burned, if his property is taken from him, if he suffers injustice, or
if he is killed for no reason. The caliph would wake up one morning in a good
mood, and would give a sack of gold to the first person he would meet. When he
would get up on a bad day, he would give the order for his tailor to be killed."
[…]
Interviewer: "Has the use of one's mind become a crime in our society?"
Sayyid Al-Qemany: "Of course. That's the problem. Sheikh Muhammad Hassan
said: 'You have our Lord's religion, so you should step on your mind with your
shoes.' Would you use your brain if he tells you that the Lord does not want
you to think? He tells you that it's in the Lord's book and that you should
beware not to think! If you have any question, ask Allah! If you need help,
seek it with Allah! But how? Allah answers the prayer of the oppressed. He
hangs it I don't know where – somewhere in the heavens – and responds to these
prayers 'even if after a while.'
"Well, if You are our Lord, and You have
the ability to help me, why don't You help me now?! Why 'after a while?!'
Aren't You capable of helping the oppressed? Aren't you God? So help me now.
Why 'after a while'? Are You waiting for me to get things better all
by myself, and I'll say 'thank you?'
"There are very basic questions, but these
people have decided not to use their minds. So they have erased Egyptian
consciousness altogether. They have erased everything related to the country in
the Egyptian mind. Consequently, any kind of thought has become heresy.
[…]
"[Al-Sisi] came from the armed forces and
saved Egypt, so I salute and thank him. Is there anything greater than saving
the country? That's the only thing I care about, so I say: Thank you, leader.
But there is much to say about what followed. I have many objections and
concerns in this regard."
[…]
Sayyid Al-Qemany: "I don't understand his position about the Salafis."
Interviewer: "He was talking to a group of workers..."
Sayyid Al-Qemany: "The first moment of sadness occurred on July 3, when he
made his speech. I saw that the people sitting there all had long beards – the
Salafis, the church, and Al-Azhar… Oh man… I was looking for an Egyptian
Ataturk. Weeks before, I said that we needed an Egyptian Ataturk. Only an
Egyptian Ataturk could set this country straight. I was hoping that Al-Sisi
would become an Ataturk. But this did not happen. He has a different charisma,
a different mentality. Al-Sisi is a kind, quiet, good, modest man..."
Interviewer: "Did you hear what he said [about renewal of religious
discourse]?"
Sayyid Al-Qemany: "I did, and I thought it was nothing but talk, I'm sad to
say. [Reforming religious discourse] is not something you instruct to do.
Reforming of mentality... This is not about reform of religious discourse. We
need to reform our mentality regarding religion and everything else.
[…]
"You cannot just reform religious
discourse. You cannot tell the virus to kill itself. You cannot ask Al-Azhar to
do it. Al-Azhar is at the heart of the problem.
[…]
"Instead of begging Saudi Arabia and the
Gulf for alms, we should change the second article of the Egyptian
constitution, and state that the U.N. Charter, the Geneva Convention, and the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights are the main source for legislation in
the Egyptian Republic. You will see how the world reacts then."
MEMRI
Source: www.http://memri.org
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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