Dr. Hossam Badrawi Official Website
Dr. Hossam Badrawi writes for “Al-Mawqie”: The battle between good and evil:
I fear confusion between the meanings of human values and the goal of international institutions such as the United Nations, UNESCO, and the International Court of Justice and the vision of their establishment and the actions of those who hold the reins of government, power, and weapons in the world in their name now, so that a negative conscience is created in us, our children, and our future generations towards beautiful and respectable meanings because we are living in a historical moment in which this hypocrisy between meaning and action is taking place.
I believe that we must defend values and restore the institutions that express them because the battle is between good and evil and one of the goals of evil is to seize these institutions and transform them into institutions that are hypocritical of the meanings of their existence and to distort the meanings of values such as human rights, children’s rights, tolerance, sympathy, love, justice, and others so that they can be killed in the souls so that Satan wins and we help him without realizing it.. The double standards of the West, the evil of their leaders, and the penetration of Zionism into the fabric of their conscience does not mean that we disbelieve in values and virtue because they have fallen in their eyes.
Human values have evolved over a long history of humankind, so we should not allow our children to ignore them just because evil leaders misrepresent and misuse them and distort their purposes to serve their interests.
This is the battle between good and evil in which the good must prevail.
On the local and national level, there is also a battle between good and evil.
In a dialogue with young people, a bold and intelligent young woman said to me: You tell us, Doctor, that education, media and culture are the most important pillars of building conscience, and that the family, school and society are responsible for what we see of violence, harassment and corruption, so you should not criticize young people, but rather blame yourselves as a generation responsible for all of this?
I said: You are absolutely right, my daughter.
She said: Let’s start with education, what is the position from your point of view?
I said: Children and young people spend about eighteen years of their lives in educational institutions that are responsible for the state, and from here lies the importance of the vision and message of the community leaders regarding the rights of citizenship and belonging to Egypt, pride and honor in it, and respect for women and their rights in a direct and indirect cumulative manner to our children and youth. There is no place where all citizens gather for 14 years in school and 4 years in university in a framework with walls, limited in time and place like educational institutions.
We must admit that if a young person graduates from these educational institutions with a single-minded mind, bigoted, and not accepting of pluralism, violent or extremist and harassing, then we must be doing something wrong.
The young woman said: With all due respect, I doubt that the responsible generations have an agreed-upon vision and cumulative strategy, and I and my colleagues believe that the reason for the challenge facing young people is the confusion of the ideas of the parents’ generation. We, with all our mistakes, are the result of your unclear vision and confused ideas.
I said: Give me everything you have.
She said: You are a generation that, along with those who came before you, has confused political, social and cultural concepts. Are we a modern civil state, as some of you say and as we believe? Or a Salafi religious state? Things are mixed up before us. Does society respect freedom of opinion, respect women, believe in pluralism and have tolerance that accepts those who are different from it? I doubt that your generation is stable in its orientations. You have been in conflict over concepts since the beginning of the twentieth century, and you blame us for what happened in our conscience.
You call for freedom of expression and human rights, and you restrict the freedom of citizens and violate their rights under the pretext of maintaining stability.
I said: So that we do not enter into a debate instead of dialogue, I agree with you, but I am looking for solutions.
She said: Let’s go back to education.
I said: In Dr. Taha Hussein, the famous “Future of Culture in Egypt”, was talking about illiteracy and said wisely that eradicating illiteracy does not mean learning to read and write, but rather eradicating the illiteracy of reading and writing and understanding, because if we eradicate the illiteracy of reading and writing without understanding, then those who read and do not understand will be subject to being controlled by those who think..
The issue is not reading and writing, but rather an issue that includes depth of understanding, the ability to choose, make decisions, and distinguish between right and wrong.
The making of conscience takes place in educational institutions, in the family, in the media, in the climate of general culture and arts.. New things are intertwined in education, such as toys, electronics, the use of the Internet, access to unlimited knowledge, YouTube, and others.
All this technology is available to children and youth without any control on our part, and whoever tries to stand in the way of its use will fail.
Is this a trial or an opportunity..!
If we learn how to use the tools of the age to create a conscience that allows for tolerance, acceptance of pluralism, acceptance and respect for others, and peace with oneself and others, we will have the opportunity to leap over challenges that have been built over the years. If we wait for the solution to come through prayer and wishing, society will slip further and drown in contradictions imposed on our generation and those who came before us as a result of ignorance, between modernity and Salafism, between enlightenment and ignorance, between science and knowledge and the superstitions of the past and beliefs created in people’s conscience at a time when knowledge was scarce and the methodology of science was absent.
Wisdom and experience say:
First: There is no educational system that rises above the level of its teachers. If we are talking about a curriculum that is taught and about an awareness of rights that is taught to modern generations and the making of a future and the making of a personality, then our goal must be focused on those in charge of the educational process, from teachers and managers, because they are the facilitators of the student’s acquisition of knowledge in the educational institution. We must define our goal as raising the level of the teacher and the level of education together.
The second wisdom says:
To improve the level of education, the climate must be prepared for the learner. If the educational climate is ugly and lacks beauty, do not expect the learner to love beauty or to be pure. Also, if the climate is full of lies and dishonesty, we should not expect education to rise to a higher level that we think will exist on its own.
The third wisdom reminds us of what distinguishes man from other creatures and what God has placed in man that distinguishes him from them? ..
The answer is imagination, dreaming, accumulation of knowledge and free will in making his decision.
Children are the most imaginative and dreamy of us, and if we contemplate the violence we present to our children in games, movies and cartoons, we would realize the extent of the emotional broadcast that we instill in them and that shapes their dreams.. The other broadcast comes from those claiming to be religious with superstitions that have no basis in our beautiful, sound religion to complete an emotional system that has nothing to do with modernity and science.
Yes, my daughter, you are right, and our generation must strive with you and through you to get out of this predicament and overcome the confusion in concepts and impose a path without contradiction between what we say and what we do.
Values are not slogans that are raised, but rather convictions that are translated through our actions, behavior and dealings with others.. They are principles included in our actions and relationships.
The battle between good and evil is a global and local battle, and we must not slip into evil methods to achieve good for humanity.
