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Home / Dr Hossam Badrawi 2023 / A Great Thinker’s Rest – Written by Muhammad Mustafa Abu Shama

A Great Thinker’s Rest – Written by Muhammad Mustafa Abu Shama

A great thinker’s break
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Muhammad Mustafa Abu Shama
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Writing about the political thinker with many titles and talents, Dr. Hossam Badrawi, requires special creativity befitting the size of his great giving in the fields of medicine, education, politics, culture, youth… and sports as well, a giving without borders and extending for more than half a century, before he was forced a few weeks ago to obtain… A warrior rested on a long medical trip in Germany. May God heal him, pardon him, and return him safely to his homeland, which is dear to him and to all of us.
I had an important meeting with Dr. Badrawi a few days before his departure. It was a long meeting between the “National Dialogue” papers, the ambitions and hopes we share, and the ideas we were preparing to formulate to be on the interlocutors’ table, and some of them were presented to public opinion. He was, as usual, optimistic despite his apparent health problems. This is the first time I have seen him like this, since we gathered at the beginning to establish the “Dreamers of Tomorrow” Association, with us a group of the best Egyptian cadres in 1998.
Our great thinker made an extraordinary effort during the second half of last year. His joy was sincere at the generous presidential call for dialogue. He was bursting with youthful enthusiasm, opening all windows. At a time when I was doing my best and racing against time to publish my new book, “The Third Way,” before the year ended, he surprised me. By issuing three intellectually heavy books during the year 2022, their titles were: “A Call to Think”, “Dialogues with Youth for a New Republic”, “Forgotten Romances”, and when he was appointed to the position of National Dialogue Advisor for “Egypt’s Vision 2030”, the media competed for him. Explore his ideas and vision, and with his bright face spread good hopes and positive energy in everyone’s hearts that resisted ugliness, despair, and violence, sought peace, and promised a better future for Egypt and the Egyptians.
Badrawi succeeded, over many years of public work (socially, politically, and culturally), to establish a balanced and balanced school of thought that sailed independently despite the harsh circumstances of the journey, a school based on political moderation, national positivity, and responsible freedom, a mixture of liberalism, socialism, and Sufism. He was a friend to everyone despite the fierce political polarization that Egypt experienced in what was known as the years of the Arab Spring. He remained neutral, siding only with the nation and expressing only his authentic convictions. A Badrawi synthesis produced by years of thinking, contemplation, reading, travel, and experiences in various aspects of Egyptian life, the most important of which remains his work as an obstetrician and gynecologist, his primary profession that gave him the secret and magic of life, and created in him a permanent vitality in generating ideas. He has continued and will continue to enrich public life in Egypt. Since his name shone in the nineties of the last century as one of the stars of society, and for generations to come.
Because we have a long common history in public work, I was honored (sometimes) to be his companion, or according to our favorite expression, we were each other’s partner (a partner in the dream), as Dr. Badrawi described me to the audience at the signing ceremony of my book (Dialogues on the Edge of Crisis) in 2015, a description I hope to convey. That I be worthy of him: He said that he considers me his “son,” and that is why my testimony against him may be “injured.” So I sought help from someone who is more worthy than me to speak about him, which is our late professor, the great writer Makram Mohamed Ahmed, who wrote in Al-Ahram newspaper in 2017, an article asking questions. In its title: “Where is Hossam Badrawi?” It is the same question that has occupied many people recently, due to the sudden disappearance of our great thinker, for weeks on end, from the public scene. Perhaps these lines of mine have explained the reasons and explained the secret of his absence.
Professor Makram, may God have mercy on him, says: “I believe, first of all, that Dr. Hossam Badrawy is a distinguished professor of medicine at Cairo University and an education expert who focused his scientific efforts on the importance of achieving standards of quality and mastery in Egyptian education systems, without Egypt benefiting anything from his efforts!” He was the most prominent person who confronted the party’s corruption. The National Party gambled on its personal future, reputation, and security when it decided to fight alone the battle of reforming the party from within, which put it in a state of disagreement and disagreement with most of the party’s symbols and leaders. Hossam Badrawi, who was the first to ignite the spark of change within the National Party, must be part of Egypt’s future, one of its elements and symbols. What is effective at this stage specifically is not for him to sit on the (reserve bench) and ruminate over his hopes and sorrows without a clear justification!”
Dr. Badrawi actually left the reserve bench months ago with his active participation in the “National Dialogue” as an advisor, before the emergency health conditions that temporarily obscured his giving took him away. We pray to God that it will end and that he will soon return to the fields of public work, enriching them with his intellectual skills and political abilities, at a turning point. In the history of Egypt and the world, it requires the effort of all sincere people.

About Dr. Hossam Badrawi

Dr. Hossam Badrawi
He is a politician, intellect, and prominent physician. He is the former head of the Gynecology Department, Faculty of Medicine Cairo University. He conducted his post graduate studies from 1979 till 1981 in the United States. He was elected as a member of the Egyptian Parliament and chairman of the Education and Scientific Research Committee in the Parliament from 2000 till 2005. As a politician, Dr. Hossam Badrawi was known for his independent stances. His integrity won the consensus of all people from various political trends. During the era of former president Hosni Mubarak he was called The Rationalist in the National Democratic Party NDP because his political calls and demands were consistent to a great extent with calls for political and democratic reform in Egypt. He was against extending the state of emergency and objected to the National Democratic Party's unilateral constitutional amendments during the January 25, 2011 revolution. He played a very important political role when he defended, from the very first beginning of the revolution, the demonstrators' right to call for their demands. He called on the government to listen and respond to their demands. Consequently and due to Dr. Badrawi's popularity, Mubarak appointed him as the NDP Secretary General thus replacing the members of the Bureau of the Commission. During that time, Dr. Badrawi expressed his political opinion to Mubarak that he had to step down. He had to resign from the party after 5 days of his appointment on February 10 when he declared his political disagreement with the political leadership in dealing with the demonstrators who called for handing the power to the Muslim Brotherhood. Therefore, from the very first moment his stance was clear by rejecting a religion-based state which he considered as aiming to limit the Egyptians down to one trend. He considered deposed president Mohamed Morsi's decision to bring back the People's Assembly as a reinforcement of the US-supported dictatorship. He was among the first to denounce the incursion of Morsi's authority over the judicial authority, condemning the Brotherhood militias' blockade of the Supreme Constitutional Court. Dr. Hossam supported the Tamarod movement in its beginning and he declared that toppling the Brotherhood was a must and a pressing risk that had to be taken few months prior to the June 30 revolution and confirmed that the army would support the legitimacy given by the people