Dr. Hossam Badrawi Official Website
Wednesday Dialogue 8/9/2023
(Weekly interview with Dr. Hossam Badrawi).
opportunity to rescue
Between stillness half, and swing, and extremism
Written by Hossam Badrawi
Half has a philosophy, swing has a philosophy, and extremism has a philosophy.. We will not be able to understand what is going on around us without explaining the source of action mainly in the way the country is governed.
I will start with the philosophy and concept of extremism. An extremist as an individual is everyone who thinks that what is right from his point of view is absolute, and that what he believes is the only correct one, and becomes authoritarian if he excludes everyone who has a different opinion, and becomes a criminal if he kills everyone who disagrees with him, and becomes a terrorist if he kills all the people he knows and who He does not know them in order to convey his message, impose his method, and prevent the existence of others
As for the extremist regimes, they turn the supporter into a servant, the opponent into a traitor, and those who differ in opinion or method into an agent. The extremist government does not understand that painting in one color has no value and that the different colors, characters and visions are what gives it weight and allows for development.
The philosophy of the fixed half was expressed by Gibran Khalil Gibran, saying:
Do not sit with half-lovers, do not befriend half-friends, do not read to half-talented people, do not live half-life, do not die half-death, do not choose half-solution, do not stand in the middle of the truth, do not dream half-dream, and do not cling to half-hope.
If you are satisfied, express your satisfaction, do not pretend to be half satisfied, and if you refuse, then express your rejection, because half of rejection is acceptance. You know her.. the half is what makes you a stranger.
Half a road will not get you anywhere, and half an idea will not give you a result. Half is the moment of your helplessness and you are not helpless..because you are not half a human being.
You are a human being found to live life, not to live half a life
Reviewing what Gibran said, I ask here, with a social and political vision, are we ready to choose? Are we ready for a political decision that serves the economy and changes the shape of the country’s future politically, socially and culturally? Or do we want half openness and half closure..!!!
Do we want a strong private sector that creates job opportunities, or do we want a public or military sector controlled by the state and its agencies, or half of that and half of that selective?
We are in the middle of wanting and not wanting.. Unfortunately, what we want changes according to events, as reactions, not as initiatives, and not as a belief in a philosophy. It’s half random
Are we a civil state or a religious state, because everything that happens in front of me says that we are in the middle, so we are not a religious state in its full sense, nor are we a civil state in its full sense, because we do not clearly prevent the interference of religion and its men in politics, but rather the regime uses their terms and phrases Sometimes to confirm that the accounting authority is only from God and not from society
We, in the half, obtain the control of religion in politics without announcing it, and we call for citizenship and our actions contain absurd discrimination between citizens of different religion and gender, and we do not accept anyone who dares to say otherwise. We’re in the middle…
Are we a military security state or a modern civil state as the constitution says!?
We’re in half.
Our words say civil, and the reality of our actions is a military security state without equivocation.
And whoever stands in the middle does not reach any finish line and does not achieve life, so let us set our goals and walk towards them and do not stop in the middle.
The real effort now is not only in the decision to stand at a point with the aim of stability, which we think is the half, but also to stop swinging violently on both sides of the midpoint, so we do not even reach the philosophy of the static half, which sometimes has benefits.
I thought a lot about all this and about the absence of philosophy behind the decisions and actions in running the country, because without the presence of a philosophy confusion occurs and the actions may conflict between one government and the next to it.
For example, the philosophy of justice requires the presence of the Public Prosecution Office, which carries out the investigation before directing charges against the citizen, otherwise the security apparatus will control people’s fate. The prosecution is a device that must be impartial and not under the tutelage of the executive authority, in order to protect the people. Philosophically, the prosecutor is the advocate of the masses of the people.
The same thing applies to the philosophy that the accused is innocent until proven guilty, so if we put everyone we suspect behind bars, whether with excessive pretrial detention for months and may extend to years, or by treating the accused as a criminal until his innocence is proven, or by placing the accused in a cage during his trial We deviated from the philosophy of successful justice.
As for development issues, and I will take education as an example, its philosophy is that it is a right of the citizen, and a priority that does not accept discussion. A distinction is made between the able and the unable, and the principle of equal opportunities gradually disappears, or in higher education, the state establishes public universities that accommodate the majority of citizens with expenses that exceed their capabilities and without creating a financing system for students, as it violates the philosophy of education by all standards.
Now we come to the philosophy of democracy, and do we respect it?!!
The philosophy of democracy is shura, freedom, accountability, and the rotation of power within the framework of a law agreed upon by all
If governments violate this philosophy, they have strayed from the right path
Democracy succeeded in Europe and North America, but it failed to be applied in developing and poor countries
The question is:
What is the dilemma of applying the rules of political freedom and achieving democracy in these countries?
The answer is that the act is not commensurate and is not linked to a philosophy. To achieve democracy in poor and uneducated countries, and to solve the dilemma, we must look at the philosophy of democracy more deeply.
The philosophy of the elected governments is summed up in that they are the servants of those who elect them and not their master. If the statements of officials come out in which they blame the people for the country’s decline and appear as if they are blessing them with projects that serve growth as if they were a gift from them and not a right, then there must be an absence of the philosophy of good governance.
Some of the government’s actions to face a challenge such as the devaluation of the currency and the need for dollars is a cure for the symptom, not the disease, and a lot of incompetence and contradiction appears in it, as if we are giving a medicine and its opposite to treat the symptom, not even the disease.
The desire to collect dollars in the current snapshot made the government extreme in facilitation after it was extreme in prevention, so it prevented the private sector from importing production requirements with its own dollar money, but without asking about the source it allows them to be deposited with impossible profit promises in the state treasury and its owned banks.
Isn’t this exactly money laundering and tariffing? The definition of money laundering is the concealment or disguise of the source of illegally obtained proceeds, so that they appear to have come from legitimate sources. It is often a component of other serious crimes such as drug trafficking, robbery or extortion. The phenomenon of money laundering is spread everywhere and exists in areas that do not come to mind, and Egypt has violently resisted it over the years with various devices, so where are these devices from the state’s disposal to treat the economic situation..
That is, we stop the wheel of development and allow money laundering to treat the symptoms of the disease that we caused and suffer from.
Isn’t that a sharp extremism in behavior..!
And a swing that does not serve the sustainability…
The philosophy of sharp swing, a philosophy whose goal is to postpone the real confrontation of slowed development with an active action as a response to the moment.
The suffering of peoples under the random half system has been proven, in front of a different opinion that talks about the philosophy of the conscious half, on the other hand, inspired by the opinion of Professor Akkad, in which he says, at my disposal, “that the true half is the point of balance in the universe and in man. The half is a meeting place Two parts that are identical and/or complementary or opposite, so development takes place. The half is the convergence of conflicting ideas, and an agreement takes place. The soft half is equal to the rough half, so life is sweetened with security and serenity.
That the half is the pomegranate of the scale by which justice is achieved in the judiciary and
The half of fairness, so the trusts are paid and the payment is completed
Tribal and sectarian political systems of all kinds, monarchy of all kinds, and republic of all kinds must converge on agreed-upon bases in which the forces are balanced and converge on intermediate foundations. We do not find pure dictatorship, pure communism, pure monarchy, pure republic, pure military, or police. Pure, not pure capitalism, not even pure civilization. This is not from the complex nature of creation, rather we find systems that are balanced in composition for the benefit of peoples whose compositions are changing
It has been proven that ready-made systems are no longer suitable for transportation, installation and operation. There must be tailor-made systems: “Sure mésure” designed and invented by a constituent assembly that is enlightened and familiar with the circumstances, traditions, history and experiences of this country, so it creates a system for it in which all sects of society work in productive harmony and in mutual benefit.
For example, the Swiss system was invented for the conditions of Switzerland in particular, which, despite its class, is not suitable for application in Egypt, just as the Egyptian peasantry may not feel comfortable when wearing the latest Parisian fashion.
. The time has come for the emergence of a consensual system between the civil and the military, suitable for operation and leading to sustainable development and the ability to compete internally and globally.
Once again, in all cases, we affirm that without a complete implementation of justice and revolution in the law enforcement apparatus, and without human development in terms of education, media and culture, it is difficult to achieve what we aspire to.
Freedom without law becomes chaos, and the pretext of fear of this chaos is in support of the continuation of the military security rule. Science and history have proven that they are systems that serve a ruling class in a snapshot of the country’s life, but they kill the state’s resources, spread corruption, and prevent sustainable development in its future.
Transparency and accountability is a path over which there is no dispute in practice and not in rhetoric
Perhaps the greatest concern of the citizen now is focused on the effectiveness of governance, that is, the amount of achievement and response to the citizen’s demands, regardless of the ideological idea adopted by the regime.
But on the other hand, achieving the greatest effectiveness of governance is related to the philosophy of the most qualified access to the seats of government through a system that allows this, and is also related to the importance of having a system of control and accountability for the decision-maker, and setting periods for governance to ensure innovation in thought and vitality of performance. In short, we see that the new generation of democracy without extremism, wavering, or stillness should focus on the following elements:
Judgment effectiveness
The competence of the referees
Oversight and accountability independent of the executive authority
An independent and effective justice system (the real revolution must take place here in this field).
An education and culture system that gives citizens the opportunity to choose the best
We have an opportunity to save, let us take it, and stop wasted opportunities
