The Skeptic الشكاك

999 ‘Our People Don’t Like Food, They Like Beans’

Excerpts from Alexandra Sandel’s staggering interview with Osama Saraya, editor of the government’s flagship daily Al-Ahram:

I can say one morning: ‘If you find white people walking in the street, they are spies for Israel and are Americans…’ and the people will go after them capture them, throw them in prison and kill them. […]

The political system is a hundred times more civilized than the street. The street is much more radical than the political system. So don’t believe the words of those idiots… they are idiots… those who say that we are interacting with the West this way, the pressure, that we’re afraid [of the West]… Why should I be afraid of the West? The West doesn’t feed me. I have food here. If I close off Egypt, there’s a lot of food. We don’t have a food problem… Our people don’t like food, they like beans. […]

Don’t believe those who sit in cafés and forums and work with the West. Don’t believe that they know Egypt. They don’t know anything. Hosni Mubarak knows Egypt better than them. He has the army, he has a very strong army, he has a security apparatus that manages the whole of Egypt, he has the ministry of education and health and all of this is his… So why would he be afraid of the West? The West is afraid of Hosni Mubarak. I’m serious, I’m being frank. The West is afraid of Hosni Mubarak. Why? Because Hosni Mubarak is useful to the West.

More startling revelations, including that Ibrahim Eissa is now with the Muslim Brotherhood, can be found in the full interview.

With friends like that, the government does not need enemies.

994 The Future Is Bright

This is very well done. I particularly like the ad for American Apparel. And “The End of Experts,” by Thomas Friedman.

992 Kilcullen’s Afghanistan Brief

David Kilcullen gives the New Yorker‘s George Packer what must be one of the best, most concise briefs on Afghanistan available from a Western perspective:

Well, we need to be more effective in what we are doing, but we also need to do some different things, as well, with the focus on security and governance. The classical counterinsurgency theorist Bernard Fall wrote, in 1965, that a government which is losing to an insurgency isn’t being out-fought, it’s being out-governed. In our case, we are being both out-fought and out-governed for four basic reasons:

(1) We have failed to secure the Afghan people. That is, we have failed to deliver them a well-founded feeling of security. Our failing lies as much in providing human security—economic and social wellbeing, law and order, trust in institutions and hope for the future—as in protection from the Taliban, narco-traffickers, and terrorists. In particular, we have spent too much effort chasing and attacking an elusive enemy who has nothing he needs to defend—and so can always run away to fight another day—and too little effort in securing the people where they sleep. (And doing this would not take nearly as many extra troops as some people think, but rather a different focus of operations).

(2) We have failed to deal with the Pakistani sanctuary that forms the political base and operational support system for the Taliban, and which creates a protective cocoon (abetted by the fecklessness or complicity of some elements in Pakistan) around senior al Qaeda and Taliban leaders.

(3) The Afghan government has not delivered legitimate, good governance to Afghans at the local level—with the emphasis on good governance. In some areas, we have left a vacuum that the Taliban has filled, in other areas some of the Afghan government’s own representatives have been seen as inefficient, corrupt, or exploitative.

(4) Neither we nor the Afghans are organized, staffed, or resourced to do these three things (secure the people, deal with the safe haven, and govern legitimately and well at the local level)—partly because of poor coalition management, partly because of the strategic distraction and resource scarcity caused by Iraq, and partly because, to date, we have given only episodic attention to the war.

So, bottom line—we need to do better, but we also need a rethink in some key areas starting with security and governance. [More…]

Via Abu Muqawama and SWJ.

988 Muslim Scholar Concludes Prophet Mohammed Never Existed

Andrew Higgens for the Wall Street Journal:

Muhammad Sven Kalisch, a Muslim convert and Germany’s first professor of Islamic theology, fasts during the Muslim holy month, doesn’t like to shake hands with Muslim women and has spent years studying Islamic scripture. Islam, he says, guides his life.

So it came as something of a surprise when Prof. Kalisch announced the fruit of his theological research. His conclusion: The Prophet Muhammad probably never existed. [More…]

979 Suzanne Mubarak: Accounts of Sexual Harassment ‘Exaggerated’

AFP via The Arabist:

CAIRO (AFP) – Egyptian first lady Suzanne Mubarak has played down allegations of rampant sexual harassment in her country, accusing the media, and implicitly Islamist militants, of exaggerating the reports.

“Egyptian men always respect Egyptian women,” the pro-government Al-Ahram newspaper on Friday quoted the wife of President Hosni Mubarak as saying in remarks aired on Thursday by Al-Arabiya television.

The Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights (ECWR) released a survey earlier this year showing that 83 percent of Egyptian women and 98 percent of foreign women in Egypt are sexually harassed.

“This gives the impression that the streets in Egypt are not safe. That is not true… The media have exaggerated,” Mubarak said.

“Maybe one, two or even 10 incidents occurred. Egypt is home to 80 million people. We can’t talk of a phenomenon. Maybe a few scatterbrained youths are behind this crime.

“And maybe some people wanted to make it seem as though the streets of Egypt are not safe so girls and women stay at home. This could be their agenda,” she said in a reference to Islamist militants.

Make that 11 incidents, Madame. Yesterday I heard a little rich brat tell my wife to “take it in ze ass” as we walked to a restaurant.

In fairness, perhaps the official count of incidences of sexual harassment in Egypt should stand only at 10.5 after that young idiot’s comment. When I put my arm around said brat and asked him if he himself would like to take it in the ass, he declined and said he’d been talking not to my wife, but to his friend. So perhaps Mama Mubarak is right. Perhaps the real problem is not sexual harassment, but rampant homosexuality.

Or perhaps the first lady was misquoted. Perhaps she said that the average Egyptian woman suffers “one, two or maybe 10” instances of sexual harassment a month. This actually sounds like a more realistic estimate.

I’ve spent too long looking for that original Al-Arabia interview online… or at least the Al-Ahram article citing it. Haven’t found either. Al-Ahram‘s front page story from yesterday (after the break) features the first lady’s more predictable comments from Abu Dhabi.

Google searches turn up only the AFP article and its derivatives. Similar searches on YouTube return nothing of interest. Maybe it was in Al-Massa’i? Does anyone out there have a copy?

More…

966 Bedouin Affairs

• First, on a very serious note, an Egyptian security official has said that Bedouin shot and wounded an Egyptian policeman in Sinai today. The news follows days of unrest sparked by the alleged killing of a Bedou man by police. It’s hard to imagine the security forces will leave it at that, though they can still opt for a negotiated resolution as the quickest means of restoring calm. Establishing stability will take longer.
• On a much lighter note (and there’s no way to make this transition without its being jarring and tasteless), from The Times of London via Kafr al-Hanadwa, a Bedou sheikh is sure Obama is his cousin. You must see the video attached to this article:
  

  He has a host of relatives in exotic locations from Hawaii to Kenya, and during his run for the American presidency he discovered that he had an aunt living in Boston.

  Now Barack Obama is being claimed by not one but as many as 8,000 Beduin tribesmen in northern Israel.

  Although the spokesman for the lost tribe of Obama has yet to reveal the documentary evidence that he says he possesses to support his claim, people are flocking from across the region to pay their respects to the “Bedu Obama”, whose social standing has gone through the roof.

  “We knew about it years ago but we were afraid to talk about it because we didn’t want to influence the election,” Abdul Rahman Sheikh Abdullah, a 53-year-old local council member, told The Times in the small Beduin village of Bir al-Maksour in the Israeli region of Galilee. “We wrote a letter to him explaining the family connection.”

  Mr Obama’s team have not responded to the letter so far but that has not dampened Sheikh Abdullah’s festivities.

  He has been handing out sweets and huge dishes of baklava traditional honey-sweetened pastries to all and sundry, and plans to hold a large party next week at which he will slaughter a dozen goats to feed the village.

  It was his 95-year-old mother who first spotted the connection, he says. Seeing the charismatic senator on television, she noted a striking resemblance to one of the African migrant workers who used to be employed by rich sheikhs in the fertile north of British Mandate Palestine in the 1930s.

  The Africans would sometimes marry local Beduin girls and start families, though, like many migrant workers, would just as frequently return home after several years. [Continues…]

• Also via Kafr al-Hanadwa, and only tangentially related to Bedouin affairs, a photograph from Al-Watan that crams all of my stereotypes about Saudi Arabia into one image. (And I know this is stretching it the Bedouin connection: Egyptians like to scoff at Saudis as Bedouin, but no one would suggest the people of Jeddah were Bedouin.) You must see this large to fully appreciate it. Unfortunately, Al-Watan doesn’t credit its photographers. If you’re reading, sir, I would like to talk to you. You deserve a prize.

956 Some Good News

• The Egyptian consul in Saudi Arabia is taking action on behalf of two doctors sentenced to jail terms and lashings for enabling a princess’ morphine addiction. News of the sentence caused a scandal in the Egyptian press. The consul says he hopes for a royal pardon. Too late for the Egyptian the Saudis executed for sorcery a year ago this time, but better late than never.
• Gamal Mubarak has proposed giving all Egyptians over the age of 21, whether they live at home or abroad, shares in Egypt’s public companies. Al-Masry al-Youm reports:
  

  The project aims to raise the financial efficiency of companies, preserve workers’ rights, distribute a package of free shares among citizens and create new entities, such as the Future Generations Fund and the apparatus for managing state-owned assets.

  Alternatively, shareholders could sell immediately. This truly is “new thought.” Perhaps America could learn from Egypt and distribute GM shares among the populace. I’ll leave the question of whether the analogy holds or whether this idea would work in Egypt to the economists. I have my doubts on both scores.

• As a side note, I’m glad to see more politic people have stepped in to express what I was too winded to say after that swift kick to the bidan. Scott MacLeod spells it out at his blog for Time. And the good Prof. Lynch says not to worry, Emanuel won’t influence policy, though the reaction to his appointment should have been anticipated and managed better.

951 Bedouin ‘Capture Police’ Near Gaza Border

The Associated Press is reporting that armed Bedouin tribesmen angry at security forces’ fatal shooting of a suspected smuggler earlier today have taken 10 policemen and one senior officer hostage near the border.

Earlier today, Reuters quoted a man who participated in the protest as saying that some 700 Bedouin had blockaded roads, torched a police vehicle, burnt tires, and fired shots in the air. This story is still developing.

[Update: The BBC is reporting 25 policemen have been released]

932 Egyptian Doctor Jailed and Whipped in Saudi Arabia

Al-Badil photographer Mohammed Ali Ad-Din has some good shots on Flickr.

And Noha El-Hennawy has a good post on Babylon and Beyond:

Almost 20 ago, Dr. Raouf Arabi flew from his home in Egypt to Saudi Arabia for a job in the world’s richest oil country. It never occured to him that he might end up whipped and in jail.

Several weeks ago, Egyptians awoke to the news that the doctor was sentenced by a Saudi court to seven years in prison and 750 lashes on charges he prescribed high doses of morphine to a Saudi princess, who eventually turned into a drug addict. Upon his appeal, the sentence was doubled to reach 15 years in prison and 1,500 lashes. Egypt then learned that a second Egyptian doctor in the same case was sentenced to 20 years and the same number of lashes.

“How can I breath or take a sip of water while my husband is being whipped in the middle of the street there?” Fatheyya Shehata, Arabi’s wife, said in tears on a private satellite channel this weekend. Shehata denied the allegations brought against her 53-year-old husband.

The incident has provoked rage across Egypt, reigniting questions about the laxity of the government in protecting Egyptian expatriates against the need for Saudi petrodollars. [Full post]

921 Shabola on Obama

The Arab world could ask for no cuddlier a spokesman than its most esteemed political philosopher and McDonald’s jingle-writer, Shabola.

Shabola, remember, was an early Obama supporter. But his thoughts on Obama’s victory now rhyme:

Bush, curse him, made us vomit and wasted us for years, but people think Obama will be Salah ud-Din.

Talk about high expectations… Saladin now. The self-appointed Voice of the Arab Street is equating the next U.S. president with Saladin. [More of Shabola’s thoughts on Obama, Hariri, and Sheikh Yassin here]

The reactions I’ve heard from guys in grocery stores and in cafes have been more muted, but still celebratory. People are just glad Bush is gone, and that the American people didn’t vote for four more years.

The day Obama takes office will be a fragile moment of opportunity for the United States in the Middle East. I guess my message to the new U.S. president would be: Please don’t waste it. It won’t come back again soon.

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