Hossam Badrawi Official Website
The “philosophy of the half” between the poet, writer and politician
Hossam Badrawi
Gibran said: Do not sit with half-lovers, do not make friends with half-friends, do not read for half-talented people, do not live half a life, do not die half death, do not choose half a solution, and do not stand in the middle of the truth. Don’t dream half a dream, and don’t relate to half hope. If you are satisfied, express your satisfaction, do not fake half satisfaction, and if you refuse.. Express your rejection, because half of the refusal is acceptance.. Half is a life you did not live, a word you did not say, a smile you postponed, a love you did not reach, a friendship you did not know ..half is what makes you weird. Half is to arrive and not arrive, to work and not to work, to be absent and to attend.. Half a road will not lead 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 created to live life, not to live half a life.
And I said: Are we ready to choose?! Are we ready for a cultural, social and political decision that not only serves to enlighten minds and changes the shape of the country’s future and suits human development, but rather is its maker?
Or do we want half open and half closed..!.
Do we want a strong private sector that creates job opportunities, or do we want a public sector controlled by the state and its agencies, or half of that and half of that selectively according to circumstances?
Do we want to get rid of poverty and be rich, or do we want equality in poverty because we are in the middle?
Do we want a strong civil society and sustainable civil associations, that supports and develops, or do we deceive you about laws that kill it in its cradle and prevent it under the pretext of bureaucracy sometimes and security at other times?
We are in the middle, we want and we don’t..Unfortunately, what we want changes according to events, as reactions, not as initiatives.
Are we a modern civil state or a reactionary religious state? Everything that happens in front of me says that we are in the middle. We are neither a religious state in its full sense nor a civil state in its full meaning. On the pretext that he is divine, while defending and believing in hadiths based on the philosophy of ISIS, the Taliban and their ilk in some of our educational books, and in many of our television programs.
In half, we get religious control over politics without declaring it, and we are issued more than a million official fatwas annually that interfere in the details of every citizen’s life, and the same in television programs that host all the elders of the new generation to ban and analyze every act and opinion.
We proclaim citizenship and our actions include a ridiculous distinction between citizens who differ in religion, and we do not accept anyone who dares to say otherwise, we are in the middle.
We work days and nights, form committees, through the times to come out to the world with strategies that preserve human rights, and we speak to the world in one way and deal with each other in another way, so we do not protect women from violating their inheritance rights, and their full testimony is not accepted in some cases, and we still justify beating her from the husband as long as it is relentless despite We are in a time other than time, and a life other than what it was.
We claim to preserve human rights and adhere to citizenship in the constitution, and we do not dare to remove the religion field from the identity card to confirm that the citizen’s identity is linked to religion and not only to the homeland.
We claim to protect freedoms, and we allow pre-trial detention for years and without investigations worthy of custody of the accused, and we all know that pre-trial detention has become a punishment in itself that is controlled by the executive authority with formal restrictions.
All of them are examples of a reality that can be modified with the stroke of a pen, and quickly, and the example is before us in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which decided to close the factory of extremism and Wahhabism and the groups for the promotion of virtue that have drawn the kingdom’s reactionary character over the years.
I had read in an interview with the Crown Prince of the Kingdom in the Washington Post for months, and he admitted that all this extremism and its dissemination were based on intelligence agreements in the early seventies with the West and that it was a mistake on the part of the rulers.
Egypt must be bigger and better able to get out of this predicament, and it has an opportunity.
Gentlemen, whoever stands in the middle does not reach any finish line and does not achieve a life. Let’s set our goals and move towards them and not stop in the half.
Are we a security state or a modern civil state, as the constitution says! We are in half. Our words are civil, and the truth of our actions is an unequivocal security state. And I say, while I am responsible for my words, that there is an impression in society that we are all being watched.. In any dialogue, I find people turning away phones and turning them off for fear of speaking freely for fear of censorship. I am almost certain that this is not true, but in politics the impression becomes real even if it has no proof.. And how many collapses have occurred in countries, as a result of reducing the size of society’s negative impressions on unreal things, but they are proven in the conscience as if they are the truth (philosophy of generation wars the fourth).
Do we really respect freedom of expression, or do we only respect freedom of expression if it supports the regime, and we do not respect it if it opposes it, but rather prevent it? We are in the middle.
But from another contradictory approach, there is a philosophy in defense of the half that destroys everything I started with my speech, inspired by a poem by Al-Akkad in defense of Satan. The professor says: The true half is the point of balance in the universe and in man. A half is the meeting of two identical/complementary or opposite parts. Half is the meeting of opposing ideas and agreement occurs.
The half may be the pomegranate of the scale by which justice is achieved, for example.
I say:
The real effort now is not only in deciding to stop swinging on either side of the midpoint, but in devising a workable system in Egypt, based on enlightenment and the use of reason.
There may be a useful, non-swinging half in which we obtain the benefits of absolute rule in shortening a lot of time in overcoming obstacles to development and excluding from it the damages of dictatorship in the continuation of the rule without deliberation of power. A system in which we avoid the harms of democracy in following the herd of mobs and demagogues because they are a numerical majority that might make a bad choice, and we get the desired development and happiness from everyone’s participation. The challenge is to choose from this middle with a cultural and political craftsmanship and economically informed. The suffering of the peoples has been proven under fully communist, fully capitalist, fully dictatorial, fully tribal, fully monarchy, as well as semi-random systems.
I repeat once again that without a complete application of justice and a scientific revolution in the law enforcement apparatus, and I mean the police apparatus (which was a major cause of the collapse of the previous regime despite its strength and violence), and without human development in terms of education, media and culture, it is difficult to achieve a balance of half, and we return to its damages, as Gibran says We do not reach any goal.
Freedom without law becomes chaos, and the argument of fear of chaos leads to support for the continuation of security rule, which is a greater danger no matter how effective it appears in a snapshot of history.
As for transparency and accountability, they are a path about which there is no real disagreement, not words, but the challenge is: Who represents the people in accountability in light of poverty, ignorance, and the spread of strict reactionary thought that does not accept accountability in the first place?
It is necessary to find a new formula that respects the balance of power, but does not waste the rules of the modern civil state, and this is what society should strive for, and write about it positively without sensitivity or fear.
(Basically inspired by a poem by Gibran Khalil Gibran on the Half).
To read the article from Al-Masry Al-Youm
https://www.almasryalyoum.com/news/details/2492976
