{"id":13958,"date":"2026-07-08T20:59:27","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T18:59:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hossambadrawi.com\/en\/%d8%ad%d9%8a%d9%86-%d8%aa%d8%ad%d8%a7%d9%83%d9%85-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%83%d8%a7%d9%85%d9%8a%d8%b1%d8%a7-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b2%d9%85%d9%86-%d9%81%d9%84%d8%b3%d9%81%d8%a9-%d8%a7%d9%84%da%a4%d8%a7%d8%b1\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T21:16:57","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T19:16:57","slug":"when-the-camera-puts-time-on-trial-the-philosophy-of-var-and-the-crisis-of-retroactive-justice-by-hossam-badrawi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hossambadrawi.com\/en\/when-the-camera-puts-time-on-trial-the-philosophy-of-var-and-the-crisis-of-retroactive-justice-by-hossam-badrawi\/","title":{"rendered":"When the Camera Puts Time on Trial: The Philosophy of VAR and the Crisis of Retroactive Justice By Hossam Badrawi"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

The referee blew the whistle.<\/p>\n

The Egyptian supporters erupted in celebration\u2014a moment of joy that echoed far beyond the stadium. It was a beautifully crafted goal, born from five consecutive touches that began deep inside Egypt’s own half, flowed through a sequence of precise passes, and ended with the ball resting in the back of the net.<\/p>\n

For an instant, football was everything it was meant to be.<\/p>\n

Then everything stopped.<\/p>\n

The referee walked to the monitor, reviewed the footage for several minutes, and disallowed the goal.<\/p>\n

The reason? An alleged foul\u2014not at the moment of the goal itself, but five phases of play earlier, in another area of the field. It was an incident that the on-field referee had not judged to be a foul at the time, and one that not even the player allegedly fouled had protested.<\/p>\n

At that point, the sporting event ended.<\/p>\n

The philosophical question began.<\/p>\n

First: Who Determines the Boundaries of Time?<\/h2>\n

The Laws of the Game permit the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) to review the beginning of the attacking phase of play<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

But who decides where an attack begins and where continuity ends?<\/p>\n

That boundary is not an ethical principle rooted in justice itself. It is an operational rule established by refereeing authorities.<\/p>\n

The distinction matters.<\/p>\n

An ethical principle arises from the very idea of justice.<\/p>\n

A procedural rule is a human convention\u2014one that may be expanded or narrowed whenever circumstances permit.<\/p>\n

If it is legitimate to go back five phases of play, why not ten?<\/p>\n

Why not to the opening whistle\u2014or, as football fans jokingly say, to “yesterday”?<\/p>\n

Once no clear philosophical boundary exists for how far back review may extend, the right to review risks becoming authority without limits\u2014invoked when desired and ignored when inconvenient.<\/p>\n

Second: The Human Eye Versus the Machine Eye<\/h2>\n

The referee on the field witnessed the incident in real time.<\/p>\n

He experienced its rhythm, pace, intensity, and context.<\/p>\n

He judged that no foul had occurred.<\/p>\n

Neither did the players themselves object, despite having the strongest incentive to do so.<\/p>\n

The official inside the VAR booth sees something entirely different.<\/p>\n

The action is frozen.<\/p>\n

Magnified.<\/p>\n

Removed from its living temporal context.<\/p>\n

This revives an ancient Platonic question in modern form:<\/p>\n

Does truth reside in the event itself\u2014or in the image through which we choose to reconstruct it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

When we grant delayed images greater authority than immediate human judgment, we do not necessarily move closer to truth.<\/p>\n

We simply replace one version of reality with another, while convincing ourselves that magnification is the same as certainty.<\/p>\n

Third: The Relativity of Perspective<\/h2>\n

A camera does not lie.<\/p>\n

But neither does it tell the whole truth.<\/p>\n

Every camera records only one angle out of infinitely many possible perspectives.<\/p>\n

Each angle carries its own interpretation.<\/p>\n

What appears to be a clear stamp from one viewpoint may seem like an ordinary collision from another.<\/p>\n

When we grant such partial images the status of absolute technological neutrality, we commit an epistemological mistake.<\/p>\n

We confuse the neutrality of the measuring instrument with the neutrality of the measurement itself.<\/p>\n

This reflects a much broader dilemma that extends far beyond football.<\/p>\n

Every era believes that its newest tool\u2014the microscope, the camera, or today artificial intelligence\u2014has finally solved the problem of truth.<\/p>\n

Yet every era eventually discovers that the tool has not eliminated human interpretation.<\/p>\n

It has merely transferred it from the naked eye to the hand that controls the lens.<\/p>\n

Fourth: The Double Standard<\/h2>\n

The greatest danger in incidents such as these is not the existence of technology.<\/p>\n

It is the inconsistency with which it is applied.<\/p>\n

When one incident is examined frame by frame to overturn a goal while another, equally controversial\u2014or even more obvious\u2014is never reviewed, technology ceases to function as an instrument of justice.<\/p>\n

Instead, it becomes a mask behind which bias may hide.<\/p>\n

The machine itself may be impartial.<\/p>\n

The human being deciding when to activate it is not necessarily so.<\/p>\n

Fifth: When Technology Frees the Innocent<\/h2>\n

There is another example of this dilemma\u2014far more serious than anything that occurs on a football field\u2014which helps illuminate the limits of retroactive justice.<\/p>\n

In the United States, dozens of prisoners have been exonerated after spending twenty or even thirty years behind bars, once DNA analysis\u2014technology unavailable at the time of their original trials\u2014proved that convictions once considered certain had been wrong.<\/p>\n

At first glance, the two situations appear remarkably similar.<\/p>\n

A new source of knowledge reopens an apparently settled judgment and overturns it retroactively.<\/p>\n

Yet closer examination reveals fundamental differences.<\/p>\n

First, the direction of justice is reversed.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In DNA cases, the review corrects an injustice committed against an innocent person and restores freedom that was wrongly taken away.<\/p>\n

In football, VAR often does the opposite.<\/p>\n

It removes a completed moment of collective joy and replaces it with disappointment.<\/p>\n

There, technology liberates.<\/p>\n

Here, it annuls.<\/p>\n

Second, the legal process is carefully constrained.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A criminal conviction is not reopened automatically or without limits.<\/p>\n

A formal request must be made.<\/p>\n

Evidence is examined before an independent judge.<\/p>\n

Strict legal standards apply.<\/p>\n

The opposing side has every opportunity to respond.<\/p>\n

VAR operates very differently.<\/p>\n

The decision is immediate.<\/p>\n

Unilateral.<\/p>\n

There is no adversarial hearing.<\/p>\n

No opportunity for rebuttal.<\/p>\n

A judgment reached within minutes replaces one that was made in the living flow of the game.<\/p>\n

Third, time itself cannot be restored.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In both situations, the passage of time becomes part of the injustice\u2014or the joy.<\/p>\n

Twenty years of a person’s life cannot be returned.<\/p>\n

Nor can the spontaneous emotional experience of a stadium celebrating a goal ever be recreated, even if the decision is later reversed.<\/p>\n

Correction is possible.<\/p>\n

Time is not.<\/p>\n

This reveals the deeper question uniting both examples:<\/p>\n

Is truth something we discover later, requiring us to correct the past accordingly? Or does a judgment rendered in its own living moment possess procedural legitimacy that should only be overturned under truly exceptional circumstances?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Modern legal systems answer this question with extraordinary caution.<\/p>\n

Criminal convictions may be overturned only under rigorous standards because human freedom is irreplaceable.<\/p>\n

Football, by contrast, has embraced a far more flexible standard.<\/p>\n

Its temporal boundaries remain ambiguous.<\/p>\n

Its review procedures lack genuine procedural balance.<\/p>\n

Yet the loss it sometimes produces is also irretrievable\u2014a unique collective experience that can never be recreated.<\/p>\n

The real paradox, therefore, is not that review exists.<\/p>\n

It is that no coherent philosophy governs when<\/strong> review should occur, who<\/strong> may initiate it, how far back<\/strong> it may reach, or what standard of proof<\/strong> justifies overturning what had already been accepted.<\/p>\n

Without such a philosophy, every instrument of justice\u2014whether a camera or a forensic laboratory\u2014risks becoming authority without limits, employed when convenient and ignored when it is not.<\/p>\n

Beyond the Football Pitch<\/h2>\n

This is not merely a football controversy.<\/p>\n

It is a metaphor for an entire age.<\/p>\n

An age in which the justice of the living moment<\/strong>\u2014with its context, witnesses, and human judgment\u2014is increasingly replaced by the justice of the archive<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

A world of endless review, with no clear temporal limits, forever capable of returning to the past, overturning settled events, and rewriting history from a perspective selected after the fact rather than from the fullness of the moment itself.<\/p>\n

We see the same phenomenon in courts of law, in politics, and in the collective memory of nations.<\/p>\n

Whoever controls the right to “rewind the tape”\u2014and decides where the recording begins and where it ends\u2014ultimately exercises greater authority than the event itself.<\/p>\n

The question worth asking, then, is not simply:<\/p>\n

Did the referee make a mistake?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is this:<\/p>\n

Who guards the limits of the authority that claims to judge the truth, when truth itself can always be recut from an angle chosen by someone else?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta hosted a football match that evening.<\/p>\n

Without intending to, it also posed one of the most enduring questions in the philosophy of justice\u2014a question that no final whistle can ever truly settle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  The referee blew the whistle. The Egyptian supporters erupted in celebration\u2014a moment of joy that echoed far beyond the stadium. It was a beautifully crafted goal, born from five consecutive touches that began deep inside Egypt’s own half, flowed through a sequence of precise passes, and ended with the ball resting in the back …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13967,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[280,292,103,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2026-collective-activities-articles","category-al-shorouk-news","category-all-articles","category-articles-by-dr-badrawi"],"yoast_head":"\nWhen the Camera Puts Time on Trial: The Philosophy of VAR and the Crisis of Retroactive Justice By Hossam Badrawi - Dr. Hossam Badrawi<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"\u0627\u0644\u0639\u064e\u0644\u0645\u0627\u0646\u064a\u0629 \u0623\u0648 \u0627\u0644\u0639\u0627\u0644\u064e\u0645\u0627\u0646\u064a\u0629 \u0623\u0648 \u0627\u0644\u062f\u0646\u064a\u0648\u064a\u0629 \u0623\u0648 \u0627\u0644\u0639\u0650\u0644\u0645\u0627\u0646\u064a\u0629 \u0647\u064a \u0627\u0644\u0645\u0628\u062f\u0623 \u0627\u0644\u0642\u0627\u0626\u0645 \u0639\u0644\u0649 \u0641\u0635\u0644\u0650 \u0627\u0644\u062d\u0643\u0648\u0645\u0629 \u0648\u0645\u0624\u0633\u0633\u0627\u062a\u0647\u0627 \u0648\u0627\u0644\u0633\u0651\u0644\u0637\u0629 \u0627\u0644\u0633\u0651\u064a\u0627\u0633\u064a\u0651\u0629 \u0639\u0646 \u0627\u0644\u0633\u0651\u0644\u0637\u0629 \u0627\u0644\u062f\u0651\u064a\u0646\u064a\u0651\u0629 \u0623\u0648 \u0627\u0644\u0634\u0651\u062e\u0635\u064a\u0651\u0627\u062a \u0627\u0644\u062f\u0651\u064a\u0646\u064a\u0651\u0629\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hossambadrawi.com\/en\/when-the-camera-puts-time-on-trial-the-philosophy-of-var-and-the-crisis-of-retroactive-justice-by-hossam-badrawi\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"When the Camera Puts Time on Trial: The Philosophy of VAR and the Crisis of Retroactive Justice By Hossam Badrawi - 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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. 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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","sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/hossambadrawi\/","https:\/\/x.com\/HossamBadrawi"]}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hossambadrawi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hossambadrawi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hossambadrawi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hossambadrawi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hossambadrawi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13958"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hossambadrawi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13972,"href":"https:\/\/www.hossambadrawi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13958\/revisions\/13972"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hossambadrawi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hossambadrawi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hossambadrawi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hossambadrawi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}