Summary in seconds: Egyptian media personalities attacking Islam, linking Islam to our backwardness, “religion” or “bad governance”? Who is responsible for our societal ills?
Last year1, a well-known Egyptian journalist2 cast doubt on the stories of “Isra’ and Mi’raj.”3 This reminded me of an earlier incident in which the same journalist mocked a pharmacist who was reading the Qur’an while working in his pharmacy in Egypt. Shortly afterward, the same journalist, while trying to defend his earlier attack on the pharmacist, said, “compare the number of new-titled-books that we publish and the number of new inventions that we patent every year, to the same numbers in any developed country.” This Egyptian journalist does not represent an isolated incidence. In fact, his views are shared by a significant number of famous Egyptian media personalities.
In my previous editorial article, “Is Islam More Than Just a Religion,” I mentioned that solving our problems depends on accurately diagnosing their causes. I then narrowed down the reason for our countries’ ills to a single diagnosis, “bad governance.” I added that “Islam, as a culture is our way out of the stagnation of our civilization.”
Rather than questioning the intentions of those who promote linking Islam with backwardness, I will only defend my diagnosis “bad governance.” I believe that without a proper diagnosis, trying to cure our sick civilization would be like trying to shoot a moving target in the dark.
Instead of directly defending Islam, I will list a few theoretical questions that will reveal the illogical reasoning of Islam denouncers:
- If there is a cause-effect relationship between Islam and our backwardness, then why are there advanced Muslim countries and backward Christian and Buddhist countries? And would our Muslim countries progress if they decided to follow another religion?
- If Islam and backwardness are closely linked, how can we explain the thriving civilization that our Muslim forefathers erected in the early days of Islam?
Imagine that “Egypt” was our mother and she was not feeling well. We took her to a doctor who noticed two signs for her illness: a decrease in the number of her annual publications and a drop in the figure of patents that she records every year. After assessing our mother’s (Egypt) condition, the doctor said she is suffering from a disease called “Islam”. Shortly afterward, the doctor prescribed his treatment regimen in two words:
“Get rid of Islam” and “replace it with another religion.”
The doctor then added: “Follow my treatment, literally, and your mother ‘Egypt’ will be able to issue new-titled-books and patent original novel inventions, like any other healthy nation.
The absurdity of such a diagnosis would shock any reasonable and sane person. The backwardness of our countries is not the disease, but rather a symptom of a deeper disease that hides behind its symptoms. The name of the disease is not “Islam,” but rather “bad governance.”
What would happen if we concluded that “bad governance” is the logical cause of our miseries, and we replaced it with “good governance”? The aim of “good governance” is to “provide its citizens with an environment that allows them to reach the maximum of their God given potentials”. Instead of wasting the state’s resources on the tripartite system of oppression; the military, police, and propaganda media machine.
A “good governance” will rearrange its priorities: it will invest in its citizens (especially in the fields of health care and education). “Good governance” will direct its billions to universities and research institutes led by professors who attained their positions through the merits of their scientific excellence. These professors and scientists will dedicate their lives to broaden the horizons of knowledge and will publish the results of their research and record the patents of their innovations.
Within a few years, our mother (Egypt) will recover and the symptoms of her sickness will disappear (symptoms like the lack of her publications and the deficiency of her scientific inventions). Sadly, these are the symptoms that our mother (Egypt) suffered and continue to suffer from during these dark years of “bad governance.”
References
1. Cairo TV-channel, “Hadith El-Kahirah” by Ibrahim Eissa on February 19, 2022
2. Ibrahim Eissa, an Egyptian Journalist, and a TV personality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibrahim_Eissa
3. Isra and Mi’raj, refers to a journey that the prophet Muhammad (570–632) took during a single night around the year 621. Muslims observe this event on the 27th day of the month of Rajab, the seventh month in the Islamic calendar. This event marks the night that Allah (God) took Mohammad, the prophet of Islam, on a journey from Mecca to Jerusalem and then to heaven.
* This article was previously posted on April, 2022 in my earlier blog “My Islam”. The article has been slightly modified to fit its current posting date.