The best way to know the self is feeling oneself at the moments of reckoning. The feeling of being alone, just with your senses, may lead you to think more consciously. More and more of such moments may sensitize ‘you towards you’, towards others. We become regular with introspection and retrospection. We get ‘the’ gradual connect to the higher self we may name Spirituality or God or just a Humane Conscious. We tend to get a rhythm again in life. We need to learn the art of being lonely in crowd while being part of the crowd. A multitude of loneliness in mosaic of relations! One needs to feel it severally, with conscience, before making it a way of life. One needs to live several such lonely moments. One needs to live severallyalone.

Thursday 4 July 2013

THE SPECTACULAR FALL OF MORSI: A REMARKABLY SWIFT REALIZATION FOR A NATION OF OVER 84 MILLION (I)

THE ARAB SPRING IS HERE TO STAY

On the expected line, the Egyptian military stepped in, deposed Mohammed Morsi, suspended the Egyptian Constitution and appointed an interim head of the country till the next elections are held.

Millions signed the petition demanding Morsi’s ouster. Millions gathered to protest. Millions shouted slogans of ‘no Morsi’. And millions celebrated in the iconic Tahrir Square and in Egypt when the Morsi’s rule came to an end.

With much less violence than the first Tahrir Square uprising! Spectacular!

This transition or the military coup as some say is still the step ahead in a positive direction in evolution of a multiparty democracy in the most populous Arab Nation.

Apart from the falling economy that Morsi failed to address, the other major complaint of the millions who protested against Morsi was that the government was engaging in ‘Brotherhoodization’ or ‘ikhwaninzation’ of the Egyptian society as an article on CNN says. (Muslim Brotherhood’s Arabic transliteration is al-Ikwān al-Muslimūn; ‘Ikhwan’ translates to ‘brothers’.)

Muslim Brotherhood is an influential organization with pan-Arab presence. It preaches and promotes exclusivity of Islamic values as the way of life and has been involved in violent activities to promote its cause. It doesn’t believe in secular democracy. The Brotherhood has been involved in political assassinations and has established militant Islamic organization like Hamas.

The movement was founded in Egypt in 1928. Due to its violent activities, it was banned in 1948. But the organization is still strong in Egypt and has been able to maintain its support base though every successive political establishment in Egypt has worked to suppress it effectively.

Its violent history, a narrow view on democratic values and emphasis on introducing a strict Islamic code as a way of life were worrying factors for the Egyptian thought leaders and for the global community when Morsi won a landslide victory last year to become the first democratically president of the nation.


And one year of Morsi’s rule has proven those worries correct. If Morsi’s victory was landslide, his fall is equally spectacular, too.

Some Arab nations are rich. Some are filthy rich. Many of the 22 Arab speaking nations are not so well-to-do. But almost of the Arab nations are bad places for free thinking souls believing in secular democratic credentials as a way of life.

Most of the Arab nations are not democracies. There are tyrannies. There are monarchies. Their rulers promote strict Islamic code as a way of life as religion helps them in keeping control over the masses. The there are nations torn by civil wars.

Though Egypt was not a democracy, but it was not even a hardliner Islamic state. Having a long ancient history, Egypt has been the cultural representative of the Arab world in the modern times and is one of the most diversified Arab world economies. The nation, though under the authoritarian rule of Hosni Mubarak for decades, has been in the mainstream of the global geopolitics. In modern times, the Egyptian politicians have been able to keep the state and the politics free from the Islamists and the religious institutions. And that reflects in the social weaving of the nation. And that is reflecting in the aspirations of the agitating nation.

The Wikipedia quotes from a U.S. Library of Congress study:

Many Muslims say that Egypt's governments have been secularist and even anti-religious since the early 1920s. Politically organized Muslims who seek to purge the country of its secular policies are referred to as "Islamists."

An article in the New York Times in the high-tide days of January 25 to February 10 protests writes:

Among Arab states, Egypt was the first to make a concerted effort to co-opt its intellectual class, and it has set the standard ever since. Muhammad Ali, who ruled during the first half of the 19th century, conscripted several generations of scholars to import scientific and military knowledge from Europe. These new experts also staffed government schools and edited official newspapers. A state-centered approach to culture persisted through the early part of last century and reached its apogee under the rule of Gamal Abdel-Nasser. Following the Free Officers’ Revolt of 1952, Nasser’s regime nationalized the press, the cinema and most publishing houses, establishing what one historian has termed “a virtual state monopoly on culture.” Mubarak exploited this monopoly for his own needs. During the 1990s, as Egyptian security forces fought a low-level war against Islamist groups in Upper Egypt, the regime did its best to recruit intellectuals to its side.

To continue..

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/