This time I decided to celebrate the New Year's Eve in a way I had not done for several years: I had t be among family members and in a big happy crowd with a good DJ. And we had a great deal of fun. I really needed to spiritually find the energy surrounding good thoughts and inspiration to get rid of the dramatic economic and social forecasts for my country and the vulnerable parts of the world.
Only to wake up the next day and hear the bad news about the Coptic Christian church being bombed in Egypt! Why? Why, did I ask myself, is there so much hatred and cruelty?
Once upon a time....
Cairo, in fact, al-Qahira, as it was first denominated by Ismaili Muslims, my spiritual leader's ancestors, founded it 909 a.C., was the capital of a big, flourishing empire. It was the place of a pluralistic outlook and practices, as their governors, doctors in law, jurists, scientists, vizirs, were all of various faiths, ranging from Jews, to Christians, to Muslims, Shia and Sunni, and of no faith at all.
Al-Azhar-the first major university in the world was founded by the Ismaili caliph and Imam, and its library was the bigger in the world. People of all walks of life could enter, read, and find ink and papyrus to take the notes they wished. Men and women participated in the assemblies of learning and teaching.
Today's Cairo
Samira and Jenny were my friends and colleagues at the American University of Cairo. They were both children of Muslim and Christian parents, one of them being Egyptian and the other Spanish and British. I myself, as a Shia Muslim tried praying with some Sunni girls. Unfonately, I was mistaken as a "new convert" - my religious practices did not match theirs; but this is Islam: a non-monolithic reality, and a very diverse set of interpretations. This is why tolerance and respect for otherness is grounded in this faith.
Walking in Cairo brought memoirs of my readings of the Fatimid times, while looking at the religious and cultural diversity, and the harmonious architecture of religious places of worship in various corners and places in Cairo and while descending the Nile till Asswan.
Clearly today's Cairo has changed: it is much poorer, materially, culturally and sadly, intellectually as well. The Friday street sermons, the male aggressive prostitution to respond to western women exotic expectations for the dark desert skin, the mimetism and dogmatic views regarding faith and practices, has gone.
It has also been gone from this side of the world as well. My students did not read or researched because they 'lacked the time', but really wanted to have an academic degree!
From Enlightenment to Human fragmentation
The world is changing and it will inevitably continue to change. I wish in a evolutionary way. However, the more I wish to be optimistic about it, the less I envisage progress, in particular as far as human life and its meaning is concerned. Humanism, Individualism, rationalism, Enlightenment, that which Europe has offered the world seems to be lost in the construction of myto-historical peoples and cultures, which have preferred fragmentation and opposition with the creation of nation-states; conflict and destruction,; superficial luxury, and greed from the alienated blood and sweat of the other.
Freedom of expression... to what extent?
I am for freedom of expression of all kinds. What I do not accept is that the freedom of some is equivalent to the making of other's life as real hell. What happened in the Coptic Christian Church in Egipt was a massacre; possibly some sort of hell, on a day that I wished was of good hope for humanity.
Clique para ver a versão portuguesa (portuguese version)
*A Salaam means peace
