زين يوسف
تصوير: محمود رؤوف
On the fifth day of the activities of the Iraq International Book Fair, the seminar hall was crowded with a large number of visitors to the fair to attend a seminar with the public by the Egyptian writer and journalist Ibrahim Issa, which was moderated by the journalist Imad Al-Khafaji.
At the beginning of the session, the question was about the general scene of the media in the Arab national, which Issa answered, saying, “Perhaps the Arab position and its relationship with the media summarizes this position, there was a seminar on press freedom in the Arab world and attended by Thomas Friedman, the famous American writer, and he talked about the difference between the Arab writer and the American writer, and he said that the American writer is his problem while writing an opinion article in the morning, does he write that the American president is a little intelligent and inexperienced, or impulsive decision, or a failure in politics? While the Arab writer is his problem while writing an opinion article whether he will be imprisoned, dismissed or killed, when you think about Arab society, you will find that the options are not far from the last quarter of a century, we are facing a very big problem, which is that freedom of expression is not only eroded at the level of power, but eroded at the level of societies, the restriction does not remain at the level of power or from the ruling party, but there are other restrictions set by religious currents, and developed by traditional society and social media, the idea that you produce has become A free idea and a different opinion is fraught with greater risks than in years ago, previously the opponent was clear, now there is a diversification of sources of threat.
Talking about the fears, whether they are from the authority more or from the parties outside the law and authority, Issa said, “It may be an exaggeration to say that you are not afraid, but let me exaggerate and say that I am not afraid, the main task for me is to say my opinion and worry about the consequences of opinions, but I am not afraid.”
He added that “he always believes that we live in Arab society and not in Swiss or Swedish society, when you live in a society you have to bear the consequences of this society, and whoever wants to say different opinions and try to change in his country and then resents the reaction is wrong.”
Issa continued, “I did not say that Mohamed Morsi is president, and throughout the year in which he took power, I did not say President Mohamed Morsi, but Dr. Mohamed Morsi, and this is a period of struggle in the first row in society in the face of destruction and hell called the religious current, the rule of the group and the gang, I am not saying that there is freedom, but there was courage, freedom means that you are legally protected, but in the period of the Brotherhood I used to go home and do not know when I will be arrested or killed.”
And the position of Ibrahim Issa of Morsi’s receipt of the presidency, he spoke, saying, “My position was in advance to reject Morsi, this is a religious terrorist group, a non-national group, does not recognize the homeland, a group that wants to restore the caliphate and the religious state, is against the concepts of the modern state, is a group that believes in the religious state, the Malaysian Muslim is closer to Morsi and the Brotherhood than the Egyptian Christian, so I do not recognize his election and do not recognize his legitimacy and resist this legitimacy and these fraudulent elections, with my conviction that the last ten years after the so-called Arab Spring and the existence of The current of political Islam, the presence of religious slogans, or the presence of religious parties within any political process means ending the legitimacy of democracy, and any consequences of democracy with religious or sectarian parties, as in Iraq and Lebanon, for example, all of this clearly calls for the withdrawal of the character of democracy.”
In a question from the moderator about the nation-state and that it once exceeded the borders of the homeland and went to fight elsewhere, he said, “Let’s say that Arab nationalism was not at the level of German nationalism or Italian fascists, but I do not agree with the existence of nationalism in the first place, and this is one of Nasser’s historical and catastrophic mistakes is going to fight in Yemen, using big ideas to claim that you are big, what happens in the Arab scene all the time is tyranny. Tyranny with its nationalist Saddamist or Nasserist face, but with differences, certainly there are differences in efficiency and quality, but not differences in sex between tyrannical people of this kind.”
On finding a solution to the problems in the Arab world, he said, “There is no consensus on diagnosing the problem, in the sense of the current situation when we talk about the backwardness of a society or its decline in the ladder of civilization, the prevailing diagnosis is that we are backward like this because we have moved away from our religion, but in fact we have a black triangle that surrounds us all, the first side is that the past was great, wonderful, enormous, beautiful, dazzling, the second side is that the past, which was beautiful and great, must return, the third side is that the wonderful and dazzling past must To return, even by force, even with weapons, this is the triangle of ISIS, and it is the perception that the world of the Islamic State and the Caliphate was an ideal world and that part of it is ignored as inhuman and a civilization based on blood and murder like all civilizations.”
He added that “the political tyrant will resort 100% to fraud, but the religious tyrant who forgerizes awareness and trades in paradise and I gave him my vote, you as a person with justice and with the idea of human civilization and accept the process of fraud, everyone who believes that democracy alone as tools capable of reviving society without being preceded by confronting religious tyranny, we want religious reform and religious renewal and necessarily lead to political reform.”
Moving to the literary side of Ibrahim Issa asked one of the attendees about the novel “Bullet in the head”, and how Issa was subjected to a strong campaign because of that novel Issa replied, “The novel may have raised all this controversy because it is about a real incident, about an operation that took place in 1977, the kidnapping of Sheikh Golden and was the Sheikh of endowments at the time by a group called the Muslim Group, was one of the first terrorist groups that founded Islamic terrorism in Egypt and the media was called the Takfir and Hijra Group, kidnapped Sheikh Al-Dhahabi for two days and then assassinated him, the novel revolves around this incident with all the details of the Islamic terrorism industry under the care and patronage of the Sadat state.”