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"Egypt the Motherland": give up Arabization
Unlikely to go anywhere, but interesting. Very interesting...
Scores of Egyptian intellectuals and vocational members formed a party called "Egypt the motherland" (Mesr al-Um) for dismantling Egypt from its Arab identity. Lawyer Mohsin Lutfi said that he will apply to the Parties affairs at the Shoura council after Eid al-Fitr for licensing the party. He explained "we are a party which says: we are Egyptians and not Arabs.. The Arabs are our friends and neighbors and we have common destiny.. but we are not Arabs."
However, there are in Egypt some 18 political parties with the majority are margined and some of them are frozen over differences among their leaders, but there is no one party among them that denies Egypt's Arabization or raises doubt on this issue despite the fact many of them call in its programs to revive the values of the ancient Egyptian civilizations. Lutfi, the nephew of the late liberal intellectual Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyed said "we are Egyptians speaking the Arabic language for historical reasons like the Franchophony in Africa which speaks French. But no one says he is French." Lutfi calls for reviving the Heoglyphic and Coptic languages and has been teaching scores of students the Heroglyphic language in his house since 10 years. He studied Heroglyphic language at the French Surrbornne university after he had graduated in 1948 from the law faculty, Fouad 1st university (the current Cairo university). He also studied at London's university for more than 3 years.
| Reclaiming their heritage? What an original idea... |
The Egyptian writer Jamal Badawi strongly criticized the idea of the new party in the Egyptian daily al-Wafd issued on Tuesday, saying "those of the Pharos trend do not care what form of government there is, rather what is of concern to them is to cancel the Arab era from Egypt's history."
He added they "are not brave to show off their hostility to Islam, and therefore they concentrate their arrows on Arabization, and put the Arabs in one bunch along with the foreign forces which occupied Egypt."
| Right. Go for their motives. If they realize they're not Arabs, they might decide they're not Islamists. And if they're not Islamists, they might even decide they're not Muslims... |
Lutfi said "the idea of implanting this party emerged when we saw in the talks of President Mubarak an inclination to the majority party which he presides over towards democracy permiting the foundation of new parties." One of the founders of the party, Talaat Radwan, said we will ask for "abrogating the word ( al-Arabyia ) from Egypt's name to become "The Republic of Egypt" instead of "the Arab republic of Egypt." In the 1970s the late Egyptian president Anwar al-Sadat abrogated the name of the United Arab republic launched by the late President Gamal Abdul Nasser for use on Egypt and Syria following their unity of 1958 and Egypt kept the name after the cessation. Radwan, a critic and story writer said relations with the Arabs will be economic and in the course of cooperation relations like any relations with any other people." He added "our call is separate from what has been provoked since years of the failure of the Arab nationalism project adopted by Abdul Nasser." He added that "relations with Israel will be on equal footing... Our principle is to have pride on the Egyptian nationality and our objective is to be a state preserving its national soil against any aggression and stands against any aggression on any country in the region. We are with the rights of the Palestinian people to liberate their homeland and establish own state and also with the right of the Iraqi people to liberate their soil."
Posted by: Fred Pruitt 2003-11-07 |
