They are all the same, all these different people...

Lately I've been asked by friends in both Egypt and the Netherlands what I think about what's happening in the Islamic world. And I am commenting a lot on the same topic when I see postings on the Internet about excesses in the Islamic world.

First of all, all these different people are all the same and I probably are one of them. What I mean is that they are all generalizing 'other people'. I think I do the same, but I make it an effort not to do so.

Recently there is a lot to do about Islamism again. And what I feel is that this is primarily to do with that in Islamic countries some weird shit is happening. US embassies being attacked, 10 year old girls shot in the head because they want an education and stuff like that. The point is that these excesses are all happening in Islamic countries and by whack-jobs that are easily mistaken for human beings. Well actually in many cases they are referred to as Muslim extremists and the media play a big part in this.

I've blogged before about the media and that I'm not really impressed by their fact-checking. But more importantly they're very much only concentrating on the shit that's happening and love to refrain from anything that's positive about what the general public considers bad. In western countries the baddies are Muslims, here in the region, the baddies are westernes. Americans are the worst. Really.

The interesting part is that more and more you see that especially the media treat whole groups as one person. Generalizing the whole group to the extent that what one members says or does is said or done by every member. Preferably the bad stuff, because bad stuff sells commercials, gets the laughs when you sarcastically criticizes it.

Sometime it really pisses me off that this happens. Why? Because often this results in more intolerance, misunderstanding and miscommunication.
Nowadays I have to say that my friends here in Egypt are more tolerant towards other ideas and beliefs than my friends in the Netherlands. Which I think has everything to do with the massive amount of information we're used to get in the Netherlands and the idea that it is impartial, to an extent and fairly accurate. Although there is the option to get yourself well informed, you have to do it yourself in Holland. And we don't have time to do so it seems.
Here in Egypt, it's different all together. Information is limited and definitely not impartial at all, but this is known and most of my friends here are really taking an effort in getting their information from different sources, making it more impartial than we in the west do, nowadays.

Let's move on to an example; you must have heard about this Pakistani girl Malala who was shot in the head by the Taliban in Pakistan just a few days ago. This girl is about 10 years old and a symbol of anti-Taliban in her country and the rest of the world. She was shot in the head because she is fighting for the right of girls in Pakistan to receive proper education. I'm sorry to say but I consider the person or persons involved to be total whack-jobs. This is just something you don't do. You don't shoot girls in the head, for any reason.

What I'm saying is not, I repeat: NOT, that this person's motives are whack, I'm saying he was a whack-job.

But that's besides the point of this post. The point of this post is that every time something excessive happens in an Islamic country, there are everywhere in the media stories about it that fuel the public paranoia against Muslims, or that further numb the public's ability to make up it's own mind. A friend of mine made me aware of a text on a website that he quoted which literally translates into; Shooting a 10 year old in the head is fine, but offending a certain religion is the worst. Of course this is referring to the recent events of the shooting and the anti-Islam movie posted on YouTube.
The sad part in this is that the Mullahs in Pakistan publicly opposed the actions of the Taliban and stated that girls have as much the right for education as boys.
The issue here is that media are positioning the Taliban as a religious bunch of people first and terrorists second. I would argue that a large amount of members of the Taliban are not the religious fanatics media would like us to believe, but are merely survivalists that have no alternative. But they are still terrorists.


Another example is about a previous post I did.



But back to Egypt, as this is my blog about living in Egypt and not about my frustrations with media.
So what about Egypt in all of this? How does Egypt fit into all of this. Well that is twofold.

Firstly, as my friends outside of Egypt are wondering how I'm still alive in this revolutionary country, my friends in Egypt are asking me how the people in Holland are looking at the developments in Egypt. Of course they only know what they see on tv and read on the Internet. And they're seeing that vast amounts of tourists are no longer flying into Sharm el-Sheikh and Hurghada. Their view on westerners are also based on what the media are saying and showing. Feeling that tourists are staying away because of the increasing power of the Muslim Brotherhood by means of the new president. Some of my friends and colleagues here feel that the western world is terrified of everything that's Islamic.
It's perfectly human to generalize, it makes the world easier to understand.

Secondly, I said Egypt's fit into this post is twofold, of course is that Egypt is not only a predominantly Islamic country, but there is also a vast amount of Coptic Christians in Egypt and their neighbor is Israel, which is predominantly Jewish. They're all living side by side with almost no quarrels between them. Yes there are incidents, most of the, rather bloody I must say. Lets forget about the incidents in the Sinai. These are not religious in nature, I'm sure. Lets focus on the issues between Muslims and Christians. The massacres in churches. Again, these are beyond my comprehension, but because they happen doesn't mean that entering a church in Cairo will get you killed. In fact, a friend of a friend of mine is a Muslim and he's an expert in Cairo's religious history. He organizes for those who're interested guided tours through Cairo focussing on mosques or churches. And his audience is a mixture of Muslims, Christians and other religions. And I have witnessed with my own eyes that a group of Muslims entered a Coptic church without starting to shoot the people inside, they didn't even had C4 in a belt around their body. A complete lack of violence. I was amazed... Not really.

One of the things that I noticed here in Cairo is that every time an incident of religious nature happened in Egypt, the religious authorities publicly condemned the incident, stating that the wackos are not at all acting on religious grounds are mislead by the idea that they would enter paradise. And this usually wasn't a marketing act towards other countries and media, but a real manner to 'teaching' the public in Egypt that these actions are plain wrong. This I hardly ever see in the Netherlands for example.

Hmmm, while reading this post again, I feel that it has become more of a rant than a cohesive story. Probably because I felt more like ranting about people's ignorance than I felt about posting about some weird stuff I experienced in Cairo. That I'll leave for my next post.

Iwan

Pretty sure the Koran doesn' say...

...That you should violently kill everybody who says something about the Prophet you don't like hearing.

Okay, if you don't know what I'm referring to; it's nice to see you crawled from under your rock. Let me give you a little rundown. Recently some people from the US made this really low quality movie about the prophet Mohamed. Portraying him as a killer, rapist, child mollester and every other kind of villain you can think of. I have to admit, I haven't seen the movie myself, but on the news they showed some clips. And boy, is this one badly made movie. It was published on YouTube.
There's been a lot of commotion about the movie, nobody knew who made it, no motive for as why it was made. And I am wondering why these actors would actually want to be in such an extremely badly produced piece of (f)art.
There were all kinds of rumors ranging from the conspirational "Muslim extremists made it to evoke violent actions in the US" to "Some kids wanted to make some prank and get as many hits on YouTube to make a lot of ad-words money". As it seems to turn out, some nutcase who was denied any internet activity in the past made the movie and his motives are still unclear, as far as I know.
Needles to say that all over the world there were violent uprisings of Muslims, roaming the streets killing everybody who even remotely looked American. Or so CNN and the likes would like you to believe.

Okay, first of all I am completely convinced that there has been a significant amount of Muslims who felt offended by the way their religious icon was portrayed. Pretty much the same way Christians were offended by the Hollywood blockbuster "The Last Temptation of Christ" and recently there is a controversy about Paul Verhoeven's initiative to turn his biography on Jesus Christ into a biopic. I think you agree with me that it makes perfect sense that people find it offending when their religion and religious icons are ridiculed.
There's always freedom of speach and freedom of press as well. And when you're opinion is that some icon is a whack-job, you have the freedom to express this opinion. When you state something as a fact, you should be able to substantiate this as well, IMHO.

Where was I going? Oh yes, Muslims killing all Americans because an American made a movie about the prophet Mohamed being a villain. First thing that springs to mind is what about Americans that are Muslim? You see, there is a very distinct group of Muslims that you can depict as Muslim by just looking at them. And this group was not on display in the clips on the news about people violently attacking US embassies all over the world. There were also no interviews with members of these mobs to ask them if they were devoted Muslims. So no way in telling these violent people were Muslim at all. Thank you international press to check your facts.

Ah, you see, I'm in Cairo and on TV there were riots in front of American buildings and I live close to a large compound with only Americans I have let to believe. So of course I was fearing for my life. I could be violently killed any moment. To prevent this, I started speaking English with a thick Dutch accent. Pro-actively taking away any idea that I am American. My survival instinct kicked in and I started mimicking the way Egyptians walk and behave in the streets. Say 'jani' every other word,
gesturing with my hands all the time and act like a jerk while in a car and extremely friendly and considered while not in a car. Then I realized, Cairo is a city of 20 million population, on the news there where maybe 200 riotters. Take any Dutch footbal (soccer) match and you'll have about
10,000 fans out of which 500 will start riotting and attacking the fans of the other team when one of them says something bad about the opposing team's star player. Just to put stuff in perspective. And these people are clearly football fans as they are wearing team colors.

But just to be sure, I went onto the streets wearing orange clothes, the Dutch flag as a cape and using my Dutch accent big time when speaking and I asked my Muslim friends whether or not they were going on a killing spree in the night when they were not praying or smoking shisha because that is
what Muslims do when you offend the Prophet because it's what the Koran says you have to do as a devoted Muslim. Guess what, it's not in the Koran. Yup, I was as surprised as you are right now. So I asked these same friends of mine, with less of a Dutch accept, dropping my cape, why these mobs were on the streets of Cairo killing every Westerner crossing their paths. Their answer; these are most likely ignorant under privileged men and women that are considering the West as the reason for their misery and now have a reason to express their grudge. They have no clue as to who to address in the first place but now they can with the excuse of that YouTube movie go on a violent parade through Cairo.
Huh? You didn't mention Muslim or Islam at all? I asked. Nope, that most likely has nothing to do with it. Maybe they're all Muslim, but about 85% of the Egyptians is Muslim.
Aha, just like football hooligans are mainly Christians, their violent acts during the matches have nothing to do with all the cursing that comes with the match. Interesting.

You see, the point is that it's so easy to just generalize and the media help us in this. Not all Americans are Islamofobes or think that Mohamed is a villain, I would dare to say that the majority doesn't and is quite the opposite. Not all Muslims are violent rioters that go and kill everybody as soon as you say something bad about their religious icons. Actually again I would dare to say that the majority is quite the opposite.
And because somebody belongs to a specific group, their actions are defined by this group. Typically most people belong to different groups, demographics. In many cases media are not taking their responsibility to inform the public correctly, they're always biased and violence, just like sex, sells. A public that is in fear wants to stay informed and the media will have a larger public. The biggest downside to this is that we, as the public, are not enticed to learn and understand more about 'the others', instead we fear them, want to stay away from them. Want to make them stay away from us. And in a day and age where information has no boundaries anymore and is there in abundance, it is even more important that we want to learn and understand more about each other, only then we can live side by side in relative harmony. After all we are all humans, predators and killers by nature. We only started collecting later in time.

I hope you agree with me that we should try to love one another, it is so easy to hate each other. Let's challenge ourselves, shall we.

Iwan

How I found out my driver is NOT a serial killer, a true story

Okay, let me just start with that the names have been changed to protect the innocent. But than again, I can change the names but chances are that I'll be incriminating the innocent, or that the names are not changed at all. And let me also confirm that everything I post in my blogs has either happened for real or I've been really told that something happened. None of what you read in these posts is made up by me. If you want to know about what I can concoct myself, read The Fingers.

To be honest, when it comes to names the Egyptians show no creativity at all. Go back to the era of the pharaohs and you know what I mean; it's all Ramses 1, 2, 3 and that went on for about 4000 years. The occasional diversion here and there, but as soon as the pharaohs got creative the names became unpronounceable.
Fast forward to the present time and you'll notice that the creativity the western parents show when naming their children has not found its way through Twitter and Facebook into Egyptian life. Here in Egypt we're stuck with Mohamed (in any fathomable spelling), Ahmed (I've been told that it's derived from Mohamed), then there's Mahmoud (also derived from Mohamed I've been told), Yasser and Islam. Approach any man on the streets by calling one of these names and chances are that you've guessed his name. This is pretty confusing and obviously the people whose ancestors build pyramids thought so as well and they came up with a solution: call people by one of their other names. Yes, they have other names as well, as in second, third, fourth and so on. There are some rules and regulations and traditional and cultural reasoning behind how people are named. The names of fathers and grandfathers are playing a massive role in this. As it happens, some people have 5 names, all the same as I've been told. Again confusing and rather annoying when you need to administer them in for example an email system, or what to think about passports.

But for my fellow inhabitants of Egypt this is not pleasant either. And this is where I start explaining how I found out my driver is not a serial killer. Okay, granted, I never did suspect him for killing anybody at all. He brakes for kittens (on the highway even!) and most of the time makes an effort in passing pedestrians at a safe distance. (Caironian joke I came up with: Why did the chicken cross the street? Because it wanted to get at the other side. Why did the Egyptian cross the street? Because he was suicidal.)
So my driver whose name could be any one of the five afore mentioned names, but lets call him 'Joe' (= John Doe), is not you everyday psychopathic lunatic with homicidal tendencies. Although once I had diner at his home and there was a lot of food on the table and I really had to eat it all... considering the look on his face. But I don't think he would've killed me, actually he didn't.
So Joe is not a killer, yet he was arrested for killing somebody. This happened the a couple of weeks ago. I was arriving at Cairo airport after a visit to my family in the Netherlands and when Joe picked my up at the airport, he actually didn't. Instead he was escorted by an undercover agent. Although I guess the agent was undercover because he looked like a bum and still Joe did whatever this person said and he wouldn't drive me to my apartment. Joe explained that he was going to get me a taxi ("No, not the black and white coffin kind of taxi", I was screaming in the back of my mind) because he had to come with the police and get something resolved. Joe was clearly trying to get rid of me, permanently, because my worst nightmare came true... I was forced to ride along in a black and white taxi. Cabs of Death I think of them every now and then. You see them, you understand this. Joe was devising a grand scheme of getting me on the trail of his ancestors. Murder-by-cab. Since I don't read Arabic, fortunately, I couldn't imagine what the headlines would look like.

Next morning I had to hitch a ride into the office with my friend Mark and his driver (let's call him O'Joe as in Other Joe) since Joe didn't show up. It took the better part of the day before Joe called me and explained that he was going to pick me up and drive me home. Now you would expect that somebody called 'Joe' speaks perfect English, but Joe doesn't. But in 11 months of spending time in the same car we've come to agree on a vocabulary that is sufficient to discuss the most complex topics a driver and drivee will talk about. And trust me, murder is not a typical topic so it didn't fall in this category.
Anyhow, Joe managed to explain to me what had been going on. Apparently during a routine check point at the airport by the police, a flag was raised when the police inspected his ID. Joe, short for John Doe, was listed as a traffic offender who had hit somebody in 2005 during a traffic accident and had ran. As it turned out, the person hit died shortly thereafter, thus John Doe was not only involved in a hit-and-run, but in a kill-and-run. Joe had spend all night and pretty much the whole day in convincing everybody and their mother that it hadn't been him but another John Doe. In the end it took some relatives who work at the courthouse to make sure that all allegations were dropped and Joe was released. Joe now has an official letter saying that he's not the Joe that kills people (which more or less is a license to kill come to think of it).
It would've been so much simpler when Joe hadn't been called Joe by his parents but something like Quanty Maji, which is a very uncommon name in Egypt.

As an afterthought Joe expressed his disgust of the Egyptian prison system. As he had spend a day in it and had been handcuffed, even when he had to go to the bathroom. He was a suspected killer, so they had to be careful when dealing with this homicidal maniac. Nobody had thought about the fact that his weapon of choice was an automobile, and therefore would be harmless without one. But than again, pretty much all Caironians are homicidal maniacs once they get into a car. But more on that topic some other time.

So now you know, just like I do, that Joe, my driver, is not a serial killer. He's not even a killer. He's got legal documentation that proves that he's not Joe the Car-Killer. So beware when you see a goldish Chevrolet Optra on the streets of Cairo. It might be Joe with his license to kill... I'm just kidding. The document only vouches for him in the 2005 killing of some traffic participant by a guy called Joe.

Next time I'll be blogging about something else all together, but it'll have to do with my experiences in Egypt.

Iwan