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বর্তমান আরব জাগরণের রাজনৈতিক ‘স্পিরিট’ নিয়ে একটি ছোট্ট পোস্ট

মাসুদ করিম

একপা দুপা [...]

আমাকে একপা আগাতে দিন যেন আমি দুপা পেছাতে পারি।

মাসুদ করিম

লেখক। যদিও তার মৃত্যু হয়েছে। পাঠক। যেহেতু সে পুনর্জন্ম ঘটাতে পারে। সমালোচক। কারণ জীবন ধারন তাই করে তোলে আমাদের। আমার টুইট অনুসরণ করুন, আমার টুইট আমাকে বুঝতে অবদান রাখে। নিচের আইকনগুলো দিতে পারে আমার সাথে যোগাযোগের, আমাকে পাঠের ও আমাকে অনুসরণের একগুচ্ছ মাধ্যম।

১২ comments

  1. মাসুদ করিম - ২৬ মার্চ ২০১২ (৫:২২ অপরাহ্ণ)

    মিশরীয় লেখক সাইয়িদ আল-কিমনি বলছেন, মুসলিম ব্রাদারহুড আর আল কায়দার মধ্যে মাত্রাগত পার্থক্য থাকলেও প্রকৃতিগত কোনো পার্থক্য নেই। ইসলামবাদী সন্ত্রাস আর ইসলামবাদী রাষ্ট্র পরিচালনার মধ্যে পার্থক্য কতটুকু? ১৪০০ বছর ধরে ইসলামিক অনুশাসন দিয়ে রাষ্ট্র পরিচালনার চেষ্টা নানাভাবে হয়েছে এবং এই প্রচেষ্টা সম্পূর্ণ ব্যর্থ হয়েছে।

  2. মাসুদ করিম - ১৯ এপ্রিল ২০১৩ (৫:৫০ অপরাহ্ণ)

  3. Pingback: ছোট্ট পোস্টে পাড়ি | মাসুদ করিম

  4. মাসুদ করিম - ২১ আগস্ট ২০১৩ (৭:৪৩ অপরাহ্ণ)

    After more than 2 years in prison || Mubarak could leave prison Thursday after Egypt court orders his release

    The court had dropped two cases against the former president earlier this week, but it was not clear when the official release order would go into effect; state has 48 hours to appeal, the Wall Street Journal reports.

    Deposed Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak will leave jail as early as Thursday after a court ruling that jolted a divided nation already in turmoil seven weeks after the army toppled Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.

    Convening on Wednesday at the Cairo jail where Mubarak is held, the court upheld a petition from his lawyer demanding the release of the man who ruled Egypt for 30 years until he was overthrown during the uprisings that swept the Arab world in early 2011.

    Judicial and security sources said the court had ordered Mubarak’s release. His lawyer, Fareed al-Deeb, confirmed this as he left Tora prison after the session. Asked when Mubarak would go free, he told Reuters: “Maybe tomorrow.”

    Mubarak, 85, was sentenced to life in prison last year for failing to prevent the killing of demonstrators. But a court accepted his appeal earlier this year and ordered a retrial.

    The ailing former president probably has no political future. But many Egyptians would see his release as the rehabilitation of an old order that endured through six decades of military-backed rule – and even a reversal of the pro-democracy revolt that toppled him.

    At least 900 people, including 100 soldiers and police, have been killed in a crackdown on Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood in the past week, making it Egypt’s bloodiest civil episode in decades.

    The United States and the European Union are both reviewing aid to Cairo in light of the bloodshed, but Saudi Arabia, a foe of the Brotherhood, has promised to make up any shortfall.

    Mubarak is still being retried on charges of complicity in the killing of protesters during the revolt against him, but he has already served the maximum pre-trial detention in that case.

    The court ruling removed the last legal ground for his imprisonment in connection with a corruption case, following a similar decision in another corruption case on Monday.

    Mubarak’s release might stir more turbulence in Egypt, where the army ousted Morsi, the country’s first freely elected leader, on July 3, saying it was responding to the will of the people following vast protests demanding his removal.

    The generals have installed an interim administration to oversee a roadmap they say will lead Egypt to back to democracy.

    Gulf pressure

    The authorities now portray their quarrel with the Brotherhood, Egypt’s best-organized political force, as a fight against terrorism and are jailing its leaders, detaining the group’s “general guide”, Mohamed Badie, in Cairo on Tuesday.

    Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which along with Kuwait have promised Egypt $12 billion in aid since Morsi’s ouster, have frowned on Mubarak’s detention all along. Arab diplomats said the conservative Gulf monarchies had lobbied for the release of a man they once valued as a strong regional ally.

    Mubarak’s trial, when he appeared in a courtroom cage, and his jailing also affronted some Egyptian officers. One colonel, who asked not to be named, said the treatment of the former supreme military commander had “tarnished the army’s image”.

    The United States, a close ally of Egypt since Cairo signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, said on Tuesday that the crackdown on protesters could influence U.S. aid. It denied reports it had already suspended assistance.

    At issue is the future of about $1.23 million in U.S. military assistance and $241 million in economic aid to Egypt.

    EU foreign ministers meet on Wednesday to discuss how the 28-nation bloc might use its economic power to promote an end to Egypt’s conflict, in which it has sought to mediate.

    They are likely to tread carefully, mixing expressions of concern over bloodshed with limited, if any, changes in a 5 billion euro ($6.7 billion) aid package promised last year to help foster the new democratic system, diplomats in Brussels said.

    More arrests

    Western nations were uneasy during Morsi’s year in power, when he assumed extraordinary powers to ram through an Islamist-tinged constitution.

    Washington has not denounced the army takeover as a “coup,” which under U.S. law would force a suspension of aid. The ensuing bloodshed, however, has dismayed the West.

    U.S. Senator John McCain, a former Republican presidential nominee who has emerged as a strong advocate of suspending aid, said: “The slaughter of hundred of Egyptians in the street is appalling to all of us.

    “Now we should expect in return for our aid that the generals who are now running the country schedule a change in the constitution, schedule elections as soon as possible and the installation of a government that is representative of the people. The present government is representative of no one.”

    The arrest of Badie, the Brotherhood’s leader, is part of a wave of detentions among the upper echelons of the organisation.

    Murad Ali, a media adviser to the Brotherhood’s political party, and Safwat Hegazy, a fiery preacher, were arrested while trying to flee the country, state media reported on Wednesday.

    The Brotherhood said the crackdown would prove futile.

    “The putschists think that arresting the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and marring their image in the media will make Egyptians bow and give in to the coup,” it said.

    “They have killed thousands, wounded thousands, arrested thousands but the (people) are continuing in their peaceful revolution, rejecting the coup and military rule.”

    Badie was charged in July with incitement to murder in connection with protests before Morsi’s removal and is due to stand trial on August 25 along with his two deputies.

    On Tuesday, the state prosecutor ordered him detained for 30 days on the charges of incitement to killing during anti-Mursi protests in November and demonstrations in Cairo last month.

    Footage released to local media showed the bearded leader sitting grim-faced in a grey robe near a man with a rifle following his detention overnight on Tuesday – images that seemed intended to humiliate the Brotherhood chief.

    The Islamist group, founded in 1928, used its organisational muscle to secure victory for Morsi in last year’s presidential election. It says it has about a million members among Egypt’s 85 million people, as well as offshoots across the Arab world.

  5. মাসুদ করিম - ২৩ আগস্ট ২০১৩ (১২:০৬ অপরাহ্ণ)

  6. মাসুদ করিম - ২৫ আগস্ট ২০১৩ (৬:২০ অপরাহ্ণ)

  7. মাসুদ করিম - ২৫ জানুয়ারি ২০১৪ (৬:৩৮ অপরাহ্ণ)

    Photo Gallery: Cairo Protests Escalate 01/28/2011

    Photo Gallery: Uprising in Egypt 01/29/2011

    Egypt in Year Three

    The country is awash in conformist state worship, fueled by the shrill narrative of a war on terror.
    Sharif Abdel Kouddous

    January 25, 2011, was a transformative moment for Egypt. Thousands of protesters flooded the streets to call for the downfall of Hosni Mubarak’s sclerotic regime, confronting the notorious security forces on National Police Day and sparking a mass uprising that reverberated around the world.

    This year, January 25 brings with it a feeling of the revolution’s undoing. A crude monument erected by the new military-backed government stands in the center of Tahrir Square—once the epicenter of autonomous mass mobilization, now a space controlled by the state and its security forces. Three protesters this week were sentenced to two years in prison for defacing the structure. The ruling barely registered in the news.

    Since the military ouster of elected president Mohamed Morsi last July, followed by the brutal crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood, the security establishment has emerged re-empowered, reinvigorated and out for revenge, cracking down on its opponents with unprecedented severity. Much of Egypt is awash in conformist state worship, fueled by the shrill narrative of a war on terror and the age-old autocratic logic that trades rights for the promise of security.

    State and private media are dominated by pro-regime viewpoints, while dissenters are demonized. Public debate has been mostly shut down, and political discussion with strangers is once again a risky endeavor. Surveillance recordings of activists are leaked and aired on television, with presenters vilifying them as traitors. Hotline numbers for Egypt’s security agencies run in scroll on the bottom of many TV broadcasts so that people can call and report suspicious activity. This is Egypt’s own brand of McCarthyism.

    The Muslim Brotherhood has been the primary target. Hundreds of members have been killed and thousands imprisoned. In December, the government declared the group a terrorist organization and froze the assets of more than a thousand affiliated charities and organizations. Even so, Morsi’s supporters have continued demonstrating on a near daily basis throughout the country, risking beatings, imprisonment and death. Meanwhile, university campuses have emerged as the new front lines of dissent, with students protesting the crackdown and frequently clashing with police.

    “Every Friday, no less than 500 to 600 get arrested,” the interior minister said in a press conference earlier this month. “At the beginning, we used to wait for the demonstration to turn violent, but now we confront them once they congregate. When we confront them, there are some that run. But whoever we can grab, we detain.”

    The redoubled authoritarian measures have done little to bring stability. Bombings and shootings that target security forces have now become commonplace, with more than 250 police killed in the past few months.

    On the morning before the third anniversary of the revolution, three bombings hit high-profile areas in Cairo, including a massive blast at the city’s police headquarters. Five people were killed and scores were injured. The Brotherhood quickly issued a statement condemning the bombings. Many suspected the involvement of Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, a Sinai-based militant group that has claimed responsibility for previous attacks.

    At the site of the police headquarters, passersby stared in disbelief at the deep crater left by the car bomb. The facade of the building was mangled, with air-conditioning units dangling from shattered windows. The blast tore through nearby buildings, including the nineteenth-century Museum of Islamic Art.

    Police ringed the area but did little to prevent people from approaching the site. Amid the broken glass and shredded concrete, a small crowd was chanting, changing the words of the iconic slogan that ignited the revolution in 2011, from “The people demand the fall of the regime” to “The people demand the execution of the Brotherhood.”

    Over the past few months, the crackdown has widened far beyond the Brotherhood, however, with the regime arresting prominent activists, scholars, journalists and public figures who dare to speak out. Egypt’s jails are bursting with prisoners. Every day, new charges are levied at those who do not toe the official line, while a repressive new law bars ten or more people from gathering in public spaces without prior police approval. The judiciary and prosecution—which have tried Mubarak-regime figures at a glacial pace, often acquitting them—have become models of efficiency in jailing and sentencing opposition voices.

    “The Egyptian authorities are using every resource at their disposal to quash dissent and trample on human rights,” said Amnesty International in a damning new report published ahead of the third anniversary of the revolution. “Three years on, the demands of the ‘25 January Revolution’ for dignity and human rights seem further away than ever. Several of its architects are behind bars and repression and impunity are the order of the day,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa deputy director.

    * * *

    In mid-January, the interim government held a constitutional referendum, Egypt’s third in three years. The vote was hailed as an important step in conferring democratic legitimacy to the military-backed transition.

    In Cairo’s working-class district of Sayeda Zeinab, voters lined up outside an elementary school to cast their ballots. Helicopters roamed the skies while police and army soldiers manned the entrances. The pro-army pop song “Tislam al-Ayadi” (Blessed Are the Hands) blared from speakers set up nearby. Large banners, many of them sponsored by local businessmen, were strung between lampposts, all of them calling for a “Yes” vote.

    The new constitution replaces the 2012 version pushed through by the Muslim Brotherhood. Many analysts have pointed to improvements in the amended national charter, including clear language on rights for women and children, as well as language reining in the role of religion. Yet the document also grants greater autonomy and independence to the military, police and judiciary—the three institutions that heavily backed last year’s coup against Morsi.

    But for many at the polls, the referendum was more about rejecting the Muslim Brotherhood and supporting the army and its chief, Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, whose face beamed from posters stuck on the walls of the school. “Whatever Sisi says, we do,” said Islam, a 24-year-old grocery shop worker after emerging from the polling station. “He is the only person who can lead the country. We need a military man.”

    The outcome of the referendum was never in serious doubt. The Brotherhood had opted for a boycott, and the only political party actively campaigning against the constitution, the Strong Egypt Party, suspended its campaign shortly before the plebiscite and switched to a boycott after several of its members were arrested for hanging up fliers urging a “No” vote. The constitution ended up passing by a whopping 98.1 percent, with a turnout of 38.6 percent. At least nine people were killed in clashes and more than 400 arrested over the two-day referendum.

    The next stages in the transition are parliamentary and presidential elections, slated to take place within the next six months, although the order has not been determined. The question that has dominated newspaper headlines and TV commentary is whether Sisi will run for president. A slew of leading politicians and public figures have all fawningly called on the army chief to enter the race.

    Sisi’s star has steadily risen in the context of his “war on terror.” The rise in Islamist militancy and attacks on security forces that have spread from the Sinai to the capital have only buttressed the role of the army and security forces in government. Indeed, the current regime is largely defined by what it is not—its raison d’être embodied in its commitment to crush the Brotherhood.

    The government has offered little in the way of solutions to deal with the country’s deep socioeconomic problems. For now, Egypt’s rulers have succeeded, at least temporarily, in reviving the often unacknowledged bargain of the Mubarak era: repression in exchange for stability.

    * * *

    As January 25 approached this year, the army and police invited Egyptians to fill the streets to commemorate the anniversary of the “glorious” revolution. Several opposition groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, called for protests.

    Yet there are deep cleavages among the opposition, and Tahrir Square will likely be a contested space. The Brotherhood issued a statement inviting revolutionary forces to unite on January 25 and made a tepid apology for siding with the army in the period after Mubarak’s ouster. “Though everyone made mistakes, we do not absolve ourselves of our mistake when we trusted the military council,” the statement said.

    Activist groups refused the offer. One of the largest, the April 6 Youth Movement, issued a statement rebutting the Brotherhood: “The revolution for you is about power. Sorry, our revolution is not the same as yours; you revolt for your own interests, we revolt for the demands of the people. This is the difference between us. How can we stand on your side?”

    Indeed, activists have not forgotten last year’s anniversary, which was marked by widespread, often violent clashes and seething anger directed at the Morsi government and his group, the Muslim Brotherhood. Those confrontations were followed by a vicious, weeks-long campaign by Morsi’s newly appointed interior minister, Mohamed Ibrahim, against demonstrators. More than 800 were arrested, including over 250 children. The Brotherhood encouraged the crackdown.

    Many now lament that the tide has shifted decisively away from revolutionary change, and that the country is headed toward an order even more regressive than the one people rose up against three years ago. Some of the most prominent figures who helped launch and sustain the revolution are now behind bars, including the founders of April 6, Ahmed Maher and Mohamed Adel, as well as the blogger and activist Alaa Abd El Fattah.

    Targeting Alaa has almost become a rite of passage for Egypt’s successive governments. He was imprisoned both under Mubarak and the Supreme Council of Armed Forces that replaced him, and Morsi’s public prosecutor issued an arrest warrant against him. This past November, two dozen armed men came to his house at night and dragged him away, beating him and slapping his wife when she asked for a warrant. Their 2-year-old son was asleep in the adjacent room.

    Alaa has been in prison for nearly sixty days now, held in solitary confinement for twenty hours a day. He faces charges of organizing a protest, yet no trial date has been set.

    In the past, Alaa’s arrests had caused widespread outrage—his supporters were given a platform on television to call for his release, while politicians and public figures denounced his imprisonment. This time, his jailing has been applauded, and the few advocates who have tried to speak out have been muted by the cacophony of jingoism gripping the country.

    A prison letter from Alaa to his two younger sisters last month was finally delivered to his family this week. It is imbued with a sense of despair, reflecting the national mood:

    “What is adding to the oppression that I feel is that I find that this imprisonment is serving no purpose. It is not resistance, and there is no revolution,” he wrote. “The previous imprisonments had meaning, because I felt that I was in jail by choice and it was for a positive gain. Right now, I feel that I can’t bear people or this country, and there is no meaning for my imprisonment other than freeing me from the guilt I would feel being unable to combat the immense oppression and injustice that is ongoing.”

    Egypt’s Hobbesian moment

    Noted Egyptian rights activist Karim Ennarah, writing on Facebook:

    January 25th might be defeated, but January 28th–I mean that Hobbesian moment that characterises everything in Egypt today–is not, and I doubt that anyone could put an end to this Hobbesian moment and turn this into a governable country. This revolution has changed things fundamentally, in a way that is irreversible (and I don’t necessarily mean positively nor am I talking about democracy or rule of law) and the social crisis that remains of it is bigger than anything or anyone, despite those who think it’s intellectually fashionable to use the term “uprising” instead of revolution in their headlines. As for us, those who are defeated, bruised and humiliated (for the time being, at least); I don’t have the faintest hint of regret. If this nation does not progress in the future–if that social process cannot be geared towards a better life, then at least I, almost every one in this country, has changed forever. I used to have one existential crisis, no I have multiple, now this society is questioning everything–things we used to take for granted like democracy, rule of law, legitimacy, “the people”, religion, and the concept of progress itself. Something’s going to give, and at the very least, I know that my generation that is defined by this revolution will prevail some day, even if it takes twenty years..

    The question now is, what will be the cost of all this?

    There are multiple ways to use the phrase “Hobbesian moment” – one in terms of the use of brutal politics, in the usual sense of “Hobbesian” as that borrowed from Leviathan and meaning the absolute power of the sovereign, and its ruthless use, to subdue selfish or unruly citizens. It can apply to state repression or even revolutionary terror. Another, though, comes Hobbes’ Elements of Law. It is about a fight to define, or frame, the future:

    No man can have in his mind a conception of the future, for the future is not yet. But of our conceptions of the past, we make a future; or rather, call past, future relatively. Thus after a man hath been accustomed to see like antecedents followed by like consequents, whensoever he seeth the like come to pass to any thing he hath seen before, he looks there should follow it the same that followed then. As for example: because a man hath often seen offenses followed by punishment, when he seeth an offense in present, he thinketh a punishment to be consequent thereto. But consequent unto that which is present, men call future. And thus we make remembrance to be prevision, or conjecture of things to come, or expectation or presumption of the future.

    For the last three years, the future of Egypt has looked hopeful at times and bleak at others (and of course looked different to different people). But it has always looked very uncertain, and that has not changed. This fight to define the future is likely to be long and bloody.

  8. মাসুদ করিম - ২৫ জুন ২০১৪ (১২:৪৬ অপরাহ্ণ)

    ISIS and SISI

    The past month has presented the world with what the Israeli analyst Orit Perlov describes as the two dominant Arab governing models: ISIS and SISI.

    ISIS, of course, is the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the bloodthirsty Sunni militia that has gouged out a new state from Sunni areas in Syria and Iraq. SISI, of course, is Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the new strongman/president of Egypt, whose regime debuted this week by shamefully sentencing three Al Jazeera journalists to prison terms on patently trumped-up charges — a great nation acting so small.

    ISIS and Sisi, argues Perlov, a researcher on Middle East social networks at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, are just flip sides of the same coin: one elevates “god” as the arbiter of all political life and the other “the national state.”

    Both have failed and will continue to fail — and require coercion to stay in power — because they cannot deliver for young Arabs and Muslims what they need most: the education, freedom and jobs to realize their full potential and the ability to participate as equal citizens in their political life.

    We are going to have to wait for a new generation that “puts society in the center,” argues Perlov, a new Arab/Muslim generation that asks not “how can we serve god or how can we serve the state but how can they serve us.”

    Perlov argues that these governing models — hyper-Islamism (ISIS) driven by a war against “takfiris,” or apostates, which is how Sunni Muslim extremists refer to Shiite Muslims; and hyper-nationalism (SISI) driven by a war against Islamist “terrorists,” which is what the Egyptian state calls the Muslim Brotherhood — need to be exhausted to make room for a third option built on pluralism in society, religion and thought.

    The Arab world needs to finally puncture the twin myths of the military state (SISI) or the Islamic state (ISIS) that will bring prosperity, stability and dignity. Only when the general populations “finally admit that they are both failed and unworkable models,” argues Perlov, might there be “a chance to see this region move to the 21st century.”

    The situation is not totally bleak. You have two emergent models, both frail and neither perfect, where Muslim Middle East nations have built decent, democratizing governance, based on society and with some political, cultural and religious pluralism: Tunisia and Kurdistan. Again both are works in progress, but what is important is that they did emerge from the societies themselves. You also have the relatively soft monarchies — like Jordan and Morocco — that are at least experimenting at the margins with more participatory governance, allow for some opposition and do not rule with the brutality of the secular autocrats.

    “Both the secular authoritarian model — most recently represented by Sisi — and the radical religious model — represented now by ISIS — have failed,” adds Marwan Muasher, the former foreign minister of Jordan and author of “The Second Arab Awakening and the Battle for Pluralism.” “They did because they have not addressed peoples’ real needs: improving the quality of their life, both in economic and development terms, and also in feeling they are part of the decision-making process. Both models have been exclusionist, presenting themselves as the holders of absolute truth and of the solution to all society’s problems.”

    But the Arab public “is not stupid,” Muasher added. “While we will continue to see exclusionist discourses in much of the Arab world for the foreseeable future, results will end up trumping ideology. And results can only come from policies of inclusion, that would give all forces a stake in the system, thereby producing stability, checks and balances, and ultimately prosperity. ISIS and Sisi cannot win. Unfortunately, it might take exhausting all other options before a critical mass is developed that internalizes this basic fact. That is the challenge of the new generation in the Arab world, where 70 percent of the population is under 30 years of age. The old generation, secular or religious, seems to have learned nothing from the failure of the postindependence era to achieve sustainable development, and the danger of exclusionist policies.”

    Indeed, the Iraq founded in 1921 is gone with the wind. The new Egypt imagined in Tahrir Square is stillborn. Too many leaders and followers in both societies seem intent on giving their failed ideas of the past another spin around the block before, hopefully, they opt for the only idea that works: pluralism in politics, education and religion. This could take a while, or not. I don’t know.

    We tend to make every story about us. But this is not all about us. To be sure, we’ve done plenty of ignorant things in Iraq and Egypt. But we also helped open their doors to a different future, which their leaders have slammed shut for now. Going forward, where we see people truly committed to pluralism, we should help support them. And where we see islands of decency threatened, we should help protect them. But this is primarily about them, about their need to learn to live together without an iron fist from the top, and it will happen only when and if they want it to happen.

  9. মাসুদ করিম - ২৭ সেপ্টেম্বর ২০১৪ (৪:০৫ অপরাহ্ণ)

    Post by Masud Karim.

  10. মাসুদ করিম - ৯ অক্টোবর ২০১৫ (১১:০৫ অপরাহ্ণ)

  11. মাসুদ করিম - ১০ অক্টোবর ২০১৫ (২:৪৪ অপরাহ্ণ)

  12. Pingback: বসন্ত আরব বসন্ত | প্রাত্যহিক পাঠ

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