The future of Egypt: Modernity and fundamentalism "?

For: Miquel Silvestre (text and photos)
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Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen rebel against their rulers and elderly in the West unleashes a strange euphoria. The elder Mubarak may fall as Ben Ali. As an abstract idea, While tyrants are falling, but what happens next in the concrete is the big question. For now, unanswered. Also in Iraq fell tyrant. We have already seen what happens when an Arab country is destabilized without having drawn up a plan well for the day after. One possible Iraqization of the Southern Mediterranean should be concerned enough, but seems to have more punch to the public about hunger Western democracy of the Egyptian people. But what we talk about democracy? Egypt is not Tunisia, where the Islamists have a reduced root. The fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood have a considerable force. Do the thousands of Western tourists every year visit the pyramids do not see what happens there? The answer is no because the Mubarak regime has tried to hide the reality and they have collaborated in the deception by locking themselves in their expensive hotels and their air-conditioned buses and multilingual guide. But As seen from the saddle of a bike when crossing the country is very different. It's something far more disturbing than the fake belly dances offered at the resorts.

Egypt is not Tunisia, where the Islamists have a reduced root. The fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood have a considerable force

To enter Egypt from Jordan have to take a ferry across the Red Sea and leading to Nuweiba in the Sinai Peninsula. From here to Taba, The spectacular coastline is filled with hotels, bright green restaurants and golf courses for tourists. Employees caring smile khaki white women exhibiting the faint shadow of the bikini in beach dresses. It is a paradise of happiness and palms that comes just to the edge of the road, where armed police car and a pickup truck full of shabby grim and massive types of beards out that we are in the Middle East and that all this is superficial reality lyophilized. Outside the resorts, villages are miserable and children threw stones at motorists. Cairo, congested and wrapped in a permanent haze; the capital of the Arab world has forsaken God. It seems that the sweepers take twenty years to strike. The most obscene luxury shops stand immaculate on Filth. At dawn, hundreds of needy cleaned expensive sports cars. In Cairo live the richest, but also millions of poor. Men and women, old or crippled, not have someone to attend and whose misery is hideously visible. They live in the backyard of the pyramids and tour buses never go through their neighborhoods. It is these people who have nothing to lose now burns in an immolation deaf to the lack of outlets.

The road from Alexandria to El Alamein is strewn with huge real estate developments under construction. The coast overlooking the Mediterranean has a ghostly, dusty and sad. Urbanization is an infinite unfinished, kilometer-long lifeless Marbella. The money from the Gulf Arabs have stopped coming and the skeletons of cement and steel seem to have less future than the poor unfortunate donkey riding in the ruins. What solution is left to these unfortunate? Brothers Islam seems to be a response. At least, speaks of hope. The owner of a small mobile shop like to talk to Western. It is your mode of travel as, said, not afford to do so physically as well, your passport is cursed by an Arab in the West. He introduces me to a bearded young man dressed in white robe. Further, it is a dangerous man, putting bombs abroad. Obviously, is a joke, but damn I do not see grace. So I'm Spanish, comments, because according to a documentary that has been in Al Jazzira, in Spain killed millions of Muslims during the Reconquista, while in Al Andalus, they had respected other religions.

The adobe walls that supported the citadel have collapsed, inclined, cracked and broken up the improbable.

Llego in Siwa, very close to the Libyan border. The oasis of the oracle that Alexander the Great visited in the middle of the desert and asked if it would rule the world. The adobe walls that supported the citadel have collapsed, inclined, cracked and broken up the improbable. Against this sky blue plaster guard, provide the outline of a jagged teeth. His enemy was the unusual rain fell for three consecutive days. Egypt Siwa is the deep. Do not sell alcohol. No more temples to the mosque. Women live in a diver. They sense the world behind a black cloth. The funny thing is that Siwa is full of Western. They are not like tourists from tour operator to go to mass gregarious Luxor and Aswan to see a thousand temples in two days. Are travelers (and traveling) authentic, tourists from the ideal. Those who like to live with local people to share their tea and their food. They look comfortable, relaxed on the powder keg. Nor were vacationing upbraideth consciousness where human rights are systematically violated women behind a cloth prison. It's a metaphor. Politics in the Arab world has been reduced to a critical dilemma whatever the rulers in power. Modernity fundamentalism. There is nothing more. What will remain after these popular revolutions? Will it become the whole of Egypt in Iraq in Baghdad and Cairo? What about that ten percent of Coptic Christians living in the country? The big words like democracy or freedom may sound too grandiose in the desert and in the meantime, the old oracle remains stubbornly silent.

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Comments (8)

  • Pedro Marquez

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    I agree with exposing. Egypt is a magazine that if taken by the fundamentalists can burn the Mediterranean. Of course caciques as Mubarak, Mohamed VI and company deserve to leave the power they have corupto, but scary to think of a new Iran. Is the Egyptian people want freedom? In accordance, But what freedom they have in Iran or have had in Afaganistán? The freedom of the burkha, llargas the beard and the trampling of the rights of women, homosexuals and other religions… I almost prefer the despicable Mubarak

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  • home

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    Then, "We assume that we enter into fundamentalism?

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  • Galician

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    Why you arrogates the right to say what is good and bad in a democracy? A people have every right to choose their rulers and customs

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  • Dom26

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    A Galician: the sovereign people also voted for Hitler and those powders brought the despicable and terrifying sludge of the Holocaust. The people have the right to choose their leaders, yes, but the lack of freedom should never be an option. You, we all know how to solve these elections in democratic countries to those who allegedly, certainly, West has been turning a blind eye and with the old European monarchies fraternize nauseum.

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  • paladin

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    Totally agree with Dom26. Hitler was democratically elected and are not acceptable or the 90 percent of the votes. Minorities have a right to be respected and universal rights are above all. Islamic fundamentalism does not respect anything.

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  • Miquel Silvestre

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    My opinion on the Arab democracies may seem contradictory, but is the following. As a traveler, fundamentalism is a direct threat. What is the country where less fear of fundamentalism have felt? Iran. There have been afraid bureaucratic, but fear of an Islamist assault, let alone to get involved in a rebellion Islamists. If there is rebellion in Iran, be anti-Islamic. Thus conclude that the human mind (essentially equal everywhere) always rejects the established power and longs to deny what. If the West would have respected the democratic results of Algeria at the time, the FIS had been portrayed in the difficult art of governing and today Algerian Islamist revolt against dictatorship. In sum, what alarms me, como a Kant, not an order or other, but disorder. The greatest injustice is chaos.

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