The Arab peoples are living in a state of unprecedented turmoil. There are revolutions, and the risk of counter-revolutions which may have already erupted. No one is neutral anymore, as people are now either with or against this or that regime, and woe to a writer like me who lives abroad and attempts to be fair and objective. This is without claiming that I have so far been successful. All I can claim I am doing is that I am trying. Over the course of the outgoing year, I wrote on Syria more than I wrote on any other Arab country. All my editorials are kept by both myself and Al-Hayat's archives. Nonetheless, it seems that a common trait among the Syrian dissidents is to accuse me of not writing anything about Syria, followed by accusing me of “glorifying the regime”. Yet when I present what I wrote to the readers who perhaps missed it, and ask another reader to give me an example of the alleged glorification, I hear no answer. In any case, in every piece I wrote about Syria since the start of the incidents in Daraa, I called for a stop to the killings which I condemned unequivocally, even if the number of casualties was only one, not ten, twenty or more. Yet a pro-opposition reader who sees nothing beyond his own opinion overlooks this clear stance, to come to his own biased conclusions. This is not to say that there are no exceptions, but they are few. This is a very important point because the dissidents claim that they want to put an end to the dictatorship of the regime in power and establish democracy, freedom and justice for all, while not tolerating any dissenting opinion. In other words, they are waiting for their turn to practice the same kind of dictatorship they are trying to flee. This is not to say that I insist on my opinion at all, but I do indeed insist on my right to express it. From Syria I move to Saudi Arabia, from whence a letter was published in Reader's Mail, by a reader named Fahd al-Mutairi. The letter said, “It is people like you who are Arabized Arabs. We are the original Arabs and Semites, and the mother of humanity, Eve, and our father Adam met in Arafat and begot all people, and her grave stands to this day in Jeddah, O Arabized Arab”. I was surprised so I went back to my article on 22/12/2011, and found that I was talking about a university study on the extinction of languages, where I said, “Arabic is guaranteed to survive. For one thing, it is the language of the Noble Quran, and Islam is the only religion in the world whose adherents increase in number, instead of decreasing, as is the case with all other faiths.” How did this anger Mr. Mutairi? I think he is suitable to work as a Syrian dissident. But what compensates me for him is that I have a “Mutairi” reader who is among the smartest, funniest and best educated readers with whom I have regular correspondence. From Syria and Saudi Arabia I move to Egypt, or specifically, an Egyptian physician living in Canada named Amer Shata. My following words are addressed to the readers, because I refuse to address this reader who has attributed to me things I did not say in the past, and returned to the same habit in a letter published in Al-Hayat's reader mail on 19/12/2011. Hence, this response is meant for the readers lest they believe him. He said about me “You wrote in this column that the last elections under Mubarak were not fair and asked him to repeat the elections”, and said that I criticized the elections timidly “but had never said that they were rigged or called for them to be repeated in this column, and I will apologize if you faced us, the readers, with what you wrote and also mention the date”. Once again, I address the readers and don't address this particular reader, whom I had previously notified in a private message that I have decided to ignore him because he has the habit of attributing to me things that I did not say. On 22/12/2010, I said, literally, “By the way, I wrote before the election results emerged, and I had never expected the Muslim Brotherhood not to win any seats. I hope the president will dissolve the new parliament at the appropriate time, and order new elections to be held”. I repeated the above in an article I wrote in response to readers' mail on 6/2/2011, and wrote on 1/2/2011, again literally, “A mistake made by a shrewd man is worth a thousand mistakes. President Mubarak's mistake was embodied in the last parliamentary elections. The fact that the Muslim Brotherhood did not win any seats can only mean that the elections were rigged. While I personally do not want to be ruled by the Sheikh of al-Azhar or the Pope of Alexandria, I was surprised by the outcome of the elections and wrote that it is not logical that the Muslim Brotherhood candidates failed to win many seats.” Thus, I wrote about the rigging of the elections not once, but three times, in which I explained my reasons for contesting the results. Shata's published letter concluded by reminding me and the readers of my article on 30/11/2010, entitled “The policies of the Muslim Brotherhood have made me prefer the government”. However, he overlooked what I said in the second paragraph, which was literally, “I am not fond of the Egyptian government, as corruption continues to be rampant there. And while the government did indeed have some good economic achievements, their benefits are still to be seen among the poorer segments, as these achievements seem to reach a certain level below which they spread no further”. I don't want the reader Shata to apologize or back down from anything, but rather I nominate him for a role in the Syrian opposition. [email protected]
