katie in cairo, egypt

Well I'm finally back in Cairo. Having arrived in the midst of the new semester which started nearly a week and a half ago, I'm desparately trying to catch up with everything from my classes, to obtaining a reissued legal visa, to last month's rent. It seems there are a few leftover foreign students from last semester that are studying here for at least a year, as I am, but for the most part, the campus is filled with faces with which I am unfamiliar. Though this country still mystifies me in so many ways, I all of a sudden feel like the resident expert. Well, at least around the other khawagas.

Of course the latest buzz on the street around here these days is the so called "Muslim Outrage" over the cartoons published by a Danish newspaper portraying images of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad. If you haven't read up on your Koranic facts lately, it's absolutely forbidden in Islam to represent images of the Prophet Muhammad or rather ANY of the Prophets (including Jesus). The idea is that these sort of immages lead to idolotrous behavior, which takes away from the idea that there truly is only one God, and ithat it is only He whom we should worship.

Muslims have demanded for a public apology by the newspaper, though a great deal of unrest seems to have spread across the Arab Muslim world in spite of this. Protesters have flooded the streets of Cairo (though fortunately there has not been any reported violence), while in Syria, Iran, Lebanon, and Afghanistan embassies have been torched and people killed.

I can't claim to truly understand all of this, but if you know a little about Arab culture (and I say Arab, not Muslim), you realize what a great deal of emphasis is placed on honor. Honor over even death. For one, the cartoon is considered an attack on Islam, one of many perceived to have been started by the West, and secondly, it shows a great deal of disrespect to the Muslim community. But I can't say if this is really the cause of such violence or not. While people here certainly do seem to take their religion quite seriously and feel that they must defend it, why then is it that we only see such events taking place in the Arab countries? Aside from New Zealand, there have been few if any reports of great Muslim unrest in other countries. What about Indonesia, the country with the most Muslims of all? Obviously this brings us back to the fact that even when wars aren't breaking out here (Iraq aside), there is a great deal of tension. Politically, religiously, economically, all of the above. Our refined Mr. Ahmadinejad of Iran has of course used to opportunity to further denounce Israel--that if this is just freedom of speech then why don't the Danish newspapers include sympathetic reports of the Palestinian situation and the crimes of the Zionists--while other leaders, Bush oil friends like President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan has thoroughly denounced the protests.

I suppose what really gets me on all of this, is that while I can clearly remember the 5,000 riot police deployed to contain the 26 or so protestors of the Egyptian Presidential Election (ok, something of an exaggeration, but my point remains the same), it now seems as if protestors are being encouraged to take the streets, even by the assistance of the government! Are we hearing the cries of our "free" citizens? Or maybe freedom of speech (and apparently action) is great only when it's against someone else.

posted by Katie Warren @ 12:28 PM