The Power

I was invited to deliver a speech at the University in Cairo about humanitarian work as soft power. As we all know, the socio-political and economic field recognises two types of power: hard (politics, economy, military) and soft (media, culture, art, history, religion, fashion, food, sports, technology, language, education, human resources).

In my opinion, westernised audiences are familiar with the effectiveness of the soft power; however I wanted to talk about the context of the Arab Spring.

In my opinion, power reflects strength, ability, command and vision. Soft power, in my understanding, should be the one which can make a change without conflict or over a long period of time. In the cases of Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Tunisia, one of the emerging powers in the Arab Spring has been that of women.

The Soft Power doesn’t stop at those mentioned above; for example, Hard Power can have its own Soft Power, often used by governments to implement policies using the “Carrot and Stick” approach.
While reading around this topic, I came up with a new term: “Rough Power”. This surprised the academia in the room and I saw a few raised eyebrows and shrugging.

In my opinion, Rough Power is the Soft Power that has been changed from being soft, smooth and conflict-free to become confrontational and conflicting for the community. Such examples of soft powers that have been transformed into rough powers are religion and history.

In the example of religion, so-called scholars have misinterpreted certain aspects of the sacred texts. Narrow-mindedness and taking things out of context, together with not keeping up with the times and the emerging culture of civil society has lead to the transformation of religion into Rough Power in some cases, in my opinion.

On the other hand, history has been corrupted as well. Let us take the history written about Muslim communities and countries. It is all about war, conquests, bloodshed, coup d’état, political manoeuvres etc, without focusing on the social aspect of the lives of the millions of people that lived in these countries. Historians failed to mention the achievements of the Soft Power, focusing instead on the Hard Power: military etc.

Another good example of a Soft Power changed into Rough Power is the Media. For various reasons, whether economical or others, some Media outlets fuel cross-cultural conflicts instead of encouraging partnerships.

In my opinion, in every situation, it is a question of moral value. Soft, Hard or Rough, it is still a form of power and it should be used by the citizens to help other citizens. It is not for citizens to use against other citizens. If we focus on the shared values of the citizens of the globe and we use all the power to empower others and maintain the life of other creatures, we are both serving and saving the life of humanity.

The Law Taker

A friend of mine read my blog the other day and was puzzled because they couldn’t understand who the Law Taker was. We left it out intentionally for you to puzzle over so congratulations to those of you that spotted it.

The Law Takers are those people in suits, tuxedos, tailcoats, evening dresses or ball gowns. That’s not all. They also sit at desks in the high offices of power: governments, political parties and economical institutions. They are the ones who are having the final say in the boardroom.

These people will always manage to take the law their way and then bend it, twist it and change it in their favour.

This is why I call them Law Takers. Any investigator will fail in pinning them down and getting the ultimate truth out of them, because even if they have broken moral laws, they haven’t broken any civil laws.

We have seen many such cases all over the world recently. They take the law in their pocket, while we’re left with empty pockets.

Some change please!

Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you for money, as the title implies. I am asking you for change.

A friend of mine once told me that the only constant in life is change. Change is happening all around us, day and night, every hour and every second. Sometimes we realise, some other times we do not realise, because we are too busy to look around ourselves. Change is part of nature and all creations of God on earth. If we accept that change is part of nature, a process, how can we accept the evolution of change?

For example, development and evolution are long-term processes in the humanitarian field. I am asking you, does evolution entail innovation, renewal, pioneering? Is evolution ever monotonous?

The other day I was discussing with a friend Darwin’s theory. My friend was saying that according to Darwin’s theory, everything starts as an amoeba, and then becomes a monkey and then it becomes a human being. In my view, the philosophy of the development of the evolving process of change has to be put in the gearbox of every civil society and humanitarian organisation.

Whether amoeba becomes a monkey, or a fish becomes a horse is not the issue. In my opinion, to meet the community’s needs, with our expertise, we have to change our amoeba organisational stage into a horse type delivery. Civil society will always be innovative, dynamic and forward-looking. Our work should not be owned by an individual group, party, religious cult or government. It should be community owned and driven to guarantee the safe delivery of the evolutionary process of change.

If one group dictates the process, amoeba can never become man, as this is against the laws of nature. We must go back to the basics, at community grass root level and allow them own the idea of developing the evolutionary process of change to see the pioneering effect of community owning their cause.