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.

The Yoyo

People might be forgiven for thinking that humanitarian workers are all saints, prophets and messengers of humanitarianism. I can assure you that is not the case. We are all human and because we are human, we make mistakes.

Humanitarian organisations, small or large, can dictate policies and build artificial boundaries between themselves and others. The contradiction lies in talking about building bridges with the community and actually doing it. We must build new bridges, not destroy existing ones.  The humanitarian culture can have different clouds, atmospheres or temperatures. What topic could be hot in the bottom tiers could be very cold to subzero in the higher spheres.

It reminds me of a yoyo, going back and forth, or staged photo opportunities between politicians, when they smile at the camera, but not at each other.

The cultural change inside the humanitarian family needs to provide inclusivity, determination and willingness to build bridges. Without them, the body of humanitarian movement cannot be saved.

I say no to the yoyo. Who is with me?

The Lawmaker, Law Taker and Law Breaker

The other day I had a discussion with a couple of colleagues from the Somali Relief and Development Forum – Jacquelyn and Robert. It was a philosophical-cultural discussion between a young British graduate, a young Canadian woman and myself.

Jacquelyn was talking about the relationship between business organisations and charity organisations and how to make the law function better between them and how to create a healthy relationship between these types of organisations.

Robert looked at me and my appearance and told me that I remind him of a gangster wearing a trilby hat.  I asked him, who is this trilby wearing gangster? A Lawmaker, law breaker or law taker? The difference between the three is quite simple, in my opinion. One might take a break, but the other two break the law.  The trilby wearing gangster can abuse any law, whether at government level, humanitarian level, business level or community level.

It doesn’t matter how good our law is or the way we make it, the Trilby person will find their way inside all interpretations of the law. We need to be careful with such individuals.

Do you know Trilby?

MCB Leadership Dinner 2012: Celebrating a year of Sport

I was invited by the Muslim Council of Britain to the Leadership Dinner to speak about the best of the British Sport. Since I am not a sportsman and I used to play only marbles, I am not able to behave like a sportsman.

I gave my speech to the British Muslim community and Muslim communities everywhere. I was quite critical of the role, questioning why we should consider ourselves leaders. I challenged the audience to consider ourselves as servants. The community is the one who can decide to accept our services or not. The community is in fact the leader, because it can make you a leader.

I talked about a number of issues and challenges:

1. Who are our friends and enemies? Everyday men and women will say that Muslims are friends with Muslims and Christians are friends with Christians. That Non-Muslims are enemies to Muslims and Islam. Sheikh Mohammed al-Ghazali from Egypt used to say that the worst enemies of Islam are narrow-minded and ignorant Muslim scholars who give a wrong opinion to the wrong people at the wrong time, via the community. We have to struggle to change our enemies into good and close friends.

2.  The second challenge for me revolves around my having been born in Egypt and come to study in Britain and become a citizen. I came from a glass house society controlled by an authoritarian regime to a very open, democratic society. I thought, as a young graduate, that such a democratic society doesn’t have ceilings or borders for innovation. I discovered after 35 years that I moved from a glass house to somewhere under a glass ceiling, with a hallway at the side, so you can leave if you don’t like it.  This is why we should revisit our way of thinking and remove such a glass ceiling from our democratic society.

3.  The third challenge was the relationship between Muslim leaders and technology, media and a newly growing culture. The challenge for Muslim organisations as well as for me is not to be locked inside a box, but to look out of the box, at the surroundings and become relevant in the context of what’s happening around us.

4. The fourth challenge is the issue of hafiz (the ones who memorise the Quran) and Aalem (scholar of Islam).
There is a trend among Muslim organisations and Mosques to have as many hafiz as possible. This is very good, but not good enough. Hafiz can memorise and recite the Quran. Aalem is the one who can navigate through the wealth of knowledge of the past, present and future, to find the right solution for a contemporary problem.  One Aalem could educate millions of different generations. Thousands of hafiz will memorise and recite the Quran to their surroundings only in the time of their own generation.

5. The fifth challenge is our wrong application of the human interpretation of the Quran, which is affected by the philosophy of our village culture. When you bring such a culture into an open society and make judgements on multilateral complex issues, it is difficult to say the least. One of the vital subjects an Aalem needs to master before he/she can be called a scholar of Islam is the Arabic language as most of the original Islamic knowledge is kept in Arabic. Our wrong application of the human interpretation of the scholars of the past is creating differences, bringing divisions and fragmenting the young growing Muslim society in the West.

6. The sixth challenge is the issue of Zakat (alms due). As we understand, the Zakat must be spent within one year on 8 categories mentioned in the Holy Quran. Unfortunately, we find that some so-called scholars deny the spending of Zakat on non-Muslims, without aiming to convert them to Islam, but make them friends of Islam. They also deny spending Zakat on employing people the run the organisations, paying administrative costs, training people, educating generations, creating think tanks, research centres and other institutions that our society and community needs most. We still think traditionally, but we are living in a non-traditional world.

7. The challenge of ALLOW. The difference between “prevent” and “allow” is that “prevent” is the language of the weak, who wants to forbid people from doing things that could be right. The “allow” language is the language of the strong people, who empower others to be more responsible with the community, even if they may make mistakes. If the Muslim community had had policy-making institutions and pressure groups, it would have impacted on this kind of policy. The research and development policy is not a part of expenditure of Zakat at the back of the minds of Muslim leaders in society.

8. The role of women in Islam. Islam has liberated women 1400 years ago; however some opinions of certain individuals are reversing the time machine to before 1400 years ago, by not allowing women to become a part of Muslim leadership in most organisations, mosques and institutions. Not only that, but also denying the Muslim woman daily space for prayers inside the mosque. As the Prophet (PBUH) said: “Do not prevent the female slave of Allah from coming to the houses of Allah”. Who are we to prevent males or females to come to the house that Allah owns?

9.  The role of youth. The Arab Spring has seen a wave of tsunami magnitude changes in many Arab countries, led by brave male and female youth, who went out to receive beatings, bullets and teargas with bare and open hearts. They became martyrs, not only for their communities, but for humanity.  We shouldn’t think of youth as a scout club, a piece of furniture or a decoration. We should consider youth the current and future leaders of our community. I ask myself: what is the percentage of leaders over 60 and 70 running our organisations and how long have they been in office. The issue of governance has to be addressed.

10. History. Our history has been recorded wrongly. We only know of battles, conquests, plots etc. We hardly ever learn about the history of civil society who lived in Muslim countries for 1400 years and produced a magnificent civilisation. We need to know more about the social history which lead to the building of such a civilisation. It wasn’t the army who built Islamic science, technology and civilisation; it was the citizens of Muslim countries.

To conclude, we shouldn’t look at others for our mistakes. We should consider ourselves accountable. What we need is a positive social climate change in our society. My last comment is on the Sunna of the Prophet (PBUH).  Sunna is about renewal, independence and reasoning (tajdid, ijtihad). The Prophet (PBUH) followed the policy of tajdid and ijtihad. If we do not, we cannot claim we are following the Sunna.

With Mohamed Sbihi, Rowing Champion and his father

The Polar Bear and the Money

Climate change, global warming, and industrial pollution – these are all affecting our planet. This is happening because of the greed of mankind, who always wants to find the easiest and most profitable way to exist. In my opinion, oil is important; however science nowadays can find a lot of alternative sources of energy. Recently I heard about a new potential catastrophe: investing heavily in the North Pole to extract gold and oil.

What we need to realise is that mankind has been systematically killing other creations of God over the past centuries through ignorance and greed. Sadly, it seems to me that nobody wants to stop the greed of man. Can you imagine what kind of impact an oil spill would have should it happen in this area? I don’t think it will be the polar bears that will benefit from oil exploitation. Somehow, I don’t think we’ll see polar bears with briefcases full of money.

When we lose sight of the rights of the billions of citizens inhabiting the globe, it isn’t a catastrophe. It’s the end of life on Earth! We are also exterminating the lives of other species.

In my view, we need to think seriously about investing in other climate friendly sources of energy. Oil is not the beginning, nor is it the end. The oil industry is just an industry. Alternative sources of energy will give us the means to save our lives and the lives of generations to come.

We need to stop terrorising the environment and work together to create a better world for you and me and the ones who will come after us.