Today's Quote

"If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich" -- John F. Kennedy

Finally Settled...

For all my friends who were waiting to hear my news since I came to Egypt, I'm really sorry but I'm just starting to feel settled now, finally found a place for my laptop and some time to surf the net and check my e-mail and to blog some!

It still feels weird for me here, I don't yet feel that I "fit in" but I'm happy. Egypt is still as I remember it, always full of surprises. Adventures started the day I sat foot here, I've seen a heck lot of people, relatives I haven't seen for like 8 years. Went to Cairo a couple of times and going there again today in preparation for the double-shot eid-new year's party. Its even more thrilling since its going to be the first time I actually celebrate new year's eve, ever!!! I remember the last time me and some friends tried to do so back in KSA we ended up laughing alone in a parking lot.

I've lost a little less than 10 kgs, a great achievement by any means especially that the only exercise I'm doing is walking :) seems that I'm not going to need the xtra large stuff I bought lately for long.

The only thing I missed during these past two weeks is blogging and reading my daily-shot of blogs like I used to do back in KSA but as the smoke is settling down now and a daily routing is starting to surface I'll be able to write a little more.

Today's Quote

"The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans are suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you." -- Rita Mae Brown.

My Last Post From Saudi Arabia

With 18 hours left, I think this is my last post from KSA. The only major thing in my life that didn't happen here was being born. 25 years, with all it ups and downs, happy times and sad time. I went to school here, I graduated from college here. All my friends and memories. I admit that I wasn't the best friend and I truly appreciate the few of that kept up with my weirdness -especially recently- and I hope they will always remember these times because my brain is doing its tricks again and all of my memories from school are already lost and of college already fading.

It is hard to leave the place where you've lived for a quarter of a century especially if you're leaving for a place thats totally new and much more complex, but after 25 years here I've decided its enough. I know that a lot of people will not fully understand my choice especially that I'm leaving a great opportunity here -according to almost everybody in Egypt I have discussed this with- for getting an M.S. degree -which I have already started- but some point during the past two years it stopped being about getting good education and became an issue of personal development.

A lot of people like living in KSA, my folks love it here. But circumstances changed a lot since my dad first came here almost a year before I was born but yet a lot of stuff also remained exactly the same. My folks may like the slow rhythm of life, every day here is almost exactly the same as any other one, nothing major ever happens, the perceived lack of troubles etc. But living in such a place for so long makes you awfully aware of the emptiness of such life and of the limitations to how much you could grow. I feel that at 25 I have missed a lot of experiences in life -but I only have myself to blame for this since it is I who chose to come here in the first place- and the choice I have is either continue living here and hide from the troubles or face it right on and go back to Egypt and try to finally reach the emotional and social maturity I'm sure I'm never going to reach living here. This issue became so important to me lately -and it should- that it overthrew everything else from my priority list even if it meant the suspension of my post-graduate studies and even the probability of not ever completing it.

Every time I go to Egypt in the summer I spend a couple of weeks in a sort of "cultural shock". Life there goes so much faster its hard to keep up with. Stuff that happens in one day there could be spread over a whole month here. The number of people you have to deal with on day-to-day bases triples or even quadruples, and its not only the number of people, but also all the different types of people that you have to deal with. I feel that I have to be on-guard 24/7. Everybody recognizes from the first moment that I'm from the gulf area "khaleeg" somehow -well, not somehow, I know its obvious :)-. Its a weird situations, how much should I give the taxi driver, who and how much should I tip in a cafe. The money stuff alone is enough, your perception of the value of money totally changes when you live in Egypt. The price of a cup of coffee in a coffee shop here could keep you full for a whole day in Egypt, but I admit that the only cheap thing in Egypt is food! Clothes are way more expensive in Egypt.

I'm going to miss studio-1 FM, I'm going to miss mishwar's shawerma and of course "Ganoup Modern Cafe". And of course I'm going to miss all my friends here who were the only reason I kept on going this far without suffering from a mental break down and making it that much more bearable. Thank you Naji and Jawad, you'll always be my best friends. Thanks to all the people from the diwaniya who during the past two months helped me -maybe without them knowing- get out from my summer depression phase. Thank you Ali, Faleh, Basil, Rashid and everybody else. I know I've been a little weird in the beginning but it was out of my control, ask Naji about it. Thank you Muthanna, Dodo, Sherbini and Noami. I'm really sorry I had to go without telling you but it has been awfully hard for me and I know that you will understand, someday. You were and always have been my closest friends. Thanks to Tawfiq, whom might be surprised to when he knows that I'm leaving KSA, you've been my safety valve and always been a joy to be with in my lowest moments. Thanks to all my friends from kfupm, to Khaled, Ali and Ehab and all the crazy things we've done together, you were the only people who I've been so close with from my college years. To Faisal, my fashion advisor, to Ahmad Bukhari, to Abdulhakeem, Abdulkareem, Said and Alaa. And to Bukhari and Alaa especially since I'm going to miss their weddings.

Thank you all. And wish me luck.

end note: after settling in Egypt I'm planning on writing about the experience of living in Saudi Arabia for so long, all its ups and downs and good and bad things, about the people and the country. It is after all a unique experience, with people from all over the world, I don't think that living in Egypt I would've met people from all over the World, to appreciate the difference between a Syrian and a Lebanese. I've me and been close friend to people from all over the arab world and have been exposed to their cultures and this is one of the greatest experiences of living in Saudi Arabia.

I've always wanted to write this down in a book. I've even chosen the name of the book: Esm Ommak Aih - اسم امك ايه. classy, huh?

Dodging Bullets

Now here's a weird thought.

Bullets, when it comes to physics, should behave like any other projectile. So theoretically, a bullet, after being fired, should travel some distance and if it hits nothing in its way it will just fall to the ground with a trajectory that looks like half a parabola with its axis in the direction of the bullet. Now, still theoretically speaking, the force with which the bullet is fired could be calculated and consequently we could get the distance a bullet travels before it loses its momentum and falls down -or simply by experimenting and trial and error- but, and here's where it gets interesting, a bullet fired at from point "A" as shown on (Diagram 1) should naturally fall at point "B". A point "C" on the trajectory of the bullet could be found where the bullet has sufficiently slowed down to the point where someone could just catch it in his hand!


Theoretically, I should be correct, so how nobody ever tried it before? If any body is interesting if this works out or not, I have a gun, bring a calculator. :)

Today's Quote

"All marriages are happy. It's the living together afterward that causes all the trouble." -- http://www.pioneerdrama.com/playwrights/rh.html

Today's Quote

"In life, it's not who you know that's important, it's how your wife found out."
-- Joey Adams

Who Stole Islam?

If I have to agree with the Egyptian government on one thing, it would be the banning of the Muslim brotherhood group. And if I had to give one reason for me not liking the brotherhood so much it would be the way they look down on everybody else.

One of the thing I admire the most about people like Ahmad Zewail or Farouk El-Baz -and in fact almost everybody with such knowledge- is how having all this knowledge made them so humble and so polite because science, just like religion, has a way of elevating a persons spirit which makes me think that maybe the gaia people were right! But when you look at most religious people you will find something that almost the complete opposite. This look that they know so much more and that they're so much better than you just because you don't grow a beard or -if you're a woman- you don't cover your hair.

I'm OK with anybody who wants to go the extra mile with his religion whatever it is but I can't help it feeling that there's something "troubling" with most of these people. I know some people who either joined or tried to join the brotherhood and I noticed that the "recruiters" usually targeted people with somewhat troubled personalities, people who could be easily manipulated and maybe back then in my subconscious I felt that these people were actually being "brain washed" but I never really saw it this way until the era of terrorists attacks and suicide bombers came upon us especially after the Iraq invasion. And this maybe the main reason why I never trusted the brotherhood. But this is not the main reason why I don't like them having an "Islamic" party.

I can't get myself to forget the Luxor massacre on 1997, and I know that the group behind the attack are not the brotherhood but the Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya who actually did it originated from the brotherhood. Living in Saudi Arabia too I could tell you that the followers of the brotherhood who took refuge there and who mostly worked as teachers in schools and universities were one of the main reasons behind the development of extremism -in a country that was on top of this following the wahhabi extremist understanding of Islam- which eventually lead to the emergence of Bin Laden and his friends. I can't really put my hands on it but there must be some kind of a connection between all these extremists link to the Muslim brotherhood.

You can do like my father and try to convince me that they're good people and they do a lot of services to the community, but, don't you think that this is just "marketing" for their group? To brainwash the people they're helping into thinking that they're good people so that they have their support when they call for them in any of their crazy endeavors against the government? "El qa3da el sha3biya" elly zahha2o ommena beeha? Its the same technique they've been telling us in schools that Christian missionaries are using in the poor countries of Africa when they offer them food and medicine in exchange for them converting to Christianity, something that I don't believe anymore but try telling this to almost all school students in Saudi Arabia.

Just take a look at their logo and their motto: "God is our objective, the Quran is our Constitution, the Prophet is our leader, struggle is our way, and death for the sake of God is the highest of our aspirations". If their message is so peaceful then whey do they need the sword for? and then below the logo you have "وأعدوا", this alone really scared me! Its as if our whole mission as Muslims is to fight and kill the infidels. And where does it say in Islam that dying should be our "highest aspiration"? These kinds of teachings are what gave us the suicide bombers and terrorists. Instead of teaching people to respect the soul and to forbid the killing of anybody regardless of his religion they're teaching us that dying should be our highest aspiration.

I still have a lot to say on this issue, wait for me...

Today's Quote

"I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants." -- A. Whitney Brown

The Solution

Something I've noticed in the blogging world: Everybody is writing about problems, nobody's offering a solution.

I'm not saying that its a bad thing, not at all. At the very least problems are finally being discussed in public and its an indication that most Egyptian are still not corrupted by the rotten system. But talking about the problem is only a first step and it should be followed by another and another till we fix these problem, and here I'm going to propose my humble suggestion on what the second step could look like. But just in case, if anybody with legal knowledge of the issue thinks that this post could lead to me getting arrested for provoking public unrest or planning to overthrow the government please notify me so I could delete it in time 3ashan mama mwasyani arga3laha 7etta wa7da ya3ni.

The solution in one word is "education". Democracy is the legal child of a well-informed society and as long as we suffer from these horrifying rates of illiteracy we're never going to make it. A couple of days ago I was reading the Asharq Al-Awsat news paper and I came upon this article on how the Jew, originally mistreated by the "religious" mostly christian Americans, and how they forced the American public to respect them by becoming highly-educated and consequently highly influential and recognized. And they're still doing it, according to wikipedia Israel ranks 3rd amongst countries spending on Research and Development. Of the best 10 universities in the middle east, seven are in Israel. Among the same list no Egyptian university shows up on the Asian top 100 -the 100th university by the way ranked 3656th world wide! mine was the 1681! yeppy!-. Going through such statistics and noting the countries you'll find that there's a relationship between a country being an industrial and a high-tech nation with a strong economy and their education standards. Countries like China, India and Korea dominate these lists.

Now, improving our educational system is a key to both having a democratic country and one that plays a key role in international politics not a country that its foreign policy is dictated else where. I know its an obvious solution to a lot of people that we should start with the education, but what I want to say here is what can we do as highly educated Egypt loving people. My suggestion is to interact with the current educational system and putting in a little of our own time and effort trying to make it better. Small things like going to your little brother's school to talk about your profession, parents organized and financed school trips, summer camps all around Egypt where college students spend a couple of hours every day teaching illiterate people to read and write and at the same time while doing this we could tell them that we have a constitution and that we have rights. A grassroots movement to educate people on political issues and to eliminate illiteracy all at once. And I'm going to try to start something like this myself in my little brother's school after I settle in Alexandria and see whats going to happen with my army service but I promise you that I'll do my best and I'll keep you updated.

One of the things I'm going to miss the most is a two-minute radio spot called "Second Thoughts". A short radio spot where Mort Crim, the presenter, tells a short story of how one person saw something that he thought he could improve a little, and DID! And the results were much greater than he expected. At the end of each show he says "Now YOU go make a difference".

Let's all go make a difference.

Today's Quote

"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic." -- John F. Kennedy

1000 visitors

My blog reached 1000 visitors today, a huge milestone for me considering I've been writing for only a little more than a month right now!

I started finding out about blogs after reading the report on the events of the 25th of May, 2005 and for the first time I thought that I could be part of something that is in no way under the influence of our outdated leaders -or so called leaders-, something thats purely Egyptian and by people who carry hope for a better Egypt. Luckily, this coincided with me getting a DSL connection and the nearing of my final return to Egypt from my exile and I started reading everything like crazy and I fell in love with it and decided that I have to be part of whats happening.

I have chosen to write this blog in English for a couple of reasons, and no, its not because I'm that guy with the American accent because I admit it right here that my English accent is not that good but its comprehensible at least. And although I love the American accent I've always hated people who think they're cool because they talk in English. The main reason is because I could type up to 40 words per minute in English plus my laptop's keyboard doesn't have Arabic letters and every time I have to write something in Arabic I have to open the windows "On-Screen Keyboard". The other reason is that I think that there are a lot of people who are writing in Arabic who are far better and more experienced than me. And when it comes to writing in Arabic the style is really important cause I discovered that in the blog world you could get bored from a post really fast, I think that most people wont read this far in this post either! But do you write in "fos7a" or in 3ammeya or in the arabic-english style, its just a huge burden, besides, I've always thought that I could express myself much more clearly in English because its a "primitive" language, its not a fancy language at all, not as much as Arabic at least.

Another main reason is that if I write in Arabic, I know that only Arabic speaking people will read it, and since I'm an advocate for reaching the "other" I thought that English will do the trick, and it did. People who read my blog, according to my statcounter, come from almost all over the globe, and mostly from Europe and the States, I even have people from Chile, Iceland and Korea accessing my blog! How cool is that?

Anyway, I have to thank everybody who visited my blog or left a comment, thank you all...

Today's Quote

"On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero." -- Tyler Durden, from: The Fight Club

Today's Quote

To err is human, but it takes a computer to really screw things up

Today's Quote

"The pen is mightier than the sword, and considerably easier to write with."
-- Marty Feldman

Today's Quote

Beauty is skin deep, ugly goes to the bones.

And the meeting was successful...

"wakan al-egtema3 mosmeran"
"wa entaha el egtema3 benaga7"
"naga7 al qimma al-3arabiya"

I know all of you are familiar with these clichés on newspapers -usually government controlled- after any meeting between high-ranking officials either inside Egypt or with others from outside, and I always wondered, who evaluates meetings and gives the judgment that this meeting was a success or that other one was a failure? Especially that 90% of these meetings -especially between arab officials- are deemed "successful"?

Is their like a checklist? Arrived on time? check, dressed accordingly? check, no swearing? check. Is it the same in western newspapers? or is it another Arabic tradition?

The Social Significance of Bars

Bars have a bad reputation, especially in the Arab world. Their mere association with serving alcohol is bad enough in any country with a Muslim majority and only to make matters worse bars became the refuge for prostitutes since according to how an Arab mind works if somebody is doing something wrong the he must also be doing all sorts of bad things -which is how somebody who's harassing a girl in the street justifies himself "if she's wearing like this she has to be a bitch" and also in politics, whenever somebody disagrees with the regime he is accused of being a traitor, a thief and all these sorts of insults that we're familiar with.

But, I think that bars in the states and in the western world in general has a much more significant role. A bar is somewhere where people could gather, chat together, dance, meet new people, have a conversation, watch a sports event, sing or have parties. I see it as a corner stone in a normal a normal social life in the west. A place to go when you're feeling bad, good, need to meet somebody, hit on a woman, especially hitting on women since in a bar is the perfect atmosphere for something like this. Girls come with the intention of meeting somebody already in their minds which makes it that much easier for guys to attempt to make a move on them. Booze is readily available, you could dance and chat, all the requirements for a perfectly good first date are there. And thats exactly what we don't have in Egypt.

If we just had a public space where it is well-known that anybody who's going there has the intention of meeting a person from the opposite sex then we're eliminating -or at least reducing- the amount of harassment that happens on the street where women are usually defensive and anybody with even the purist of intentions could be humiliated and even beaten -depending on the location :)-, and for all the conservatives out there, there shouldn't even be booze, just regular drinks or coffee or whatever, the only important thing is the concept itself.

Just another great idea by moi.

Is It Really Worth It?

I don't like to talk much about the Palestinian issue. Its not as if my opinion is going to change anything in it or going to reach anybody who's capable of doing anything anyways. A lot of times I read the newspapers and ask myself if all these people writing on all of these subjects do really believe that they have a unique angle or the solution for any of our problems! Anybody who watches TV nowadays will be surprised by how many experts we have on any subject you could think of but to me, it only comes to a couple of people worth listening to what they say. I can't help but think what would've happened if half of these people actually did something instead of getting their faces on TV and thinking they're famous now. Whats even weirder is what happens when these experts -and presumably intellects- start arguing with each other and the time immediately goes back 50 years to when everybody was calling his enemies traitors and agents of the west and all that bullshit that got us nowhere, or is it that we have fallen in a crack in the space-time continuum -I love this word :)- and the whole Arab area where time doesn't move forward any more.

I empathize with the Palestinians and with the all the pain and suffering they have to go through to stay alive but I think that they fell victims to an ideology that is not suited for solving the current situation. Until Arabs solve their own problems first and develop a sense of unity -and not unify because I don't believe that this is possible- the Palestinian issue should be treated as a humanitarian crisis. If we set aside our prejudice and start thinking about it, our first priority is not what type of government and what kind of borders, its the ability for the people to sustain themselves and be able to work and learn and for their children to play safely. I don't believe that any normal sane mother will accept that her son will go blow himself to pieces to injure some Israelis and by no means is it acceptable that a 57 years old woman blows herself to injure three soldiers! And the assholes who shot a video of her before she goes, what kind of sick people are they?

Now I'm not saying that I have a solution, but I'm certain that what's currently happening there isn't one. Killing an Israeli using tin can rockets is not going to benefit anybody and we all know that the Israelis are the kings of manipulating the media and they're going to benefit from something like this far more than the palestinians will, if the do at all.

To be cont'd.

Today's Quote

"Sex without love is an empty experience, but, as empty experiences go, it's one of the best." -- Woody Allen

Did anybody read this?

While looking for a piece by Osama El-Baz on the Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper website, I stumbled upon this interesting document:

مصادر: مبارك سيلغي قانون الطوارئ بعد عودته من رحلة العلاج

The article is dated 1-July-2004. Is he back yet? :)

The Uniform

Sometimes to change from the inside you have to change from the outside.

All Egyptians now know that their country is being controlled by a few corrupt figures whose corruption spread through the entire community that corruption has become the new norm. But, knowing the problem is still only half the answer, an answer that is becoming increasingly difficult, how do you save the country?

Every time I watch an American high school on TV in a movie or a series I feel that I missed a lot of things. The school I have been didn't make us wear a uniform, but thats something we had to fight for every single year until a couple of year after I graduated they finally won and made it compulsory. I have never understood the reason behind the school uniform and short hair. Why do they want everybody to look the same? The image that comes directly to my mind when I see uniformed schoolboys in the street now is that of a military school with an oppressive authoritarian figure on the top of it, somebody screwed enough in his head that he hates everybody else to the extent of ruining their individuality and personality. Brainwashing, we are all being brainwashed, just like the Nazis brainwashed the Germans we're slowly being brainwashed into thinking that we should obey our leader and not question him, we are being taught to be all the same and not to think for ourselves because authorities know whats best for us, even in what we wear.

To me, school uniforms and short hair is a sign of oppression as anything else. I believe that schools is the ticket to solving all of Egypt's problems. Maybe American schools are not much better than ours only because they have colorful well-printed textbooks or because they have chemistry labs that rivals those in our engineering schools, maybe its because their students are taught to think for themselves and to ask questions, they're not given answers they're required to look for them and this is the foundation of scientific research that our government thinks that only by building labs we're going to produce science.

Their students have a "student governments" and these are not the "top students" the 4.0 students who well automatically be assigned to these position just because they study hard -the Egyptian model-, no, they are elected, and this is the foundation for your democratic country.

It all starts in school people. And schools are not the tables and the chairs and the textbooks, schools are much bigger than that. Schools are where we learn to be people, to learn, to tolerate the other.

I had a very close friend in primary school called Zein. Zein's mother was Australian and he himself looked very much Australian too, and this was his mistake. Just because he looked different everybody automatically hated him, just because he doesn't fit in their built-in image of what a normal person should look like and because we were all taught to look the same -I'm not talking about the school here cause I already said we didn't have a uniform, its the image by society of what a normal person should look like, and if you don't get what I mean go out to the street and see for yourself how 90% of the people look almost identical- because they were all taught to look the same he was treated like a freak!

This post is running long, continue later...

I'm Che Guevara Goddamnit!

Check out the results of my "Famous leader test" at similarminds.com

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

More results coming as soon as I get them! By the way, I DO have a picture of Che in my room! Freaky huh!

Today's Quote

"If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed." -- Albert Einstein

Hijab Fight, Act 4

I was just watching "El-3ashera masa2an" on Dream 2. I didn't see the show for quite a while now but I came by it on TV and I immediately remembered why I hate to watch arabic talk shows. EVERYBODY IS SCREAMING! Everywhere I watch TV now I find people, all kinds of people, shouting and screaming on TV trying to make a point. A point that usually is that they're the only ones who got it right and that everybody else is wrong. Every time I see this I immediately remember when I was watching "Quadriga" on DW-TV and he said that the only reason why he's watching this show is because of how calmly and nicely do these people argue with each other! :)

Anyways, first impressions? This Salah Eisa is a an arrogant son of a bitch. He was treating everybody -especially Essam Sultan- like he was much better than them and this is just a quality that I despise. Did anyone of these see Dr. Ahmad Zewail or Farouk El-Baz and how humble they sound when they're talking and I bet that they're much more well-known in the world than any of them. Anyways, I was glad that the issue of the lacking of a culture of civilized argument in Egypt -and in the arab world- in general, because in my opinion this is the key issue in the whole fight on Farouk Housni.

I'm afraid that our country, because of the absence of a real political atmosphere, is being hijacked by Islamic radicals. These are the people who are truly behind this whole bubble. The proof? I'm going to use the same argument used by Magdi El-Gallad, where the hell were they when the real shit happens? Where were they when Egyptians are burned alive, drowned, poisoned and all these wrong doings! Where were they when women were -and still are- sexually harassed? Or is Islam now restricted to covering the hair and growing a beard?

Honestly, I didn't want to talk about this subject at all cause to me, as all the guests -and surprisingly the head of the Islamic brotherhood on the phone- agreed that this subject is irrelevant and is only a front of a much bigger problem. The hijacking of the country by extremist Islamists. And thats not at all a good thing, but thats the subject of my next post.

Today's Quote

"It's all fun and games 'til someone loses an eye; Then it's just fun you can't see." -- James Hetfield

The Honeymoon is Over

Another cigarette in the balcony gave birth to yet another brilliant insight, honeymoon. I don't know who invented it but to me going on a honeymoon right after marriage is a completely flawed concept. Imagine for a second that you just got married and successfully constrained yourself to having one vagina for the rest of your life -a timeless saying of wisdom from the movie "Old School"-, What is the reason why you should travel to exotic places filled with beautiful -usually half-naked- girls in an overwhelmingly romantic atmosphere? Its simply torture to remind yourself constantly of how many women are now out of your reach! If anybody has to go out on a honeymoon it has to be before getting married not after!

Am I right or what?

Today's Quote

I am free of all prejudices. I hate everyone equally.
-- W.C. Fields

Today's Quote

Today's quote is dedicated to Rami Siyam (Ayoub). For more information please click here.

"I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law." -- Martin Luther King Jr.

Today's Quote

"You know that look women get when they want sex? Me neither!"
-- Drew Carey

Mubarak Denies My Suggestion on Niqab

Apparently, Mr. Osama Shaltout, a shoura council member has raised my suggestion of banning niqab in Egypt to president Hosni Mubarak! Check it out here.

Today's Quote

"If you kept the small rules, you could break the big ones." - Julia (George Orwell's 1984)

زرع.. درس.. شرب.. هرب

Another great story by Anis Mansour, one of my favorite writers.

Bloody Mad

I was watching this documentary on TV about an English guy, Donald Campbell, who was determined to break the 300 mph -yes, thats 480 kph if you're wondering- in a jet-engine powered boat and managed to get himself killed in the process. And it made me wonder, what the hell did he accomplish?

I understand the need for setting land speed records or air speed records, these have resulted in a lot of development in the designs of cars and airplanes and trains and a lot of useful stuff, but have you ever heard of a person wanting to be on a boat going 300 mph? Thats just insane... and what bugged me the most is that he was treated like a hero, hey, the guy is crazy! Whatever...

Pink is not a color

I was taking my usual cigarette in the balcony, enjoying the fresh cold air that I missed so much when it suddenly hit me. Pink is not a color!

We have learned in the arts class in school that you have your basic three colors, red, yellow and blue. Mixed in different proportions you get any color in the world, but pink? Pink is what you get when you add "white" to red! Its not actually a color! Pink is simply the "lack" of red!!! Its not even a natural color, its "artificial" and now remember this cause its going to be important later on. Thinking about it, pink doesnt' even occur naturally, there's not a single fruit or vegetable I know thats pink! Even pink roses, I bet its only a phase before getting a real color, RED! Apparently, omwhere in our history, a guy ran out of red while painting so he decided to add some white to it and he came up with, pink! And apparently this dude was highly recognized that nobody dared to object when he decided that he discovered a new color and even got at its own name, pink!

Now, I know this might sound rediculous to most of you, but here's the catch. Pink destroyed women's lives.

Ever wondered about these girls who adore the color pink and put it in everything they have? Well, here's my theory: Pink is a color that was specifically invented to oppress women and to lock them in the box of being "cute little things" and, and this is quite clever now, they used to promote another illusion, romance.

"Romance" is artificial. Or at least the kind of romane that you see on TV, but all the girls some how got in their minds the whole "romantic love" thing and the "hero of their dreams" and all that impossible stuff about finding the one and blah blah. Immagine the statistical improbability of finding the "one" from among 6 billion inhabitants of our planets! And girls got so fixated on this idea that for most of them it has become the aim of their lives to find the one and get married and have children, your typical Hallmark family, a fictional family by the way. And when their boyfriends, fiances etc. don't act like the complete romantic heros they're supposed to be they're frowned upon and treates as cold-hearted insensitive beings when in fact we are only being "realistic".

Anyways, so the marketers of this new romance idea decided to associate it with a color -for marketing purposes of course- and what better color to describe an artificial feeling than an "artificial" color, Pink!

I'm Moving to WordPress

As I'm still new to the blogging world, there are still a lot of things about it that I don't know. But one thing I know now, word press kicks blogger ass.

I'm just sad I didn't find that out earlier before I started posting, or even before I made the conversion to beta which was the point of no return since WordPress doesn't support importing -an amazingly useful feature by the way- from the beta version! Stupid me! My only hope now is that as they go on they're going to solve this problem. I should've known this was a scam since they were bought by google, who I don't like very much! I'm more of a Yahoo! person.

I almost immediately fell for WordPress. I love a peice of professional work and WordPress is just that, it looks clean, its loaded with features, stuff that I found out lately to be useful and important but in blogger you have to add all this stuff and I had to do it the old way adding the html code and using trial and error, I took a couple of programming courses but I'm no programmer, thats why I changed to blogger beta since it promised a visual interface for playing with the template and colors and fonts and all that crap. For instance, statistics are built-in the dashboard and it has a lot of neat stuff like referrals, their templates look great although I didn't start playing with them yet. You could also keep track of all the comments you made to other blogs on WordPress and notify you of newer ones! I didn't know they could do that! I have to check on my comments manually and its just Hell!

Anyways, so long blogger, from now on I'm going to post both on blogger and on my WordPress blog until I figure out how to move my old post from here.

Today's Quote

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." - Albert Einstein

Netherlands, the next big enemy...

Netherlands is banning borqa in public places. So what?

First of all, I don't live there, and don't nobody start on me that the west are attacking Islam and all that shit and that we should unify with our "brothers" in the west, I don't even believe that arab countries, let alone the Islamic countries, are ever going to be unified and I don't even want it to happen, but thats a different issues.

Second of all, if you're living in the Netherlands, or anywhere in Europe for that matter, and you are wearing a borqa, then you obviously don't belong there and you should move out. Wearing a borqa is an extreme measure, even in Islam, and its not even required to cover your face or hands, and if you are this extreme then I don't understand how you are living in a place that contradicts with all your believes?

Third of all, its not even required to wear a borqa! So why make a big deal about it? Why make a fight out of it? If you have to wear it then go somewhere else, but to me at least, its not natural to cover your face, I can't communicate with a person without seeing his face, its like you want to erase your identity! Besides, the Netherlands says that they're banning it for security reasons, of course our conspiracy theorists won't buy this one bit but I for one think that this is a totally legitimate reason for banning the borqa. Here in Saudi Arabia, terrorists go around freely wearing borqa to cover their identity and no police officer dares asking a woman to uncover her face. Even cars with women inside goes through security check-points unchecked! I don't care if you put check-points all over the place you're not going to make me feel safe if you let a car pass unchecked because there's a woman inside! So, I really don't blame the Netherlands for saying they're banning it for security reasons.

What I really think is that we should ban it in Islamic countries too! Borqa is nothing but an out-dated garment forced on women by tradition and has nothing to do with Islam. I read an investigation by a Saudi newspaper about this issue and I was surprised to know that some of these women never take it off -its not actually a borqa in this case but something similar worn on the face beneath it but they still wear a borqa when they go outside- anyways, I was saying that even their kids never saw their faces, and in some cases, their husbands! This is a case where social traditions got intermingled with Islamic teachings and these women need to understand that and stop abusing themselves because it, according to psychiatrists interviewed for this newspaper investigation, has some serious consequences on their psychiatric well being! Let along on their family, imagine if you never saw your mom's face! How could she show affection or love or any other feeling?

AlJazeera International

I just love it. Put aside all the prejudice everybody has on the Arabic Jazeera channel, this is something completely different, I guess. It is so well presented, very professional, I especially love the show . There's simply no better looking channel with this diverse and wide range of programing that are shown -or yet to be shown- broadcasting from an arab country. I love the way it looks too, very clean, very smooth, with thier news band at the bottom much less prominant and annoying -and actually similar to that of the BBC's- than thats of their Arabic version or of Al-Arabiya's for example -don't you just hate it?-. It looks very professional and mature that I don't believe it just started less than a week now.

Having such professional and well-known -to the western audience at least- presenters such as Riz Khan sir David Frost, I just loved his show "Frost around the world" is such and intelligent move on their part, this would give them much more credibelity to a western audience than say, another Al-Qasim talking in English.

I know its still too early to tell, but if you could judge a book by its cover, then I'm willing to put all my money on it. Now we do have a channel specifically made for channelling our point of view to the west, weather al-Jazeera is the best person to do so or not is yet to be seen but at least its a start.

Today's Quote

“You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.” -Al Capone

Today's Quote

If you try and don't succeed, cheat. Repeat until caught. Then lie.

Today's Quote

"Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science. " - Henri Poincaré

Today's Quote

"Of all the things I've loved and lost, I miss my mind the most." - Mark Twain

Today's Quote

"If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style. " - Quentin Crisp

Zero Point Energy

I found this very useful website, I was searching the net for a very long time for something similar. A lot of good documentaries are here and with very good quality, mostly about 9/11 but skip to the end of the page and you'll find a lot of even more interesting documentaries.

Make sure you check the one on "Zero Point Energy" which is what I was looking for in the first place... I first knew about this a little more than two months ago and it is still mind boggling to me.

click here to go to the site

On My Bed!

Here is yet another thing I don't get about women...

I was just watching "Ed TV" on mbc2, great movie, anyways, there's this scene where his mother tells him, Ed, that his father was cheating on her, not only that, no, it was "in her bed"!!!

So here's what I don't get, cheating is bad, I totally agree. Married men shouldn't do it. But, when it happens, does it really make any difference where? How is cheating in "your bed" much worse than cheating anywhere else? I mean, here you're with this hot chick, you're both ready to commit sin, where do you go? Her place is a mess, I don't know, its too late to go to a hotel, its going to show up on your credit card report or whatever and its gonna get you in trouble, there are like a million reasons for a man, if he's going to cheat, to do it in a "familiar place"! He knows where the drinks are, he knows where the food is, he's gotta wake up early and go to work and he needs to take a shower, I personally love my shower, I don't like taking showers in a strange bathroom!! There's your clean clothes and stuff... The only problem is, she knows where you live now and if anything goes wrong, you're screwed!

So, ladies, I don't see the importance of "the bed" here, what if he did in on the kitchen floor, is "he did on my floor, the damn bastard?". Is it just the bed or is any place in the house also a "no go zone".

And guys... we gotta stick together, I have always wanted to have "The Guy Code". A manual for such weird social and relationship stuff and what is the standard procedure in such situations. And one important chapter in this book should be "Cheating", cause, women are bending our hands here over this "cheating" thing and I think we need to go UN over them and make a clear definition of "cheating". Is kissing cheating? Is kissing Sandra Bullock cheating? If I had the chance, I don't care who am I going out with, I have to kiss her!! And what about when you're outside the country or the city? What exactly is cheating? Cause we need to end this thing once and for all.

Today's Quote

Don't follow in my footsteps, because I run into a lot of walls.

The Greatest Secret In Modern History

The Greatest Secret in Modern History
UFOs and a Solution to the Environmental and Energy Crisis

The Cover-up: UFOs

Mercury & Gemini Astronaut, Colonel Gordon Cooper
A saucer flew right over [us] and landed out on the dry lakebed. [The cameramen] went out with their cameras towards the UFO. I had a chance to hold [the film] up to the window to look at it. Good close-up shots. There was no doubt in my mind that it was someplace other than on this Earth. -- Video interview. Transcribed in Disclosure, Steven M. Greer, MD., ed., pp. 226 - 227.

FAA Division Chief of Accidents and Investigations, John Callahan
The UFO was bouncing around the 747....Well, I've been involved in a lot of cover-ups with the FAA. When we gave the presentation to the Reagan staff, they had all those people swear that this never happened. But they never had me swear it never happened. I've got a videotape. I've got the voice tape. I've got the reports that were filed. -- Video interview and Disclosure, pp. 80 - 85.

Russian Air Force, Space Communications Center, General Vasily Alexeyev
They came up with a table with pictures of all the shapes of UFOs that had ever been recorded - about fifty….The study of UFOs may reveal some new forms of energy to us, or at least bring us closer to a solution. -- Disclosure, pp. 345 - 347.

Former Director of CIA, Admiral R.H. Hillenkoetter
Behind the scenes, high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about the UFOs. But through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense. To hide the facts, the Air Force has silenced its personnel. -- The New York Times, Sunday, February 28, 1960: "Air Force Order on 'Saucers' Cited," p. L30. See also Disclosure, p. 58.

Corporate Manager of Fairchild Industries, Spokesperson for Wernher Von Braun, Dr. Carol Rosin
Von Braun [rocket science pioneer] told me [in 1974] the reasons for space-based weaponry were all based on a lie. He said the strategy was that first the Russians, then the terrorists are going to be considered the enemy. The next enemy was asteroids. "The last card is the alien card, and all of it is a lie."….I was at a meeting in Fairchild Industries in the War Room. The conversation [was] about how they were going to antagonize these enemies, and there was going to be a Gulf War. Now this is 1977! -- pp. 255 - 259.

More Cover-up: Advanced Technologies Developed from UFOs

US Marine Corps, Captain Bill Uhouse
The [flight] simulator was for the extraterrestrial craft they had - a 30 meter one that crashed in Kingman, Arizona, back in 1953. I was inside the actual alien craft for a start-up. There are probably two or three dozen [flying saucers] that we built. -- Disclosure, pp. 384, 385.

US Army, Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering, Colonel Thomas E. Bearden
Probably 50 inventors have invented [virtually cost-free energy systems]. If we use these systems, we can clean up this biosphere. But the entire structure of science, industry, and the patent office are against you….The more powerful the agency, the more they resort not only to legal, but to extra-legal means to suppress their competition. -- Disclosure, pp. 534-542. See also www.cheniere.org.

Disclosure Project, Founder and Director, Steven M. Greer, M.D.
The situation is so dire that senior Joint Chiefs of Staff leaders in the Pentagon who I have briefed have no more access to such projects than any other civilian-unless they are on the 'inside.' The government is really quite outside the loop. We have insiders and scientists who can prove that we do in fact possess energy generation systems capable of completely and permanently replacing all forms of currently used energy generation and transportation systems. Every single person who is concerned about the environment and the human future should call for urgent hearings to allow these technologies to be disclosed, declassified, and safely applied. -- Disclosure, pp. 14, 15, 567. See also Dr. Greer's websites at www.disclosureproject.org, and www.seaspower.com.

For full story see book Disclosure and witness videos at www.disclosureproject.org.
Disclosure Project has over 400 government and military witnesses prepared to testify on this subject.

Time Travel is Possible!

Yes people, I have figured it out... Time travel for everybody. I don't know how nobody ever thought of this before, but, the secret lies withing the geometry of Earth itself!

Because Earth is a sphere with time zones defined by longitudes, and because all longitudes meet at the north and the south pole, any persona standing on or near one of the poles can actually walk all over the different time zones all over the world making him go forward, or get this, backwards too! so long for Einstein's theories!

Of course, the only limitation on this new and fascinating method is it is limited to a time shift of 12 hours in either direction -backward or forward-. Nonetheless, a +/- 12 hourse could be very beneficial indeed, think of how many times you have forgotten your anniversary or your wife/girlfriends/life-partner's birthday, a simple step backward, shifting you 2-3 hours to the past where you could buy a gift and still make it back home ON TIME! Isn't this marvellous?

The only thing stopping us now is relocation. But, taken the current rates of global warming, the polar areas are going to be the best summer vacation spot for most of humanity, especially with the rest of the world intollerably hot by then, everybody is going to be able to travel in time!!! So, do not sell that 8 selender SUV of yours, it is our only hope!

Today's Quote

Energizer Bunny arrested, charged with battery.

Things I Hate

I hate when our Imsms talk about if cloning is allowed in Islam or not when we don't have a single scientist who's working in that field -applies to a lot of other stuff too-

I hate it when windows gives me an error message with only one button saying "ok"

I hate it when there's nothing good to watch on TV

I hate the lumps of undissolved of powder milk at the bottom of my coffee

I hate that a decent cup of coffee in any cafe now costs me more than 10 pounds

I hate to cut my hair, I hate going to the barber, even better, I hate my hair all together

I hate it when a bearded dude thinks that he's a better muslim than me -gross generalization-

I hate it when I walk on the streets and nobody's smiling anymore

I hate that everybody thinks that there's nothing going right these days and they're doing nothing about it

I hate people who drive insanely fast

I hate people who drive painfully slow

I hate cars I'm never going to be able to buy

I hate the fact that my little brother doesn't have fun at school anymore

I hate people calling TV or radio shows and asking "momkin asharek?"

I hate people who talk on TV and radio until the presenter asks them to stop

I hate that nobody respects time anymore

I hate anybody who says that "the Insider" is a good show

I hate Kazem El-Saher and anybody else who sings in "fos7a"

I hate the lack of green in my city

I hate anybody who thinks that he's better than all the others

I hate that I wasted too much time doing stuff that I didn't really like

I hate not pursuing my talents to their fullest extent

I hate actors and actresses who think that they perform art to convey a "message"

I hate not being able to speak my mind out loud

I hate being afraid

I hate hating so many things in my life

Today's Quote

"Sanity calms, but madness is more interesting" - Bertrand Rusell

Today's Quote

"I don't have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem." - Ashleigh Brilliant

Today's Quote

"Life is like a train, its bearing down on you. And guess what? Its gonna hit you, so you could either start running when its far off in the distance, or you could grab a chair, crack open a beer, and just watch coming", Erick Forman -That 70's Show ,S07-Ep01

Something Fishy

I don't like fish.

I don't like eating it, I don't like having it as a pet -why do people do that?-, I don't like its smell, I don't like its taste, I don't like its bones, I don't like that it takes me an hour to wash its smell off my hand after eating it, I hate its aftertaste which remains in your mouth for the rest of the day no matter what, I hate when fish swim near me, in short, I just hate everything about it. And a lot of people do to, at least a lot of the people I know! And the proof? There's like a million way to prepare fish, and if you think about it, fish doesn't really have a taste, this is even more obvious for squid, it just has absolutely no taste, I almost through up after I eat it, the taste comes from all the stuff you put in the recipe, and chef's all around the world know it...

I really believe that there's a big conspiracy by chef's, for whom fish is like the ultimate challenge. Feed people something that doesn't have any taste, over charge them for it and make them believe like they had the most delicious meal in the world while all the ate actually is herbs and spices and some vegetables maybe... ITS A COMPLETE SCAM GOD DAMN IT!

You will say, ok, so what do I care? Don't eat it moron, nobody's forcing you to do, well, true, but again I'm an eater, if its their on the dining table and I have nothing else to eat, I'll eat it!

Now back to our subject, ok, besides all the stuff I hate about fish, there's one thing that bothers me the most, its price! Fish is like the most expensive thing you could eat almost any where in the world, it doesn't matter if you live in the middle of the desert or on an island in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, its still expensive. Don't you think that there's something "fishy" about this? Ok, fish is the only type of food in the world that I know of, or one of the very few, that you spend no money raising it, caring for it, protecting from illnesses, providing shelter or a place for living, nothing, you spend absolutely nothing on fish, until you "fish" it at least!

Even then, did anybody see a fishing boat? Will, here in Alexandria at least, fishing boats don't seem to me like the most expensive boats in the world, they don't look safe either! And what other equipment do you need to go fishing? A net? Have you ever seen one of these shipping boats on TV when they drag fishing net out of the sea and its like swarming with fish? With a net that costs like what, 100-120 pounds at most, and you are catching all this fish. Its simply the most cost effective process I've ever seen.

Compare this to cattle, you spend all kinds of money on cattle, between buying a farm where you could actually raise cattle, you have to take care of it 24/7, feed it, treat it, milk it, slaughter it, transport it, freeze it, package it, its a head ache, but still it could be half as cheap as fish.

Somebody please explain this to me. Cause if I don't get one, I'm going public on the chef-fishermen conspiracy.

Today's Quote

If you must choose between two evils, pick the one you've never tried before.

Today's Quote!

I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me. - Noel Coward

Now, here's why boycotting won't work

This issue might seem old, but in the light of the recent poll that found that Denmark is Egypt's second worst enemy, with Israel of course being the worst.

A lot of people argue that boycotting is a very strong tool, and indeed, it had people in Denmark notice that what they did was wrong -at least in the eyes of Muslims- and it could've been one of the most civilized and effective worldwide Islamic demonstration if it wasn't for the violence that occurred. But I'm not going to argue with the effectiveness of such boycotting act.

The major flaw in the boycotting of Danish products in my opinion is the grounds on which this decision was made. Think about it, Denmark was originally, also according to polls by the same people who did this one, was considered a friend of arab and islamic countries, but now after all what happened I suspect that Danish people themselves will think twice before supporting any of our causes in the international arena.

But here's what really bothers me, Danish never killed any muslim, occupied or declared war on any muslim nation yet, we see it as more evil than countries like the united states and Britain. Don't you think that if any country is to be boycotted it has to be the united states? Don't a lot of Americans attack Islam and Islamic countries on daily bases? Don't they produce movies with representations of, not only our prophet, but of god himself? Don't they produce songs that attack everything that we consider holy in this world? Didn't some of their senators threaten to destroy the Ka'aba? Don't you think that a single act of these here deserves a more severe boycotting of American products than what happened with Denmark? At least the Americans will deserve it since most of us already think that America is the "biggest devil"!!

Isn't this a double standard that we, people who claim to be victims of double standards in politics, use with others too? Did we just find it much easier to boycott Danish products than boycotting USA? Well, that is the reason why I didn't participate in the boycotting of Danish products, its not because I'm not a good Muslim who defends his faith against the attack of these infidels, its because I found it to be a bluff.

So excuse me, but we ARE a nation of hypocrites.

Today's Quote

It may be that your whole purpose in life is to serve as a warning to others.

WTF?

Now, thats funny!!!

I was trying to go to the Reporters Without Borders website to show my support to their campaign against internet censorship and guess what? Their website was blocked already...

I have no comment on this one... You already know it :)

The Real Fight

Someday, we the Muslims, are going to rule Rome, invade Europe and kill all the Jews. But hey, just a second now, doesn't that makes us also imperialistic? which is exactly the thing we're criticizing the americans and the west in general for doing right now?

The United States is the strongest power on earth, militarily or economically and nobody can argue with that. But, why do we think that superpowers always have to be fair with weaker countries, and arab countries in general are amongst the weakest in the world right now unfortunately. What benefit could the United States ever get in solving the Palestinian issue and kicking the Israeli's out of there? Anybody who thinks that a superior power is going to be fair to him and not look after its own benefit is only fooling himself and the only way to get your rights from it is by becoming a super power yourself, only then well your demands be met and you're going to be treated fairly.

One of my personal believes is that we are managing the palestinian issue very badly, mainly because our current leaders and policy makers are a bread that lived through some of the weirdest times on arab countries, they all have the attitude of not recognizing the other, unwillingness to open discussion and think that it is our faith to fight the Israelis and kill them all.

I don't like Israelis myself, but I've also always been against generalizing. I'm against the way we are taught in schools to hate Israelis, or Jews in general, and in my case I was even taught to hate everybody who didn't agree with the "salafi" way of interpreting Islam. You can't say that all Israeli's are criminals, they're all army reserves, but aren't all Egyptians too? or at least all the males? I think that some Israeli's, even those still active in the army have more moral fiber than we do. I don't know if any the story that some fighter jets pilots refused to bomb targets with civilian palestinians [1] [2] while our own leaders had no problem bombed us, their own citizens probably even the same religion, with chemical weapons. Was that Israeli pilots better human being that the people who executed the orders to bomb Halabdja with chemical weapons under the Iraqi regime? What about the Israeli peace activist? The ones who oppose their own government and sympathize with the palestinians? Why do we hear nothing about them? What about the americans who travel all the way to Israel to show their support for the palestinian people and get killed, and if you never heard about it, and you probably didn't just look up the story of Rachel Corrie, an american peace activist who was killed by an Israeli Bulldozer.

It makes me laugh when I read in the Egyptian newspapers that the Israeli president is going to be prosecuted for sexual harassment, at least he's going to be prosecuted! The highest figure in the Israeli government is going to be stripped of his immunity because of this and prosecuted, I don't think anything like that is nearly going to happen in Egypt. Have you no shame writing about other peoples flaws and forgetting our own?

Why is it the dream of every arab to kill all the jews in the world?
How do we say that jews and christians had their best days in the world when they were living in the Islamic state when you see now the way we treat our own Christian citizens? And why did we kick all the jews out of Egypt when abdulnasser was ruling? Are all the jews in the world responsible for whats happening in palestine? Is it really the dream of all the jews to have their own country in Palestine?

When I was reading "ra2fat al-haggan" novel, there is a part that stopped me and made me think a lot, when ra2fat was on the ship going to Europe and the young jews were with him and he didn't believe that they were not going to Israel, he actually had to convince some of them to go with him!

Did anybody know that most Jews actually oppose having their own country because according to their faith this would be the end of their faith? Don't you think that we are the victims of a propaganda machine that is still working today?

Do you really think that 5 million jews could manipulate the policy of the United States? How, money? Don't we have filthily rich arab people too? why don't we use them to control the states ourselves? Why do american politicians give a lot of care to the Jews and ignore the arab constituents? Its because arabs in the states are a mirror of the state of arabs themselves in their own countries, divided.

The palestinian issue is not the cause of our troubles, its because of our failure that we have a palestinian issue. And the only way to solve it is to hold back the spending on militarization, because honestly, do you think we are going to fight any time soon? and fight the real fight, the fight against injustice on our own people by our own leaders, the fight against poverty, the fight against illiteracy, the fight for our own freedom, only then, when we are a nation that respects itself that we can demand respect from others, only then that we can solve the Palestinian issue.

El 5elfa welly by5allefooha

There are a lot of things about living in Egypt that makes me wonder if I'm really living in the 21st century or is it that there's just something magical about Egypt that makes its people stay the same while everything else around them is changing.

women circumcision for example, magic, superstition and the supernatural world in general, virginity, divorce, polygyny... You see all of these issues come and go in the media probably when they have nothing better to do and they want a sure hit... its the "fart bag" theory by Mahmoud El-Sa'adani all over again and weather it requires wodoo2 again or not.

Polygyny in particular always made me think, yes it is permissible by Islam to marry more than one woman, but, really, do you think anybody does for any other reason than sex? This is yet another way where a part of Islam was taken, manipulated, and under the influence of our man-made culture it gave an opportunity for perverts to have sex with more than woman "fel-7alal"... Before you all attack me and start spreading accusation right and left, don't you think that Islam made this practice ok to solve a particular kind of problem? All "tashree3at" in Islam were put there to serve a purpose that will eventually make the society better... but, is this why man people practice polygyny now? Have you ever heard of a single case where a man is married to more than one woman and there was no problems cause that are far worse than if he stuck with his first wife? Is their a relationship between the fact that people who get married to more than one woman have like a gizillion kids?

Is not being fertile reason enough to destroy a marriage? I see kids all over the place and to be honest, I don't think that anybody is doing any better job than anybody else bringing up his own kids, that is if he gives a damn in the first place about them growing up into responsible human beings. It actually makes me wonder of the relevance of having kids anymore, especially with our world not getting any better, is it a good decision to burden ourselves emotionally and financially to introduce yet more people to this over-crowded planet?

If we are still living in farms and own our land and work on them growing corps then having kids, and even at relatively young ages, is a good source for good and reliable labor! Think about it, I believe this is the main reason why peasants like to have many kids and get married at very young ages, because their lifestyle demands such measures. But, unless you are a peasant, and unless you're so egotistical that you actually believe that the world needs more people like you? Because other than that, If I have learned anything from my parents and all the hell I and my brothers put them through, all this pressure, all this money spent, then it is to not have any kids.

But lets say you are crazy enough to get married... and lets say that you found someone and you've met her family and all is going well, just after the "fara7", there's the first obstacle, virginity. Let's say your wife was -el 7amdolellah- a virgin, which I don't get the relevance of especially with the invention of "re-verginization" operations. But, answer me this question... why is their is always this pressure on the newly weds by their in-laws to get pregnant as soon as possible? Is it suddenly your responsibility to ensure the continuity of the human species? Are you the last fertile couple on Earth?

But again, let us forget about this, let's say that you are a "normal couple" who had a young baby like 10-12 months after marriage and you have successfully ruined the only pussy you are allowed to touch -from now on, its the death penalty, and by stoning too-. Let me ask you a question, what difference in the world does it make if the baby is a boy or a girl? Let me take you back to the peasant mentality because its the only way I could explain the relevance of the sex of the child. Again you're a poor peasant who's starving for a another loyal laborer to work on his land, if you get a girl, you're surely going to let her help you after she has grown strong, all peasant women do, but, as it is the customs of peasants before your daughter reaches 20 years old, maybe even 18 or 16, she's going to get married and belong to someone else's household and start working on their land, you have given him free labor and you have lost an 18 years old investment! A boy on the other hand is going to stay with you helping you with your own land, not only that, he is too going to get married and doing so, you have gained another free laborer too! Thats a good return on a night of fun, don't you think?

Now, unless you are a peasant who needs free labor, you are not allowed to discriminate between a boy and girl. But again, el sharaf yabettelkalb, el sharaf!!! And don't let me get started on that, but if you gotta, Isis said it all here.

Here's a little story I heard on a movie once. A man got married to a woman, and after some time, the man noticed that whenever his wife cooks fish, she cuts the tail and the head and put it in the pan. When he asked her why she is doing this, she answered that she always saw her mother do it this way. So the guy decided to research the issue, so he went to her mother and asked her why did she always cook fish this way, she answered that its because she was poor and her pan was smaller than the pan, and since she couldn't afford a bigger pan, she would only cut the head and the tail so that the fish fits in the smaller pan!

Before you do something just because every generation before you did, because your whole ignorant community is doing it, ask yourself a simple question, why do I have to do it exactly the same?

On niqab welly byetnaqqabo

This started as a comment on Isis's post
http://egyptreality.blogspot.com/2006/10/hijab-niqab-my-head-hurts.html
on hijab. As I started writing it I realized that I have too much to say about the issue that I decided to make it a complete post on my blog too... So, here it is:

Dick, Isis, and everybody else who's reading this comment.

I have to say that this is one interesting topic you're discussing here and it is still controversial even in Islamic countries, not only in the west.

I hope that my opinion here might open a new perspective especially that I've been living in Saudi Arabia for a very long while now.

I'll tell you my opinion on hijab at the end, but right not, I want to say that I disagree with muslim immigrants to the west wearing niqab or forcing their daughters to do so. I think that if you agreed to immigrate to another country then you agree to make certain compromises, I'm not saying that he doesn't have to be a muslim, but Islam is really based on five "pillars" or requirements that if you do them then you're a muslim.

I think that its only the most religiously extreme immigrants that chose to cover their whole body, it is extreme even in Egypt! But the issue is, if you are accepting to live in that culture you have to live by their social norm and not force it on the others, if you choose to wear niqab and cover you whole body then may be leaving your home islamic contry wasn't a smart choice to begin with.

I take it on muslims who live in westerns country and not try to accept and really become a part of the society they are living in now but instead hiding themselves behind cover after cover until they are completely insulated from the effect of that society, if you are afraid of it so much, why live there in the first place? And what is the niqab if it is not another barrier between the person wearing it and the society he's living in?

I think that these people live in a type of dilemma because Islam requires muslims who are not able to perform their islam correctly in any place to leave it as the prophet did when he left from Mekka to Al-Madina.

I'm not against covering the hair or wearing hijab, I believe that it is a personal choice, but its a personal choice that necessitates certain transition in a persons life style. Its a sign of humbleness and total abidance by the teachings of Islam thats why the example of the "sexy mohagaba" mentioned by Isis here is completely fraud!! cause being sexy in itself is completely against wearing hijab and the only thing I could understand from such attitude is that this person was forced, either by family or by social pressure, to wear something that reflects an image that is different than what the person believes in.

Western women who live in Saudi Arabia often wear some kind of cover "abaya - 3abaya" which is a black peace of textile worn on top of the clothes, just like saudi women do. Not necessarily because they believe in it, but because they are responsible persons who respect the culture of the country they're living in. I ask for nothing more from muslims when they're living abroad, and there's not contradiction here. One of my veiled friends when she goes to the states she wears an ice mask to cover her hair instead of wearing the traditional hijab she usually wears in Egypt because she understands that the essence is covering here hair not that she has to cover it in a certain way.

The insistence of girls to cover their faces -even with paper as Isis's saying! lol!!! never seen this one before though!- comes from a non-understanding of their own religion and instead listening to the new bread of neo-Islamists who are all around TV now who made these girls think that if covering your hair is good then covering your face is even better!

These people forgot that Islam always asked people not to do more than they could handle or afford, thats why we don't have a system of priesthood in Islam where men and women are not allowed to get married, its because Islam recognizes the needs of the body and well not accept or tolerate not accepting them, also there are a lot of indications on such things in the teachings of our prophet where people are specifically and repeatedly asked to make the easier choice between two good practices!

Covering the face is, at least in my opinion, a political statement that they think that the rest of us are wrong and that they're the only true muslims... the trend of the "Islamic Brotherhood" who were by the way responsible for the spread of extreme understanding of Islam all over the world and who are responsible for the birth of the Taliban and last but not least the guy from Austrailia...

Etkallemo

I'm writing this post in support of the unofficial campaign started by Malik after the incidents of sexual herrasements...

WE ARE A SICK COMMUNITY...

Yes, we are absolutely a sick community. And we have been one for quite a long time now, well, as far as I remember I started to read at least. We would make a very interesting case study for an interested psychological researcher with all our hidden truths and feelings and double standards and yet we, on the political level, ask others to be fair and just with us while we are unfair and unjust to ourselves and to everyone around us.

We are all hypocrates. We all want something or promote for something and do the complete opposite. We all pretend to have a certain standard but as soon as we are alone we do all types of wrong doings. The sexual herrasement event that took place is only the tip of the iceberg of a much larger issue which is the woman in our society and all of this also fits in the larger picture that we are all living in a sick hypocratic community.

I remember when I was a kid and I was reading kids magazines, there was a feature where the magazines answers questions that kids ask them. One particular quesiton that came up almost every week was always from a girl who has a brother and she's asking why is he allowed more freedoms than she does and the answer would be that since she's getting a lot of more precious stuff in the form of jewelery, it is justified that he should also get some more previlages since he's not getting any jewelry!!! Even as a little kid I didn't buy it, and I still don't. Thinking about it now, maybe if you made the boys stay in as much as girls or abide by the same curfew maybe, just maybe, we could've trusted our daughters going on the streets alone... or is the concept of eliminating the cause not familiar with all of us?

To tell you the truth, I nver understood the extreme importance we give to virginity and how if a girl loses it the whole world crumbles over not only her, but on her whole family. I immediately get the all well-known image of a mother crying over the lost virginity of her daughter and asking herself "7awaddi weshi men el nas feen" and the father getting in deep trauma and depression and is just not able to talk to anybody and loses all will for living and this whole aurora of shame the falls on the family and then the girl falls in the abyss of sin!!! And it doesn't matter how did the girl lose her viriginity, if it was by accident or if she was abused or raped or if she committed it by her own will, no matter what the circumstances are the reaction is the same. And especially in the case of rape, and this is what really grinded my gears, is when a rape accident is "solved" by the rapist accepting to marry the girl that he raped... does anybody see anything wrong here? What about the girl? the rape victim? what about her being scarred for life by a sick soul that she's then forced to live with for the rest of her life? what is going to happen to her? where is her right to live a normal life after being victimized?

Again, maybe if we treated the guys the same way for losing their virginity too we wouldn't have these problems! If we eliminate them from the society and treat them like outcasts too any guy will thing twice before committing this sin which in Islam has the same weight and requires the same penalty! And we call ourselves a muslim community, excuse my french, but you could all kiss my ass.

This might make most of you laugh but maybe its because I never had a sister. But I don't think thats the reason... or maybe, I really don't know.

The other dilemma I have is the issue of divorce. It just amazes me how much crap a woman can bare from an abusive husband just because she doesn't get divorced and the whole scene from the loss of virginity. I think that being raised outside Egypt and only visiting it on vacations and trying in this little space to catch up with whats happening and immersing myself in the magazines and newspapers and then spending the rest of the year outside made me an "outside observer" who has a different views of our society.

Now, back to the issue which I beleive is not the public abuse and herrasement but the issue is how we look to the woman in our society and how women also look at themselves. I know we as a "masculine" society bare most of the fault but women too acting week and vulnerable and being unable to support themselves financially and emotionally are committing the same crime against themselves. I don't know who said it on TV, I think Nawa Al-Sa'dawi, yeah I beleive it was her who said that a woman who's being abused by her husband deserves to be abused! Thats completely true, you choose weather you're a victim or not. But again, I have to admit that it takes a lot of courage to stand up in front of a whole community that looks at a woman as property and if she loses her virginity, for any reason, she's broken goods that anybody can go abuse and use just because!!!

Unfortunately most girls coast through life waiting for "the one", the dream person who well make them feel special and treat them righteously instead of fighting and demanding their own rights for themselves. I've been talking once with a girl who's a medicine student and she was getting engaged and I asked her what she's going to do after getting married and she told me that she's going to be a stay at home mom. I have nothing against any girl wanting to stay at home and take care of her kids and actually beleive that its the right of the kids to have their mom looking after them, if she chooses so that is. But I was shocked because this girl worked so hard studying through school and went to study medicine and put herself under this whole pressure just to be a stay-at-home mom at the end. I mean, she might as well have stayed at home right after school waiting for the "right" person to come along. Again, I'm not against the education of women but I'm against the notion in our society that the ultimate goal of any girl is to get married and produce offspring, immediately! Why is it that any couple who gets married have this obligation of producing children as soon as possible and why is it if they fail to do so or just simply choose to wait a little that they are criticized by the whole community as if if she fails to get pregnant then she's useless. And then there's this whole egyptian movie again where the guys mother criticizes the girl very harshly and treats her like excess luggage and wants her boy to divorce this girl and marry another "fertile" one?

To be honest with you, I'm yet to see the perfect son. I've seen too many examples of bad parenting that resulted in weird specimens of people that I'm wondering why is anybody thinking that they could do a better job bringing up their own sons? And I could go on and on on the weird stuff that we take as givens in our society.

Nawal Al-Sa'dawi, aside from all the debat going on about her and her controversial statements and position, which are only controversial because they contradict with our sick mentality, is one of my heros. She wasn't afraid of divorcing her husband and defied the rule of the community and preferred to make people respect her for who she is not for the state of her hymen membrane. She alone had the courage to defy the way over-due taboos of an unjust community and didn't feel any shame in getting divorce. I just wish all girls had the same courage. I wish that girls have the courage that Hend El-Hennawi had going public with her pregnancy and forcing "ebn el fishawi" as I like to call him to accept the "nasab" of his daughter. Did anybody really ask himself why did everybody attack this girl? Did anybody think that maybe its the right of this little girl to have a father and save her some misery in the future that we all know she's going to suffer from as soon as she begins to understand what people are talking about?

I have talked too much here and I know that most people reading this post will not come so far but if you did, thank you. I'm only righting this just to record my despise of our society regarding the treatment of women. And girls, I have nothing more to say than "ekallemo"...

The Hala Show Taboo

I know this comment is comming a little too late, but I just read this article and I just had to comment on it because it made me feel angry. This is yet another example of how double-faced our society is becoming and how untolerant and un-willing to participate in any kid of positive discussion we have become. I'm talking about the letter that 200 people sent to the rotana channel demanding the resignation or firing of Hala Sarhan because of the nature of contraversial subjects she is discussing in her show on the channel.

First, I don't know how difficult it is for some people to just change the channel if they don't like what they're watching on the TV. It is impossible for everything that is shown on the TV to abide by the hight "moral?" standards of all the people watching because by default it is being shown to a very wide segment of people, if they like it thats good, if they don't, they don't have to! It is their right to change the channel and watch something else that is more to their tast and standards. But if everbody demands the stopping of every show that discusses issues he doesn't necessarily agree with then there is not going to be anything left to watch!

Secondly, I'm one of the very few people who say they don't like Hala Sarhan and actually don't watch her shows! I didn't see the one that spurred all that controversy but its the reaction that has stunt me! I respect Hala and think that she's very brave for discussing such subjects that nobody else on TV dares to come even close to, its her way of talking that really annoys me, I dislike her as a person not as a professional if that makes any sense to anybody! If she's going to talk about prostitutes in Egypt, why not? Isn't there prostitutes in Egypt? Haven't you been to the street before? Hellooo! She didn't just create this issue for the sake of discussion! It is a problem that the community suffers and if we are going to do anything about we have to discuss it and see who are these people and what are their problems in order to fix them and prevent more people from doing the same again, but this is in an ideal community...

I don't think that anything that has been discussed on TV has ever changed anything or solved any problems and thats why it really bugs me whent these actresses and actors go on saying that they are going to "discuss a problem" in their dumbass series "يعالجو المشكلة" as they always like to say... but thats not the issue here, the issue is that these people, the respected ones ofcourse, have the right to disect the society and show us the rotten things that are living inside in order for us to become aware of it and try to solve it.

At the end of the article it discusses the issue of openly discussing safe sex on TV and trying to enforce it as a subject in the schools. I personally have no problem with this and maybe even encourage it, to tell you the truth, it is something that teenagers have to hear about from somewhere and in our society, I don't think that parents are willing to openly discuss this kind of stuff with their kids so if there's a reliable source of information about it, why attack it? especially when it comes to using birth control, which the Egyptians have to seriously start considering! Its one thing for a teenager to have sex -and in the case of girls bring shame to their family forever! :)- but it is going to be much less of a headache if it doesn't develop into a pregnancy issue which our society handles and a disasterous way either way... Drop all the pretexts of social right and wrong and think about it objectively and you will find that I'm right. I don't think that now you can preven teenagers from doing whatever they want to do, so you might as well teach him how to do it right so it wont distroy their future!