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Silence is a choice

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, Announcements, Q & A on May 27, 2008

On a recent speaking tour for Project Ijtihad…

Irshad engages with students in Philadelphia…

… about expressing themselves. (Photos: Ann Snyder)

A young Egyptian recently sent me this anguished email:

“i am an animation artist and a script writer. first, i like your rebellious spirit and your haircut. although I am a traditional muslim and committed so much with five prayers a day, i wont decide to kill you immediately.

your book opened my eyes to that bad thing called free thinking. for example why the media in egypt shows israel as the evil enemy? you know [Ariel] sharon’s son is in jail while gamal mubarak [son of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak] rides government cars with a huge security?

why really a young egyptian engineer fly away and hits himself to the walls of world trade center and what was the message he was trying to say and what kind of education pushed him to do such a stupid thing?

the problem i believe is we r living in continuously suppressed-thinking STATE. i mean we egyptians have the right to shout loud in a football game but we doesn’t have the right to protest against any political or religious affair.

do you know that a girl was arrested because she made a group on the facebook - calling for a strike? and a famous journalist was jailed because he said that mubarak is maybe ill because he doesn’t show up at a recent ceremony?

i don’t think that the problem is islam but I doesn’t think anything else because in my country I doesn’t have the right to think at all.

oh irshad sometimes I dare to ask - while I am hiding in dark - is there hope for us? thanks a lot for the book. and i love you so much.” - Ahmadollah

My response:

“Ahmadollah, I sincerely believe that free-thinkers like you are the ones to save Egypt (and, frankly, the world) from corrupt, self-satisfied elites. You are right: The problem is not Islam. The problem is our silence as Muslims.

I realize that you cannot protest in the streets without being beaten up by Hosni Mubarak’s thugs. I was in Cairo two years ago and saw with my own eyes the large green trucks filled with unemployed boys. The government hires them to attack pro-freedom demonstrators. This is your reality.

Can you do something else to speak your mind freely? I believe so, and I am here to help.

My non-profit campaign, Project Ijtihad, has created a partnership with TakingITGlobal, a portal that connects social justice activists from 180 countries, including Egypt. I say more about this partnership here.

Now, Project Ijtihad is going further. We have just launched our own discussion board on TakingITGlobal. Everything can be explored: human rights, political reform, even my hairstyle (under the category, “crimes against humanity”!) You can start your own discussion thread too.

Best of all, because TakingITGlobal creates online communities throughout the Middle East, they know how to ensure that your identity remains protected from the government.

So if you have something to say (and clearly, Ahmadollah, you do), join us. Activists around the world want to listen and lend a hand to your dream of real democracy in Egypt.”

Beyond Ahmadollah, everybody reading this blog is invited to sign up. If you need assistance or have questions about participating, contact Project Ijtihad’s coordinator, Raquel Evita Saraswati.

For more evidence that anybody can speak up for justice, including an 8-year-old girl in Yemen, click here.

And to defy censorship that much more, download free translations of my book. I’ve posted it in multiple languages for those countries where it’s censored or difficult to access.

Remember: Governments everywhere expect you to be apathetic, scared and weak. The questions is not whether we can prove them wrong. Of course we can. The question is whether we will.