Interview With Kefaya Punk About Egyptian Democracy
Kefaya Punk is a 23-year-old pseudonymous blogger and activist in Egypt. Punk graduated in summer of 2008 in Mass media and communication – Radio & TV major at a private university. He blogs about linguistics and politics and his facebook campaings and dissident opinions online made him a target of censors several times. He is helping build an NGO dealing with issues like diversity, accepting difference and tolerance.
In this interview, Punk tells The Propagandist's Contributing Writer Niklas Anzinger about his political activism and has news about his close friend Maikel Nabil Sanad, who was arrested by Egyptian military police. (Read our interview with Maikel Nabil Sanad).
Your political activism touches on secularism, democracy, religion and especially about Israel. I noted you take also pro-Israel stances similar to Maikel. What does it mean to take that stance in daily life and given the political circumstances?
Secularism is the only alternative to religiously-shaped civil wars and inequality. Secular statehood is the only guarantee for citizens to be treated equally no matter what their religious beliefs are.
Democracy is significant in ensuring that the authority of the state and politicians won’t corrupt them as well as giving opportunities to serve the good of society.
Religion should always be a personal thing for people and not a means to political gains or whitewashing supremacism. Religiosity shouldn’t prevent people from being logical and sane. Our Egyptian society faces a problem that some people are ready to throw away scientific and logical findings if they think they contradict their religious beliefs.
Finally, religion must not be written in our national identification card, because it gives the opportunity for racists to identify members of other religions and bash them. It is also an indication of the state’s intervention in individual´s personal beliefs as well as sponsoring sectarianism.
Egypt has a Nasserist Arab-nationalist heritage of anti-Israelism and anti-Judaism which was strengthened ever since Egypt was hijacked by the military in the 1952 coup d’état. Some militarists who called themselves The Free Officers, made a declaration pronounced by Anwar Sadat on radio and talked about their defeat in Palestine war in 1948! What is the relation of Palestine to an allegedly Egyptian revolution in 1952? The Egyptian military makes use of the Palestinian issue for political gains and to justify its violations.
Why don’t we see outcries for the illegitimate and violent wars that Saud family fought and seized the lands of, for example, the kingdom of Hijaz? It wasn’t Saudi land! Have the Arab-nationalists thought about history, rather than doing what they are told by their authorities, as a herd? Have they thought about how the land of Palestine was owned and controlled by the Egyptians, Canaanites, Israelites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines before being controlled by Muslims? In late history, it was controlled by the Ottoman Empire which was Islamic as well, but Britain controlled it, then after the British withdrawal, Zionists decided to establish their homeland there. So what?
The problem here is the Arab-nationalists double standard dealing with history as well as religion. The Arab-nationalist and the anti-Israeli logic claim that Jews don’t have the right to seize Arab or Islamic land. I consider Arabism to be Islamism, but in a quasi-secular disguise.
No matter how much Arab-nationalists claimed that they are secular and that Islam has nothing to do with their ideology, it’s all documented in the history. Gamal Abdel Nasser had a Three Circles Theory in which he theorized that their militarist Egyptian revolution had three spheres, the Arab world, Africa and the Muslim world.
What the early Muslim conquests, at the beginning of Muslim religion spreading, actually was trying to do was spread the Islamic culture and the “language of its sacred book”. That’s not any different from the imperialism which modern Islamists claim to counter.
After succeeding to an extent in spreading Islamic culture and language, not everyone in the conquered lands converted to Islam, but still they were forced to embrace the Islamic language which was only spread for the sake of Islam. (It is more correct to call literary Arabic language the Islamic language, because its rules were constructed from the exact language of the Koran and the Koran is the Islamic sacred book.)
Arab-nationalism claims that people within North Africa and Middle East have common traits, which include sharing the same language and religion! There is a bizarre claim that all the people within North Africa and Middle East speak the same language, denying the fact that they speak different dialects or non-standardized languages. The claim even extends to the belief that we speak corrupt accents of the true correct Arabic language which is – of course - the most eloquent and that those accents are prosaic and limited.
Arabism is quasi-secular Islamist sectarianism.
I noted you take also pro-Israel stances similar to Maikel. What does it mean to take that stance in daily life in Egypt given the political circumstances?
Most of my friends share similar ideas with me in our acknowledgment of Israelis right to peaceful coexistence. It’s hard for us to declare our thoughts regarding Israel and we have no space to express our peaceful thought in the Arabic media. The Arabic media never talks about it. And as you know it, my activism is only on the internet. I’m already using a pseudonym to protect myself from persecution and prosecution.
After the Egyptian uprising, I was thinking of that there would be no reason not to reveal my name online, but it looks like I won’t, especially after Maikel’s imprisonment! I’m calling it the Egyptian uprising, because a revolution ousts regimes and constitutions, but our regime still exists with its old constitution. Apparently it hasn’t changed since 1952 and the authority remains.
What is your relationship to Maikel Nabil? How well do you know him? Are you political activists in the same branch? Have you done certain actions together or do you participate in political organisations?
I already knew Maikel three years ago from his activities online and his famous campaign “No For Compulsory Military Service”. I knew him from Facebook, but not personally. In a time less than a year ago, he noticed my contributions through comments on his Facebook page, so he requested to add me and I accepted. We started chatting then we met personally.
Maikel is now one of my most trusted friends. I agree with almost all of his thoughts. He truly believes and acts upon the principles he believes in. This is very important for me so that I can trust what people say, because I've met some people who consider themselves social activists or political activists who claim to be liberals but never act upon what they claim to believe in. I always like to exchange ideas with Maikel and brainstorm. His opinions about current events are important to me and help shed some light on some things I’m unaware of.
Since the beginning of the major demonstrations starting from 25th of January, I was so scared to go out of home, especially after the internet and mobile phone connections were cut off and after watching on TV how horrific was the regime's response to the peaceful demonstrators. After that, some of my friends were arrested and tortured. They knew friends who died in demonstration.
Maikel contributed hugely in convincing me that we, as liberals, have to join and support the demonstrations and show ourselves more. It was a day or so before the first of February that he called me on the mobile phone, after the mobile connections were restored partly, and told me that there is a march of million on Tuesday and I had to join him. That historic day was the first time for me to ever join a demonstration.
Maikel is very intelligent. He understands the political issues of Egypt and how the dictatorships in the region managed to perpetuate themselves. He understood very well that the enemy to our freedom in Egypt isn’t an external country or Israel, as our regime propagates. The threat is the militarist regime of Egypt which was founded after the Free Officers committed a coup d’état and managed to overthrow the monarchy and hold on to power ever since.
Maikel is an anti-militarist. Militarist regimes are against freedom and democracy. They enslave their seized nations by compulsory military service, which may extend to three years in Egypt, with no rights at all and extremely bad conditions, health care and food. The compulsory military service prevents Egyptians from traveling abroad without finishing their compulsory military service. It also bans them from working while in military service. Recruits are paid very little. It is also a way to justify the involvement in politics, people’s private lives, liberties and rights.
Our militarist regime in Egypt prevents us from expressing sympathy or at least claiming the right for Israelis to exist peacefully. Our regime manages to damage the reputation of anyone who tries to do so, by propaganda and preventing them from defending themselves in any type of media in Egypt.
We don’t have free or independent media in Egypt. All of our information sources must be faithful to the militarist ideologies, or else they won’t be allowed to work in Egypt and their personnel would face unfair military trials, like Maikel.
Our regime never allows anyone to say, write or make a performance art about anything good about Israel, Israelis or Jews.
Because Maikel knew the root of the problems the Egyptian politics face, he was a great threat and a real challenge for the regime to perpetuate itself. He targeted their claim that it's the only alternative to a Taliban-like extremist opposition. That the government and the Muslim Brotherhood made deals in secret is not a surprise.
That’s why our deteriorating militarist regime arrested Maikel recently and sentenced him to 3 years in prison. It's a gesture for anyone who dares to question the militarists or shed some light on their violations, crimes, corruption, Islamic fundamentalism and their unimaginable enmity to the 2011 revolution and revolutionaries.
In a Jerusalem Post article you noted "contrary to what most people think, that Maikel’s imprisonment has nothing to do with his last article about Israel, I think that it was a great excuse for his imprisonment". Please tell me the latest about his arrest and his condition.
Maikel Nabil was arrested at his home on the 28th of March in the evening by military police. He managed to secretly call his brother from a soldier's mobile phone and tell him that he was arrested. That’s how we knew about his arrest.
Maikel was brought to a court-martial. The military court tried to mislead Maikel lawyers on the 29th of March that he wasn’t going to be tried that day, so all of them went home except one. Then his father managed to get inside to find out what would happen to Maikel. He discovered his son was being tried with around 50 others. The trial judge proceeded very quickly without even listening to their defense.
The verdict was postponed several times. His lawyer attended the last day of the verdict, on the 10th of April, but again the defense and his family and friends were tricked by the court that the verdict would be postponed again for the day after tomorrow for no reason. A day later his lawyer was shocked to learn that two hours after he went home, Maikel was quickly tried and sentenced to three years in prison -- without having any lawyers present!
The regime wages a propaganda war against Maikel. They tried to paint a picture of him as an Israeli agent and a traitor, because he made a video and put it on the internet, asking Israelis for solidarity with the Egyptian revolution and for calling Israelis “friends”.
