I cannot believe that its been already almost a week, A LOT happened during very few days; meeting a big group of interesting people, getting to know about many ideas, projects, ambitions out there. I think it is now clear for us all that we all share personal and more general objectives as participants in this course. We all want to develop our skills and knowledge expand our network yet a main concern remains situation back home. How can we contribute to change? Many suggestions could be given, yet I believe that big dreams always start small, and as we are not the only people working on media, freedom of expression, democracy or change maybe this meeting would help us grow our network of those looking for a change in the Arab region.
First day when we arrived, I was asked to be part of a collective interview conducted by a journalist from the Swedish News Agency, we were asked to talk about ourselves and our work, beside discovering that one of the people interviewed "Wael" from Egypt was one of the most famous if not "the" most famous blogger in Egypt -whom I happen to have previously seen on a documentary on Al Jazeera- I also discovered that I was accompanied by a feminist Journalist "Maha" and the younger journalist of the group who writes at Al Jazeera talk "Muhammad", suddenly my achievements in life; if I may call them so, seemed so little especially with the last two being couple of years younger than I am. But, in any case, since I have tried to convince myself for some time now that age is just a num
ber, let's not get too far from what I initially wanted to point out. So, each of us basically talked enthusiastically about new media and change, I tended to always think that Westerners enjoy lecturing about democracy, probably because we (Arabs) have been distinguishing ourselves for quite some time now with what I call "political retarded-ness" or more generally RETARDED-ness; not sure that word exists but well.. it makes me laugh and think; aren't we actually so? I guess we are, on multiple levels in fact, but what I discovered that the west is not the only side enjoying theorizing about democratic solutions.. we could all do that, couldn't we? I think many; precisely, policy makers in this world do not understand or perhaps do not want to understand, that democratization does not really have a magic recipe and for a successful democratization to happen it needs to come from down to up .. at least this is how I see it.
We got to the point were we almost agreed that social and political change in the Arab world like anywhere are interconnected yet are slow and gradual, I don't think we can work on one exclusively while isolating the other, and so to change you need to educate, open the eyes and get people to question. And so, I really like the term that we have brought up on various occasions so far "think out of the box". As I expressed in the session of Ibn Rushd mosque many of us are sick of this traditional and unfortunately mainstreamed way of educating and thinking and we really need to start being more critical, and in that regard I am a little optimistic because we all know that Arab people are not really satisfied with their life conditions especially in terms of political liberties, but not only. We tend to find an excuse for ourselves; governments are so, the U.S is so and so and as much as this type of analysis leaves a space for interpretations it also does not and should not mean that we should stick too much to this passive way of thinking, things now are not the way they were ten or fifteen years ago, we
should admit that, and control now is way harder than it was before, spreading the word is now an art and a technique and is no longer about paper, ink or pigeon... they cannot shoot the pigeon and F-16 can bombard buildings and bodies but not thoughts and beliefs, therefore lets all pass it on ..A week has passed and we all look forward for the coming modules, and one more thing we also hope that by the coming few days we will get to know Stockholm from up as mush as we are now experts in its underground..
Tusbihun ala watan !
Wednesday 23:53 pm.
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