WATANI International
26 July 2009
The killing of the Egyptian 32-year-old woman Marwa al-Sherbini in a courtroom in Dresden, Germany, earlier this month shocked Egyptians and produced responses most of which were—as has become customary—volatile, emotional, heedless, and aggressive. A few reasonable voices called for careful deliberation and a refrain from excesses. Prior to presenting my outlook on how this incident was handled, however, and lest I should be deliberately misunderstood, I would like to express my deep distress at the horrendous crime that took the life of Sherbini and left her husband injured by German Police fire. I pray for a speedy recovery of the bereaved husband, for his own sake and for the sake of his little son who was destined to witness the appalling death of his mother.
I have no doubt that the German judiciary is perfectly capable of upholding justice in Sherbini’s case. The problem, rather, lies in the manner in which our media handled the case, revealing an irrational degree of racial consciousness on our part, to the point of rushing to condemn the entire German people—even the peoples of Europe in its entirety—for the crime. We saw ourselves as victims of a full-scale conspiracy and went on—as though fighting windmills—to draw counterplans. All through, we appeared oblivious of our flagrant dual dealing and double standards which, were the roles to reverse so that the culprit would be Egyptian and the victim foreign, we would find unacceptable.
We in Egypt should know better. We have suffered badly at the hands of the so-called “Islamic” jihadi groups which call for violence in the name of Islam. These groups began, during the 1970s, to attack Copts, banks and businesses, then foreign tourists. It escaped no-one’s attention that the purpose was to terrorise Egyptians, destabilise the regime, and ruin the interests of the country and the sources of its national income. In the aftermath of each attack we rushed to confirm to the international community—and especially to those countries whose citizens were victims of the attack—that the culprits were not your typical, kind-hearted Egyptians who love and welcome foreigners. Neither were they representative of mainstream, tolerant Muslims. Rather, we would stress, they were hard-core terrorists who would be promptly brought to justice. We hoped against hope that the entire country would not have to pay the price of a crime committed by a handful of terrorists who were after the peace, prosperity, and security of Egypt. We could not afford to be taken to account by the international community for a crime we were, collectively, innocent of.
Many writers who tackled the Sherbini murder applied double standards; forgetting how we—as a people—would have been appalled to be collectively held responsible for crimes committed by a few individuals.
Under the title “The racist address behind the crime”, Abdel-Alim Mohamed wrote on 13 July in the Cairo topmost daily, the State-owned al-Ahram: “The racist address and its proponents of fanatic politicians should be taken to task. The racist address leads to a collapse in the moral values which condemn the assault of persons on the pretext of colour, religion, or culture. It makes it convenient for racist, extremist Europeans to discard moral and humanitarian values, seeing themselves as delegated by the Divine to rid the community of different, diverse faces. The racist killer is more often than not supported, whether publicly or privately, by sympathisers of the racist address.” It was impossible for me to miss parallels of the same logic in Egypt where repeated attacks against Copts or foreign tourists occur. Fanatic, racist thought is allowed to thrive; and culprits of hate crimes are allowed to get away with their crimes.
Again in al-Ahram, the writer and head of the Journalists’ Syndicate Makram Mohamed Ahmed wrote on 18 July that it was a pity the German government disregarded the Sherbini incident for a few days following the killing in the hope that it would pass without complications. It only condemned the crime in the wake of the wrath of Arabs and Muslims, including the Muslim community in Germany. The incident caught the German media red-handed as it handled the case with missing objectivity, displaying underlying racist tendencies.” Here again, I found it impossible to overlook the stance of Egyptian public and private media vis à vis the crimes against Copts and tourists, and the manner in which these crimes are obscured and sidelined, with flimsy excuses made up to justify them.
As for Amina Shafiq, it was with gratification that I read her weekly column in al-Ahram on 19 July. Ms Shafiq wrote: “We commit the same mistakes we ask others to refrain from when they deal with us. When a few Muslims attack people in the West, we ask the West not to generalise their view of Muslims as terrorists to include all of us peaceful, tolerant Muslims.” This, Ms Shafiq insisted, is exactly what we in Egypt have done with the German people in the wake of the murder of Sherbini.
To Ms Shafiq I say: well done. She was brave enough to oppose the huge wave that condemned the people of an entire country—nay, continent—then went on to impose itself guardian or supervisory body over the German judiciary. Had Egypt been in Germany’s feet, we would have risen, shrieking and shouting, against the unwarranted intervention in our domestic affairs and violation of our sovereignty.