That helpless feeling
Debating 2003, the Egyptian press agreed it was a frustrating year, according to Omayma Abdel-Latif
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"The Jews are still in Palestine and the Americans are still in Iraq. Where are the Arab leaders?"
"In the bathroom." Samir in Al-Arabi;
Amr Okasha of Al-Wafd sums up Egypt 2003: Issue of the Year -- parliamentarian draft dodgers. Victim of the Year -- the pound. Man of the Year -- penniless
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The year 2003 will go down in history as not only the year when the Middle East took centre stage but also the year when many political taboos were broken -- at least so say opposition newspapers. While the papers were busy with the routine selection of Man of the Year and reviewing the major events of 2003, three issues continued to stir heated debate: Libya's decision to eliminate its weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), the ban on donning the veil in public schools in France and the results of the People's Assembly's bi-elections. News about Saddam Hussein, which dominated the newspapers in the wake of his capture, took a back seat.
"This was the year of powerlessness par excellence," wrote prominent writer Fahmi Howeidy in his Tuesday column in Al-Ahram. "Confusion has become the order of the day. Everybody is asking one question: where is this ummah (Muslim nation)? We have had some people doubting that the ummah exists at all."
The year 2003, wrote Howeidy, is far worse than 1967, the year of the catastrophe, as the Arabs commonly call it. "The 1967 defeat stunned our societies but did not break them. They remained defiant and confident. This is not the case with 2003. We have noticed hardly a trace of anger directed towards what has befallen us during this year. The wall of separation between society and some sections of the elite has become too high. The elite can barely claim to be reflecting the true will of the people." The Arab world, concluded Howeidy, is now like a boat without a navigator or a captain.
For some papers, however, it was not all gloom and doom. Al-Arabi, the mouthpiece of the Nasserist Party, described 2003 as the year in which the paper managed to write on many of the taboo issues that have been rarely tackled in the Egyptian press. "We have dealt with issues that no other paper in Egypt dared to deal with," Al- Arabi boasted. One such issue which the paper said it was the first to raise was the debate over President Mubarak's eventual successor and democratisation in Egypt. Exposing cases of corruption in both public and private sectors was also among the paper's specialties during the year.
The Libyan president's decision to come out of the closet on WMDs drew an angry response from Egyptian papers. Al-Arabi warned against "complacency and succumbing to America's grand designs in the region". It considered Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's move "a stab in the heart of the Arab national security system. This decision comes from a leadership which considers itself at the heart of Arab nationalism and at a time when the United States, Britain and Israel seek to impose their hegemony over the states of the region," said the paper, quoting a statement issued by the Nasserist Democratic Party. The paper noted that the Libyan decision "does not protect Libyan nor other Arab peoples. Rather, it opens the door to American intervention and whets the appetite of [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon and his gang to commit more atrocities against the rest of the Arab world."
The paper also noted that "Egyptian-Libyan relations are strained," referring to President Mubarak's adviser Osama El-Baz's criticism of any unilateral steps to disarm and his call for a unified and collective Arab stand on the issue of WMDs in the region.
But the editorial of the weekly Akhbar Al-Yom on Saturday had a different view. It pointed out that in the Syrian-Egyptian summit held in Sharm Al-Sheikh last week, both the Syrian and Egyptian leaders welcomed the Libyan step but renewed their call to remove all WMDs in the region, particularly that possessed by Israel. The paper noted that "the double standard of the United States has in fact made Israel confident that the issue of its possession of WMDs will not be raised. International justice should be the rule and the double standard policies on this issue is unacceptable," the paper said.
Writing in Al-Wafd on Saturday, Sanaa Al-Said was very critical of Gaddafi's decision, describing it as "offering victory to Bush after the capture of Saddam Hussein and opening the door wide for him to launch aggressive campaigns against any country in the region... the Libyan declaration is a good deal for the US but it is a unilateral step which undermines the position of all Arab countries which are left with no alternative but to succumb to US pressure."
In what appeared to be an orchestrated PR stunt to improve his battered public image, Egypt's Prime Minister Atef Ebeid was interviewed by Al-Ahram, Akhbar Al- Yom and his most virulent critic, Adel Hammouda of Sawt Al-Umma. The interviews were apparently timed to coincide with Ebeid submitting the government's statement to the People's Assembly. In the interview with Akhbar Al-Yom, the premier defended his government's policies and rejected any notion that it was behind the recent price hikes, insisting that "some private sector businessmen were responsible." Still, his reaching out to the media did not deter Al-Arabi from selecting Ebeid "Worst Man of the Year".
The debate over the French president's decision to put into law a ban on religious symbols in public schools, including Islamic headscarves, continued to draw a response. The debate coincided with a visit to Egypt by French Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy who met the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Sheikh Mohamed Tantawi. Afaq Arabiya, the unofficial mouthpiece of the Muslim Brotherhood, launched a scathing attack against the decision, reserving particularly harsh criticism for Tantawi for describing the matter as a purely domestic issue. "We hope that Al-Azhar and its sheikh would express the true opinions of Muslims to the officials of the French administration. We hope that they will stand up to attempts that deny Muslims the right to worship and practise their religion anywhere in the world," the editorial observed. One writer of the paper wrote cynically, "The veil has become a weapon of mass destruction in the eyes of the French state. [French President Jacques] Chirac is acting like a fanatic by drafting such a law which denies Muslim women the right to practise their faith under the pretext that the veil poses a threat to the value of secularism to which Chirac is a strong adherent," observed Abdel- Azeem Al-Matanie.
Al-Arabi also took issue with Tantawi's statement, accusing him of "letting down the Muslims in the battle of Chirac". Gauging the reaction of several Muslim ulama and scholars, the paper registered "the wave of anger which swept the Muslim street in denouncing the decision. The message which will be sent to Muslims around the world is that France has begun a vile campaign against its Muslim population just because they happen to be Muslims. And if the Muslims in France are to be denied their religious freedom and basic rights, it follows that France itself is bound to lose its role as a prominent cultural model," wrote Mohamed Hamad.
