A delegation of US tech companies and policymakers are visiting Syria today and holding a meeting with President Bashar Al Assad and high-ranking officials. The tech delegation (#techdel on Twitter, and “techdel” hereafter) came after coordination on high diplomatic levels and as a part of the Obama administration’s policy of engaging with Syria, according to William Burns, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.

A tweet by Alec Ross, the techdel’s leader, summed up the United States’ attitude towards the visit:

This trip to #Syria will test Syria’s willingness to engage more responsibly on issues of #netfreedom

Of course Net freedom is craved by Syrian users; Censorship is strict and many popular websites are blocked by the Syrian government (Facebook and YouTube to name a couple), and perceived cyber-dissidents have many a time received prison sentences ranging between 3-5 years in most cases. What the techdel seems oblivious to is how much the U.S. sanctions on Syria are complicit in further limiting internet freedoms for Syrian users. Jared Cohen, Member of Secretary Clinton’s Policy Planning Staff and a member of the delegation, tweeted:

Big gap between older & younger Syrians on challenges to business. Youth blame lack of education, not sanctions

Just to show how misguided that statement is, I’ll draw up a few comparisons between Syrian governmental censorship and U.S. imposed IT sanctions:

According to Jared Cohen, the techdel also addressed issues of intellectual property:

Strong words from US techdel to Syria on intellectual property & emphasis on enacting laws to address this in short & long-terms

Again, US policymakers are requesting that Syrian authorities help them enforce measures against software piracy, of software that’s originally banned from Syria under the US sanctions. I don’t know what message they are trying to send here, but again it shows that the techdel came with a pre-prepared speech that’s hardly based on the facts on the ground, and shows little desire to have a proactive discussion with Syrian counterparts. It’s ludicrous that Syrian officials are asked to help effectively enforce sanctions against their country; The fine people from techdel seem to disagree. The fact of the matter remains, pirated software is the only choice for Syrians now, and in the absence of the ability to purchase original copies; all U.S. demands for measures against piracy are painfully misguided.

I personally have little hope for any positive outcome to come out of this initiative. Both sides are hardly affected by the current situation and the real victim here is the Syrian youth and entrepreneurs who are having to spend their time and energy to come up with ways to go around limitations and hurdles from local and U.S. policies. Those wasted talents would have been better invested in an [infant], yet promising, Syrian IT sector.

I hereby start a campaign to call on policymakers from Syria and the US to end unjust policies and practices that are adversely affecting Syrian IT infrastructure, and users.

How you can help

Start by contacting US policymakers, especially if you’re based in the United States.  If you’re a Syrian blogger, blogging in Arabic is a good way to attract attention and garner support internally.

- Important contacts:

You can call or write to Sec. Clinton’s office:
Phone: +1 202-647-5291
Address:
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520

You can also contact advisers and members of Sec. Clinton’s team:
Alec Ross (@AlecJRoss on Twitter), Adviser for Innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Jared Cohen (@JaredCohen on Twitter), Member of Secretary Clinton’s Policy Planning Staff.

Use hash tag #freenetsy on Twitter to make it easier to organize and track tweets, and make sure to join the Facebook group page and invite your friends to join.

ترددت أخبار مؤخراً تزعم بأني مشارك في مشروع شرق أوسط واحد Onemideast.org وأردت التوضيح على موقعي بأني ليس لي علاقة بالمشروع لا من قريب ولا من بعيد، وتفاجأت بوجود رابط موقعي على موقع المشروع وقد طلبت حذفه. كما أن موقع كلنا شركاء استخدم صورتي  دون إذن بدل صورة عبد السلام الذي طلب حذف صورته من الخبر، وقد طلبت من الموقع حذف الصورة أيضاً.

أعيد التأكيد بأني ليس لي علاقة بالمشروع ولن أعلق بأكثر من ذلك.

Going to college in Damascus was a frustrating experience for quite a long time. I did not know the city nearly as well as I should have. I didn’t live in the heart of Damascus, but 30 minutes by servees (a microbus used for commuting in Syria) on a good day. When meeting people in parts of the city that I did not know, I was often too stubborn or too ashamed to ask for directions or help getting somewhere. That always ended with me asking questions to people I’m more comfortable asking, but also less likely to be able to help me; or walking aimlessly and asking people in the street who were as clueless as I was. Going to a new theater or cultural center was always a process of finding out the address and the best way to get to and fro the designated activity location.

Well, not for long. Thanks to Google’s Map Maker, other location-recognition-impaired people won’t have to suffer like I did. I’m now one of a group of volunteer users, or citizen cartographers as Google likes to call them, who  have been drawing the entire map of Syria on Google Map Maker. We’re highlighting points of interest, businesses, streets, neighborhoods and just about everything in between. Eventually it will be available on a high quality, easy to search Google map that’s free to use for all people and platforms that have an active internet connection. There’s an intimidating learning curve to Map Maker; roads are hard to draw and they disappear after you first draw them because they need to be moderated before they show up. This means having to draw roads with no visual clues of your previous work. Drawing on water is a close analogy.

Some Background

Googling a couple of keywords on comprehensive directories and guides of Syria (think Yellow Pages) returns a plethora of unfinished projects that were started by people hoping to monetize on their investment. When that failed miserably, they bailed on their half-baked guides. Here are a few samples of local and national attempts at creating a comprehensive directory:

eSwaida: The best failed attempt for a directory for my hometown, As Suwayda. (click image to enlarge)

Looking for the Commercial Bank of Syria lands no results on Syria Directory. (click image to enlarge)

Syria Directory looks like a really well done site: clean design, modern looking, and the links and infrastructure all work as intended. Looks like the people behind it did everything right… apart from the part in which one actually enters some data to the database. Searching for Commercial Bank of Syria in Arabic yields no results. Too bad developing the directory died out with the final touches on the design.

Yellow Pages Syria relatively has the better database of all. (click image to enlarge)

Yellow Pages Syria can probably claim to be the most comprehensive directory in Syria. But their claim only stands on paper — the print version. The search algorithm on the website is a mess, and their listings offer nothing more than a name, a phone number, and the neighborhood where the listing is located. No websites, no emails, and no detailed street addresses.

Unfortunately, in Syria street names are not commonly used by the locals, apart from major roads within a city. When you’re in a cab you ask him to take you to a well-known point of interest (a square, a theater, a mall etc.) or you just ask him to take you to an area or neighborhood and once you get there you become his turn-by-turn navigator. 10 years ago, most  streets had no name plates. Now almost every street has name plates and buildings are numbered numbers, but none of the locals know or memorize them, let alone use them.

To have better understanding of the situation, you can look at an official map of As Suwayda issued by the Syrian Ministry of Tourism. It’s bad enough that they chose to name just around 10-11 streets, but also they had to make the map using a ridiculous orientation of North being to the left, as opposed to every other modern map in the entire world that uses the north-on-top as a standard. But this is Syria, and we don’t play by the rules. If you like to acquire this gem as a collectors’ item, they’re available for free at all information tourist centers around Syria. (You’ll need a map to find those too!)

The Syrian Tourism Ministry shows us how it's done. (click to enlarge)

What’s Being Done

If you look up As Suwayda’s map on Google Maps today, all you’ll see is a gray area with minuscule number of roads intersecting in it (left image below). After some extensive work — 2384 edits, 130 moderations, 442.4 km of road added, and 263 feature edits, the map shows improvement (right image below). Those changes are in Google’s map production cycle and hopefully would be graduated to the public once the map is sufficiently detailed.

click to enlarge

The map of Damascus was recently graduated by Google and has since seen great improvements on the map maker that are yet to be reflected on the live map. The entirety of Syria’s map is being upgraded one intersection at a time. Other cities are seeing lots of work done as well. A complete full featured map would help tourists, and clueless residents like me, find their way around while in Syria. No need for extra confusion and humiliation caused by asking people who might give you the wrong directions on purpose just for fun. No need to be disappointed by an out-of-town police officer that has trouble locating his designated patrol locations.

As this post’s draft lied around neglected for two days waiting on an inspired finish, I found out just today that the wonderful platform SyriaConnect was also thinking along the same lines, by establishing a task-force for mapping Syria online. All what’s left to be said now is that when there’s a will there’s a way; despite US technological sanctions, and locally brewed censorship and bans on supposedly dangerous technology (such as GPS enabled devices), tech savvy Syrians are creating content and finding ways to make the internet a bit more hospitable to them, and to their fellow countrymen. Each in his own little, but significant, way.

Credit goes to L0uy, his blog post brought me back to Google’s map maker after I had given up on it the first time because of the frustrating learning curve. Also, props to the great volunteers working on improving Syria’s maps: Eyad N, Basil al-Daghistani, Nabil Attar, Adham, L0uy and others.

WikiLeaks

Have you watched the video? Now here’s the official U.S. army statement in 2007 as it was reported by the New York Times:

The American military said in a statement late Thursday that 11 people had been killed: nine insurgents and two civilians. According to the statement, American troops were conducting a raid when they were hit by small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. The American troops called in reinforcements and attack helicopters. In the ensuing fight, the statement said, the two Reuters employees and nine insurgents were killed.

“There is no question that coalition forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force,” said Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl, a spokesman for the multinational forces in Baghdad.

Nice cover up, No? Weddady explains on twitter how this could happen: “NYT is only as good as their sources when reporting on unseen events. US military sources –> US military official line.” I wouldn’t expect the army to behave any differently; Armies protect their own no matter what. Disgusting, but not uncommon. Defendants of the soldier’s actions are saying that the Iraqis had guns and what appears to be RPGs. Jacob Appelbaum clears things out a bit saying “When I was on northern Iraq in 2005: I had a camera over my shoulder, and a guard with an AK-47. This is very common in Iraq.” I also have to add that RPGs used by the insurgents are anti-tank weapons and not a ground-to-air weapon. Trying to hit an Apache with these is similar to trying to kill a flying wasp with a slingshot. Suspecting the journalist’s camera to be an RPG which is quite an outrageous mistake to make and still does not hold as an excuse for the trigger-happy soldier operating that 30mm machine gun. Read more about how they’re actually used in Iraq here.

There’s more to the story. US army officials lie trying to pretend that they don’t know how two children were injured in the incident. The children were in fact in the van trying to rescue the wounded and the on the full length video we hear the one of the soldiers saying: “Well, it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle.” Except the so-called battle happened in a suburb; you know, where families with children usually live. Iraqis are not bringing their kids to battle. The battle is happening in their back yards, streets, and homes. With over a million Iraqis killed since the war began and over 4 million became refugees, isn’t it clear as the sun that Iraqis have pretty much done everything within their power to spare their kids the battle.

The climax of disregard to human life, and a textbook breach of the Geneva Conventions and their three additional protocols, happens near the end of the video. A van draws near the wounded and an unarmed man rushes out of it trying to evacuate the wounded. The soldier requests permission to “Engage” — gotta love the euphemisms — and once he’s granted permission he opens fire killing everyone on the scene. I’ve seen a few apologists argue that these are insurgents and that the Geneva conventions and International Humanitarian Law (IHL) don’t apply for some reason they fail to mention. Article 41 of the Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I) says the following:

Safeguard of an enemy hors de combat

1. A person who is recognized or who, in the circumstances, should be recognized to be hors de combat shall not be made the object of attack.

2. A person is hors de combat if:
(a) he is in the power of an adverse Party;
(b) he clearly expresses an intention to surrender; or
(c) he has been rendered unconscious or is otherwise incapacitated by wounds or sickness, and therefore is incapable of defending himself.

Several other articles reiterate the corner-stone of IHL: the differentiation between combatants and non-combatants. Once a fighter is wounded and no longer able to partake in the battle, he is no longer a target. I’ve read so many attempts at justifying what the soldier’s did from people who claim to be military exerts or serving in the US occupation forces in Iraq. I’m ever so convinced that every soldier should be taught Humanitarian Law before being taught how to survive in the wild or how to shoot a rifle. That incident is a disgrace, and it’s unlikely that it’s one of a kind. Defending it is inexcusable, no it’s unimaginable.

have you donated to Wikileaks today?

As you can see from the map, Arabic speaking countries are a ‘hot area’ where many voices are threatened. I looked closely at the data to see what I can get out of it. My approach was to select a sample of the worst offenders and do a little comparison. I chose the following regimes for this mini-research project I did: Assad of Syria, Mubarak of Egypt, Ben Ali of Tunisia, Mohammed VI of Morocco, Saud of Saudi Arabia, Al Nahyan of UAE, and Sabah of Kuwait. Now wouldn’t it be interesting to see comparison between a regime’s years in power opposed to how many voices were threatened in those years? I thought so too and here’s what I found:

Voices Threatened vs. Years in Power*

As you can see, only Assad, Mubarak, and Saud achieved a higher number of threatened voices than years on the chair. With that they have won their countries a spot on the Reporters Without Borders list of internet enemies for the year 2010 along with Ben Ali for the overall number of voices threatened. Morocco was a close contender, but it didn’t make the top ten list. Here’s a pie chart to better represent the share of voices threatened by regime/country:

Voices Threatened Distribution

The podium goes to Egypt, Tunisia, and Syria; Their Mukhabarat are walking tall today.

On this day, I would like to pay tribute to all Syrian bloggers behind bars, and to all threatened voices around the world. I also want to point out one of the many guides on circumventing internet censorship that’s available for download in English and Arabic.

A world without internet censorship for me means being able to click on a link only worrying that it could have viruses, not that someone is virtually reading over your shoulder and keeping track of every page you happen to open. It also means being able to write a blog post, write a comment, or post a video online without worrying that you’d get up to three years in prison for it; and most of all it means that internet access in my country is held back, over 80% use dial-up, for years to keep online activity, and indeed activists, as controllable as possible.

You can see the Global Voices coverage of the day here, and here. Also, be sure to visit the campaign’s website on Reporters Without Borders:

*The “years in power count” is approximate and could be tiny bit off in some cases.

Being the skeptic that I am, I had to see for myself before I could make a final judgment.

I arrived in Boston on June 20th, 2009, knowing that I would have to go through “Secondary Screening” at the airport. The waiting room had a weird mix of people:  a Lebanese kid (he looked 16); a Russian young man with missing papers that was trying to weasel his way in; a bunch of disgruntled Spaniards, including a plane crew, that were irked by the fact that they would have to go through the humiliation of secondary screening. My experience was not so bad, I waited for a little over three hours before my turn came up and I was asked a couple of trivial questions about my parents before being allowed out. That was anticlimactic. It was an inconvenience, but it was still easier for a Syrian national to be granted entry to the U.S. than to some Arab countries.

Up until last week, my stay in the U.S. had been one smooth ride. I had been pleasantly surprised to have no incidents, no one with nasty prejudices. I had been treated as any other human being. Then came a trip to Washington D.C. where I opted to take the train because flying for a Syrian in the U.S. does not go without hassle. To my surprise the train  had no WiFi so I unfortunately chose to watch an episode of Al Jazeera documentary in Arabic called The Story of a Revolution ( حكاية ثورة Hikayat Thawra) on the Palestinian struggle against Israeli oppression and occupation, and yes, the oppression of the various  Arab regimes that were trying to use Palestinian suffering for domestic political gains.

حكاية ثورة - Copyright Al Jazeera

Halfway through the episode I noticed a hawk-eyed middle aged man ogling my screen with a death stare. I did not pay much attention to him and I went back to my documentary. Minutes later I hear him  on the phone talking about me to what I assumed to be 911. He was on a rant about a terrorist watching a video in Arabic, at one point he said something about Jihad as well. He was soon yelling profanity making sure I could hear it though he wasn’t saying it directly to my face, things like: “What the fuck is this shit,” “I’m not putting up with this shit.” He soon proceeded to leave the cart, I assumed he was also going to report me to the train’s staff as well. I took advantage of his absence and called 911 myself and told them that there was a guy acting in a threatening manner because he saw me watching a documentary in Arabic on my laptop. They advised me not to confront him and just move to another cart for my own safety.

Needless to say my train ride was ruined because I was paranoid that at any given stop the police might want take me away or that highly disturbed old man would decide to do a preemptive strike and attack me himself. I wanted so bad to confront him myself, call him out for the ignorant racist that he is, but he looked crazy enough that any exchange of words with him would make him physically violent immediately. Even though I believe I did that right thing by not confronting him, every time I think about it I regret not giving him a piece of my mind.

You might have heard about the college senior that’s suing after he was held for over five hours after an airport screener found  his Arabic flash cards and a book critical of us foreign policy, and you might know that U.S. airports make passengers that carry certain passports go through heightened security measures (the list of countries is politically loaded and has nothing to do with national security any way you look at it.) There was also the case of the Iraqi immigrant that was denied access to a JetBlue flight until he covered a T shirt that said “We will not be silent” in Arabic and in English.  The U.S. has gone a long way since Rosa Parks defiantly declared that she had the right to sit anywhere she wanted on the bus, but it still has a long way before allowing tokens of Arab culture and language onto their trains and airplanes.

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كتب أنس أونلاين تدوينة بعنوان “انفصام الشخصية العلمانية العربية !” تساءل فيها عما إذا كان العلمانيون العرب يعانون من انفصام الشخصية بما أنهم يدعمون المقاومة الإسلامية المتمثلة بحزب الله وحماس على الرغم من أنهم يرفضون التصويت لها في انتخابات سياسية وقد يرفض بعضهم فكرة وجود أحزاب دينية سياسية من الأساس.

لن أتحدث عن المتشددين من الطرفين، سواء العلمانيين أم المتدينين، فكما لا يرغب العلماني بأن يفرض المتدين عاداته وطقوسه وتعاليمه عليه، لا يرغب المتدين بالمثل أن يفرض العلماني نمط حياة لا ديني عليه أو أن يمنعه من أداء بعض فروضه الدينية. نقاشي التالي يفترض وجود احترام متبادل بين طرفين يختلفان بوجهات النظر بشدة. صححوني إن كنت مخطئاً ولكنني أعتقد بأننا لا نريد العيش كما في السعودية حيث يتم فرض لباس معين على الأشخاص (يتعدى متطلبات الحشمة بشكل غير معقول) ويمنع فيه الاختلاط والتفاعل البريء بين الجنسين، وتمنع فيه النساء من قيادة السيارات والانخراط في العديد من مسالك العمل ويضرب فيه الناس في الشارع لقسرهم على الصلاة؛ وأيضاً لا نريد العيش في دولة كفرنسا تضطهد الأقلية الدينية المسلمة بحظر الحجاب أو النقاب مثلاً تحت غطاء حقوق المرأة وحقوق الإنسان.

في طرحه لوجهة نظره سأل أنس السؤال التالي:

كل هذا جيد ولكلّ جهة حقها بأن تؤمن بالأفكار التي تريد لكن … لماذا لا يثبت العلمانيون على مبادئهم وأفكارهم بنفس طريقة ثبات المتدينين والتمسك بمبادئهم؟

سأرد على السؤال بسؤال، عن أي المتدينين نتحدث؟ هل نتحدث عن متديني الخليج الذين لا همّ لبعضهم (كي لا أظلم الكل، ولكرهي للتعميم بشكل عام) غير الحديث عن ضرورة مواجهة المد الإيراني الشيعي (أو الفارسي حسب الحاجة والسياق)  في المنطقة؟ أم عن متديني حركات المقاومة الإسلامية الذين تدعمهم إيران نفسها لمقاومة الإحتلال الإسرائيلي الغاشم؟ هل نتحدث عن متديني هيئة الأمر بالمعروف والنهي عن المنكر سيئة الصيت في السعودية؟ أم عن متديني الأسر الحاكمة في بعض الدول العربية الذين سُرّت أبواقهم الإعلامية بالهجمات الوحشية على المقاومة الإسلامية والمدنيين في لبنان وفلسطين وشمتت بهم بكل صفاقة؟

في النهاية هذا ليس موضوعي ولكني أردت أن أشير إلى افتراض خاطئ في الجملة التي اقتبستها، علينا التركيز على التفاصيل الدقيقة وحيثيات هذه المواضيع، كي لا نقع في مغالطات لمجرد تسرعنا بإطلاق تعميمات أقل ما يقال عنها أنها غير دقيقة.

عودة إلى موضوعنا الأساسي حيث قسم أنس العلمانيين إلى قسمين بحسب رأيه:

الاحتمال الأول: العلماني العربي هو في النهاية وليد لمجتمع ذو ثقافة إسلامية عمرها يقارب الخمسة عشر قرناً، العلماني العربي يحمل في النهاية وبشكل أو بآخر في وجدانه الجمعي جينات من حكموا يوماً نصف الكرة الأرضية بعد أن كانوا قبائل متشرذمة وكان فضل الاسلام أساسياً في قوتهم هذه، ربما يحاول أن ينكر هذا، أو ربما يحاول أن يقتنع بأن الزمن تغير وما صَلُحَ في الماضي للحكم تحت إسم (دولة إسلامية) لن يصلح الآن، وربما يسوّد الصفحات والمقالات حول هذه الفكرة لكنه يغير رأيه فوراً عند أي تجربة عملية يشاهدها على المحك، فهو لا يرى نوراً في نهاية النفق سوى تلك الحركات (الإسلامية).

لو نظر أنس بدقة إلى وجهة النظر تلك بتمعن لوجد أن العلماني يدعم المقاومة مهما كانت، حتى لو اختلف معها بالأيديولوجيا (وهذا أمر لا يمكننا أن نقوله عن بعض “المتدينين” الذين لا يريدون أن يروا سلاحاً بيد المقاومة لمجرد أنها من مذهب ديني مختلف) فالمهم هو الدفاع عن الأرض وعدم السكوت بوجه الاحتلال. العلماني العربي يدعم المقاومة الإسلامية على الرغم من عدم اتفاقه مع البرنامج السياسي للجهة المقاومة. وأنا شخصياً لا أرى تناقضاً في ذلك فالشق العسكري واضح، والبرنامج السياسي الداخلي واضح ويمكن مناقشته ضمن البنى السياسية القائمة أساساً، القسمان قد لا ينفصلان عن بعضهما بأكثر من شعرة، ولكنا نكون مخطئين إن لم نرها أو إن تجاهلناها. ولا ننسى أن المقاومة الفلسطينية المسلحة كانت ومازالت تضم فصائل يسارية وإن ضعف تأثيرها بعد إنهيار الاتحاد السوفييتي داعمها الأول. الفكرة هنا أن المقاومة الإسلامية هي الأقوى والأكثر تأثيراً في الوقت الحالي، ولكنها ليست “النور الوحيد في نهاية النفق”، كل من حمل سلاحاً بوجه المستعمر هو نورٌ في نهاية النفق. ليس هناك تناقض ولا فصام، هناك أولويات ووعي للاعتبارات السياسية القائمة على أرض الواقع، ما يسميه أنس فصاماً أسميه أنا تحكيماً للمنطق.

أما بالنسبة للمسلمين الذين حكموا نصف الكرة الأرضية بعد أن كانوا قبائل متشرذمة قبل الإسلام عادوا ليكونوا قبائل متشرذمة في ظل الإسلام. لمجرد حدوث شيئين بتسلسل معين لا يعني أن هناك علاقة سببية بينهما. الحضارات والإمبراطوريات قامت وسقطت من الفراعنة إلى الرومان إلى المغول إلى العرب المسلمين في الأندلس إلى الإمبراطورية العثمانية والإمبراطورية البريطانية والفرنسية وحالياً أمريكا حاكمة العالم بدأت بإفساح الطريق للقائد العملاق الجديد متمثلاً بالصين. كل تلك الحضارات قامت وحكمت بجيشها وعلمها وإقتصادها القوي،  ولو كان التدين معيار القوة الوحيد لكانت السعودية والفاتيكان وحتى أفغانستان أقوى دول العالم.

القسم الثاني من العلمانيين بحسب رأي أنس هم الأقلية وهم كالتالي:

الاحتمال الثاني: العلماني العربي سيُشجع الشيطان نفسه لو كان محارباً لإسرائيل, عند هذه النقطة تنتهي الخلافات والحواجز ويصبح الأمر أكبر من أن يفكر فيه بهذه الطريقة! تخيل أن يقف حينها إلى جانب العدو الإسرائيلي لمجرد أنه ضد فكرة الأحزاب الإسلامية من أساسها! الأمر غير وارد على الإطلاق (على الرغم من وجود بعض العلمانيين العرب الذين وقفوا ضد حماس وحزب الله في خضم حروبهم مع إسرائيل وقد قرأنا العديد من مقالات هؤلاء الكتاب في العديد من المواقع وخاصة الموقع سيء السمعة ‘إيلاف’ لكن أعتقد بأن هؤلاء قلة وليسوا الحالة العامة للعلمانيين العرب).

أود أن أذكر أنس بأن السعودية كانت أول من لامت حزب الله على “مغامراته غير المحسوبة” إبان العدوان الإسرائيلي على لبنان، وأن شيخ الأزهر صافح الرئيس الإسرائيلي منذ فترة ليست بالطويلة. فإن كانت السعودية أرض الحرمين الشريفين والأزهر شمس الحضارة والمعرفة الإسلامية مواقفهما كما سبق، فالعتب على كل من باع المبادئ والكرامة وخان إخوته في الأرض والدم مقابل مكاسب سياسية أو أعوام إضافية في كرسي السلطة. فعلينا إذاً أن ندقق في التفاصيل كما سبق. هناك أناس يبيعون مبادئهم ويلبسون جلد الخراف على الرغم من أنهم ذئابٌ مستعدة لنهش لحم أبناء جلدتهم عند أي فرصة سانحة. بغض النظر إن كانوا يقدمون أنفسهم للعموم على أنهم علمانيون أم متدينون، كلهم مستعدون لتقديم كل شيء للعدو مقابل ضمانات فارغة بمكاسب سياسية، ويقومون بالتلاعب بالأشخاص الذين يؤيدون الأفكار التي يفترض أنهم يمثلونها لتحقيق مآربهم الشخصية، دون أي اعتبار لمصالح عامة الشعب. جميعهم يكشف عنهم عاجلاً أم آجلاً ويتضح كذبهم ونفاقهم أمام العامة التي يفترض أنهم يحمونها ويضعون مصالحها فوق كل اعتبار.

أتفق مع أنس في أن التطرف من الاتجاهين مرفوض، كما أن منع أي طرف أو جهة من ممارسة حرياتها وحقوقها المدنية متضمنة حق التنظيم السياسي أمر غير مقبول بتاتاً. أنا أؤمن بأن حريتي تنتهي عندما تبدأ حرية الأخرين وأرفض العيش في مجتمع لا يحترم حرية الآخرين، كل الآخرين. المرء له الحرية في حياته طالما أنه لا يؤذي الآخرين ولا يتعدى عليهم بممارساته. والأحزاب الإسلامية أو الدينية ليست شراً مستطيراً كما يروج بعض العلمانيين، بل هي جزء ضروري من العملية السياسية في أي مكان لكي تمثل مصالح المواطنين الذين يؤمنون بها ويقومون بدعمها. ونتفق جميعاً أن الأنظمة الشمولية القمعية غير مقبولة بتاتاً سواء كانت علمانية أم دينية.

ولعل سوريا مثالٌ مقبولٌ لاختلاط الدين بالدولة حيث هناك قانون أحوال شخصية للأديان المختلفة يحترم ممارساتها في الزواج والطلاق والميراث، وهناك قانون جنائي (وإن كان متقادماً) ولكنه بأغلبه لايستمد أحكامه من الدين الإسلامي أو غيره ولا يفرضها على الجميع ولا يقطع الرؤوس والأيدي (لأسباب دينية على أي حال). هناك وزارة للأوقاف والدين يعلّم في المدارس، ولكن بالمقابل لا يتطلب أن يكون وزير معين من دين أو مذهب معينين كما الحال في لبنان مثلاً. أنا لا أدعي بأي حال من الأحوال أن سوريا بلد مثالي بهذا الخصوص وأهل مكة أدرى بشعابها. ولكنني أعتقد بأن سوريا نموذج عقلاني (وليس علماني) ويمكن البناء والتطوير عليه.

وليس هناك خاتمة أفضل لتدوينتي هذهمن اقتباس من رسالة من والد الصديق ياسين الذين يدون في أمواج اسبانية في فرات الشام حيث كتب التالي:

” لا تسمح لأي انتماء ديني أو قومي أو سياسي أن يفصلك عن الآخرين, كل الآخرين, فالإنسانية و الانتماء إليها هي أوسع و أكثر رحابة من كل دين و وطن “

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في النهاية أود أن أوجه التحية لياسين الذي بدأ حواراً ممتازاً حول التدوين السوري والتفاعل بين المدونين على اختلاف مسالكهم، ولعلوش الذي كتب تدوينة رمزية رائعة بعنوان قصص حب كافرة، ترك فيها للقارئ الفرصة بالخروج باستنتاجاته الخاصة. واحترامي لعموم المدونين السوريين الذين أقرأ بمتعة شديدة ما استطعت من نتاجهم وما جادت به قرائحهم إن كان باللغة العربية أو الإنكليزية.

وتحيتي بالطبع لأنس الذي لايدع اختلافنا في الآراء يقف في طريق تعاوننا في موقع أردرويد: أندرويد للمستخدمين العرب.

UNLIMITED OFFER! GET YOURS NOW, OR DON'T.

My RSS reader this morning brought some news that I’ve been anticipating for a long time now. The environmentally friendly Toyota Prius is now available in Syria. With an extraordinary fuel economy and a price tag to match: $60,000!

Car prices are always high in Syria because of jacked up customs and fees on purchasing new cars. But paying $15,000 just to register the car is outrageous, especially that there’s a presidential decree for reduced import and registration fees for eco-friendly hybrids. The car would still set you back $45,000 without the registration fee. I wish I were joking, or dreaming for the matter. A car that the fully equipped top model Prius V would cost 28K costs over twice as much! And judging by the specs on the model available in Syria it’s the cheaper  26K Prius IV model.

So If you happen to be in Syria, and hope to save 30 thousand dollars on gas, this car is definitely for you!

I was especially interested in the particular use of words in the article. I quote:

It has been a quarter-century since Israel and Syria fought directly, but Syria backs anti-Israel forces like the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah and the Palestinian Islamic organization Hamas. Israel’s sworn enemy Iran backs Hamas and Hezbollah.

In this article, Hamas and Hezbollah were not referred to as.. *gasp* “terrorist organizations.” Now I was not able to determine if this was an AP policy not to refer to them as such outside of a direct quote, or whether there’s more to the matter. I’m going to layout a few happenings, and let the readers come out with their own conspiracy theories.

Syria’s main beef with the U.S./Israel can be summed up to the following points and accusations: Supporting Hamas and Hezbollah, Interfering in Lebanon and Iraq, and strong ties with Iran. So what’s changed?

Hamas is being locked in Gaza with walls courtesy of the Israeli and Egyptian governments; They will be are being starved into irrelevancy. Hezbollah is no longer an upset in Lebanese politics since they failed to establish a majority in the last election and eventually all the creases were straightened out. Also, the 2006 war was a PR disaster for Israel and gave Hezbollah a stronghold in Lebanon, even though they weren’t able to translate it into votes a couple of years after that. To Israel, Hezbollah is a wasp hive best left alone. Also, the U.S. has been very successful in slyly translating the tensions in regards to Iraq into tensions between the Iraqi and Syrian governments as Washington works a slow withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

On the other hand,  Syria and the U.S. seem to be achieving progress, be it painfully slow: A promise of a gradual lift of sanctions that is yet to materialize. Robert Ford, former deputy ambassador to Iraq, is a candidate for the vacant-for-five-years job of U.S. ambassador to Damascus. He is currently awaiting Syrian approval. Iran is now occupied with internal turmoil, and sanctions keep piling up. I would not be surprised if Syria starts to noticeably drift away from its current closest ally. Politics in essence is more interest than ideology.

Does all of the above mean that Syria is working its way out of the gutter? Are Hezbollah and Hamas going to be removed from US terrorist organization lists at some point in the near future?

I do not think that the correlation of these events implies causation. Maybe I’m reading too much into the choice of words in that AP report. Still, It’s certainly interesting to see how things are shaping up. Could we be witnessing the “birth pangs of a new Middle East?”

P.S. The following Time article also uses the term “militant groups” to refer to Hezbollah and Hamas: Why the U.S. is Back on the Road to Damascus.

P.P.S. It’s important to mention Twitter in anything you write to show that you are relevant and hip — sarcasm.

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I have been in the US for over seven months now. Sometimes a friend asks: “Do you miss Syria?” I always think about that and reply by saying that more than anything I miss the people (and sometimes the food). What makes a homeland is the people inhabiting it before the land itself. In a recent conversation with a Syrian friend whom I’ve never met, he was saying that he didn’t want to leave the country because he didn’t want to have to adapt to a new world and new people.  Distance is becoming more and more irrelevant everyday. People of different cultures are becoming less alienated with every click of a mouse in each forsaken corner of the world. The only real challenge that traveling entails is leaving behind those whom you care about the most; Language is acquirable. Cultural customs are a breeze to get used to. A job or an education are attainable. But how easy is it to brew an indifference towards those closest to you?

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To motivate myself into writing more than one post a month over here; I will start a series of posts about the different projects, websites, and organizations that I have been involved with to various degrees recently.

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I really wanted to include something about Syria in this post, so I looked at Syria-news for inspiration. I can’t say that the news have changed much: Corruption. Embezzlement. A vicious circle of useless talks with Western officials. Another honor killing. Another major traffic accident with dozens injured or dead. The Minister of Social Affairs and Labor, Diala el-Hajj Arif, is still an imbecile; I hate her with the heat of a thousand suns.

Things haven’t changed much.

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سَأعيشُ رَغْـمَ الـدَّاءِ والأَعـداءِ * كالنَّسْـر فـوقَ القِمَّـةِ الشَّمَّـاءِ
أرْنُو إلى الشَّمْسِ المُضِيئةِ هازِئاً * بالسُّحْبِ والأَمطـارِ والأَنواءِ
لا أرْمقُ الظِّلَّ الكئيـبَ ولا أرَى * مَا فـي قَـرارِ الهُـوَّةِ السَّــوداءِ

نشيد الجبار (هكذا غنّى بروميثيوس)،   أبو القاسم الشابّي