(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Violence and terrorism have become commonplace – something everyone talks about. Men, women, young people and young children, the government, the people, billionaires, poor farm workers, intellectuals and illiterates. Everyone. Nevertheless, the underlying causes and roots of violence in culture and society are rarely discussed. Virtually no one touches on history, philosophy, psychology, art, religion or ethics in this context.
How should we be able to overcome political terror, military terror and police terror while simultaneously supporting it in everyday life, in our thinking, in culture and morality, from cradle to grave?
How can we cope with terrorism without being willing to look at the deeper underlying causes and roots it has in history and in patriarchal capitalist class thinking in both the West and the East?
Pathe violence of the triarch. Latest news from Washington tells a bit about the evolution and character of the violence. The United States faces major challenges. Mental and physical violence and torture in modern American culture have evolved to be worse than a raw and primitive jungle. Recently, we have gained insight into American police violence, when the police were confronted by the peaceful protests that have exploded extensively in many US cities. In the United States, too, there are protests against abuse of power, abuse and violence, but in this case from the Judeo-Christian patriarchy.
Nevertheless, many people seem to believe that terrorism and violence exist only in our Arab countries. We are supposedly the only ones who are violent and carry out terror, because of our eastern genes, from Arabs and Berbers, or because Islam is supposed to be the only religion that encourages patriarchal violence and killing of infidels. But it is known that the worst Islamic terrorist groups, such as Daesh, Al-Qa'ida, the Taliban and Boko Haram, are originally American, European and Israeli structures, which serve their basic colonialist goals.
We find examples of the same thing throughout the world's religious history – from Judaism to Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and more. Seas of blood have been played in the name of God, in the name of the Prophet, in the name of the saints, and in names we have never heard of.
Religion and politics have not been separated in any country, neither now nor in the past. All religions are patriarchal class systems that hide behind politics, or politics hide behind religion. Religion and politics are not really separated in any country, not even today, not even in countries that call themselves democratic, civilized and modern – such as Israel and her best friend, the United States.
A world. It has become part of the political game and the historical ignorance we live in, that we draw a distinction between violence in a "first world", "second world" and "third world" – and between Western civilization and other civilizations in the east and south. We live in one world. Subject to one patriarchal capitalist civilization and one masculine culture. Stratified on the basis of violence, power, rape and terror – despite desires for democracy, social justice and peace.
How many social revolutions have exploded in the world? Among other places in Egypt. Against patriarchal violence and class-driven oppression. How many of these revolutions have boiled away in cabbage? People are still submissive, men, women and children alike.
This must continue to happen because of the class values we teach our boys at home and at school: the concept of masculinity which is based on power and control, honor, pride, cold logic and masculinity. The girls, on the other hand, learn the concept of femininity as an antithesis of masculinity, that is, as inferiority and submission. They learn to accept humiliation, and to see themselves as a body that exists only for the pleasure of man, without being able to have their own thoughts or will.
Praise and beatings. Ever since I was little, I have felt that the values and concepts I was presented at home, at school, on the street, on the radio and elsewhere in society stripped me of all my human value. It felt like a direct attack on the confidence I had in my own intelligence – which would protest against submission, obedience and humiliation. At the same time, my brave, obedient sister received praise and rewards, and was seen as the ideal woman.
These ideas are allowed to develop freely in the personalities of our sons and daughters. They are afraid of being bullied and accused of being gay and lesbian, of not being masculine enough or feminine enough.
The boys get used to behaving arrogantly and controllingly, and the girls get used to submitting and living with humiliations, day in and day out. Every second of life, layers of degrading and hurtful memories accumulate in the girls' consciousness and subconscious. It becomes part of their emotional life and thoughts, so they no longer feel unfairly treated or have any objection to being beaten by their brother or husband.
Violence learning. The boys, on the other hand, are instructed to be men, not women, and to become a strong and dominant father – a "proper man," who has the right to punish and beat his sister, his wife and his children, so they obey and submit. his order. A brother becomes accustomed to looking at his sister and mother and other women disrespectfully and disrespectfully, and sympathizing with laws, religion, ethics and art that support these same values that are the source of the violence that permeates the family and the country.
Both the Revolutionary Party and the educated man have rejected class-based violence, political violence and the oppression of dictators. They distance themselves from the big brother see you mentality that George Orwell described, and the brutal violence of King Sharayar One Thousand and One Nights, when he killed all the women in revenge for his wife's infidelity.
Sharayar was not punished for his violent crimes, but was rewarded with faithful entertainment from Sheherasad, who tells him beautiful stories every night, and later gives birth to three boys. Even Lebanese May Ziade's famous literary salon included only men, several of them directly misogynistic, such as Abbas Mahmoud Al-Akkad. Not a single woman participated in this community.
The patriarchal society did not have room for a fiction writer like May Ziade (1886-1941), and has left her no greater legacy than as a patient in a mental hospital.
This is what no one wants to talk about in connection with violence and terror.
Translated from Arabic by Vibeke Koehler.
Nawal El-Saadawi (b. 1931) is a physician, author, feminist and one of Egypt's leading intellectuals. She has been writing exclusively for Ny Tid since June 2009. In the online newspaper Egyptian Streets, El-Saadawi was listed earlier this year as one of twenty-three Egyptian women who have made history.
New Time January 16, 2015
