Kareem Amer the blogger who went to prison

Abdul Kareem Amer is an Egyptian blogger who was sentenced to four years in prison for, well obviously having a brain. Kareem first caught the attention of the law enforcement officers of Egypt when he criticized the Islamist violence against Alexandria Christians in 2005. He continued to write in his blog before he was finally arrested and prosecuted on February 22, 2007.

Kareem spoke courageously against what he saw as political repression, religious extremism, and discrimination against women in Egypt. He maintained secular views and often criticized the militancy of Islamic leaders. He also spoke against what he saw as the hypocrisy of his university and his government.

And here is the best part, Kareem was disowned by his own family after he was sentenced to prison. So much so for the so called forgiveness and kindness of religions. 

If this is how they plan to maintain their religious grip on the society i can only predict the downfall of the religion they are trying to save, but certainly not in this century. Maybe people like kareem are the pioneers of what to come in the future. I can only hope so.

First they came

In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;

And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;

And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;

And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up.

 

Martin Niemoller

why do some democracies fail

This is written after coming to the conclusion that our parliamentary democracy lags behind other major democracies. This is not about ignoring the progress we have made but about concentrating on the things we have missed out. So why is that some parts of the world have successful democracies while some parts
are struggling to make progress?

The only reason i can think of is our people were not ready for a parliamentary democracy. At the time when we got this democratic system our people did not demand for such a system nor did they fight for one. Only the western educated leaders at that time lobbied for democratic reforms. The only thing the  ordinary man wanted was to get rid of the alien ruler. So the thing that happens when you get something you didn’t demand and you don’t understand happened to our democracy, people misused it. Whole ideas of democracy were originated and evolved in the west through many struggles, debates and uprisings. When our countries were transformed it should have been done in a slow and iterative manner.

This is the theory i could arrive at after all those times of thinking. As far as i can see most of the countries that were given a model of democracy by colonial rulers were slow to adapt to it(in some cases it was a disaster) while those countries that were transformed slowly by themselves made steady progress.