From Child Pleasure Brides to Perspective

Is there a universal truth to morality? Is there a baseline we can all agree on, or are there intervening variables such as poverty, culture, and indifference? Do we see the other as worthy of the same humanity as we see in ourselves? So many questions, each pregnant with possibility, yet aborted with each point and counter-point..

I came across the below article concerning the regrettable practice of subjecting young girls to the paying paws of degenerate men who prey on the realities of poverty and desperation. In this case, the sad story comes out of Egypt, and it is a reality that I knew existed yet failed to speak against...... Ignorant parents and family sell these young girls to stave the hunger and need of their siblings, and themselves. It is a sad story that has been playing itself out in the various forms of the human slave trade. Same stories abound from China, to India to Albania...

Yet, from afar, we ask questions such as those I started with above. Where is the humanity of those girls? Is it worth quieting the hunger of others? And from where I sit, what right do I even have to ask?

Then there is the gift of perspective, distance and observation we can embrace. While I can empathize, I can not sympathize.... And, I can declare with certitude, and perhaps a spot of righteousness, that there is a baseline, and we are all accountable.

From Reuters
EGYPT: Minors sold for prostitution under guise of marriage
CAIRO, 16 November (IRIN) - Hanadi was a teenager when she was sold into a short-term marriage by her father. "When I was 14, my father told me I was to be married to a man from Saudi Arabia," said Hanadi, who did not want to use her real name.

"Later on, I discovered that my father and the man had agreed I would stay with him for a month, until he returned home [to Saudi Arabia] at the end of the summer. There was never any intention for us to remain together any longer than his holiday in Egypt."

Hanadi is now 20 years old. She lives in a shelter run by Cairo-based NGO the Hope Village Society, which cares for street children.

"Hanadi did not know at the time, but when her father agreed for her to spend a month with the Saudi tourist, he was paid a large sum of money in return in the form of a dowry, which she never had a share in," said Yasser Sobhi al-Okeili, who helps run the centre Hanadi lives in.
"Nor was the marriage officially registered, though she did not know it at the time. Eventually, after a failed marriage of her own choice, she found herself living in the streets. Many girls who have suffered a similar fate end up as street girls," al-Okeili said.

Although there is no specific law that bans the sale of girls and women into such temporary marriages, which amount to prostitution, the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Egypt is a signatory, forbids the sale of children and bans marriage under the age of 16, said Mohamed Tag el-Din Labib, Hope Village Society training and research director.
In addition, Egyptian law bans both prostitution and the marriage of girls under 16. "Minors in prostitution are sent to a sort of corrective centre, where conditions are often as bad if not worse than they are in adult prisons," said Nihad Abul Qumsan, director of the Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights. "The man involved is not usually prosecuted, but rather acts as a witness in a trial."

However, rights workers say that because minors often go through at least some of the steps that would make a marriage seem legitimate make it difficult for any of the involved parties to be held accountable or be prosecuted. In addition, parents are almost always either in charge of a transaction of this kind, or at the very least are involved and have given their consent.

Superficially legal
When young girls are set up to be sold for sex, the matter is very often rendered superficially legal as the couple sign a civil marriage contract and are divorced upon the departure of the male party, or no marriage contract is signed at all, as was the case for Hanadi.
According to Qumsan, rules can be circumvented in a number of ways, including falsifying birth certificates or not registering the marriage at all.

Because of this, few statistics or studies on the matter exist. The government's General Department for Women's Affairs does not directly target this practice, according to a ministry official in the women's department speaking on condition of anonymity.

Similarly, rights advocates in several civil society organisations contacted by IRIN said they do not deal with the phenomenon outside the framework of violence against women.

Local activists agree that the main reason for early temporary marriages, as well as other forms of child exploitation such as child labour, is extreme poverty.

"Money is always the main incentive," said Malaka al-Kurdi, director of a campaign combating violence against women at Cairo-based NGO Alliance for Arab Women. An estimated quarter of Egypt's approximately 80 million inhabitants live just on or below US $2 per day, the United Nations-defined poverty line.


al-Kurdi added that the experience of going through a temporary marriage whose sole purpose was the gratification of the male partner was enough to affect a girl for life, particularly in a conservative society such as Egypt.

"The phenomenon is simply inhuman, in that a girl who undergoes such an experience is bound to lose out on her childhood," al-Kurdi said.

Hanadi believed it unlikely, despite her young age, that she would ever become fully reintegrated into society as a respected citizen. "After what I went through, no one respects me. The man I married after the Saudi left used to beat me and use me as a sex worker, inviting friends and acquaintances to the house and forcing me to sleep with them," said Hanadi.

"It was horrible. He kept all the money he made from me, of course, and for me it was a living nightmare," she added.

A Tribute to Sadat - 25 Years Later, Where Are We

It was 25 years ago that a great man was killed. Not only were we deprived of the promise he held for peace in the Middle East, but no one else since has been able to take on his mantle.

Many also pay tribute to Sadat today by taking a look at how far away we are from the promise of the possible had we followed the trajectory he offered us. Those who callously killed him know the mistake they made as quoted in today's International Herald Tribune:

"If I could turn back time, we wouldn't have killed Sadat. We would have appreciated his value," said Nageh Ibrahim, a leader of the Egyptian Gama'a al-Islamiyya (Islamic Group), .."

Very few individuals in history make a real difference. Machiavelli spoke of the importance of glory and reputation, but it was Aristotle who noted the true virtue of practical wisdom. Sadat attained glory, but his real gift was his practical choices and wise leadership... not only for Egypt, but for the region and for the world.

As we face the possibility of an unrestrained hegemon in today's world, what lessons can we learn from the example of Sadat? What threats do we face and how can we successfully protect against them? Is it by fueling more anger, balancing, and division?

One of Sadat's most poignant lessons is not only courage, but also the importance of finding other ways of settling disputes. He showed us that we should not delude ourselves with self-righteous thinking. Where there is dissension, our start point should be to believe that all humans are rational beings acting and reacting to one another. This is not to say that there is no moral barometer adjudicating amongst us; it is to say that seeing from a single-angle means you can not be that judge. If we approach "the other" from the perspective that our actions induce reactions, and we believe in our agency, we can change the course of the ensuing chain reaction.

Sadat showed us that if you change, the equation changes - shifting the trajectory into a new direction. That is his legacy and that is the lesson we have failed to learn.

Here are a few words I wrote 25 years ago - the day we lost Sadat>

To Sadat

Behind the myth, where time begins,
I enjoy the mystery of life.
Life. A simple word.

A soothing touch of realism revealed
The true beauty of life.
The world, created and perfected
To be
Mild. Fresh. Serene.
Perfect harmony.

A world where
The trail of tears
The springs of hope and
A rocky haven of new thought
Never end.

Imagine silencing the spirit of life.

October 6, 1981

Power of Women's Anger

Social and political expression are not an invitation to aggressive and physical abuse and manhandling. No one should be subjected to that, and in a part of the world that upholds the dignity of every human being and especially women, it is especially painful when it happens as it did in Cairo on May 25th. Coming on the heels of the prisoner abuse in Iraq and Cuba by the Americans, seeing it occur on the streets of Cairo and directed against Egyptian women for merely voicing their views by Egyptian men sympathetic to the regime, the shame is palpable. Indeed, it is so palpable that women in Cairo are taking to the streets in protest demanding the resignation of top police and security officials in response to the indecent physical abuse some women faced as they protested against the referendum on the constitutional amendment supposedly allowing multi-candidate presidential elections. Getting the women of Egypt to rise up in anger is quite a feat, but the government has managed to do just that. This sleeping giant has now awaken and the outcome may be more powerful than all the recent political opposition together. Not only is it fodder for the opposition, but it also serves to unite women of all political stripes and persuasions across the range from the majority apolitical to the minority ultra activist, from the majority religious moderate to the minority raving extremist.

When I saw the stories of the women being abused, I shook my head in disbelief. Not in Egypt, I thought. I received more emails expressing the same sentiment than on any other aspect of the recent political events in Egypt. But I ask myself, why the disbelief? Is not Egypt one of the preferred destinations for American and European interrogators to send prisoners? Before the events of September 2001, the US and European governments routinely gave sanctuary to political activists including religious extremists from Egypt and other countries in the Middle East. These individuals, some of whom are believed to have committed terrorist acts in Egypt, were given political asylum to avoid the torture that they claimed waited for them in Egyptian prisons. After September 2001, the Egyptian government was practically saying 'I told you so'. Today, prisoners are sent to Egypt and other places in the region to be 'interrogated' away from media scrutiny or legal recourse. The implicit argument is that individual human dignity and democratic values can take a back seat to protecting the public (an argument, it is often claimed, to also be embodied in the US Patriot Acts).

So, why the surprise and dismay when it happens openly on the streets of Cairo? Perhaps because it happened openly, or perhaps for a simpler reason. The women abused on the streets of Cairo are the mothers, wives and daughters of Egypt. In Egypt, as in most places, honor and dignity of women is sacrosanct, and their defiling will not be left unanswered. The anger of the Egyptian women demands a response. Egyptian men will unite behind that, and that is a two-legged giant.

Still A Game of Solitaire

Egypt's ruling party today is engaging in a classical case of politics of appeasement, and even that is occurring within rigid boundaries. The culture of fear which keeps regimes in power for generations feeds on establishing a sense of the taboo and the proclaimed desire to protect the greater good and is buttressed with the reality of retribution against those deemed to have stepped out-of-bounds. That culture of fear in Egypt is now being challenged by a simple slogan "Kefaya" or "Enough". ..... I have commented that change is necessary and inevitable, however if it is to be positive it must be holistic in its approach. In other words, voices, all voices, must be given space to be heard. The reality of changing the rules of the game in theory to allow multi-players while effectively only allowing one player is not lost on anyone. Everyone can see that it is still a game of solitaire. With dissenters being arrested and sporadic demonstrations, today's referendum on the constitutional amendment theoretically allowing for multi-candidate presidential elections left much to be desired not the least of which is sincerity.

Reality check: Egypt's deck of 70 million cards with no shortage of aces is no longer willing to have a single dealer.

Eve of a Non-Event

With both secular and religious opposition calls to boycott the referendum on a constitutional amendment allowing multi-candidate presidential elections in Egypt, the general consensus is that the reforms are unlikely to result in dramatic political changes to leadership in the upcoming September election, a point even the Egyptian Prime Minister is willing to concede. The argument being put forth by the government and its supporters is that the seeds for future change have now been sowed with this constitutional amendment. Change, it is argued, is best if slowly cultivated, rather than brought on suddenly with the consequences unknown and unchecked so as to avoid the scenarios of Algeria or Iran (Iraq being a regional aberration). Egypt viewed the social, economic and political upheavals faced by the former Soviet Union and the leadership quickly came to the conclusion that change, if unavoidable, should be managed and slow. Often the cases of Morocco and even Jordan are pointed to as slow evolutionary processes allowing for political maturation of the electorate and strengthening of the institutional framework. While such arguments may have merit, they must be made within the context of slow change on all front, including a welcoming to all political voices. As the regime in power opens to change and puts in place the empowering mechanics, the opposition must also be allowed to mature with the process. As noted by various analysts, including very recently in the Washington Post, the clear contradiction in the international and Egyptian support of opposition religious political movements such as Hamas and Hezbollah, yet resistance to greater political integration of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is staggering, and raises serious doubt in many minds as to the veracity of the desire for change.

Referendum or rubber stamp

On May 25, Egyptians will go to the polls to approve or disapprove of the constitutional amendment allowing multi-candidate presidential elections in Egypt. While on the face of it, this would appear to be an astounding development in the forever land of the pharaoh, careful analysis has led some critics to conclude that these changes will result in little challenge to that legacy. Reaction by both religious and secular government opposition is a call to Egyptians to vote against the amendment, leaving the man on the street somewhat confused. On the one hand, the regime that has ruled Egypt since the revolution of 1952, is calling the refendum which is supposed to open the door for a potential overturn of that stronghold "... a day of national pride" and "... the making of a new dawn". On the other hand, the fledgling opposition which has long called for more openness in the political process in Egypt, is opposed to the amendment which is supposed to allow for just that. Ironic? Contradictory? That is the simplistic conclusion of a simplistic analysis. Egyptians are anything but simplistic, yet they are still caught in the middle. If there is a mass vote against this constitutional amendment, when will they have the chance to see some change, any change, again? Will their vote of protest be heard and lead to greater reforms or will it result in a forceful closing of the door? That is the dilemma that the man on the street faces. Is this arguably cosmetic change a relief valve for the evident pressure building up, or is it a real change that may show results perhaps not in this election but the next, or the one after that? Are Egyptians willing to wait.... and wait... and wait?

Reminds me of....

Headlines today read of mass arrests and general unrest in Egypt - reminiscent of times not too far past. Depending on your source, close to 2,000 have been recently arrested, most from the Muslim Brotherhood - that's where the recent history is being repeated. While Egypt's Parliament voted on the proposed constitutional amendment, supposedly allowing multi-candidate presidential elections, critics are calling it a hoax. It is not only the Muslim Brotherhood who voice the desire for true elections. Reuters reports that the government-sanctioned opposition party, Al Ghad, has withdrawn from further discussions with the ruling National Democratic Party in protest over the proposed constitutional amendment. The group is quoted as saying that the talks "has become a theatrical entertainment directed by the NDP to deceive the people and domestic and international public opinion."
I wonder how long this situation can continue, and at what cost...

The Expected Backlash

As expected, the backlash is loud against the transparently restrictive constitutional amendment allowing, for the first time, a multi-candidate race for president of Egypt. Egyptians have been in denial for far too long. History is witness to the fact that when a sleeping people awake, they do so with determination.

The Color of Change

Here is an article in ALJAZEERA.NET you may be interested in.
Brotherhood leaders held in Egypt
I encourage readers to learn about the Muslim Brotherhood, who they are, and what they stand for. This is not meant to endorse this group, but rather to challenge the stereotyping that has blinded the world to the real change that is happening in Egypt.