Politics as Usual
The nine of us undoubtedly represent a fairly wide spread of opinions on the political spectrum, but we were not going on this trip with politics as our focus. Most decidedly not! However, nine Americans traveling together—how could politics be avoided? It couldn’t. We might as well have been wearing red, white and blue tattoos though we very carefully had left our logo-ed t-shirts and baseball caps at home. Therefore, I have three political stories to tell, one mildly annoying, one amusing and one profoundly compelling.
The three roommates of us, J, L and I, went into a drug store across the street from our hotel in Izmir to pick up an item one of us had forgotten to bring. Our American-ness accompanied us inescapably. The proprietor of the store looked at us and then bluntly asked, “What do you think of your president?” We’re not used to being asked “personal” questions in such an in-your-face way, and so we stumbled through some bland responses. If only we had thought on our feet and turned the question back around to him by asking him what he thought of his president. It wouldn’t have been polite to do that, but perhaps he might have considered his own situation and realized that the issue isn’t so black and white. Bush is neither a monster nor a savior, and we all have mixed feelings about him (and differ with each other in our opinions about him and our country’s policies). In any case, he followed up with what we have always heard about people in the Muslim world: “I hate Bush,” he said, “but I love Americans.”
On a more friendly note, as I was rocking a sweet baby in the Sisters of Charity home in Mokattam, a lively group of Coptic young people came, as they do every other Friday, to play with and otherwise love those babies. A couple of them were college-aged and anxious to try out their English. “Where are you from?” they asked me. “America.” “Where in America?” “Ohio,” I replied, “near Chicago” (trying to give them a geographical reference point). They came to attention. What followed was rapid-fire Egyptian Arabic, punctuated in the middle with one word that I could understand: ‘….brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrBushbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.” I realized much to my amusement that Ohio had received its fifteen minutes of fame in (what seem to me to be) remote corners of the world by being the swing state that gave President Bush the 2004 election. Hey, give me a break. He needed all those other electoral college votes too. Too bad I couldn’t take advantage of this “fame” to further our conversation. For their part, they seemed to forgive me with good grace.
The last encounter has left me puzzling out its meaning and implications. One of the incredible privileges we had was to have lunch with an Egyptian man who was involved while he was in university in Canada with IVCF and who has since served on the board of IFES and heads up a highly-respected evangelical organization in Egypt. He thrilled us with his history lesson about Christianity in Egypt and with his vision for the spread of the gospel here. As he told us how they can work effectively within the legal framework of the country (and how those who feel they can assert their freedom from those laws by evangelizing outside them really hurt the cause of the gospel), he added that Bush and Condoleeza Rice’s push for democratization in the Middle East would also hurt their work. If there were to be elections right now, Bush style, the Islamists would win and the conditions conducive for their work that they now enjoy would disappear. Not only that, he said, passionately, when Bush says “Democracy,” Egyptians hear “Pornography.” Freedom, in its American contours, means to them that what restrains immorality will be lost. (In his remarks I heard echoes of Meic Pearce’s Why the Rest Hates the Rest.) Americans are free to be immoral because our social and political climate encourages what the Qur’an (and Bible) forbids. Who would want to live in a democratic society like that?
This man is not an average shopkeeper or student. He has earned the right to have his opinion carefully considered by outsiders seeking to understand his culture. His spiritual “credentials” deserve great respect. It raises for me again (for this is a topic I have explored with students in my first year seminar) the issue of whether such ideals as freedom and truth and (subsidiarily) democracy are universals or whether they are social constructs. Isn’t it arrogant for us who live under democracy to say that only modern westerners have all the social conditions in place to make it work? Isn’t freedom something that all people long for? Can democracy grow from different cultural roots? I am going to be hearing his urgent voice echo in my thoughts for a long time. And I am going to listen more carefully to the arguments put forth by my government’s spokespersons as they urge democracy on countries in the Middle East. Egypt will have elections in September. Mubarek has been in power since the early 80s. What is best for Egyptians? I am profoundly encouraged even in my confusion to know that a person with such wisdom and passion as this fine man is in a position of influence in that critically important country.
The three roommates of us, J, L and I, went into a drug store across the street from our hotel in Izmir to pick up an item one of us had forgotten to bring. Our American-ness accompanied us inescapably. The proprietor of the store looked at us and then bluntly asked, “What do you think of your president?” We’re not used to being asked “personal” questions in such an in-your-face way, and so we stumbled through some bland responses. If only we had thought on our feet and turned the question back around to him by asking him what he thought of his president. It wouldn’t have been polite to do that, but perhaps he might have considered his own situation and realized that the issue isn’t so black and white. Bush is neither a monster nor a savior, and we all have mixed feelings about him (and differ with each other in our opinions about him and our country’s policies). In any case, he followed up with what we have always heard about people in the Muslim world: “I hate Bush,” he said, “but I love Americans.”
On a more friendly note, as I was rocking a sweet baby in the Sisters of Charity home in Mokattam, a lively group of Coptic young people came, as they do every other Friday, to play with and otherwise love those babies. A couple of them were college-aged and anxious to try out their English. “Where are you from?” they asked me. “America.” “Where in America?” “Ohio,” I replied, “near Chicago” (trying to give them a geographical reference point). They came to attention. What followed was rapid-fire Egyptian Arabic, punctuated in the middle with one word that I could understand: ‘….brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrBushbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.” I realized much to my amusement that Ohio had received its fifteen minutes of fame in (what seem to me to be) remote corners of the world by being the swing state that gave President Bush the 2004 election. Hey, give me a break. He needed all those other electoral college votes too. Too bad I couldn’t take advantage of this “fame” to further our conversation. For their part, they seemed to forgive me with good grace.
The last encounter has left me puzzling out its meaning and implications. One of the incredible privileges we had was to have lunch with an Egyptian man who was involved while he was in university in Canada with IVCF and who has since served on the board of IFES and heads up a highly-respected evangelical organization in Egypt. He thrilled us with his history lesson about Christianity in Egypt and with his vision for the spread of the gospel here. As he told us how they can work effectively within the legal framework of the country (and how those who feel they can assert their freedom from those laws by evangelizing outside them really hurt the cause of the gospel), he added that Bush and Condoleeza Rice’s push for democratization in the Middle East would also hurt their work. If there were to be elections right now, Bush style, the Islamists would win and the conditions conducive for their work that they now enjoy would disappear. Not only that, he said, passionately, when Bush says “Democracy,” Egyptians hear “Pornography.” Freedom, in its American contours, means to them that what restrains immorality will be lost. (In his remarks I heard echoes of Meic Pearce’s Why the Rest Hates the Rest.) Americans are free to be immoral because our social and political climate encourages what the Qur’an (and Bible) forbids. Who would want to live in a democratic society like that?
This man is not an average shopkeeper or student. He has earned the right to have his opinion carefully considered by outsiders seeking to understand his culture. His spiritual “credentials” deserve great respect. It raises for me again (for this is a topic I have explored with students in my first year seminar) the issue of whether such ideals as freedom and truth and (subsidiarily) democracy are universals or whether they are social constructs. Isn’t it arrogant for us who live under democracy to say that only modern westerners have all the social conditions in place to make it work? Isn’t freedom something that all people long for? Can democracy grow from different cultural roots? I am going to be hearing his urgent voice echo in my thoughts for a long time. And I am going to listen more carefully to the arguments put forth by my government’s spokespersons as they urge democracy on countries in the Middle East. Egypt will have elections in September. Mubarek has been in power since the early 80s. What is best for Egyptians? I am profoundly encouraged even in my confusion to know that a person with such wisdom and passion as this fine man is in a position of influence in that critically important country.
posted by Barb @ 10:04 PM
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