A lot of people have asked us
to comment on the exoneration of Mubarak,
Al-Adli, and the gang of crooks.
Bravo! Truly, bravo!
Three years of planning,
hard work, and high performance.
Three years, during which all
of Mubarak's self-serving entourage,
to the best of our knowledge,
never once fought among themselves.
And even if they did,
we never heard about it.
None of them came out chanting,
"down with so-and-so".
The big kahunas and A-list crooks
surrendered their necks calmly
to the B-list crooks and bandits.
They trusted them implicitly
and handed over leadership to them
along with their present and future.
They came out of their homes
without a fuss and went to prison
knowing quite well
that the men they groomed
will pick up the torch
and get them out of prison.
It doesn't matter who does the robbing
as long as the robbery continues.
And their media lackeys
really know how to play the game;
They pacified the people
and deflated their revolution,
and they absorbed the people's anger,
contained them, and didn't clash with them
or head-butt their ideas
in a show of idiocy or ignorance.
Instead, they took
the calm and sly approach,
and the entire country fell for it.
It was a magnificent,
beautifully orchestrated symphony!
They may even be following the lead of some
maestro conducting from behind the scenes.
That's not out of the question.
And as for that conductor...
Well done.
You, sir, are a genius!
He knew how to run an army
of thieves, bandits, thugs, and hoodlums,
and get them to implement his plan
to the letter, without deviation.
Even if he wanted to do a bit of fine-tuning
here or there, they would all obey.
He knew just how to exploit
each one's weakness
and position him in his team
to win the game.
You know what
would really be a catastrophe?
If there was no one pulling the strings
from behind the scenes
and it turned out that we put on
the dunce cap voluntarily.
We would have fallen for it
hook, line, and sinker!
However, that is highly unlikely.
Why? Lend me your ears.
What I'm about to say isn't new, but let's go
over it together, and please pay attention.
There's a big possibility that this will
be the last thing I say on this channel.
What I'm about to say is not history-related
and I won't go into much detail,
but it is the gist
of all our discussions of history.
It may be worth mentioning here
that our revision of history
was part discussion of events,
in which we sought to be
as accurate as possible,
and part stating a point of view.
And that is why we revisited those specific
historic events; to clarify that viewpoint,
which is what some people were accusingly
calling, "infusing honey with poison".
Supporters and opponents
of the coup and those in between.
Supporters saying, "you are a Brotherhood
sympathizer and hiding an agenda,"
and opponents saying,
"you're bad-mouthing the Brotherhood..."
"..to invalidate the accusation
that you are one of them,"
"and the Brotherhood does not need you
to add to their strife."
And those in between say that
I am neutral and I bad-mouth everyone.
But, in fact, I am against
what the Brotherhood did
and against all
what the military is doing.
I'm also not neutral, I'm simply someone
who has a personal point of view
that favors neither party.
And because this will most likely
be the last thing I say on this channel,
I want to explain
that point of view once and for all
without it being obscured
by historical events.
You know those Hollywood movies
about man creating an entity
imbued with artificial intelligence
to operate autonomously without intervention?
It would be left to evolve, multiply,
and self-repair and become self-sufficient,
until that entity rebels and becomes
the ruler of man and enslaves mankind.
The Terminator, iRobot, and Eagle Eye
are but a few examples from this genre.
My personal opinion is that
we are living that scenario today,
and that transnational corporations
are now the entities
controlling the human race.
These cross-border multinational corporations
are the progeny of the capitalist system
that is currently governing the world.
Man created it
and man fell prey to it.
He created it and put a system
in place to protect it, grow it,
secure its resources,
and ensure its continuity,
to the extent that what the corporation needs
becomes prohibited for the people.
It became the center of the universe;
wars are waged and ended
to serve the interests of the corporation.
Nations are exterminated and civilizations
are crushed for the sake of the corporation.
All that with man
being entirely out of the equation;
he has no role to play in choosing
the direction these corporations will follow
nor even in determining their value.
How come man plays no role in determining
the value of these institutions?
These institutions' value is not determined
by their importance to mankind
nor even by the worth of its assets;
buildings, machinery, and so on.
Instead, their value is determined
by their share prices in the stock market,
and the stock market is a whole different
can of worms, but to summarize
we need to ask
ourselves a few questions:
What is the highest market value
of any company in the world?
Is what this company produces
the most important commodity to mankind?
For example, a mobile manufacturer
increases its phone screen size by one inch
and its market value increases
by twice as much
as the increase in value of a pharmaceutical
company that discovered a cure for cancer.
That inch of phone screen is more important
than the discovery of a cure for cancer.
Share prices of pharmaceutical companies
go down because investment
in the pharmaceutical sector
is considered high-risk,
because those companies
spend a lot on R&D
and they're not guaranteed to produce a hot,
new product like electronics companies are,
and thus people aren't falling over
each other to buy their shares.
Even the dividends that the company
pays out to shareholders
are not the most important criteria
for determining a company's value any more.
So what ARE
the most important criteria?
The most important criteria
is the company's ability to grow.
How it grows, on the other hand,
is not important;
Whether it grows at the expense of nations
and civilizations is not cause for concern,
all that matters is that it can grow.
Whether people die for it to grow
is still not a problem;
all that matters is that it does grow.
This subject is very complex
but this is not the time to go into details.
In short and in my own
possibly misguided personal opinion,
neither peoples, nations, governments nor
even individuals control these institutions.
Sometimes the interests of individuals and
countries coincide with those of corporations
and consequently fortune smiles
upon those people and countries,
but if conflict arises between corporations
and said persons or countries,
they are crushed mercilessly;
CEO today, prison inmate tomorrow,
and by the same law that he himself
put in place to protect the corporation.
Today, a certain country receives
aide and grants from all over the place,
but when the regime changes course
or the country changes its direction,
it gets the boot.
Examples of that are abundant,
and speaking of examples,
people mistook what I said about South Africa
to be an example of a successful revolution
and that Mandela's success
was due to the Spear of the Nation
and the violent approach
that he adopted toward the end.
Actually, that was not my intention at all.
What I meant was that the violence that
Mandela perpetrated was brushed under the rug
he was turned into a hero,
and the blood that was spilt was forgotten
because a deal
is always struck in the end.
Why was that deal struck?
Because Mandela decide to bow to capitalism;
he bent over for the corporate machine.
Mandela, the Marxist freedom fighter departed
leaving behind the bastion
of true capitalism in Africa.
He did not touch the capitalist system
nor challenge the corporations
that were and are entrenched
in the heart of South Africa.
On the contrary,
he came to term with them socially,
and more importantly,
he came to term with them economically.
And he did not interfere
with their operations.
The same thing happened
in the case of Turkey's Erdogan,
and the same thing happened
with a lot of people who decided
to be subjugated by capitalism
and the corporate machine.
And this is most likely what
the Brotherhood was trying to do
in Egypt, whether intentionally
or unintentionally, but failed.
This is the face of capitalism
from an economic point of view.
If you think
about what constitutes a free-market
and how everything is, ostensibly,
subject to supply and demand
and the desires of man,
you will find a surprising similarity
between it and the political system
that is falsely called
the Democratic System.
Democracy's competitive nature,
i.e. that those who get to rule the country
are those who convince the most people
to drop a piece of paper
with their names on it into a box,
regardless of their eligibility to rule
or lack thereof,
is the same nature that governs
the stock and securities markets.
And there is a great deal of integration
and intersection between the two systems.
Just like the company
with the highest value
doesn't grow bigger
due to the discretion of human beings,
even though it is supposedly being traded
in a market where human beings buy and sell,
also, the one who governs the state
in the so-called democratic system
is not selected by human beings based on free
and fair elections, as we perceive them to be
rather, in reality, what determines
the value of the company
as well as who gets to govern
is the same entity,
i.e. the multinational corporations,
in a manner that ensures that they
will grow, flourish, and become gigantic.
Ask anyone who knows about politics
who determines who the US President will be
and who decides his agenda, and so on.
The answer will be the same every time;
the United States of America
is actually
the United Corporations of American.
It appoints the US President,
and by extension, it rules the world.
What's my point?
My point is to emphasize that
the political system of Competitive Democracy
along with the economic system of capitalism
are two integrated systems
that work hand-in-hand to ensure
that the true ruler controls the world.
They aren't just complementary systems;
one advocates for the other.
Democratic regimes advocate
for liberalism and unfettered capitalism
and economic institutions
support competitive democracy
so that in the end
the end result is that same.
When a country is dependent
on the principle of competitive democracy
it becomes like a fish on a hook.
In order to convince the greatest number of
people to leave their homes on a specific day
and to circle a name on a piece
of paper and then drop it into the box,
you need two things;
money to create a compelling ad
that persuades the people,
and weapons to force them
if they don't play nice.
And corporations have both.
Therefore you won't find a country following
a fully competitive democratic model
unless it adopts pure capitalism
and vice versa.
Of course, excluded from this discussion
are countries playing on the sidelines,
and those have to be subservient
to a country run by the corporate machine.
It is an all-or-nothing complete package.
So, where's the problem?
Everything is nice and dandy.
Why not embrace this so-called capitalism
and live to get by.
That, of course,
is one of the available choices.
But, FYI, if you choose that path
there will be trade-offs;
things that you will have to give up
without looking back.
For example, one of the
principles of neoliberalism
is the so-called Competitive Advantage.
Take Egypt, for example.
What is Egypt's foremost competitive
advantage relative to the rest of the world?
Let us assume those advantages
are the Suez Canal,
cheap skilled labor, cotton
and tourism, for example.
These four things only.
Capitalism states that Egypt should only
concentrate on these four advantages,
assuming that these are the foremost
competitive advantages available to Egypt.
Desist working on anything else
and direct the entire nation to work only
on improving these four advantages.
Shift the entire focus of your
education, culture, scientific research,
and every aspect of your existence
to these four sources of income,
until you become the
uncontested master of those resources.
What about all
the other things that I need?
For those you will have
to depend entirely
on countries for which these items
represent a competitive advantage.
We'd import bread for the land of bread,
rice from the land of rice,
oil from the land of oil,
and so on.
What if those countries
monopolizing oil or rice
are bastards and are being jerks
to parties important to me?
Nope! Think again!
No affiliations, alignments, biases,
playing favorites, or any of that.
It's every country for itself!
What if they antagonize me personally
or refuse to "oil" me or "rice" me?
There are two solutions: either you act
the bad-ass and put them in their place,
or you suck it up.
and most likely, our impoverished countries
that have no arms to defend themselves with
will suck it up.
This is one example of one principle that we
can consider, and it's a generic example.
If we take the example of Egypt alone,
we will find that Modern Egypt
built by Mohammed Ali, was built to be
an independent, self-sufficient empire,
and therefore is not specialized
in specific areas
that it can focus on
to gain a competitive advantage.
And when we tried
to transform that empire
to the model of a state
competing in a capitalist world society,
we saw what happened during
the Sadat era of open-door economy
and the predicament
that we are still living in today.
The problem of the Egyptian revolution
is that it took place during difficult times,
a time in which the entire
global order is in shambles
and seeks to find a third, middle-ground
solution between capitalism and communism,
between the left and right.
A third economic and political path.
The world is being crushed.
The United Stated, which is supposed
to be the master of the world today,
its people are beginning
to feel the burn of capitalism.
State service institutions and public
utilities have turned into corporations
obsessed with milking the customer.
The State of Detroit in America
is just now recovering from a recent crisis,
and because people are unable
to pay their water bills,
they cut off their running water,
forcing people to turn
to churches and temples
to bathe and get drinking water.
Even the authorities...
the judiciary is competing with the police
over who can collect
the most fines and fees from people.
State agencies
are fighting over budget funds.
The entire population
is struggling to repay debts
from the President
to the last sanitation worker.
Amid this turmoil, and after the revolution
and the Islamists' ballot box victories
in most countries,
we had a slither of hope of instituting
a comprehensive Islamic system
that would present itself
as a legitimate alternative,
not only within the confines
of our miserable countries,
but as a new paradigm
for the entire world.
Let us pause here
and go back a few steps in time.
The biggest turmoil in the history
of the Islamic nation was due
to the biggest doctrinal dilemma
for which we have failed to find a solution,
I.e. the mechanism for competing for power.
A big question that scholars
and theologians have avoided
either to prevent sedition and bloodshed
or out of fear for their own lives.
Those who dared
to wade into it got burnt.
Unfortunately, the two mechanisms
that were handed down to us,
namely, the consensus
of decision-makers and people of influence,
or the authority of the prevailing ruler,
both need a lot of revision.
Let us imagine who would have been
those decision-makers three years ago.
Someone like Sheikh Hazim,
aka the Islamist Nostradamus,
would have been excluded
because he is confrontational
and bloodthirsty.
OK, forget it. Let us consider who would
select those decision-makers to begin with.
Forget that. Who would referee
between them if they disagree
and who would outline
the rules of Shura for them?
If the answers for these questions
were easy
the blood of the companions of the Prophet
wouldn't have been shed 1,4000 years ago.
On to the prevailing ruler.
Prevailing in what way, I wonder?
By force of arms? Where will he
get those arms from? Spoils of war?
Suppose that the enemy who owns those weapons
armed another ruler who became the victor.
Are the people, then,
expected to take to the streets
to cheer and praise the prevailing ruler?
If that was the case,
why are so worked up about Sisi's coup?
These two mechanisms have flaws that render
them not too different from direct elections
in my opinion, because both mechanisms
can easily be manipulated by outside forces.
What the Prophet "PBUH"
and the ٌRighteous Caliphs after him did
varied each time a successor
was appointed,
starting with the appointment
being left to the process of Shura
and the Immigrants and the Supporters
choosing Abu Bakr al-Siddiq in unison,
followed by al-Siddiq seeking the counsel
of some of the Companions individually
to appoint Omar,
followed by Omar electing 6 Companions
to undergo strictly regulated elections,
and finally, Ali "PBUH"
accepted the pledge of allegiance
of those who were in Medina
after the murder of Othman.
Meaning that the process
was totally different each time.
This issue needs a lot of consideration in
terms of jurisprudence, Sharia, and politics,
to define a clear mechanism for succession
and transfer of power in the Islamic system,
from which the ruler would glean the
mechanisms for his or her own evaluation,
and from which a comprehensive political
system would be constructed and put in place.
This having been said,
let us go back to our original topic.
The problem that global capitalism
has with Islam isn't theological,
quite the contrary, this system guarantees
absolute freedom of religion to individuals.
But the problem here is the same problem
that Quraysh had with the Prophet "PBUH".
Their problem wasn't with him
worshiping a different deity,
the true problem was that Islam at the time
was poised to set forth a new ideology
that would change their social,
economic, and cultural norms.
Same thing holds true today. Islam offers
a new ideology that competes with capitalism;
an ideology that strikes
at the heart of ​​capitalism
and at the heart of the banking system,
changing the concept of the Net Present Value
that the banking system relies on
as well as interests,
and affecting the constants of finance,
in addition to presenting entirely different
values, principles and fundamentals.
So far, however,
we have not played to this strength;
we have not presented the comprehensive model
that would enable us to conquer them
intellectually, before telling them,
"we come with the sword."
The IMF loan that Morsi intended
to take out was not just usury,
but also a form of submission
and subordination to this system.
The privatization and capitalistic
encroachment that Erdogan adopted in Turkey
are the reasons why
he's been allowed to stay in power there.
What Mahathir Mohamad did in Malaysia
has nothing to do with Islam,
and I have no idea
why people think he's an Islamist.
This is my own personal major beef
with the prominent Islamists of today;
they either decided to cope
with this system and live-and-let-live,
or they try to reinvent the wheel of what
took place in Afghanistan, Algeria, etc.
I understand that we all want a speedy
victory and an immediate reversal of the coup
and the establishment of justice
and fairness immediately,
but among the things that
the Arab Spring has uncovered to us,
and it's uncovered a great deal of things,
is that we are a joke,
and we do not have anything to qualify us
to do what needs to be done,
and that mobilization and revolution is not
a substitute for intellect and analysis,
and that we need to reconsider everything
that we used to hold as self-evident,
so that we either confirm it as such
or come up with an alternative for it.
When we have something worthwhile
to offer as opposed to drivel
and a collage of ideas aggregated from
different eras and connected by nothing
other than the fact that those
who implemented it were successful Muslims,
we can then talk about a violent revolution
or a peaceful revolution or what have you.
Confronting the oppressor
should not be our main concern;
he is but a cockroach,
and the pages of history
are filled with curses to his ilk.
What should really be our main focus
is fixing our own situation.
Listen to how al-Kawakbi in his book
"The Natures of Tyranny", 100 years ago,
talks about tyrants as if he was
describing our current situation.
"Commoners are the strength
and nourishment of tyrants;"
"on them he unleashes his tyranny
and by them he is emboldened."
"If he imprisons them,
they applaud his valor,"
"if he takes their money,
they praise him for sparing their lives,"
"if he pits them against each other,
they boast about his cunningness,"
"if he is liberal with their money,
they call him generous,"
"and if he kills some of them
without mutilating their bodies..."
"..they consider him merciful."
So, what we see here
isn't something new,
and the Egyptian people today
are not too different from any other nation
in their reaction
to the tyranny of tyrants.
The tyrant will eventually be gone
as many have before him,
what matters is what we are going to do
to get out of this vicious cycle.
Some people bite
more than they can chew,
and seek to resolve the problems
of the whole world on their own.
The fact of the matter is that we're living
in an era where we do what we can,
and the idea that we are too obsessed
with registering an immediate victory
or making up for lost time
should not be our main focus.
All I hope for is that we meet our Lord
while we're on the right track,
and that when our children remember us
they would not spit on our memory
like we did to those who came before us.
