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Janaury 31, 2011
It’s the 7th day of the mass Egyptian rallies protesting the conditions of high unemployment, political corruption and the abuses of citizens’ rights. Looting, the burning of buildings, as well as several lives have been lost as a result. They’re demanding radical reform and the immediate resignation of President Mubarek. By the time you read this Mubarek may have already stepped down and gone into exile.
Egyptians want real change NOW, not later! Their own conditions, along with the recent radical political changes in neighboring Tunisia, are now causing tension in the other surrounding dictatorial countries. This is greatly impacting our own regional interests as the United States and has huge implications to the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt.
Facebook, YouTube and international news agencies are covering the events by the minute when phones and the internet are available. This is has caused many to jump on the bandwagon using radical words like revolution even in westernized Islamic Egypt.
There are some valuable parallels that can be drawn between the ancient Empires that have fallen and this present day situation. Babylon fell to the Medo-Persians; Medo-Persians to the Grecian Empire and the Grecians to Rome and eventually Egypt became a Roman province.
Religious belief systems, political philosophies and systems like communism promised to deliver the masses equality and justice and wound up being more repressive than their predecessor. Marxism, capitalized on the conditions of the oppressed and the poor who were desperate for change. The commoners were angry and fed up with the unjust oppression by Czarist Russia making the conditions ripe for the Bolshevik revolution.
In the French Revolution the people of France were also fed up with the Monarchy’s aristocracy and its unjust feudal system. Though they threw out the monarchy the revolution got out of control and thousands of innocents lost their lives in the bloody Reign of Terror.
While we have the luxury of looking back on world history and seeing the social injustices that led up to revolutions and conflicts we need to ask the question many others are asking today: Who or what will replace Mubarek and his political machine-philosophy? A Islamic fundamentalist state enforcing a Talibanic Sharia law? Will peace with Israel be sustained? Or will it be a reformed democratic structure?
The question remains unanswered for Egypt we can draw some truths from this storyline for ourselves. Today, we see needed change in other countries and our own.
In the 60’s John Lennon said, “…you say you want a revolution…” He went on to say, is it the evolution of ideas, a change in the constitution or an institution that is needed? Or “well, you know you better free your mind instead?” Hmm, free your mind instead, now what does that mean?
Freedom, we all want it in some way don’t we? What is freedom? Freedom from who or what? Good question.
Is freedom doing what we want to do? If I have it, what will I do with it? Regardless of what kind of freedom one is talking about, is there a responsibility that goes with it?
Over 3,300 years ago the people of Israel had endured unjust slavery in Egypt for hundreds of years (Exodus 12:40). They were desperate in their conditions with no clear way out.
“Get us out of Egypt now!”
Please stay tuned for the continuation of this blog in the days ahead as we discover the implications of freedom for our own lives. We’ll engage with a people who really needed freedom and what we can learn from them…
