بالكاد تنفّسنا الصعداء بعد الإفراج عن زميلنا حسين غرير قبل أن يعود اختناق الغضب والحزن ليذكّر صدورنا بواقع القمع والكبت وعبادة الصّمت الذي نعيشه.. وردنا خبر اعتقال زميلتنا رزان غزّاوي.

رزان غزّاوي سوريّة بامتياز.. سوريّة بعملها المحموم للمرافعة عن القضية الفلسطينيّة وﻻجئيها في وسائط الإعلام اﻻجتماعي باللغتين العربيّة واﻻنكليزيّة، سوريّة بالتزامها بكل قضايا التقدّم والعدالة اﻻجتماعيّة والمساواة، سوريّة بوقوفها مع الأحرار في طريقهم لنيل الحرّية والكرامة.. رزان صوتٌ ﻻ يريد له الصمت إﻻ أعداء الحقّ والكرامة والعدالة والحرّية.

نطالب السلطات السوريّة بالإفراج الفوري عن رزان غزّاوي وعن كلّ معتقلات ومعتقلي الرأي والضمير والكرامة، ونحمّلها مسؤوليّة أي أذى قد تتعرّض له، كما نطالبها بكف سياسة القمع الإرهابي الرعناء بحق المواطنين السّوريين، وندعو جميع أنصار الحقّ والحرّية للتضامن مع رزان غزّاوي، معنا، مع سوريا..!

صفحة التضامن مع رزان غزّاوي على الفيسبوك 

Silence doesn’t serve us after today. We don’t want a country where we get imprisoned for uttering a word. We want a country that embraces and welcomes words.

This is the last thing Syrian blogger Hussein Ghrer demanded on his blog, and here we are today blogging with sadness on the news of Hussein’s detention, without knowing why, and where he is now.

Hussein is 30 years old, he is married and has two kids. He participated in several campaigns in solidarity with our Palestinian brothers during the Zionist invasion of Gaza and blogged about the war against Lebanon in 2006. He was well-known for his work with the Syrian Bloggers for the Occupied Golan and for his solidarity with the victims of “honor crimes” in the country.Fear of freedom and hatred against all liberties are responsible for Hussein’s detention. Words are Hussein’s weapons, and ours too. We want these weapons to break the silence. We command you to raise your voice for Hussein’s freedom and all prisoners of conscience in Syrian cells.

We demand the immediate disclosure of the fate of our friend and fellow blogger Hussein Ghrer and the immediate release of all prisoners of conscience, since their detention is against the law and universal human rights. We also demand the end of persecution against freedom of speech, because blind force, no matter how strong it is, will stay blind, and will stumble until it falls for good.

Campaign’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/FreeHussein
Blog: www.freehussein.blogspot.com
Hashtag on twitter #FreeHussein.

Related articles

• Syria: Prominent Blogger Disappears in Damascus (advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org)

Often I find myself debating with Syrians who are pro the regime on Facebook, twitter, and Google Plus. Below is my response to comments by a fellow Syrian who supports the regime  on a public G+ post. Feel free to click through to the post to see all the comments. Below are his(her?) comments and my response. They said:

 It is very shallow to paint the situation as angels versus demons in Syria. Both factions have criminals among their ranks. But as a supporter of the regime I can’t overlook the fact that a significant portion of the opposition is based on a sectarian ideology and bonds upon the hatred of the other rather than through any civil dogma.

it is a stand against chaos and lawlessness. It is supporting the idea of the state not the imprisonment of your friends. Though the experiences of your friends might have been tragic, which I am awfully sorry for, but still the tragedies that the community as a whole will face in case Syria slips into chaos is much more greater than any personal suffering.

My response: I’m interested in seeing where you got your stats when you said “significant portion of the opposition is based on a sectarian ideology and bonds upon the hatred of the other rather than through any civil dogma.” Please don’t try to pass your opinions as fact. The regime is trying desperately to paint the protesters in a bad light. Heck, if we want to talk about percentages, I can easily prove to you that a larger portion of regime loyalists have committed far more atrocities, crimes, and human rights abuses that any abuses committed by the protesters are a mere fraction of that.

Also, care to explain why the regime is targeting peaceful activists if the claim is that the regime is fighting armed gangs? Why did +Anas Maarawi spend two months in jail? Why did Ghayath Matar, the renowned peaceful activist, get arrested by security forces, tortured and brutally murdered? Why was Ali Ferzat assaulted? Why did the parents of the Internationally renowned musician Jandali get viciously beaten up because he composed a song calling for freedom? Why is Syrian media publishing statements by groups promoting violence against Syrian protesters AND their parents? Why am I (and my parents) along with countless others, such as Hakam AlBaba being threatened by the dirt-bag Ammar Ismail from Damascus News Network who’s heavily supported by the regime and is constantly appearing on Syrian TV channels? Why were peaceful artists and intellectuals arrested for days and threatened and almost assaulted when the court finally freed them? Why are pro-Assad thugs assaulting people in Europe and even Washington DC?

I can keep going for days. In brief, the current regime is the antithesis of the “idea of state” that you claim to support. The Assad regime is a ruthless clan clinging tooth and nail to power at any cost.

What kind of state keeps hundreds of thousands of its people stateless and without any rights for decades? Why all the repression of the Kurds?

Syria has been in masked chaos since the sixties. “Stability” enforced by human rights abuses and fear is not something to be proud of or defend. The Assad regime is a sectarian regime if I’ve ever seen one. They claim to be secular but they do everything in their powers to scare the minorities from what would happen if the regime falls.

If your idea of state is North Korea, then congratulations, the Assad regime is bringing us ever so closer to it.

au·dac·i·ty/ôˈdasitē/Noun

1. The willingness to take bold risks: “her audacity came in handy during our most recent emergency”.
2. Rude or disrespectful behavior; impudence: “she had the audacity to pick up the receiver and ask me to hang up”.

I watched Al Assad’s second speech today, to the newly formed cabinet. The main change: he did not laugh. It’s hard to laugh when people are tearing your pictures apart and destroying statues of your late father and setting them on fire.

He opened by talking of conspiracy theories and infiltrators. Not too promising. There was definitely a change of tone from the previous speech and not interruptions with poetry or parroting chants like what happened at the parliament. However, removing status law is still going to take another couple of weeks. I expect it to be announced on a Thursday.

Algeria(?) lifted their emergency laws promptly after some protests. But in Syria we still need sometime. Time we can’t afford. We have a constitution, be it faulty as it is, so why does it need weeks just to be reinstated?

Giving hundreds of thousands of Kurds citizenship, and even the thought of  establishing a Parliamentary committee to study removing the emergency law were red lines. It was unthinkable that anyone would dare discuss them openly in the public sphere.

It took a few weeks of protests by– if you were to believe the Syrian official line– “infiltrators;” “conspirators;” “agents of Bandar, Hariri, Israel, and the US,” and trained foreign nationals to push the regime to announce that they’re going to give Syrians some of their basic rights back.

Assad talked audaciously for an hour about reform. I’ll leave it to you dear reader to choose which meaning of the word applies here. Meanwhile thousands of people are rotting in jails for committing though crimes against the “beloved leader”  and motherland. Convicted felons, thieves, frauds, and the average thug are released in hours with a .frequent presidential pardon. Bigmouths aren’t so lucky.

Adding insult to injury, Assad talked about ensuring citizens’ dignity, on day after his security forces tied down every man in Al Baida village in Baniyas for daring to protest. Heavily armed thugs gleefully walked all over the men tied down like cattle, frequently kicking them in the head and face and beating them with sticks.

Of course, the speech did not leave out political reform. Assad talked about improving life standards, supporting the drought impoverished  Eastern provinces, improving transparency in the public sector and economic processes as a whole. There was no mention of the economic titans–or Economic Bulldozers as they prefer– of Assad’s close circle, Makhlouf and Shalash, who have been treating the Syrian Economy as their personal trust fund for decades. A promising start indeed.

After the speech, some of my fellow Syrians were optimistic, hopeful, excited even with all the seemingly serious promises and apparent change in tone. I wonder how those promises are in anyway more serious than similar promises from Assad in 2000, or his promises two weeks ago that had a fair share of blood chilling jokes and chuckles as blood of Syrians were coloring the streets red.

For the time being, I’m going to hold on to my skepticism and cynicism. Studies show that cynics are more bitter than the average person, but also have a firmer grasp of reality. To my fellow Syrians that took the redpill and set themselves free I say: I’m forever humbled by your bravery and persistence. I’m honored to be your compatriot and had the pleasure of knowing some of you whether in person or online.

People following the #Syria hash tag on Twitter in the recent weeks to track the developments of the Syrian protests and the deadly governmental crackdown on peaceful protesters must have noticed two major annoyances:

First was the proliferation of what tweeps dubbed as the “twitter eggs,” a group of newly created and mostly image-less twitter accounts that cussed out, verbally assaulted, and threatened anyone tweeting favorably about the ongoing protests, or criticizing the regime. Those accounts were believed to be manned by Syrian Mokhabarat[intelligence] agents with poor command of both written Arabic and English, and an endless arsenal of bile and insults. Several twitter users created lists to make it easier for the rest to track and report those accounts for spam. Here are a couple of examples.

Second, which is more damaging, is the creation of various spam accounts that mainly target #Syria hash tag; flooding it with predetermined set of tweets– every few minutes–about varied topics such as photography, old Syrian sport scores, links to Syrian comedy shows, pro-regime news, and threats against a long list of tweeps who expressed their support of the protests.

Identifying The Cause

At first I thought this was a badly timed annoyance, and several users were already reporting those abusive accounts. However, a couple of users apparently discovered some foul play. The parody account @SyrianPresident tweeted:

Stop it mukhabarat Twitter is not #Bashar’s spam machine! > @TheLovelySyria #Syria #Homs #Aleppo #Damascus #Lebanon http://is.gd/Plii1Z

and @syrianrebels responded:

@SyrianPresident it’s a company in Syria that send automated msgs, a dedicated owner they use server of @eghna check website #Syria branch

I went to investigate the Bahrain based Eghna Developement and Support*, which among other things provides “political campaign solutions.” I searched for any affiliation with Syria, and sure enough, one of the main suspected #Syria spam accounts was featured in their success stories page.

Eghna claims that “LovelySyria is using EGHNA Media Server to promote intersting photography about Syria using their twitter accounts. EGHNA Media Server helped Lovely Syria get attention to the beauty of Syria, and build a community of people who love the country and admire its beauty.” The only problem with that claim is that the lovelysyria.com website is only a Drupal login page void of content. There’s no way of creating a new user account, and therefore any claims of fostering a community are false.

Breakdown Of Research Results

Seemingly unrelated spam accounts, with the exact same modus operandi, have been rapidly coming into existence with only enough content to appear to be legitimate automated twitter accounts instead of spam bots with a very sinister motive behind them.

I have managed to identify at least 7 different accounts that are evidently configured to loop a specific set of tweets at predetermined intervals (usually between 2-5 minutes). Below are links their respective user pages and an explanation of what they tweet about:

• @TheLovelySyria: As mentioned above, it tweets Flickr links of photos taken in Syria. It uses #Syria hash tag and also rotates between #tags of different Syrian cities. Tweets every two minutes.
• @SyriaBeauty: Uses same set of tweets as @TheLovelySyria and tweets every two minutes. This means you’ll be bombarded by one tweet a minute of #Syria tweets unrelated to the current pressing issue which is the brutal crackdown on Syrian protesters. Same hash tags scheme.
• @SyLeague: Tweets Syrian Soccer League match results from seasons 2003-2004 onwards. Matches are selected randomly and bear no significance to the fans of the sport. Same trend as above when it comes to tag usage. Tweets every two minutes.
• @KaramahClub: Uses same tweet set as @SyLeague. Same #tag trends as all of the above.
• @SyHumor: Tweets links to episodes and sketches of popular Syrian sitcoms. Same tag usage trend as above. Tweets every 2 minutes.
• @DNNUpdates: Affiliated with Damascus News Network on Facebook. Pro-Regime.  Tweets a distorted version of the events in #Syria and repeats news about alleged armed gangs and terrorists. Only uses #Syria tag. Tweets every 3 minutes.
• @MBKing13: Harasses a large number of twitter users who support or tweet positively about the protests. This account tweets about conspiracy theories and threatens twitter users while pretending that there’s a human behind the account. Taking a deeper look at the account shows that there’s a large set of pre-programmed tweets that are used repeatedly and threats are aimed at a set of users. The account is active 24/7  and tweets at 5 minutes intervals. Tags used: #Syria, #Mar15.

Note: if you twitter links appear to be broken you probably need to go to your twitter account settings and enable HTTPS which also enhances your privacy. If the page doesn’t exist it was probably taken down, but I have screenshots that I’d gladly share and I’m sure google will cache those pages for a long time.

Conclusion

Relying on the available data it seems that the regime is upping it’s information warfare game. Instead of generating bad PR by blocking websites or solely relying on going after online activists and attempting to hack their accounts. The regime at first attempted bullying and intimidation online by seemingly independent twitter accounts. That failed miserably and ended up being an embarrassment.

Now, they are effectively diluting the discussion and making it much harder to find any info about the protests by bombarding the popular relevant hash tags with badly disguised spam. Those spammy accounts have already been reported by many twitter users for spam, but Twitter has been slow to respond and apply their TOS (terms of service) that clearly prohibit “overloading, flooding, spamming, mail-bombing the Services, or by scripting the creation of Content in such a manner as to interfere with or create an undue burden on the Services.”

Twitter is currently one of the main platforms used by dissidents and activists to disseminate information and videos of the ongoing protests, and uncover the crimes committed by the regime’s security forces against unarmed peaceful protesters. It is of utmost importance to ensure that their voices are heard. We must provide the general public and international media easy access to such information. Crimes unnoticed are crimes unpunished.

Update on April 19, 5:30 pm EST: The above mentioned twitter accounts are still active but their tweets are no longer showing when viewing the #Syria hash tag stream. I think Twitter handled this in a smart manner; the accounts are still viewable to people who are following them but are no longer cluttering Syria related searches. Thanks to everyone who reported this.

* Eghna has responded to the article. Please find their response in the comments below.

Imad Saboni, Syrian Telecom Minister

According to Sada Souria, Syrian Telecom Minister, Imad Saboni, said in a recent lecture at Tishreen University that he personally believes that “effectively raising awareness of the dangers of the internet is the answer, not blocking websites.” Saboni alluded to the ban on GPS devices in Syria that was reversed lately after being in effect for so long. He said that GPS is finally allowed after endless controversy and that it’s now actually used on Civic Administration motor-vehicles. Of course the Minister did not miss the opportunity to launch in ill-informed statement saying that all countries block websites. While that might apply to a few dozen countries, the vast majority of the world does not censor the internet.

The latest statements reflect a conflict between the old guard and more pragmatic officials who see that the censorship policy simply does not work, that the pros of allowing new technologies has a greater positive impact on development than any imagined negative effects that might have on the stability of the political system in the country.   It’s worth mentioning  that in the early days of internet in Syria you had to have a police or intelligence officer look over your shoulder while you surfed the web at Al Assad Library in the heart of Damascus. Before that, satellite TV was banned as well. I remember laughing when my high school history teacher told us that radios were banned in Yemen for fear of foreign influence. Well, I’m not laughing now.

The Minister was clear that what he said was his own personal views, and that the current policies are in effect because it’s perceived that the internet is more of a danger than phone and mobile networks. I don’t want to read much into what he said, but there are hints of a change of policy that might be coming, just like with every other technology that was blocked partially or fully in the country.

Syria currently blocks dozens of websites including some major blogging platforms and social networks, along with humanitarian and political websites. However, circumvention has become common knowledge for a large swath of the tech savvy youth and thus is available to a majority of users. The government is aware of this, but the sporadic nature of online censorship means that very few websites were ever unlocked in Syria due to having too many parties involved in the process. Will other websites soon be free just like Wikipedia Arabic that was blocked for a while and then unblocked? One can only hope.

ترددت أخبار مؤخراً تزعم بأني مشارك في مشروع شرق أوسط واحد Onemideast.org وأردت التوضيح على موقعي بأني ليس لي علاقة بالمشروع لا من قريب ولا من بعيد، وتفاجأت بوجود رابط موقعي على موقع المشروع وقد طلبت حذفه. كما أن موقع كلنا شركاء استخدم صورتي  دون إذن بدل صورة عبد السلام الذي طلب حذف صورته من الخبر، وقد طلبت من الموقع حذف الصورة أيضاً.

أعيد التأكيد بأني ليس لي علاقة بالمشروع ولن أعلق بأكثر من ذلك.

Going to college in Damascus was a frustrating experience for quite a long time. I did not know the city nearly as well as I should have. I didn’t live in the heart of Damascus, but 30 minutes by servees (a microbus used for commuting in Syria) on a good day. When meeting people in parts of the city that I did not know, I was often too stubborn or too ashamed to ask for directions or help getting somewhere. That always ended with me asking questions to people I’m more comfortable asking, but also less likely to be able to help me; or walking aimlessly and asking people in the street who were as clueless as I was. Going to a new theater or cultural center was always a process of finding out the address and the best way to get to and fro the designated activity location.

Well, not for long. Thanks to Google’s Map Maker, other location-recognition-impaired people won’t have to suffer like I did. I’m now one of a group of volunteer users, or citizen cartographers as Google likes to call them, who  have been drawing the entire map of Syria on Google Map Maker. We’re highlighting points of interest, businesses, streets, neighborhoods and just about everything in between. Eventually it will be available on a high quality, easy to search Google map that’s free to use for all people and platforms that have an active internet connection. There’s an intimidating learning curve to Map Maker; roads are hard to draw and they disappear after you first draw them because they need to be moderated before they show up. This means having to draw roads with no visual clues of your previous work. Drawing on water is a close analogy.

Some Background

Googling a couple of keywords on comprehensive directories and guides of Syria (think Yellow Pages) returns a plethora of unfinished projects that were started by people hoping to monetize on their investment. When that failed miserably, they bailed on their half-baked guides. Here are a few samples of local and national attempts at creating a comprehensive directory:

eSwaida: The best failed attempt for a directory for my hometown, As Suwayda. (click image to enlarge)

Looking for the Commercial Bank of Syria lands no results on Syria Directory. (click image to enlarge)

Syria Directory looks like a really well done site: clean design, modern looking, and the links and infrastructure all work as intended. Looks like the people behind it did everything right… apart from the part in which one actually enters some data to the database. Searching for Commercial Bank of Syria in Arabic yields no results. Too bad developing the directory died out with the final touches on the design.

Yellow Pages Syria relatively has the better database of all. (click image to enlarge)

Yellow Pages Syria can probably claim to be the most comprehensive directory in Syria. But their claim only stands on paper — the print version. The search algorithm on the website is a mess, and their listings offer nothing more than a name, a phone number, and the neighborhood where the listing is located. No websites, no emails, and no detailed street addresses.

Unfortunately, in Syria street names are not commonly used by the locals, apart from major roads within a city. When you’re in a cab you ask him to take you to a well-known point of interest (a square, a theater, a mall etc.) or you just ask him to take you to an area or neighborhood and once you get there you become his turn-by-turn navigator. 10 years ago, most  streets had no name plates. Now almost every street has name plates and buildings are numbered numbers, but none of the locals know or memorize them, let alone use them.

To have better understanding of the situation, you can look at an official map of As Suwayda issued by the Syrian Ministry of Tourism. It’s bad enough that they chose to name just around 10-11 streets, but also they had to make the map using a ridiculous orientation of North being to the left, as opposed to every other modern map in the entire world that uses the north-on-top as a standard. But this is Syria, and we don’t play by the rules. If you like to acquire this gem as a collectors’ item, they’re available for free at all information tourist centers around Syria. (You’ll need a map to find those too!)

The Syrian Tourism Ministry shows us how it's done. (click to enlarge)

What’s Being Done

If you look up As Suwayda’s map on Google Maps today, all you’ll see is a gray area with minuscule number of roads intersecting in it (left image below). After some extensive work — 2384 edits, 130 moderations, 442.4 km of road added, and 263 feature edits, the map shows improvement (right image below). Those changes are in Google’s map production cycle and hopefully would be graduated to the public once the map is sufficiently detailed.

click to enlarge

The map of Damascus was recently graduated by Google and has since seen great improvements on the map maker that are yet to be reflected on the live map. The entirety of Syria’s map is being upgraded one intersection at a time. Other cities are seeing lots of work done as well. A complete full featured map would help tourists, and clueless residents like me, find their way around while in Syria. No need for extra confusion and humiliation caused by asking people who might give you the wrong directions on purpose just for fun. No need to be disappointed by an out-of-town police officer that has trouble locating his designated patrol locations.

As this post’s draft lied around neglected for two days waiting on an inspired finish, I found out just today that the wonderful platform SyriaConnect was also thinking along the same lines, by establishing a task-force for mapping Syria online. All what’s left to be said now is that when there’s a will there’s a way; despite US technological sanctions, and locally brewed censorship and bans on supposedly dangerous technology (such as GPS enabled devices), tech savvy Syrians are creating content and finding ways to make the internet a bit more hospitable to them, and to their fellow countrymen. Each in his own little, but significant, way.

Credit goes to L0uy, his blog post brought me back to Google’s map maker after I had given up on it the first time because of the frustrating learning curve. Also, props to the great volunteers working on improving Syria’s maps: Eyad N, Basil al-Daghistani, Nabil Attar, Adham, L0uy and others.

As you can see from the map, Arabic speaking countries are a ‘hot area’ where many voices are threatened. I looked closely at the data to see what I can get out of it. My approach was to select a sample of the worst offenders and do a little comparison. I chose the following regimes for this mini-research project I did: Assad of Syria, Mubarak of Egypt, Ben Ali of Tunisia, Mohammed VI of Morocco, Saud of Saudi Arabia, Al Nahyan of UAE, and Sabah of Kuwait. Now wouldn’t it be interesting to see comparison between a regime’s years in power opposed to how many voices were threatened in those years? I thought so too and here’s what I found:

Voices Threatened vs. Years in Power*

As you can see, only Assad, Mubarak, and Saud achieved a higher number of threatened voices than years on the chair. With that they have won their countries a spot on the Reporters Without Borders list of internet enemies for the year 2010 along with Ben Ali for the overall number of voices threatened. Morocco was a close contender, but it didn’t make the top ten list. Here’s a pie chart to better represent the share of voices threatened by regime/country:

Voices Threatened Distribution

The podium goes to Egypt, Tunisia, and Syria; Their Mukhabarat are walking tall today.

On this day, I would like to pay tribute to all Syrian bloggers behind bars, and to all threatened voices around the world. I also want to point out one of the many guides on circumventing internet censorship that’s available for download in English and Arabic.

A world without internet censorship for me means being able to click on a link only worrying that it could have viruses, not that someone is virtually reading over your shoulder and keeping track of every page you happen to open. It also means being able to write a blog post, write a comment, or post a video online without worrying that you’d get up to three years in prison for it; and most of all it means that internet access in my country is held back, over 80% use dial-up, for years to keep online activity, and indeed activists, as controllable as possible.

You can see the Global Voices coverage of the day here, and here. Also, be sure to visit the campaign’s website on Reporters Without Borders:

*The “years in power count” is approximate and could be tiny bit off in some cases.

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كتب أنس أونلاين تدوينة بعنوان “انفصام الشخصية العلمانية العربية !” تساءل فيها عما إذا كان العلمانيون العرب يعانون من انفصام الشخصية بما أنهم يدعمون المقاومة الإسلامية المتمثلة بحزب الله وحماس على الرغم من أنهم يرفضون التصويت لها في انتخابات سياسية وقد يرفض بعضهم فكرة وجود أحزاب دينية سياسية من الأساس.

لن أتحدث عن المتشددين من الطرفين، سواء العلمانيين أم المتدينين، فكما لا يرغب العلماني بأن يفرض المتدين عاداته وطقوسه وتعاليمه عليه، لا يرغب المتدين بالمثل أن يفرض العلماني نمط حياة لا ديني عليه أو أن يمنعه من أداء بعض فروضه الدينية. نقاشي التالي يفترض وجود احترام متبادل بين طرفين يختلفان بوجهات النظر بشدة. صححوني إن كنت مخطئاً ولكنني أعتقد بأننا لا نريد العيش كما في السعودية حيث يتم فرض لباس معين على الأشخاص (يتعدى متطلبات الحشمة بشكل غير معقول) ويمنع فيه الاختلاط والتفاعل البريء بين الجنسين، وتمنع فيه النساء من قيادة السيارات والانخراط في العديد من مسالك العمل ويضرب فيه الناس في الشارع لقسرهم على الصلاة؛ وأيضاً لا نريد العيش في دولة كفرنسا تضطهد الأقلية الدينية المسلمة بحظر الحجاب أو النقاب مثلاً تحت غطاء حقوق المرأة وحقوق الإنسان.

في طرحه لوجهة نظره سأل أنس السؤال التالي:

كل هذا جيد ولكلّ جهة حقها بأن تؤمن بالأفكار التي تريد لكن … لماذا لا يثبت العلمانيون على مبادئهم وأفكارهم بنفس طريقة ثبات المتدينين والتمسك بمبادئهم؟

سأرد على السؤال بسؤال، عن أي المتدينين نتحدث؟ هل نتحدث عن متديني الخليج الذين لا همّ لبعضهم (كي لا أظلم الكل، ولكرهي للتعميم بشكل عام) غير الحديث عن ضرورة مواجهة المد الإيراني الشيعي (أو الفارسي حسب الحاجة والسياق)  في المنطقة؟ أم عن متديني حركات المقاومة الإسلامية الذين تدعمهم إيران نفسها لمقاومة الإحتلال الإسرائيلي الغاشم؟ هل نتحدث عن متديني هيئة الأمر بالمعروف والنهي عن المنكر سيئة الصيت في السعودية؟ أم عن متديني الأسر الحاكمة في بعض الدول العربية الذين سُرّت أبواقهم الإعلامية بالهجمات الوحشية على المقاومة الإسلامية والمدنيين في لبنان وفلسطين وشمتت بهم بكل صفاقة؟

في النهاية هذا ليس موضوعي ولكني أردت أن أشير إلى افتراض خاطئ في الجملة التي اقتبستها، علينا التركيز على التفاصيل الدقيقة وحيثيات هذه المواضيع، كي لا نقع في مغالطات لمجرد تسرعنا بإطلاق تعميمات أقل ما يقال عنها أنها غير دقيقة.

عودة إلى موضوعنا الأساسي حيث قسم أنس العلمانيين إلى قسمين بحسب رأيه:

الاحتمال الأول: العلماني العربي هو في النهاية وليد لمجتمع ذو ثقافة إسلامية عمرها يقارب الخمسة عشر قرناً، العلماني العربي يحمل في النهاية وبشكل أو بآخر في وجدانه الجمعي جينات من حكموا يوماً نصف الكرة الأرضية بعد أن كانوا قبائل متشرذمة وكان فضل الاسلام أساسياً في قوتهم هذه، ربما يحاول أن ينكر هذا، أو ربما يحاول أن يقتنع بأن الزمن تغير وما صَلُحَ في الماضي للحكم تحت إسم (دولة إسلامية) لن يصلح الآن، وربما يسوّد الصفحات والمقالات حول هذه الفكرة لكنه يغير رأيه فوراً عند أي تجربة عملية يشاهدها على المحك، فهو لا يرى نوراً في نهاية النفق سوى تلك الحركات (الإسلامية).

لو نظر أنس بدقة إلى وجهة النظر تلك بتمعن لوجد أن العلماني يدعم المقاومة مهما كانت، حتى لو اختلف معها بالأيديولوجيا (وهذا أمر لا يمكننا أن نقوله عن بعض “المتدينين” الذين لا يريدون أن يروا سلاحاً بيد المقاومة لمجرد أنها من مذهب ديني مختلف) فالمهم هو الدفاع عن الأرض وعدم السكوت بوجه الاحتلال. العلماني العربي يدعم المقاومة الإسلامية على الرغم من عدم اتفاقه مع البرنامج السياسي للجهة المقاومة. وأنا شخصياً لا أرى تناقضاً في ذلك فالشق العسكري واضح، والبرنامج السياسي الداخلي واضح ويمكن مناقشته ضمن البنى السياسية القائمة أساساً، القسمان قد لا ينفصلان عن بعضهما بأكثر من شعرة، ولكنا نكون مخطئين إن لم نرها أو إن تجاهلناها. ولا ننسى أن المقاومة الفلسطينية المسلحة كانت ومازالت تضم فصائل يسارية وإن ضعف تأثيرها بعد إنهيار الاتحاد السوفييتي داعمها الأول. الفكرة هنا أن المقاومة الإسلامية هي الأقوى والأكثر تأثيراً في الوقت الحالي، ولكنها ليست “النور الوحيد في نهاية النفق”، كل من حمل سلاحاً بوجه المستعمر هو نورٌ في نهاية النفق. ليس هناك تناقض ولا فصام، هناك أولويات ووعي للاعتبارات السياسية القائمة على أرض الواقع، ما يسميه أنس فصاماً أسميه أنا تحكيماً للمنطق.

أما بالنسبة للمسلمين الذين حكموا نصف الكرة الأرضية بعد أن كانوا قبائل متشرذمة قبل الإسلام عادوا ليكونوا قبائل متشرذمة في ظل الإسلام. لمجرد حدوث شيئين بتسلسل معين لا يعني أن هناك علاقة سببية بينهما. الحضارات والإمبراطوريات قامت وسقطت من الفراعنة إلى الرومان إلى المغول إلى العرب المسلمين في الأندلس إلى الإمبراطورية العثمانية والإمبراطورية البريطانية والفرنسية وحالياً أمريكا حاكمة العالم بدأت بإفساح الطريق للقائد العملاق الجديد متمثلاً بالصين. كل تلك الحضارات قامت وحكمت بجيشها وعلمها وإقتصادها القوي،  ولو كان التدين معيار القوة الوحيد لكانت السعودية والفاتيكان وحتى أفغانستان أقوى دول العالم.

القسم الثاني من العلمانيين بحسب رأي أنس هم الأقلية وهم كالتالي:

الاحتمال الثاني: العلماني العربي سيُشجع الشيطان نفسه لو كان محارباً لإسرائيل, عند هذه النقطة تنتهي الخلافات والحواجز ويصبح الأمر أكبر من أن يفكر فيه بهذه الطريقة! تخيل أن يقف حينها إلى جانب العدو الإسرائيلي لمجرد أنه ضد فكرة الأحزاب الإسلامية من أساسها! الأمر غير وارد على الإطلاق (على الرغم من وجود بعض العلمانيين العرب الذين وقفوا ضد حماس وحزب الله في خضم حروبهم مع إسرائيل وقد قرأنا العديد من مقالات هؤلاء الكتاب في العديد من المواقع وخاصة الموقع سيء السمعة ‘إيلاف’ لكن أعتقد بأن هؤلاء قلة وليسوا الحالة العامة للعلمانيين العرب).

أود أن أذكر أنس بأن السعودية كانت أول من لامت حزب الله على “مغامراته غير المحسوبة” إبان العدوان الإسرائيلي على لبنان، وأن شيخ الأزهر صافح الرئيس الإسرائيلي منذ فترة ليست بالطويلة. فإن كانت السعودية أرض الحرمين الشريفين والأزهر شمس الحضارة والمعرفة الإسلامية مواقفهما كما سبق، فالعتب على كل من باع المبادئ والكرامة وخان إخوته في الأرض والدم مقابل مكاسب سياسية أو أعوام إضافية في كرسي السلطة. فعلينا إذاً أن ندقق في التفاصيل كما سبق. هناك أناس يبيعون مبادئهم ويلبسون جلد الخراف على الرغم من أنهم ذئابٌ مستعدة لنهش لحم أبناء جلدتهم عند أي فرصة سانحة. بغض النظر إن كانوا يقدمون أنفسهم للعموم على أنهم علمانيون أم متدينون، كلهم مستعدون لتقديم كل شيء للعدو مقابل ضمانات فارغة بمكاسب سياسية، ويقومون بالتلاعب بالأشخاص الذين يؤيدون الأفكار التي يفترض أنهم يمثلونها لتحقيق مآربهم الشخصية، دون أي اعتبار لمصالح عامة الشعب. جميعهم يكشف عنهم عاجلاً أم آجلاً ويتضح كذبهم ونفاقهم أمام العامة التي يفترض أنهم يحمونها ويضعون مصالحها فوق كل اعتبار.

أتفق مع أنس في أن التطرف من الاتجاهين مرفوض، كما أن منع أي طرف أو جهة من ممارسة حرياتها وحقوقها المدنية متضمنة حق التنظيم السياسي أمر غير مقبول بتاتاً. أنا أؤمن بأن حريتي تنتهي عندما تبدأ حرية الأخرين وأرفض العيش في مجتمع لا يحترم حرية الآخرين، كل الآخرين. المرء له الحرية في حياته طالما أنه لا يؤذي الآخرين ولا يتعدى عليهم بممارساته. والأحزاب الإسلامية أو الدينية ليست شراً مستطيراً كما يروج بعض العلمانيين، بل هي جزء ضروري من العملية السياسية في أي مكان لكي تمثل مصالح المواطنين الذين يؤمنون بها ويقومون بدعمها. ونتفق جميعاً أن الأنظمة الشمولية القمعية غير مقبولة بتاتاً سواء كانت علمانية أم دينية.

ولعل سوريا مثالٌ مقبولٌ لاختلاط الدين بالدولة حيث هناك قانون أحوال شخصية للأديان المختلفة يحترم ممارساتها في الزواج والطلاق والميراث، وهناك قانون جنائي (وإن كان متقادماً) ولكنه بأغلبه لايستمد أحكامه من الدين الإسلامي أو غيره ولا يفرضها على الجميع ولا يقطع الرؤوس والأيدي (لأسباب دينية على أي حال). هناك وزارة للأوقاف والدين يعلّم في المدارس، ولكن بالمقابل لا يتطلب أن يكون وزير معين من دين أو مذهب معينين كما الحال في لبنان مثلاً. أنا لا أدعي بأي حال من الأحوال أن سوريا بلد مثالي بهذا الخصوص وأهل مكة أدرى بشعابها. ولكنني أعتقد بأن سوريا نموذج عقلاني (وليس علماني) ويمكن البناء والتطوير عليه.

وليس هناك خاتمة أفضل لتدوينتي هذهمن اقتباس من رسالة من والد الصديق ياسين الذين يدون في أمواج اسبانية في فرات الشام حيث كتب التالي:

” لا تسمح لأي انتماء ديني أو قومي أو سياسي أن يفصلك عن الآخرين, كل الآخرين, فالإنسانية و الانتماء إليها هي أوسع و أكثر رحابة من كل دين و وطن “

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في النهاية أود أن أوجه التحية لياسين الذي بدأ حواراً ممتازاً حول التدوين السوري والتفاعل بين المدونين على اختلاف مسالكهم، ولعلوش الذي كتب تدوينة رمزية رائعة بعنوان قصص حب كافرة، ترك فيها للقارئ الفرصة بالخروج باستنتاجاته الخاصة. واحترامي لعموم المدونين السوريين الذين أقرأ بمتعة شديدة ما استطعت من نتاجهم وما جادت به قرائحهم إن كان باللغة العربية أو الإنكليزية.

وتحيتي بالطبع لأنس الذي لايدع اختلافنا في الآراء يقف في طريق تعاوننا في موقع أردرويد: أندرويد للمستخدمين العرب.