The ongoing pursuit
What Denzel stated sets some sort of challenge to the mainstream idea about how the world operates, how people succeed and how people become happy
Sherif Rizq
8 Articles
Latest by Sherif Rizq
Relevance as political power
Since the beginning of time, the idea of revolting against rulers has been studied and scrutinised, yet many people are still conflated about what makes ordinary citizens take to the streets and protest. A lot of people would not have imagined that protests would break out in Iran’s eastern city of Mashhad, initially against price …
Basics of Citizenship
1. Motherland is the highest value The motherland makes you motivated to love it ever since you were born. When you do not feel strange inside it, the motherland becomes a universal energy. Citizens may differ in cultural, ethnic, and religious backgrounds; however, at the end, they all belong to one nation. In Egypt, there …
The politics of fear
“Fear does not prevent death, fear prevents life,” was one of the most important sentences in the movie Mawlana, based on the novel of the same name by Ibrahim Eissa. Fear prevents movement, makes brains shut down, and allows hesitation to take us over. The desire to be free from fear remains the hope of …
Political complexities
The local and international relations between different political forces are always controlled by power centres. States are no longer the only international political entities; today, large corporations and international non-governmental organisations—usually backed by powerful countries—also have international influence because of their huge financial capabilities, some of which easily exceed numerous countries’ budgets and GDPs. This …
Fundamentalist groups as exclusionists
Anwar Al-Sadat was the president of Egypt from 1970 until his assassination in October 1981. Extremist groups, galvanised by fundamentalist ideas, assassinated him. Al-Sadat allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to play politics, and allowed their students to be part of the political scene at universities. He had a plan to create a balance between the communists …
The Muslim Brotherhood: the one-size-fits-all approach
The Muslim Brotherhood is a fundamentalist group, and subsequently they believe they possess the absolute truth. They are ultra-conservative. They were founded on fundamentalist approaches. They base everything on religion. They consider the Qur’an, Haddith, and Sunna to be the ultimate sources of all types of knowledge. Brotherhood founder Hassan Al-Banna highlighted the importance of …
The missing keyword in the fundamentalist mindset
“Situations vary dramatically from country to country. It would be foolish to take a one-size-fits-all approach and barrel forward regardless of circumstances on the ground,” said Hillary Clinton in her Keynote Address at the National Democratic Institute’s 2011 Democracy Awards Dinner. This quote reveals a lot about a cornerstone concept that fundamentalists, radicals, and extremists …