Setting hearts ablaze
Fanaticism waning
The entire world and the countries of the region around us are going to be much free from outdated restrictions, to believe more in human rights, to end the era of fanaticism and spread freedoms within the legal frameworks.
In this context, the Tanweer Cultural Center is organizing a lecture which will be given by an American intellectual of Egyptian origin, Ahmad Saad Zayed, who holds a diploma in Islamic law from the Higher Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies of Cairo, and has earlier attended courses on Western philosophy and science of development of ideas from the universities of Oxford and Yale of the United States and others.
Because of the poor choice of the organizers of the lecture because of its name, and not the subject, those who trade in religion and the forces of ignorance and darkness, who are always afraid of dialogue due to the fragility of their thinking, the naïveté of their views and the weakness of their logic, called on the concerned authorities to intervene and cancel the lecture and this happened immediately.
In a move reminiscent of the theatrics, one of the biggest fanatics tweeted threatening self-immolation in the lecture hall, if approval was given for the lecture. He said that, of course, after hearing the decision to cancel the event.
The next day, a few hours before a special meeting with the lecturer, security officers visited him in his hotel room since he was the guest in the country, confiscated his cell phone and told him that his presence was undesirable and had to go with them immediately to the airport. That is what was already done.
There is no doubt that those who called for the cancellation of the lecture knew nothing about it other than its ‘ambiguous’ name, and they should have attended the lecture and argued with all logic to silence and expose the lecturer and show the weakness of his argument, if there was, and then demanded his deportation, and not before he had even spoken one word. They have not heard of him before and do not know anything about him at all.
In a video which was circulated at the height of the terrorist violence in Syria, a Kuwaiti politician, a lawmaker, and one of those who demanded the deportation of the lecturer Zayed was quoted as saying: “Today is the beginning and we have trained three thousand trained fighters. There are thousand fighters today in Aleppo, and tomorrow, God willing, we will prepare another thousand for Idlib, and in the evening there will be another thousand in Hama.”
“These fighters represent the launch of Kuwait’s great campaign in Aleppo to prepare 12,000 fighters with weapons and equipment to fight in Syria. We are continuing to prepare those in Kuwait and this is part of the campaign launched by religious scholars, and today is the day to help Syria achieve victory in deeds not words”, he added.
These are the words of the lawmaker who threatened to commit self-immolation in a lecture hall if the man was allowed to deliver his speech. He is the one who has set ablaze the hearts of mothers and fathers, and perhaps even more, by sending their sons to fight futile wars on his behalf to defend his political ambitions and backward ideas.
Who deserves the expulsion, is it the peaceful lecturer who was prevented from opening his mouth and asked to leave Kuwait?