Thursday, November 10, 2005

3 years ago it was just a "fish" and "shark"! can u believe it?

Long ago I wrote the email below (i think it was 3 years ago)...... yup.... 3 years ago.....
i was going through my documents and apparently i was preparing a draft before sending it......
i read it now and i started laughing at how things dramatically changed.....
i felt myself so much a function of history......
so little and so irrelevant to how things develop.......
in my mind it was just a stupid game between some of the neo religious clerics ... the ones who carry the motto (heaven guaranteed or money back)... but now it's not just a "fish" and a "shark"..... it's a whole set of "wild life".....
how naive i was when i wrote those words! how come things were so different? yes.. they were different.... very different from what i see now around me.....
disoriented.... maybe.... i don;t know.....
all i need to say.... i learned how to pray my 5 daily prayers in a church...... !!! (i miss u Pere Jules! i wish u were here to help.. or maybe i need to help myself.... )
read below.......
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Hello everybody,

During my last stay in Cairo I noticed a very alarming phenomenon. I guess many of you might have guessed what I’m talking about from the subject, anyways, I’ll give a brief introduction for those living abroad who might not know what my title refers to.

Few years ago (I think 4 years ago), some churches started distributing some stickers to be put on the back of cars. The sticker is of a simple fish drawing. By asking my friends about the meaning of the sticker I got the following historical explanation. During the roman colonization of Egypt, Egyptians suffered a lot from the roman humiliation due to their belief in the new religion, they had to hide their conversion to the new religion as they were tortured whenever the occupiers knew about their conversion. Therefore, in order to identify each other and at the same time hide their identity from the Romans, our ancestors invented this logo that they used instead of the Cross. It was not doing the function of the Cross, it was just a mean to identify each other and fool the Romans.

Anyways, for some reason, somebody decided 4 years ago to start printing the logo and they started distributing it to the public through their offices. Without going into the reasons for doing so which I think is irrelevant as we can never know how were they thinking when they did so (to be honest, 2 possibilities came to my mind, first it could be something to remind of the past suffering to encourage youth to stay away from the bad doings or in other words to increase their attachment to religion just like the other Moslem stickers of No God but Allah and these sort of things, second I thought may be some extremists were trying to pass a message of ‘it is the second roman age of humiliation’). It did not really make a difference for me what the explanation was as I think that any religious stickers for whichever religion is very demeaning and reduces the value of this religion into a bunch of stickers. In other words, what would a sticker of a Christian or Moslem slogan or loge really add to the person who is using them? For me it just reflected the superficiality of those using them as it did not really have a value added to the person or the society, some were using it to say ‘watch out, I’m religious’ others (and those are the majority) were just the masses who follow without really thinking deep about it and our society is a very fertile land for those who just follow without questioning, those are the ones as well who are usually made to feel very guilty by extremists about matters concerning religion and therefore they usually follow in order not to feel the guilt planted by the extremists.

Anyways, the Moslem extremists saw a chance in this to get another message through. And they started using the same technique and distributing this time the logo of a shark (of course a shark, that’s how narrow minded our society is). The words No God but Allah is written on the shark. The message is clear, the shark eats the fish. Some stickers even have sharks with fish in their mouth (to portrait strength and superiority).

Therefore, our religions were reduced by some extremists (or to be politically safe let me say by some narrow minded cheer leaders) into some stickers and stupid slogans.

This stickers mania is now taking a new shape and it is abused by some extremists to try divide our society into teams and groups of different interests, I mean in the past I’d have refused it but I’d have understood the fact that most people are not really aware of it and they are just probably imitating others, but now, they have to understand how they are being manipulated by the narrow minded Christian and Moslem extremists.

Thinking with my friends about a way to counter attack the extremists, we found that the only way to do that is to deprive those logos of their meanings. The fish is no longer valid as it had a specific historical notion that does not exist (assuming the one who started them did not have an ugly idea in mind) and the shark is a very stupid imitation that reflects how empty minded its initiators are.

Therefore, we decided that we are going to put both stickers on our cars in order to send a clear message to all those proud of being a ‘fish’ or a ‘shark’. One of my friends volunteered to provide the fish stickers and another to provide the shark stickers. We discussed the fact that some idiots might think we are saying the shark is eating the fish if we put them side by side so we agreed to put one sticker on the right corner of the back of the car and one on the left corner.

The only disadvantage about this is that we have to use the stickers which is against our beliefs in the first place but we couldn’t think of a better way to reduce the meaning of the stickers to nothing.

I encourage you all to do the same or think of a better idea to face this flood of superficiality that is streaming though our society. If you need the fish or the shark let me know and I’ll give you the contact.

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