A buddy of mine sent me a video featuring a 12 year-old Egyptian boy being interviewed at the scene of one of the anti-Morsi riots.
Generally, I try to avoid all forms of political BS*, but what this kid states is remarkable - hell, it would be remarkable for an adult male in Egypt to say it, so the age of this kid makes it 3 or 4 times as remarkable.
The skeptic in me wonders if it's a scripted interview, but the unblushing admirer in me thinks if it is, this kid gets an Academy Award way before DeCaprio ever sees one.
The interview is in Arabic, so I had to call my friend Salem and have him watch it and tell me if what is being written in the subtitles is actually being said, and he assured me it was.
This is a transcript of that interview:
Boy: My name is Ali Ahmed
Boy: I'm in first grade preparatory (equivalent: 12 years)
Boy: I'm here to help prevent Egypt from becoming a commodity owned by one person, and to protest the confiscation of the constitution by one single party. We didn't get rid of a Military Regime to replace it with a Fascist Theocracy.
Interviewer: Fascist Theocracy? I don't even know what that means.
Boy: Fascist Theocracy is when you manipulate religion and enforce extremists regulations in the name of religion even though religion doesn't command that.
Interviewer: Who taught you all this?
Boy: I just know it.
Interviewer: How do you know it?
Boy: I listen to people a lot, and I use my own brain. Plus I read newspapers, watch TV, and search on the Internet.
Interviewer: So you see the country is not doing so well and has to change?
Boy: You mean Politically or Socially?
Boy: The social objectives of the revolution are yet to be achieved. Economic empowerment, freedom, and social justice. There are still no jobs. The police still jail people randomly. As for social justice, how can a News Anchor get thirty million Egyptian pounds while some people still pick food from garbage?
Boy: Politically speaking, where is the constitution that represents us? For example, women are half of the society. How come there are only 7 ladies in the constituent assembly, 6 of whom are Islamists?
Interviewer: So you think they are going to manipulate the constitution?
Boy: What is built on falsehood is false itself, even if the constitution is nice but the assembly is bad. We will end up with something bad. Don't bring me 80 good articles and 20 bad ones that will ruin the country, and then tell me this is a constitution.
Interviewer: Did you read the constitutional draft?
Boy: Nods his head yes.
Interviewer: Where? On the Internet?
Boy: Nods his head yes again.
Boy: For example, they say women are equal to men in all matters, "Except in matters that contradict Islamic law." But then, Islamic law allows men to discipline their wives. This can't work in society.
Interviewer: Why not? What's the problem?
Boy: The problem is that it's outrageous. I can't beat my wife up and almost kill her and then tell you this is discipline. This is not discipline, this is abuse and insanity.
Boy: All of this (political process) is void because the Parliament in the first place is void. Popularly and constitutionally void.
Boy: Some parties base their campaign on mixing religion and politics. Mosques were mobilizing voters - they distributed sugar and cooking oil to the voters and many other things like that.
View the full video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QeDm2PrNV1I
When I was 12, I had already read Shirer's Rise and Fall of Adolph Hitler and Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago (both at my Mom's insistence), and I did read the paper on a daily basis. However, I'm pretty certain most of my protests and concerns centered around whether or not Neal Adams or Jack Kirby was the best artist in comics (Adams' advertising agency inspired photo-realism vs. Kirby's dynamic graphic representations is still an ongoing debate in that little sub-culture I visit from time-to-time).
This kid...this kid is amazing.
*Okay, I admit I get a bit nationalist on Memorial Day and the 4th of July. It's impossible for me not to.
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