I had been marching through the streets of downtown Boston for an hour before I realized that the rhythm and cadence of "We are the 99 percent!" is exactly the same as "The people want to topple the regime!" the chant of Egyptian protesters who brought down the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak last January.
My father teaches at the American University in Cairo, and we moved to Egypt when I was 15 years old. Coming back to the U.S. to start a Ph.D. program 13 years later, I felt like I was coming home, but I also knew that my connection to Egypt would never be severed. So I had that chant stuck in my head for months after spending anxiety-filled hours and sleepless nights following developments on Facebook and Twitter as many of my closest friends camped out in Tahrir Square. Hearing such a similar call here in the U.S. brought back that feeling of pride and hope that I had while watching a generation of disempowered youth take back their country, and it gave me a taste of the courage that led those brave young women and men into the streets.
A number of those involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement (both in New York and in other cities around the country), as well as commentators, have drawn parallels between what we are seeing in the U.S. today and what we saw in Tunisia and Egypt a few months ago. As Cornell West eloquently put it, "This is an American Autumn in response to the Arab Spring." That said, the factors that have led to the occupation of Wall Street are very different than those that forced Tunisians and Egyptians (as well as Libyans, Syrians, Bahrainis and Yemenis) into the streets: We do not live under a dictatorship, we enjoy certain freedoms and rights that they lacked, pepper spray is not tear gas, and we do not have to worry that our military might be ordered to fire upon us. But we have shared frustrations: a common feeling of disempowerment, of having so much to offer our country and being stymied at nearly every turn by the influence and power that is purchased with monetary wealth. So while the analogy is not perfect, there are enough similarities to make it meaningful, even if the vast majority of the 99 percent is part of the global 1 percent due to their U.S. citizenship alone.
The similarities do not end with the protestors. The way that the police, government officials and the mass media frame the story of these protests reminds me of the story that Mubarak and the Egyptian State media told a few months ago. Pro-Mubarak spokespeople admitted that the demands of the protesters were legitimate up to a point, and they even praised the noble youth who had taken to the streets in the early days of the movement, but they also said that the movement had been infiltrated and hijacked by foreign influences (Israel and Iran) and people with "agendas" (the Muslim Brotherhood). There was no truth to any of these claims, just as there is no truth to Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis' recent claim that the Occupy Boston movement has been taken over by anarchists. But in both cases they attempt to excuse sometimes violent police intervention in peaceful protests while keeping up the pretense that they are on the side of the people.
The Egyptian protestors were directly targeting the government, whereas the Occupy protestors are targeting corporations. And where the Egyptian government used state media to control the information the public received about the protests, corporations in the U.S. are using corporate media to delegitimize the Occupy movement.
Another great similarity between Occupy and Tahrir is the way that it has brought diverse groups of people together. During the Egyptian revolution I was inspired watching Coptic Christians protect Muslims as they prayed on Friday, and Muslims protect Christians as they held Mass on Sunday. And one of the most inspiring aspects of the Occupy movement for me as a Muslim chaplain is the Protest Chaplains. The Protest Chaplains began as an effort to give visibility to Christians in the movement, but it soon grew organically into an interfaith group that created space for all religions, as well as those who identify with non-religious traditions such as atheist Humanism, to bring their values to the streets in solidarity. Over the last few weeks we have joined each other in the Faith and Spirituality tent at Occupy Boston for yoga classes, meditation workshops, Jewish services, Muslim prayers, Christian worship and just to sit and reconnect with the peace within ourselves when things around us are tumultuous. We have created a special place down at Occupy Boston, a place where all are welcome, and we are impervious to being separated by those things that politicians and the media so often use to keep us apart.
The Faith and Spirituality tent at Occupy Boston is not an anomaly, it is a manifestation of some of this movement's core principles in the realm of religion. The Occupy movement is characterized by consensus building: no decision is made that effects the group unless it has been agreed on through consensus at a general assembly, which ensures that in the camp, and in the movement, there is always a space for everyone, and we all have an equal voice. This has helped to foster one of the most inclusive communities that I have ever had the honor to call myself a part of. Similarly, the Faith and Spirituality tent is a place where all are welcome, regardless of their specific beliefs and traditions. Far from staking out space for themselves, individuals constantly strive to make more room for others to enter. This is truly a beautiful thing, especially when religion is so often labeled as divisive, as something that we do not discuss for fear that it will cause a rift in whatever jerry-rigged unity we have cobbled together by putting our differences aside instead of celebrating them in front of each other.
But it is not enough for us to have that space in Dewey Square. We need to find a way to bring it to the rest of the country, to the rest of the world. On Oct. 9, still only months after the revolution, the Egyptian military violently broke up a predominantly Coptic protest, killing 24 civilians. While this was going on, the news anchors on the state television channel reported that Christians were attacking the military and, amid false reports that soldiers had been killed, they called on Egyptian civilians to come into the streets and protect them from other civilians. The short-term result was that roaming gangs of Muslims took to the streets looking for Christians to beat up. The long term result is an increased risk of sectarian strife and the possibility that Egypt will lose all that it gained in the revolution.
It may be easy for some to blame religion here, but they would then miss the point that those in power will use whatever they have to keep a population that is demanding justice and accountability divided. They will seek out whatever opportunities they can to pit us against each other and distract us from the real issues in our society. It remains for us to remove as many of those opportunities as possible, not by trying to ignore our differences, but by embracing them and still finding ways to come to a meaningful consensus. This requires that we stop thinking of each other as being on opposite sides of some conflict, but as standing next to each other on the same side of the universal struggle to improve our world. This requires that those who follow religions not view those who do not as having less access to justice and moral goodness than they do, and that atheists, new or otherwise, not try to lay all the blame for the world's problems at religion's door. It is by rejecting the narrative that religions are fighting each other, and that reason is fighting faith, that we will disarm those forces that truly stand in the way of our success, and we will enable ourselves to co-create a more just society, one that thrives in its diversity, and revels in its singularity.
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I see no difference between an ideology and a religion. Both are based on revealed truths and both lay down rules for moral behavior. The ideology of Wall Street is the repugnant ideology of Ayn Rand even if they use Hayek's name as code for Rand. I would say that the Occupy movement sees the US as having a de facto established religion - call it Greed - and wants the first amendment put back in place.
I don't think there is a very close parallel to the Arab Spring which was not, so far as I could tell, a religious conflict.
We see below many of the usual dogmatic,'fundamentalist' anti-religious rantings by people whose zealously held 'belief' in atheism purports to resolve all our problems. Tell us how atheism (materialism, reductionism, relativism) solves our problems. "Get rid of religion and everything will be wonderful" (see USSR); Simplistic arguments about how 'science' answers all questions (look at the 'progress' we are making in the world today); "Religion causes war". Well, just as an example: in the last 100 years about 200 million people have been slaughtered (pogroms, holocaust etc.) in the name of secular ideologies, Nazism, Stalinism, Maoism etc.
These peoples simplistic notions are often based on a very popular naive 'scientism' ('science as ideology') of the likes of Dawkins, and his unintellectual, unlearned and frankly idiotic ilk. They reduce Christian civilisation to a few evangelical Texan homophobes- and then show us how thats not good.
'There is really nothing more naive than to attribute naivety to all the ancient sages of the East and the West, whose teachings embrace implicitly, broadly and deeply, everything of value to be found among the 'subtleties' of modern thought; a man has to have very little imagination to believe, with the satisfaction of a schoolboy who is promoted, that he has at last discovered what hundreds and thousands of years of wisdom did not know.'
Here then Inonoatama gives us another example, not exactly covered in the previous note - what we could term the 'patronising/ridicule' argument mixed with a naive/simplistic 'scientific materialist' worldview or belief. "Prove it!". In reality Inonoatama things are much more complex then your comments would. For example: Please prove the 11th dimension in string theory or explain why the simple act of observation ultimately decides whether the photon will behave as a particle or wave in the - delayed-choice variant- of the 2 slit experiment - and show me your workings! In this present case, you want me to prove a hypothesis using experimentally created data of your choosing that you just happen to 'believe' in. (Also note: the characteristically parental playful chiding references to turquoise Punjabi lizards (!) and an anthropomorphized "individual", "supreme being" as if the Absolute was some big Giant guy with a white beard!) ( see also: the "Christian civilisation which I know virtually nothing about from the neo-Platonists to Aquinas to Augustine to Meister Eckhardt is the SAME as a bunch of Fox news watching uneducated Texan new earthers - which I do know about" argument)
“Scientific Materialism” is a worldview and a belief system, not a discipline. You have to 'believe' in a set of axioms unquestioningly for it to work. The expectations of scientific materialism are such that physical objects and the observer are sovereign.
Empirical science is self-limited to physical phenomena, that are measurable and repeatable. Empirical science, is totally dependent upon the continuing belief in and acceptance of a set of dogma, axioms, or first principles such as 'logic' and 'rational thought'. [Do these come from ourselves in which case they would be subjective/relative?] And so, science is based upon a set of unproven, and unprovable principles, that are known to be true only by belief. Thus, if science is thought to be valid, then belief is also assumed to be valid. Last, if belief is valid, then 'transcendence' exists – because the belief operates on a level 'transcendent' (or absolute - not relative.) to the plane of the empirical world' in order to look down and judge it. Your religion then becomes this belief.
"For the scientific method can teach us nothing else beyond how facts are related
to, and conditioned by, each other." Albert Einstein
“Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art" Will Durant
This, irrespective of religion, race, colour, culture or nationality has brought the many together to manifest change, show a collective voice, where economics, religion and politics has created division, fear and judgement.
No, this is a clear statement of response where religion has never provided such an inclusive non judgemental gathering.
...great...turn it into a religious movement if you want it to end. Rage against our corporate masters has nothing to do with religion...nor should it.
As for Iran:
"Iran's authoritarian regime has secretly executed hundreds of prisoners, according to a new UN report detailing growing rights abuses in the Islamic republic.
The mysterious executions at Vakilabad prison in Mashhad in eastern Iran were highlighted in a report compiled by Ahmed Shaheed, the new UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran.
Shaheed, who assumed responsibility for the mandate on August 1, billed this as an interim report cataloging the most recent trends in the human rights situation in Iran.
The report, which is to be presented to the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, details a raft of abuses from the denial of women's rights to torture, but the most shocking data was the skyrocketing rate of executions.
The report, obtained by AFP after first appearing on the Foreign Policy website, said 200 officially announced executions had taken place in 2011 with at least 83, including those of three political prisoners, in January alone.
"Furthermore, authorities reportedly conducted more than 300 secret executions at Vakilabad prison in 2010," the report said.
"Vakilabad officials, in violation of Iranian law, allegedly carried out the executions without the knowledge or presence of the inmates' lawyers or families and without prior notification to those executed," it said.
"It has also been reported that at least 146 secret executions have taken place to date in 2011."
Shaheed also noted that four percent of executions stipulated no charges, that 100 juveniles were on death row, and that more than 100 executions this year alone were for drug-related offenses.
Human Rights Watch counted 388 executions in Iran in 2010, while Amnesty International put the figure at 252, ranking the Islamic republic second only to China in the number of people put to death last year."
I think our protests outside Wall St have limited affect, we really need to move them now to Washington DC and K St, the root of all evil that allowed our jobs ( plant closures for the past 20 years) to be outsourced to China, and the Banks to steal us blind.