Here is some plain speaking: In the fight between right and wrong, and between truth and falsehood, and between justice and injustice, and between good and evil, to claim to be neutral is to lock arms with wrong, and with falsehood and with injustice and evil.
How clear and simple and straightforward it is!
It is to be a vicious champion of evil against good. George W. Bush once said it nicely: If you are not with us, you are against us.
When it comes to Egypt today, the question is not whether you are with Islam or not, the question really is whether you are a supporter of democracy or dictatorship.
For, that is what is going on in Egypt right now: a fight-to-the-finish between those who love Freedom and Democracy and those who have kept Egypt under military dictatorship for close to 100 years and wish to keep it so for another 100 years.
It is the same fight for Liberty that Moses, Alaihis Salam, fought against Pharaoh. And that Jesus, Alaihis Salam, preached in the Temple in Jerusalem.
It is the same fight in which Prophet David, Alaihis Salam, slew Goliath.
And it is the same fight that Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, fought against the liars and hate-mongers and evil-doers in Makkah.
It is this same fight that today Dr. Morsi and the Great Egyptian People are fighting against the Military Dictatorship represented by Mubarak’s last prime minister General Shafiq and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and many others – both inside and outside Egypt.
It is basically the same fight that George Washington and the American Revolutionaries fought against King George. And that the Les Miserables citizens of France fought against a corrupt French Imperial Regime.
And it is essentially the same fight that Abraham Lincoln and the Union fought against a breakaway Confederacy that wanted to divide America and retain the evil institution of Black Slavery.
And it is the same fight that Gandhi fought to get the British to quit India which they had occupied and plundered for over a hundred cruel years. And it is the same fight that the Allies fought against Hitler and his hordes during World War II.
And it is same fight that Nelson Mandela fought against the cruel and inhuman South African Whites-Only Apartheid Regime, and its powerful foreign friends and protectors, and, as a result, was locked up doing hard labour – breaking rocks – for over 23 years.
It is the same fight the Dalai Lama is even now fighting to get his country Tibet and his Tibetan Buddhist people to be free from the clutches of a domineering and grasping Communist China.
It is that same fight that the Great Egyptian People are now fighting under the leadership of Dr. Morsi and with the support and backing of the Ikhwan. It is a fight for the Great Egyptian People to live free – or, as Dr. Morsi says, die chasing the dream of Liberty, Equality and National Dignity.
The Great Egyptian People launched a revolution on Jan 25, 2011, to win this fight for Freedom and Democracy and claim their rights as free citizens of a free country that had been denied them in the most cruel and brutal manner for at least the past 100 years.
Universal and inalienable rights of Life, Liberty and Human Dignity that were best captured, 1400 years ago, in a statement by Umar, the second Khalifah, after Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, in which Umar demanded from one of his governors: Matata’abadtumunnaas wa qad waladathum ummahatuhum ahraaraa?
Paraphrase: “When did you turn into slaves The People whom their mothers gave birth as free individuals?”
This is the primordial, elemental fight that is going on in Egypt right now. And in this fight the Egyptian People are set upon by all kinds of traitors, mealy-mouths, crooks, mercenaries and criminals – both foreign and domestic, both religious and secular – whose sole aim is to prevent the Great Egyptian People from breaking free and to keep them in slavery under foreign domination and under the thumb of military dictators forever.
So, the question is not whether you support Islam or not in Egypt, the question is much more basic than that. The question is do you or don’t you support the most basic human right of the Egyptian People to live free in their own country in this 21st Century.
That is the question: clear, simple, straightforward.
And it does not matter what your religion or faith is, or what your country or nationality or ideology is. All you need to be is a human being – and be able to read these lines in English and understand them.
So, look in the mirror and decide for yourself. Look in the faces of your own children, if you have any, and decide.
Stand in front of your sacred objects, whether it is a Torah Scroll, a cross, a crucifix or a copy of the Qur’ān, and thus face the Divine you worship in whatever form or format, and face your conscience, and then decide: Where exactly do you stand?
Do you stand with the Egyptian People to be free or do you stand with their oppressors who have taken every right and dignity away from them and who have, over the past 100 years, subjected them to some of the worst and most cruel and barbaric atrocities known to man?
Your answer will tell us – and tell the world – the kind of human being you are!