The Dutch Experience

Well, finally after long time of some Dutch have been asking me about the meaning of shouf shouf habibi in Arabic, and some Dutch friends told me that it is the name of a Dutch comic movie. So, the last weekend was the movie weekend for me and Ola, and we have seen the movie.

Actually, the movie may have some comic situations but it is discussing one of the most sensitive cases in the Netherlands in a poor production method, or even not providing any solutions or opening ways for people to think about it. I really liked the idea of the movie and having people in the country who started thinking about such issues, or even working on solving it.

The movie starts with a beautiful view of the crescent, and the main character in the movie saying how romantic is the view and that he can live there, BUT, the view in the morning is very different; a dessert is few mud houses laying there. The commenter says then, no way anybody would like to live there, and this is why half of Morocco live in Holland. The movie continues in a comic way describing the worst of living in a country like Morocco. The guy tells his uncle who do not know anything outside his living environment, about the differences between a Moroccan and ET as; 1) ET has his own bike (not stealing it), 2) ET has good looks, 3) ET came alone (not with all his family), 4) ET wanted to learn the language (not mentioning that a lot of immigrants in NL have been living here for 10 or even 20 years and do not speak any Dutch or English), 5) Et wanted to go back to where he came from (no immigrant would even think of going back to their original country).
Among the comic stories in the movie, when the main character was describing his mother as the only person on earth who take off her glasses when she wants to see, and the reason behind that is: the only Dutch words that she know is, "es goed" (it's good), and when she had an appointment with the optician, her answer to all questions were "es goed"!!
Despite all that, the movie is critically analysing the way of life of such people, that can not get any better than worse. It shows what kind of problems they are facing in their lives in the Netherlands, but actually, the movie end up with all of them being losers!! The reason behind that they can not integrate into the society which is not helping them as well, and they are very enclosed to their culture which makes them living in small Moroccos inside the Netherlands, and trying to live up to their cultures in a very different environment. Even the part of them who are trying to live according to Dutch culture fail, simply because they are not Dutch. The problem in there, is that such people are not open minded enough to understand the difference between their own culture and the hosting culture, and how to adapt themselves to live somewhere in between both. It can never work by living up to their cultures and can never also work living up to the hosting culture, they have to make the smart balance, or not to get out of their countries. But at the end, this is not the problem. The problem is that those people do exist and unfortunately makes the majority, so how to solve this problem. Or, the better question is "whose problem is it?!".

This is what James Cameron trying to claim in a new documentary about the tombs found in Jerusalem in the eighties for Jesus, Maria Magdalene and Judah. The film contradicts the belief that Jesus was resurrected and ascended to heaven and did not had a family.

BUT, if this would be proven to be true, does this mean that ascension day won't be a national holiday anymore!! dammit.

I was reading this amazing book, "History of God" by Karen Armstrong, who is a former nun and now a "freelance monotheist". This is really a good piece of reading, and it shows the different ideologies that developed the perception of God through different eras, starting from Greek mythology, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and modern philosophies. It shows how beautiful are all religions are, but unfortunately, the misinterpretations of those ideologies by time showed their ugly faces.

I bumped in this video of a Bahraini sheikh, and I was really amazed that there are finally some Muslims who are thinking in such way. Religions were originally made for thinkfull people who can read their books, understand them as ideologies and not to follow some mad guys and creating some dogmatic ideas.
In the previous mentioned book, the writer shows that during the golden era for Islam, there were a lot of Muslim scientists/thinkers/philosophers, who used the religion to develop some philosophies which were so great and lead to create open minded people, but unfortunately during the following era and till present time, most of those ideologies decayed and got replaced with some idiots driving people to do things has nothing to do with the original religion teachings. At the end, those teachings were meant to be for people who are ready to mediate and think of the outer world and not to destroy it!!

Well, just after the South African UN envoy hits Israel's apartheid and describing it as similar to the South African apartheid, and a month after the racist statement made by MK Tartman, commenting on the appointment of the Arab Muslim Raleb Majadele to the post of minister as "a lethal blow to Zionism", she got actually chosen as the next Israeli minister of terrorism.......sorry, I meant tourism.

Labels: Israeli affairs

What is happening in Iraq cannot be described by any means other than INSANE!!
I believe that if so-ever there would be anybody on earth planning to destroy this country, this person could not be any happier on any day other than such day.
While the puppets....sorry, I mean the "rulers" of the country are praising the campaign against the insurgents and spreading the indulgence among their people on how successful their plans went, bombings and killings are taking place around them!!
At the same, the very wrong action for whatever reason it has, took place by arresting the son of the highest Shiite sparking protests among the Shiite locals.
And for the second majority of the population, do not worry. They were not left over without a break. This cannot be described as anything except as a weird story. A Sunni Iraqi woman accused three Shiite policemen of raping her. Despite whether the allegations are true or not, the government decided not only to dismiss the case, but to reward the policemen, fire the Sunni official who demanded the investigation and an arrest warrant toward the woman.......and of course driving an outrage among the Sunnis!!

There is something just going wrong in this place.

This movie is quite short and nice. People are asking questions about the world they relate to.

Earlier today, a plot for bombing a Southern Sinai resort that has a lot of Israeli tourists was foiled. Heavy Egyptian security forces blocked one of the underground secret tunnels underneath the Egyptian Israeli borders, when they captured one palestinian with a bomb suiciding belt, who during the interrogations told the police about the others. Later on, the 23 palestinians who were planning for the plot were arrested.

This is what I am talking about.......Media Integrity!! According to BBC's, the article is headed, "Egypt blogger jailed for insult". This is what is so-called yellow journalism, as according to the article it says that the guy is sentenced to jail for 4 years because he used his blog to criticise Islam, the top Islamic institution Al-Azhar, and Mubarak as a dictator!!

It is true that this guy is running a blog to criticise the 3, not mentioning that he used to be a student at Al-Azhar university and got kicked out because of his low marks, but actually the sentence is for spying against Egypt for Israel!! The interrogations showed that he traveled to Turkey and communicated with the Israeli embassy there, and then traveled to Canada, recruited some Egyptian Coptic immigrants to talk negatively in media about Egypt!! and he provided Mossad with some critical information about Egyptians and Al-Azhar.

The interrogations with him resulted in Egyptian government reporting to Interpol for detaining 20 Israelis in Tureky, US and Canada for interrogations, and Israel later on was seeking getting those Israelis back to Israel safely, according to Ha'aretz (Israeli newspaper).

One of the things that will strike you directly when you land in one of the Dutch big cities; Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Den Haag, etc..., is the diversity between people. Meaning you can find a tiny Asian girl, dark skinned dude, or even brownish skinned lass, and all of them will tell you that they are actually Dutch. And although, the country has got some problems from the increasing number of immigrants, but one point to be credited for Netherlands is the integration programmes that they develop to overcome the previous mistakes, and make such people part of the society.

Despite the wide spread of English speaking among Dutch nationals, the country is considered as a very international in general, in means of, Prince Claus of the Netherlands - the queens husband - is German, Princess Maxima - Prince's Willem-Alexander's spouse - is Argentinian, and now two appointed ministers in the new government are Muslims Turkish and Moroccan.

I have got to say that, initially, when I was living in a fairly Dutch small city (Arnhem) and I used to meet internationals living in other cities, and they start saying that Dutch people are racist/rude/arrogant (depending on everybody's experience), I used to be the first person to criticise such view. During that time, all my different experiences of dealing with Dutch was really amazing and gave me a very positive perception of Dutch culture.
All that started to change by spending more time in bigger cities like Amsterdam, or even by moving to Rotterdam, which have put me in situations either as observer or participant where some Dutch people were behaving in a rude way.

Last week, I was riding the super-crowded morning bus in Amsterdam, when I have found two free seats in front me, and having an old lady beside me, made me offer her one of them. Just before siting on the other seat, I have recognised that there is a young lady standing, when I decided to behave as a Gent and offer her the seat, but the reaction was quite shocking for me, as I have found her dodging me to reach to the seat!! I let it go, as she may have thought that it is a hopeless try from me to flirt or some stupid idea like that......whatever........but, when the bus stopped for us to go out, the same lass was behind me when she tried dodging to get out before me, but that time, I decided to give her a sneaky elbow that made her away from the exit and delayed her in getting out of the bus!! As I hate doing such things, but some people would drive you to do stupid things.

Couple of days ago, I was riding my bike in one of those streets where bikes and cars are allowed to drive along. I found one of those brilliant drivers passing me in a very narrow distance which had his side mirror to hit my hand. When I was thinking that he may stop and check if I am fine, he just continued driving, when I started recalling the first page of introduction to the old-times-swearing-book. At that time, was when he stopped and instead of apologising, he started telling me that I should take care!! Well, despite that the swearing took a different grip at that point, it was obvious that the dude was DUI!! yes, he was DUI by mid-day in the city centre of Amsterdam!!!!!!

Despite all such incidents, I still answer the question of what I do like about the Netherlands, the same answer..........it is also people. Though, people would normally remember one bad incident over ten good ones, but I would never forget all the friendly attitude, assistance, and kindness of either some Dutch friends or even strangers who helped me in some random situations, but the conclusion would be.......take care from Dutchies from big cities, they may would not have the best attitude that you may expect!!

The moment that my eyes glimpsed that castle, it reminded me of kids story of the princess who was trapped in a castle and the prince came to rescue her, and he climbed the tower by her long hair.

Ola and me in the king's and queen's outfit :)

Well, today was interesting in terms of learning some new aspects of Dutch culture and origins of Dutch sayings.

Ola and me decided to go cycling to a castle near Amsterdam, which is from the "golden age" despite that it did not had anything golden or even luxurious. I realised one of the major differences between Egyptian or Mediterranean cultures in general and the Dutch one. Whenever you go to a castle in Egypt, Turkey and other Meds, you can find that the word castle would normally mean a huge dignified building where you get trembling from standing by one of its walls. At the same time, it would mean that inside it, there should be a lot of signs of luxury, art, fine taste of portraits, sculptures, or jewelry that would represent the richness of the castle builder.

The guided tour, though was in Dutch, but was informative enough and showed that some of the Dutch sayings originated from something in there; for example, the count's chair had a flipping part where he used to put his money in and from that the phrase about stingy people came from that they sit over their money, or about people who drinks a lot of beer, hauling beer, because in the dining room there is a bucket that whenever while dining the people feel that they want more beer they haul it in the bucket.

One of the things that stroke me (the same stroke me when I was in England last summer) was in the souvenir shop, where they are selling toys and costumes for kids and "The Crusader set" written on it!! Hey guys, are you promoting for some historical terrorist group!! well, if that is the mentality of people who are promoting for a historical evidenced terrorist group who had a vision of stealing some others' lands and resources through promoting for an illegitimate message veiled by religious reasons for it, though it is a peaceful religion and has nothing to do with their evilish campaigns, so please do not blame the radical Muslims nowadays for doing the same and using the religion in their own political visions!!

Well, finally everybody, after a long time of receiving complaints........hehehehee :)
I've finally fixed that damn thing called Feed, and you can receive whatever people receive when there's a new post......honestly speaking, I've no idea how it works, only if you want to get it, you can press on the orange thingie in the address bar (where the websites links are) and then you can sign up for it.

GOOD LUCK :)

Every now and then, we see Monsieur Chávez pocking some fun at his rival; Mr. Bush, on a "yeshfy el-kelab we yedorak ya mawkous" way.
But this time, it's inspired by fun clips at National Geography TV, by describing bush as "more dangerous than a monkey with a razor blade."

I have got myself into a new addiction represented in Google Firefox' toolbar, may be sound stupid for some people or sound as an old news for others, but concerning that I do not easily trust new softwares/programs/tech-related-thingies before a long-beta-testing period, but that sh*t is so good!!!

Israeli Apartheid Week is a week-long series of events held for the third year concurrently across various North American and European campuses.

Event organizers describe Israel as a "settler-colonial state" in the mold of pre-reformed South Africa, arguing "that Israel is in fact an apartheid state, not just a belligerent occupying power."

Honestly speaking, I have never started thinking about the country in such way, until I was holding this discussion with a Vietnamese friend who was telling me about the Viet immigrants to Israel who do not have any rights in the country and they can not apply for an Israeli passport because they are not Jews. I read an article about the same issue but for Chinese immigrants, who felt frustrated after long time of living in Israel with the hope of getting the nationality one day, but they are left hopelessly stranded, when the government announced that they can not naturalise any immigrant unless, if he/she is a Jew.

So, the problem that it is not an issue against Arab, Muslims or Palestinians in general, but it is an issue against any non-Jew living in the country. You can not have a "normal" person's rights in that country unless you are a Jew, AND you can not even act as one, as you can not convert to Judaism, and you are not a Jew except if your mother is one!!

So, what happened exactly during the period between February and September 2005 (the preparation period for the Egyptian presidential elections) has finally "officially" revealed!!
After the latest incidents of capturing some members including high rank members of Muslim Brotherhood and with all those people who have no idea about what is happening in the back stage in Egypt, or even just trying to ignore that such things happening and calling for human rights, because those people were captured (as those people see it) because they are from the opposition party, while it is far away from truth. I mean there are a lot of people who are opposing the ruling government in Egypt although the current situation in Egypt is tremendously improving (with an external rational eyes) and the proof is that the economy is boosting in a rate that may be uncontrollable!!
I was reading this article about the incident of capturing those dudes and that they are charged in cases including money laundry. Now, the internal affairs discovered some documents showing communication traces between the banned organisation and some former and current congress men!! Although, many people if not most of them, have already known about that such incident took place, specially just before the presidential and people assembly's elections, and that they got financial support from the American government to support them in their election's campaign (for a reason that everybody knows). The investigation process has found such proofs including communication with British diplomats and (it says) other foreign entities (which makes our imagination go much further). The investigation results mentioned that the reason behind such communication was aiming at providing information about what is happening in Egypt to use it in influencing the external image of the country and to make external pressure against the government!!


So now, for people who feel sympathy toward this organisation, yes, I feel sympathy toward them too, but not for the current one, but the one that was existing some 40 to 50 years ago (Naser's time). And for those who are arguing about Human rights in Egypt claiming against such incidents, I would prefer that such people get captured and tortured or even get burned in gas chambers than to perform such horrible acts against my lovely country, or perform torroristic attacks and kill inocent people, because those people who might get hurt can be me or you, or our beloved people!!

This piece of news if shows anything, should be how naive and alerted we are in the moment toward a beast that we have created ourselves in our minds. The beast is named Terrorism and its danger is much less than what we think and can be easily avoided if we are a bit smarter. The problem that this issue resided in everybody's brain and taking some percentage of even our normal day basis life. Everybody is thinking in a way out of the movies that we see in TV and if we hear a small bang in the street, you can find everybody's either running away or laying on the ground (to avoid the bomb's clusters!!), and even more than that, you can find "the brave people" are trying to calm people down and telling them instructions (because they are experienced in such things).
May be people will start looking underneath their beds before going to sleep because Bin Laden might be there!!
This story triggered in my memory another one happened last week when I was travelling from Rotterdam to Amsterdam during the rush hour, where there was not even a place for people to stand for an hour trip!! and there were those 3 head-veiled girls who were talking out-loud-mouths as if they have loud speakers in their heads, and seemed to be so pissed off because they could not find any place to sit, and out of what I understood with my basic Dutch knowledge, that (out of fun) they can say talk loud about a bomb threat in the train and make people leave their seats for them to get free ones!!
It was obvious that the people around me who understood/were hearing were having a smile on their faces although you can feel that it is a smile mixed with fear.

Probably the problem in such environment (and I am not talking about Netherlands as the same can happen in Egypt and I have already heard a similar situation there!!) that we need to do actually study such mentalities of people and see what are their fears/how they got created within their heads. At the same time, the people who are spreading those poisonous ideas has to be studied as well.
It really shocked me more than any non-Muslim who may hear about such thing, but I had the last Friday prayer in a Den Haag mosque where the Sheikh during the speech was talking about the Islamic teachings that we should give to our children because they are the seeds of the future. The shocking part was when he came to a point that it is a harder situation for us (the people who are living in a "non-Islamic" society presented in the Netherlands) because we are surrounded by Koffar; which seemsto be the word that makes a huge turning point between what-so-called radicalism and moderate Mulsims. The word in Arabic literally means anybody who do not believe in God, but it was described in Kuran as the people who do not believe in any values and are fighting against the monotheistic religions, either in a physical or in a moral way. Unfortunately, all those mindless people described as radicals transformed the word to mean everybody who is not a Muslim or even more than that, everybody who is not fighting with "Muslims" against Kuffar including Muslims who are peaceful!! sounds scary, isn't it??!!
The more scary is that such Sheikhs are allowed to spread such poisned ideas to normal people who are attending the Friday prayer.
The striking thing for me was when I got out of the mosque to see the first shop beside the mosque is a sex-shop, when I start thinking that such speech that we just had may lead some idiots or ingorant people to do some vandalism acts toward such places!!

There is a long way to get to any point which is free of the terrorism ideology, with whatever it means, either in terroristic attacks or even just spreading such ignorant ideologies.

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/nintendo_surgeon.png

This issue is back again in my brain, as not to do anything but to strengthen my theory about trustability of media in general, which proven lately to be highly untrustworthy, meaning that of course it has a lot of information, but it do not mean that all of them are TRUE!!

Couple of weeks ago, was having a forum about Global Warming that attracted a lot of people to comment at - or shall I say against - as I was trying to say that this phenomenon exist of course, as only blind or senseless people can ignore it. BUT, it is not human related or at least not proven scientifically yet that it is!! I was trying to tell some people that they should not get facts from movies - specially Hollywood because they are politically driven - but most of answers were triggered back to me as "but it was mentioned in this movie.......", and "the other movie was showing how......" and "Al Gore's campaign is........".

last week, IPCC's (the biggest gathering for scientist to research Climate Change) report was issued, and its summary was as follow: "We are not saying that Climate Change phenomenon is not related to human activities, but it is likely to be related", so for those who were leading their argument based on "facts" driven out of "movies"......relax, and know that even scientists until this moment can not prove the link.

Despite all that, I am not saying that we should not research cleaner alternatives as source of energy, as it is so stupid to know that the biggest source of energy on Earth is the solar energy and it is the least source currently used, though it is so easy to convert almost everything we are using in our houses to. It just requires very small knowledge of electric connections, average to low intelligence and even a handbook to show you the steps with pictures :)

and hold on a second......Global Warming!! this term is even scientifically INCORRECT!! it is not getting warm globally, it is getting warm in the northern and southern part of earth, but getting colder between them........it was even snowing in Cairo last Friday!!

It seemed normal, when I got this piece of paper as the random brochures, leaflets, ads and a lot of other materials that are normally distributed outside mosques after Friday prayers (same habit happens everywhere in the world). The brochure is written in Arabic and has a title of "Somalia...Somalia, Support it".
This week, when I started packing my stuff to get ready for the move, I found the brochure again and it seemed interesting enough to read.
The brochure starts with sympathy-driving words like the poor Muslims of Somalia are getting killed by the "koffar" (non-believers), the US and its allies in the region. Then, it goes through the poor history of the country that is filled with conspiracies from the UK, France, the US, and Ethiopia against the Muslim nation (of course because they're Muslims).
At the end (here comes the most sickening part), it says that Hezb el-Tahrir (Liberation party) is motivating the "true" Muslims to join them and fight along with the Somalis against the atheists (Ethiopia and US), and it is a must for every "true" Muslim to support their brothers in such situation!!!

Well, believe it or not, this is how any terrorist group starts recruiting their own members anywhere in the world. It doesn't matter of which religion (it happens in Islam, Christianity and Judaism), but it starts with an innocent message bringing sympathy to the poor brothers from the same religion, and bringing people who feel pitty toward the case. Then, after attracting some number of people, it goes through brainwashing process, and making them hate everything around them (even people from the same religion) and actually this part was already included in this brochure ("all the muslims have to support them (Somalis), and the neighboring countries from Egypt, Sudan, Djipouty, Eriteria, Yemen and Saudi have to send their troops to stop the massacre") and in some other parts, it claims that people who don't support them aren't Muslims!! and then it goes through the last stage, of weapon training and preparing them mentally to bomb suicide or do whatever act of vandalism against civilians, most probably in somewhere for some cause different then the original attracting message (fight for Somalia).
If countries that don't understand such cultures, like Netherlands, Denmark, or Germany, wouldn't get alert toward such small messages "innocently" spread among people, then it may lead to some serious consequences.