It is very educating to read about war on terror from the point of views of experts on psychological, political, and sociological perspectives or international relations. But it is a totally different flavor to personally live its sequences and consequences and to have some time to reflect from a personal level.
The other day I went to apply for a visa for Tanzania where my wife and I are supposed to have 21 days training in preparation to be posted in Nepal for a job in development work with a Danish international organization. We went to the consulate of Tanzania in Copenhagen to apply for visas.
My wife presented her Danish passport, then she was asked to pay fees and she got her visa in less than two minutes. I was fascinated by the efficient and decent Danish employee, I watched her performance of her job with a sense of jealously about the conditions of civic service in our developing world. Then I submitted my Egyptian passport with its lovely distinguished king size and the optimistic green color to the receptionist in the consulate who immediately felt unease about this unexpected and out of place passport in lovely Copenhagen.
We explained the situation that I live here legally because of our marriage and we are posted by a very distinguished Danish organization to attend the training course. She explained politely that there is a list of countries where its citizens applying for visa should be subjected to different procedure that takes more than two months to be administered and she handed us the piece of paper with the list of troublesome countries.
The list included about twenty country extending from Nigeria in the West to Bangladesh in the East. I tried to inquire about the logic of the choice of those countries but had no
explanation.
We looked carefully again to the list to try to guess the common denominator, they were
all so called Islamic countries. Because Egypt is one of those countries it meant that the issuing of my visa will require two months of administrative work which means I will not attend the training that supposed to finish 21. of October. It was not difficult for me and my wife to connect this procedure to the “global war on terror” and we remembered the bombing of Dar Al-salam in 1998 alleged to Usama Ben Laden.
The first reaction of my sweet angry wife was to shout, “Damn Ben Laden! Due to him we get into these troubles!”. I would not disagree with cursing him but I have to admit I directed my anger firstly to the American Empire and its pervert war on terror which has shown to be a global war on Muslims.
No body can explain or justify to me rationally why I need two months to issue a visa to a country located in my own continent, while my Danish wife could get it in two minutes. I share with her the most basic values in life, the same career and humane commitment. We have spent some time discussing why her anger and frustration has been directed toward Mr. Ben Laden while mine mainly directed towards the American Empire (thank God, neither of us believed in the responsibility of a third world poor country – Tanzania - for the procedure we are facing). My point was simply why one billion Muslims (about one out of six humans in the planet Earth) should bear the responsibility of the action of a handful of Muslims?
Apart from the clear discriminatory nature of the list my country is included in, I am still puzzled about its rationale. If I was Ben Laden follower and holding a Danish or British passport then I would have got the visa in two minutes like my wife!! Are the experts on terror who advised this procedure advising Ben Laden to seek recruits those who are holding Western passports? What if he took their advise seriously (and it seems he does) and started to focus on recruiting Muslims with “proper passports”, will the same terror experts start to prepare a list of Muslim family names instead of the list of countries to be subjected to the odd procedure I am subjected to? Would I live till the time where a decent kind administrator in an embassy or consulate telling me, “Sorry Sir, people with the family name of Hussein should apply for a visa two months earlier than those with the family names of Hansen or Smith.
Humanity and reason are really in trouble if Mr. Ben Laden started to advise his followers to change their family names from Muslim ones into more proper family names, while keeping their hatred and rage toward the West. Hatred and rage that are fed by sense of discrimination that itself increase rage and so on in a vicious circle.
So what can we do about terror? I hear my wife asking. Well, being a personal victim does not qualify me automatically to be an expert on terror, but I would say, let us live with the reality that terror will continue to exist, we are equally facing the risk of it; Muslims, Christians and Jews, whether we get visas in two minutes or in two months.
So let us also share the costs of fighting it, I mean let me and you (my wife) spend two months to get our visas, if necessary. Let us both also decide about our choices between risking our lives in terror attack or having our visas in two months instead of two minutes, our decision should be according to the rule of one man/woman one vote not upon a dictation from a super power.
The current equation is that we are both exposed to danger of terror but only I as a Muslim pay the price of fighting it, is not fair, not rationale and extremely dangerous on Western values itself (which I think are universal ones and definitely not Danish).
Sometimes I get the impression that the experts of terror who propose such kind of procedures of war on terror are more dangerous on world peace than the terrorists they are claiming to be fighting.
Post script; I phoned my 13-year-old son in Cairo, he asks me about my travel to Tanzania. I tell him that I might not get the visa in time, since Egypt is on the list of troublesome countries. He replies, “oh, war on terror”. Others might keep looking at the procedure as a matter of administrative regulations, neutral and abstract as civilized laws ought to be.
people