Soccer is More Important than Real National (Arab) Issues: The Pathetic State of the Nation

By: Hassan Al-Haifi

All this incomprehensible raucous about the Soccer games between Egypt and Algeria cannot help but make the observer wonder at the real pathetic state of the Arab Nation, as a whole and as individual states. This entire silly tic for tat on the claimed superiority of local “national” soccer teams makes the observer wonder if there is any more reason to display any semblance of pride in being associated with this helpless nation of demagogues for worthless causes, which it has become. But what can the latter do, except hope that the Al-Mighty cleanse the capitals of the Arab World of its impotent leaderships. It is not enough that most of these leaderships are hardly possessive of any education beyond the substandard level, let alone any taint of culture breeding. Even at the collective level, we have an Arab League that has been immersed into the abyss of failure, thanks to the ineffectual and remote controlled guidance of Amr Moussa, who has to date not produced any degree of bringing the organization to any level of regional recognition or even allegiance to national causes, which the Arab League is supposed to sponsor. Moreover, the Arab League has become weaker in speaking out for the issues that are most troubling to the Arab people as a whole: Palestine, Somalia, North Africa (Polesrios), the War in Sa’ada (despite six rounds of bloody warfare that has brought on the rise of over two hundred thousand “internally displaced persons”), and the Sudan and all its internal conflicts. This is not to mention that the Arab League has not shown any suggestion that it is even seeing what is going on in Iraq now for close to a decade. Even this current stupidity over the World Cup Elimination Playoffs, for which no one hardly expects any of the fierce combatants – either Egypt or Algeria - in this recent brawl to ever reach as a contentious team for the world title anyway.When one looks at the map of the Arab World, whether as shown by Google Earth or as the Sykes-Picot and the Balfour Promise and all the other international or regional agreements have laid out the Arab World, we see rivers of blood flowing in all the valleys and rivers that crisscross this make-believe jigsaw puzzle of nationhood. However, thanks to greater communications and easier access to the various channels for information exchange, the people of the Arab World are slowly become more informant about the follies of their leaders across the Arab World. Moreover, it is more easier to see that most of the leaderships in the region are closed narrow-minded societies that mainly work for the enrichment of their bona fide members, who have either reached their positions by means of their clan association, or for acting as agents of other regional or international cliques, and have no sense of the real implications of government of the people, for the people and from the people. In fact they hardly recognize that leadership means delivery of certain tangible and intangible results for their peoples, ethical and professional performance at all levels and in all sectors of public administration, freedom from the influence of traitorous military establishments or dubious partisan associations that have for the most part brought more hell to their people than meaningful governance.This is the only hope that one has for the future, for the current situations throughout the Arab World are no indications at all of any hope to rest with the existing quagmire of impotent leaderships now riding on the necks of their people without even paying any fare! However, there is still the disconcerted state of the Arab “masses” or the “people of the street”. These people have lost their balance, as a result of all the state machineries of oppression and persecution, which have been reoriented to serve the selfish aspirations of the incompetent leaderships that hold the helms of authority throughout the more than twenty “states” that make up this weak and powerless nation.But with this nation itself being a part of a greater Moslem Nation that is composed of emerging powers, such as Turkey, Malaysia, Iran and eventually Pakistan, one is comforted that Allah’s real impression of justice will prevail. In this context, the observer is inclined to suggest that so far most Arab States have no sense of the real values that Islam should espouse, mainly justice for all, the elimination of poverty, the sanctity of life and private property and freedom from all forms of political oppression and religious persecution, not to mention the removal of fictitious borders among fraternal states within the entire Nation of Islam (of course not Elijah Mohammed’s fictitious nation of Islam in America).

Yemen Tines
Published:23-11-2009