The Dictatorship Syndrome by Alaa Al Aswany

Author:Alaa Al Aswany [Aswany, Alaa Al]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Politics, Commentary & Opinion, Political Science
ISBN: 9781912208593
Google: NQpYxQEACAAJ
Goodreads: 50728651
Publisher: Haus Publishing
Published: 2019-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

Emotional faith

Only two types of religious people choose their faith: those who lived at the time of the prophets and decided to believe them, and those who converted to a different religion that they found more meaningful than their ‘birth’ religion. Apart from these two types of people, we inherit our religion – or our lack of faith – from our parents. We believe in it from when we are little children, we become emotionally attached to it and, over time, religion becomes a basic part of our memories and our consciousness. We never use intelligence in order to come to a religion, though we do so in order to defend it.

Religion is thus a completely inherited and instinctive belief. We build our peace of mind upon faith in a religion and we rarely allow that to be questioned. You can take the cleverest, most intellectually gifted, most open and tolerant person when it comes to mundane matters, but if the conversation turns to any form of scepticism regarding religion, they can suddenly turn into a fanatic, ever-ready to deny glaring truths, to start spouting baseless and unprovable assumptions and to defend legends and fantasy. They may resort to sterile debate and become arrogant or hostile. They are driven by deep religious feeling and by their instinctive fear of doubt penetrating the firm religious belief upon whose foundation they have built their life and their vision of the world. Therefore, there is no point at all in discussing religion with such believers because their emotions do not allow them, spiritually or intellectually, to undertake a logical re-examination of religious doctrine.

This emotional faith engendered by religion is also a phenomenon of dictatorships. Watch a speech given by any dictator in the modern era and you will not find a single logical argument. A dictator never speaks to the intellect but works on the emotions of the masses who submit completely to their feelings, who do not engage their intellects and instead start to empathise with the dictator. They see him as someone who represents their will, who is their hero and saviour and to whom they will give their support in any decision he should make. The millions of people who stood for hours, shouting themselves hoarse, their hands raw from applauding Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini, were not stupid or empty-headed. They had submitted to the dictator’s magic spell and had been taken over by an emotional state that eradicated their consciousness and will – a form of mass hypnosis.

As we have seen, in 1958, Gamal Abdel Nasser announced the formation of a union between Egypt and Syria and the establishment of a new state called the United Arab Republic in which Syria was to be the northern province and Egypt the southern. The union lasted until 1961 when a group of Syrian officers rebelled and plotted a coup against Nasser, which led to the secession of Syria. The day after the coup plot was uncovered on 28 September,7 Nasser gave a speech to thousands of Egyptians in Republic Square in Cairo.

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