I agree with you as long as this outcome is not unexpected AND the strategy includes winning the war, not just the battles. That may in fact be the case, but as someone not very familiar with all this, I just can’t tell. Is that the case?

gary

if a single battle is won, have we really furthered the greater cause?

I may have misunderstood: are you asking, is it good to win a battle, if the enemy’s defeat will cause him to escalate his tactics? Yes, it is. You must expect the enemy to become more brutal as he becomes more desperate. However restrained his tactics may be now, the more successful you are in pushing him towards defeat the more viciously he will fight back.

The only way to avoid enduring the very worst your enemy can throw at you is to lose before that time.

I may have angered some of you for even asking such a question, but consider this first:

“The art of war is of vital importance to the State. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.”
– Sun Tzu’s “Art of War”

I would say the same principle applies to social struggles. Analysis should not be neglected.

gary

And yeah, he may be considered suicidal for doing that. But it takes a lot of guts to do this knowing the risks, and doing it so openly that he puts his pictures, phone number, full name and address for the world to see, including the Egyptian authorities which obviously came with a big price.

This is not the first time he gets arrested and he knew it was going to happen again, that’s probably why he wrote as frequently as he did. To know his story in more detail read Mohamed Fadel’s document about him, where Kareem is interviewed. Anything and everything you need to know about Kareem is both in this document and on the campaign’s website. Familial details can be found in Fadel’s article (15 pages long, by the way.) It will help you explain why Kareem wrote about Islam and the political system in the manner that he did.

In any case, Kareem’s experience is an example of how REAL freedom seekers fight. This is why you all should campaign for his freedom. He’s not your average blogger and activist.

His words (and more importantly, his actions) show a person of great courage: did he choose to remain and be jailed to illustrate his point about the lack of free speech?

Esra’a, then the USA should have never been mentioned at all in this thread.

There is no reason why it shouldn’t be mentioned in this thread at least in passing.

It significantly supports Egypt, which is ruled by a dictatorship. It is thus playing a role in these crimes. It is not actively voicing concern or support for the increasing human rights violations happening there. All we are saying is that for the sake of decency, this is what it should do if it truly cares about human rights and political stability in the region. Unfortunately, it does not. This is what our exchange was about, no one was blaming what is happening in Egypt on the USA which is what you implied, and what I already addressed in another comment within this thread.

Also, I am talking about the filtering that occurs within each of us. Not this forum.

Anyway, I am not fighting you.

and my questions are what are we doing right now to secure his release

I linked our campaign for a reason, for those who want to read about what we are doing to secure his release the site has extensive information on how and what people can do in order to help.

As for the relevance of what I wrote, it wasn’t me who mentioned the USA and who is supporting Egypt. Look further up this thread. You can’t throw something out there and expect nobody to comment. We all can’t just filter out what we want to hear from the other comments.

It is factual information. The USA does support Egypt, the USA does supposedly support “freedom,” all the while supporting a dictatorship that puts the lives of innocent civilians in serious risk. However, and as the of the title entry suggests, this is about Kareem Amer’s letter. Not the USA. One little comment should not hijack an entire thread.

Secondly, no one is filtering what they “don’t want to hear.” I just simply want to stick to the topic I specifically raised, and no one seems to respect that right now.

As for the relevance of what I wrote, it wasn’t me who mentioned the USA and who is supporting Egypt. Look further up this thread. You can’t throw something out there and expect nobody to comment. We all can’t just filter out what we want to hear from the other comments.

Anyway, ma’asalama.

Esra’a, don’t get warped. If my comment rattled you, it shouldn’t. You asked me to bring something to the table and share my insights with the group, and I did. If you feel I am apathetic, then tell me so. I don’t mince words to curry favor or to stay in a postive light. Nothing was ever achieved by having a bunch of “yes” people who all agreed on the same things. Americans by and large do want peace in the Middle East, but I am sure that my statements of such are falling on deaf ears. Your feelings of America being self-serving and apathetic, it’s hard to separate the government from the people.

I don’t see the relevance of this to my comment, or actually this entire thread in general. I didn’t even imply that you were apathetic, but I would rather talk about Kareem right now than clarify what I think is already clear enough.

Not a single person in this thread with the exception of Murad actually referred to Kareem’s letter, which is what this thread is all about.

Did anyone here even bother reading it?