Revolution 2.0. Wael Ghonim

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СКАЧАТЬ was one of the reasons I hated the educational system in Egypt. I was very defensive and believed that it was the system, not me, that was blocking my progress. Yet even though I was losing at school, I was winning somewhere else.

      Earlier, during the summer of my preparatory year at the university in 1998, I had created a website to help Muslims network with one another. It was pretty much like a simple version of YouTube. There were three fundamental differences, however: it was a website for audio material, not video, since video quality was not as advanced as it is today; content uploading was restricted to me and a schoolmate, since the content was religious in nature; and, finally, the website administrators had to remain anonymous. The webmaster could be reached only via an e-mail address that did not include his real name. I named the website IslamWay.com.

      State Security would have immediately targeted me if it had discovered that I was the creator of an Islamic website, no matter how moderate it might have been. When I received the call from Captain Rafaat, I prayed that it would have nothing to do with my IslamWay days. Luckily, he never mentioned it during the interrogation, so I didn’t either.

      It wasn’t too long before IslamWay became one of the most popular Islamic destinations on the Internet. During its early years, the website contained more than 20,000 hours of audio recordings of religious sermons, lectures, and recitals of the Holy Qur’an. Over 3,000 hours of this material I had digitized myself. In addition, the website relied on more than eighty volunteers, the true identities of most of whom remain unknown to me to this day, to collect and digitize content from existing cassette tapes.

      Two years after the launch, the website had strong traffic from tens of thousands of daily users. I wanted it to serve as a kind of public library featuring a complete range of moderate Islamic opinions. When the English version launched in 1999, it spread strongly among Muslims who did not speak Arabic and among others who wished to learn about the faith. The website was becoming increasingly influential.

      Surprisingly, IslamWay led me to my future wife. Despite my young age, I wanted to get married. I had proposed several times to Egyptian girls whom I met online or through my network of family and friends. My proposals were always met with skepticism leading to rejection. Many families thought I was crazy to seek marriage while I was still at school, despite the fact that I was financially independent and making a decent income. Stubborn and independent-minded as ever, however, I was determined to solve my problems my own way. Somehow I settled on a solution: I decided that what I really needed was to marry a non-Egyptian who would convert to Islam. I admired the openness of American culture and the practical way in which Americans faced life’s problems — so not just any Muslim convert, an American Muslim convert. I figured that anyone who changed her faith after a period of contemplation must be someone special — in today’s hectic world, most people barely have enough time to think about the ideologies they inherit from their parents, let alone conduct comparisons with other faiths. And even fewer people, I figured, are actually able to cope with the emotional baggage that family and society throw at a person who changes her faith. There was only one difficulty: I did not know a single woman who fit this description. But I did know how I could find one: the Internet.

      I first met the woman I was to marry online after reading something she wrote on the website’s discussion forum dedicated to new Muslims, where she participated frequently as she practiced the faith she had recently embraced. I reached out to her, and we began corresponding. I found her personality strong and her writing style quite appealing. Yet when I made the crazy suggestion that she visit Cairo — she lived in California — she refused. Our correspondence trailed off over time.

      Not too long after, in June 2001, when I was twenty, I planned a trip to the United States in order to donate the website to a U.S.-based charity that supported Muslim communities around the globe. The site had become very successful, and it was now so large that it was beyond my capacity to keep up with its growth. I was working at least thirty hours per week, and my studies were suffering. I had received an offer in 2000, from a close friend who knew I was the owner, to buy 10 percent for $100,000. It was a huge sum for a young man, but I refused to sell. I had never intended to make money from the portal — I do not feel comfortable profiting from social activities. I always knew I wanted to donate it to a charitable organization. Now it was time to transform IslamWay into a professionally managed website, and an American Muslim charity was ready and willing to take it on. So I hopped on a plane.

      During my stay, an American friend offered to introduce me to a girl whom his wife knew was looking for a Muslim husband. Fate stepped in: she was the very girl I had chatted with online for months. Weeks later, Ilka and I were married.

      I did not tell my parents in advance. My mother, I knew, was especially opposed to the notion of marrying a foreigner with a culture different from ours. Two days after the wedding (attended only by my mother-in-law, two witnesses, and an imam), I called my father. To my surprise, he only scolded me in calm tones for not consulting him and my mother. I asked if he could help me by sending a few thousand dollars until I got settled, and he agreed. I asked him not to tell my mother until I found a way to break the news to her as gently as possible. But he must have thought twice about that idea. Minutes later, my mother called and unleashed her wrath at my unilateral decision. She refused to speak to me for months afterward. I would call and call, and she would hang up as soon as she heard my voice. I wrote letters, trying to appeal to her love for me. I expressed how much I loved her. I praised Ilka as gently and insistently as I could manage, stressing her good manners and other great qualities. Nothing worked.

      My stay in America left a major and lasting impression. Like any Egyptian who visits the West, I was in awe of the quality of education, the respect for citizens’ rights, and the democratic process that gave people voices and allowed them to be active players in the political process. Admittedly, at my young age, I was easily impressed. I drew a conclusion that I repeated to Egyptian friends many times: “We’re being fooled in Egypt!” The thing that impressed me the most was the freedom of religious practice — the respect for religions and every human being’s right to practice his or her faith. There were many organizations that defended Muslims and their rights. They were free to criticize the American government’s policies without fear of any secret police.

      Yet not everything was in favor of the United States in the comparison with Egypt. I sensed an individualism in the air that contrasted greatly with my experience back home. In Egypt, a lot of emphasis is placed on the family and on groups in general, which creates an atmosphere that engenders a sort of emotional warmth in spite of its occasional restrictiveness. On the contrary, in the States I noticed that people were on their own in many situations in which they would have enjoyed much social support if they were in Egypt. My brain was in the United States, but my heart was definitely in Egypt.

      My initial plan was to stay in the States to finish my degree, because I was so impressed with American higher education. Yet I had a change of heart after 9/11. I will never forget that day. My wife and I were home, and I had woken up early and started working on my computer when, on a discussion board, I found people asking each other to turn on the TV right away. I watched flames emanating from the first World Trade Center building; we all thought at the time that a plane had accidentally crashed into the tower. I woke up Ilka to join me, and shortly after, we both screamed in horror as a second plane crashed into the other tower. I had never imagined that people who claimed to be Muslims could commit such an atrocity. The faith in which I had been raised both unequivocally prohibits the killing of innocent civilians under any circumstances and completely forbids suicide. So I was dumbfounded when I heard speculations in the media that the culprits were Muslims. Over the years I had observed various Western media outlets magnifying the acts of some crazy fanatics and portraying them as representative of Islam. If 9/11 had anything to do with Muslims, I thought, then those who had planned this monstrous murder of thousands of innocent civilians must have been thinking solely about their political ideologies and could not possibly have considered the damage they would do to the image of Islam and Muslims living in America. Or perhaps they СКАЧАТЬ