“He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her,” Jesus is quoted in the Bible (John 8:7) as saying when he confronted a throng intent on punishing an adulterer in accordance to the laws of Moses. Jesus was trying to teach his people the double virtue of humility and tolerance. If we learn more about ourselves, he suggested, our compassion for others will grow. A nation cannot aspire for civilisation, modernity, and knowledge unless it is willing to learn from its past and more importantly, use this past as a foundation for enlightenment and forgiveness. More than two years have passed since the 25 January Revolution and we are still taking stock of what happened. We know now that not all Egyptians feel the same way about the revolution, nor do they have the same opinion of the old regime and the new one. We know that some of them are harking back to the past, while others are apprehensive of what is to come. In this time of insecurity, no one is safe, and no one is immune to blame. Just as success follows failure and ebb follows the tide, we have stepped into a new era with anticipation in our hearts. Plato once divided humanity into two sections — into barbarians and the civilised. The latter are the ones who have laws, the former the ones who improvise. So Plato must have regarded Egypt as the most civilised country on earth, for it had laws for 3,000 years before his time. But Egypt was beginning to fall behind, even then. Its laws had become outmoded, and yet it stuck to them. The invaders who came to the country were more flexible, for they paid homage to the Egyptian legacy of laws and religion. And therefore, they were able to move ahead, whereas Egypt stagnated. At the onset of modernity, Egypt was torn between old and new ways. Since then, we haven't really been able to make up our mind. Our progress comes in fits and starts. We are as erratic as a football team who cannot maintain a steady record. One moment we surge ahead and the second we step back. One day we are determined to change the world, and the next we're tired and indifferent. This is the story of the past 200 years or so, during which we underwent many changes, some under the monarchy and some under the republic that followed. At the first sign of a coup, a revolution, a foreign invasion, or liberation from occupation, we tend to start all over. Instead of building on what we had, we always start from a clean slate, as if amnesia has set in. Truth be said, the pharaohs were the first to do that. When an old regime was overthrown, the new pharaoh and his associates made sure that any memories of the old regime were erased from the records. In the novel 1984, George Orwell imagines a regime that glorifies its own achievements through falsehood, employs doublespeak to delude the population, and runs a Ministry of Truth to tell the nation what to think. This is no longer possible. With all the technology of recording, communication, and online storage, lies are easy to detect, and those who say something can always hear themselves repeat it on YouTube. We know how to sift the chaff from the wheat, but it is a tedious process. So, instead of keeping what is good from the past and discarding what is bad, we tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater. In the aftermath of the January revolution, I wrote several articles in Al-Ahram under the title, “Why we failed”. In these articles, I discussed what I know about the old regime, and explored ways to make the new regime work. But nobody was ready to give Egypt the success it deserves. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) was not willing to transcend the regime of which it was a part, and the Muslim Brotherhood and the civil opposition were just as reluctant to look ahead. Some people have grievances to air, while others have scores to settle. But no one has asked this question: Why have we never had a democratic system? Why have we never produced elections that everyone agrees were fair? Why do we still have an illiteracy rate of 28 per cent? Why is our industry focussed on assembly? Why — with all the newfound religiosity — is sexual harassment on the rise? And why are we so fond of conspiracy theories? Instead of calling a spade a spade, we are still beating about the bush, shoving the dust under the carpet. But when everything is said and done, we will have to answer the questions mentioned above. We will have to critique the past and then move on. To start with, we need to admit, in all honesty, that our country is still a backward one. No group that has already ruled the country has succeeded in giving this nation what it aspires to have. And those whose ideology was tried — so miserably — elsewhere are unlikely to fare better. So let's quit exchanging blame and wasting time. We need to have a plan for the future, and we're not going to have such a plan if we remain shackled by conspiracy theories. The first step to healing ourselves of the ills of the past is by discarding conspiracy theories, by refraining from casting stones, by working together instead of accusing each other. Egypt does not need a new revolution. It needs a new way of thinking.
