CAIRO: Three cheers to those who are behind the Al-Hussein explosions on Sunday: The first goes to the righteous people of Egypt, who made a wonderful bomb, which was described by the malicious media as primitive but in fact it is so ingenious that its shrapnel has blazed Egypt's name across the four corners of the earth, efficiently placing Egypt in the top stories of news bulletins on almost all television stations worldwide. Thus the first of our cheers goes to those loyal sons of the motherland which has nurtured them over the years through thick and thin. Now they return the favor by showing the world Egypt's real image, not the distorted one presented sometimes by foreign media. Who says that Egypt is safe, that its people are devout and generous, or that its religion is one of mercy, tolerance and forgiveness? Our own countrymen have volunteered (without any help from the malicious foreign media) to portray a different picture of Egypt, depicting it as an unstable hotbed of violence, hatred and terrorism where innocent lives are claimed in cold blood at one of the holiest religious shrines. Clearly this must be because Egyptians don't like tourists or Christians and Jews who travel far to visit the Islamic, Coptic and Pharaonic monuments and spend hard currency, which we don't need, then go back home with a great impression of the good-hearted, generous Egyptians who spare no effort to help any visitors. Our cheers go to the sons of Egypt who have demonstrated beyond doubt that they cannot be bought or sold. Despite malicious arguments that the beneficiaries of this miserable explosion are the enemies of Egypt, it's quite clear that this noble task was single-handedly undertaken by a group of righteous Egyptians. Had the enemies been involved, the operation would have been more sophisticated and the bomb less primitive. The second cheer goes to the great sheikhs who have taught those young people the upright teachings of our religion, reflecting the correct understanding of Islam as they teach them how to fire bombs on the streets and kill people in cafés in the name of Islam, paying no attention to the security and safety of a handful of French students, who never paid attention to the malicious propaganda broadcast by the enemies and chose to spend their holidays in Egypt instead of Israel and to drink green tea in a café in Al-Hussein, rather than to visit the Wailing Wall in the Occupied Territories. The bearded sheikhs, in their shrunken galabeyas, overlooking the principles of our ancient history and the teachings of our sublime religion, had not so long ago, sabotaged the minds of young people, urging them to kill one of our icons of thought, literature and culture, our great novelist Naguib Mahfouz, who also put Egypt's name on the top stories of television bulletins in the world. The third cheer goes to this great society, which created favorable conditions for all this to happen through an ingenious education system that has become exemplary for spreading ignorance and backwardness among the youth; as well as to a pioneering media which has turned sheikhs and Quran reciters at funerals into television stars, preceding satellite channel shows about infidels and the punishment they deserve. Thus breeding a new generation of righteous believers who have devoted their lives to killing those who are not Muslims - but there's no harm if a few Muslims are sacrificed as well. Then comes our wise economic policy which has led to ample unemployment opportunities, and so failing to find a job that benefits society, our youth devoted themselves to spreading the wisdom they have learnt from the Emirs of ignorance, backwardness and terrorist groups. The voices of Um Kolthoum or Sheikh Mohammed Refaat no longer delight them, but rather the hysterical shrieks of some psychopathic preachers in state-run mosques. A final cheer goes to all of us because we saw this and were silent about it for too long. Each one of us was a nail in this bomb. Mohamed Salmawy is President of the Arab Writers' Union and Editor-in-Chief of Al-Ahram Hebdo.
