Jordan Watch
An update and analysis of development and reform challenges in Jordan from a social democratic perspective.

Less Politics, more culture, economy and Fun in Jordan Watch
Wednesday, January 10, 2007

As explained in my latest post  I am trying to reduce the schizophrenic condition I have in my career vs blogging time by more integration of the two identities. In my assessment of my blogging year and in relation to my professional career and issues of interest I decided to reduce controversial politics from my Jordan watch blog for many reasons that I will explain now.
As I said in my previous post politics puts people on a collision course. In our Arab society we are still not fully mature in terms of accepting other opinions and that makes people personalize their differences. I happen to have a package of political convictions that I found them to be hard to promote and the only natural reaction is hard criticism.
In face of criticism I need to react and defend my point of view with the best logical tools I have. Keeping silent is an indicator of surrender. Sometimes I do believe that I made a mistake and my critics are right and I do aknowledeg taht in my commenst. Sometimes I know I am right and I have to defend. With the exchange of views a rift starts to be created and suddenly I feel I have been engaged in a personal counter attack which is simply wrong.  
Let me take this into real terms.
I happen to believe in three principles: freedom, social justice and secularism. This brings together a package of political identity that ranges between secular humanism and social democracy. I try my best to use this logic and principle in my political arguments.
Some people think that to be a politically brave and legitimate intellectual you have to criticize the regime. Personally  I am totally in support of the Hashemite regime in Jordan out of conviction not threats or incentives. I believe that Constitutional monarchy is the best regime in the Arab world and it has been proven by practice. I have not gained or lost anything from my position. I do not want to gain and I hope not to lose. Having said that the situation is not perfect and there are a lot of issues that need to be fixed soon especially in political reforms and fighting corruption. I call for reform within the state and regime and not by attacking them.
Some of my critics have a different point of view and that is their right. What is not their right is accusing me of being linked and beneficiary from the regime for saying that which I am certainly not.
I am critical of the governemnt when it screws up (90% of cases) but still must be able to give praise for the remaining 10%. If I do that I become an agent for the intelligent forces and be paid by the government!
Moving to Arab and regional politics. I love and respect each and every arab country and its people. Yet I am against all dictatorships and degradation of human dignity in the name of resistance, facing up the US and standing against Zionism. Arab people from Morocco to Syria need freedoms and any regime or political movement stripping them of their freedom is not to be supported. Thus I am against many Aran regimes but still it is difficult to criticise regimes like Syria becuae you will be labelled as pro-American.
I know that democracy is not prospering in Jordan also but at least there is no systematic killing of opposition like other regimes.
Now, let us come to Islam. I am a muslim who believes in the spiritual dimensions of Islam specially while asking for honesty, integrity and supporting fredoms. I am against political Islam and against all political Islamists movements that want to take authority and force their own vision of radical Islam on other people. Of course when I say this I become an agent of the CIA.
This is becoming too exhausting to me. I do not want to spend my time refuting accusations and engaging in persoanlized attackes from anonymous readers who insult me and question my integrity. 
This is why I am gonna reduce the political content of this blog unless there are issues that are very urgent, and focus more on issues of main interest to people like social issues, economy, development and maybe some more funny and light-hearted posts.
This is a space that I have created to express my opinions, get to know people and not engaging in wars.  
 

posted by Batir Wardam in Blogging @ 11:00 AM

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(8) comments


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On January, 10, 2007 11:23 AM , Sa3eed said:

"freedom, social justice and secularism"

Where is democracy? You must add democracy or you will mistaken for a neo-liberal.

On January, 10, 2007 12:04 PM , batir
from Jordan said:

Dear Sa3eed; democracy is composed of freedoms, social justice and secularism. Social justice is the principle that seprates neo-liberals from political liberals

On January, 10, 2007 4:14 PM , Rabee said:

Dear Batir, i am an avid reader of your political posts, some I agree with but others i don't. this is life.

yet i strongly disagree with your assessment that the criticism directed at some of your political commentaries were simply because you believe in "freedom, social justice and secularism" while the others don't. If any, much of the criticism came from people who were TRULY committed to freedom, justice, and democracy when you seemed at times to be waffle and on others to be more committed to factional and neo-liberal and pro-regime positions.

but all in all, you have a good analytical mind and your posts are worth reading and debating, more so than the majority of jordanian blogs. And the criticism directed at you does in no way shape or form diminishes my respect for your intellect.

Besides, it's pointless to form an opinion about a person because of his political views. views change all the time.

i hope you will reconsider your decision to abandon political discussions. jordan need tough-minded debtors and more heated debates, else we regress into the stale rotten mindset where everyone agrees with everyone else.

On January, 10, 2007 6:14 PM , hatem abunimeh
from United States said:

Although I have a fairly good idea about your stance on various issues from reading your blog and your articles in the newspaper, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for telling us in more depth about who you really are and what is it that you stand for. I would like to see more Jordanian bloggers come forward and tell us exactly what they stand for, no one should be ashamed of what they stand for. Some people try to give the impression that they are for this cause or that cause while in reality they stand for nothing but self interest.I would like to say that my personal opinion of your blogging is very much similar to that of what presented by Rabee above. The fact that we disagree with you on issues doesn't in way represent any prejudice or anything like that, it is merely a difference of opinion and different outlook on the same issue, but needless to say we are in agreement about our main fundamental goal of wanting the best for Jordan and the people living in Jordan irrespective of their origions. I have actually been exposed to your writing long before you started your blog, as you may have noticed from reading my blog that I'm a newspaper reading junkie.I wont be able able to close my comment without cautioning you the way Rabee did before me about "Waffling" it is very dangerous and makes people lose confidence in the writer fairly quickly if they start noticing that he is a waffler. Good luck to you in all of your future endeavors and please count me in as one of your regular readers.

On January, 10, 2007 6:38 PM , hadi x said:

Sorry batir. it's three against one in favor of you not abandoning political discussions. this is democracy :)

and i will promise to get less personal with my replies :(

On January, 11, 2007 10:17 AM , kinzi said:

Batir, here's a chance to get more personal: I tagged you! Tell us "Five Things You Don't Know About Me"

A chance for us over-30s to share our great wisdom with the younger folk.

On January, 12, 2007 12:12 AM , Adel said:

For the record . The USA has unseated France as being the Top Arab Killer. France killed about 1 million Algerians during colonial era.

USA killed about 1.5 million Iraqis, 0.75 mil starved or killed by curable diseases during sanctions and 0.75 mil result of US invasion of Iraq.

And just as in Algeria, Arab death squads paid for and supported by the French, did most of the killings.

On January, 13, 2007 12:13 AM , Batir
from Jordan said:

Rabee thanks for your note. I certainly did not attempt to claim that I represent "freedom, justice and secularism" while my critics are not. i am not using the Bush doctorine of "they hate us because we are free" but I just wanted to show what are my values. A kot of my critics have fundamentalist points of view and consider the truth to be only in one package. I agree with all your other views.
Hatem thanks alot for your opinion. I hope I will not waffle, certainly I will not atempt to deliberately. If I do you can always ring me an alarm bell.
hadi x I can live with being less personal, tahnks.
Kinzi thanks for the tag I am still checking the number of masks I am gonna unveil.
Adel thanks for the note.



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