The folks over at the Free Kareem Coalition have translated and posted the last blog entry of Abdel Kareem Nabil Soliman (recently sentenced to four years in prison for insulting Islam and Mubarak) before he was arrested on Nov. 6, 2006. In it, Kareem talks about how he thought his expulsion from Al-Azhar university — where his thinking clashed with his professors’ — would be the end of that drama (including threats on his life, he writes, from Sharia law students). No such luck, as then the prosecutor came calling. The whole piece should be read; here is an excerpt:
“I hereby declare that I do not acknowledge the legitimacy of my summons to investigate a matter like this, which is within the realm of my freedom to express my opinions. This freedom was stipulated by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which Egypt has supposedly signed. Moreover, setting this declaration aside, and even if it did not exist, and even if Egypt did not sign it, human rights are very self-evident matters that do not require legislations or laws to regulate them or to define their essence.To every gloating and spiteful person among those who envision that the likes of these primitive measures might change my positions, affect me, or force me to stray from walking in the path that I have set for myself, I say: Die in your rage and hide in your burrows. I shall not recant, not even by an inch, from any word I have written. These restrictions will not preclude my dream of obtaining my freedom, for that has been my wish ever since I was a child, and it will continue to run in my imagination in endlessness.
And to Al-Azhar University, its professors, and its Islamic scholars, who stood and are still standing against anyone who thinks in a free manner, far away from their metaphysical aspects and superstitions, I say: You will end up in the junkyard of history, and when that time comes, you will not find anyone to cry over you. Rest assured that your grasp will disappear as has happened with others like you.”
