Good evening and welcome to the inaugural Middle East Centre webinar. My name is Eugene Rogan and as centre director, it's my great pleasure to be speaking to you tonight from the boardroom of the Middle East centre here in Oxford and what used to be the library reading room of Middle East Centre, which for decades was the venue where we hosted our five day seminar series. It's gonna be familiar terrain to any of our alumni who are joining us from abroad.
And I'm delighted to welcome you all back and welcome everyone who is joining us for tonight's presentations. It is a pleasure and an honour to be joined by Dr. Alah elsewhere. Since the publication of his second novel, The Yacoubian Building in 2002, Dr. Onda has emerged as the most admired and widely read author in Arabic publishing.
Yacoubian Building was, I believe, the most successful book ever published in the Arabic language, and each subsequent novel has proven a massive bestseller, Chicago, which came out in 2007, drawing on his personal experiences as a student in that city, and then in 2013, the Automobile Club of Egypt. And most recently got. And nor the so-called republic, which has yet to see light of publication in the English language.
But his novels have been translated in over 30 different languages and have truly established him as a figure of global literature. Between his novels, Dr. Allah has until recently maintained a full time dental practise and written political commentary for the Egyptian press. Three volumes of his political writings are now available in English. There is his on the state of Egypt. What made the revolution inevitable, which came out in 2011, the revolutionary year for Egypt.
Democracy is the answer. Egypt's Years of Revolution, published in 2015. And the subject for tonight's talks and the book that has given the theme to the entire terms of webinar series, The Dictatorship Syndrome. The book is available with a discount through the website where you connected to get your registration for this webinar tonight. And I would strongly urge all of you to take a moment to read the dictatorship's syndrome.
Every now and again, we get a book from the region that is the kind of defining document that captures a political moment in the history of the region. To me, it's something like Samir Cáceres book Being Arab, which did a similar tour of the horizon for the Arab world in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq. And I think this is an important book that's going to provoke so much conversation about our region and beyond.
Dictatorship, of course, is a subject that has preoccupied Dr. Eila since his 2014 essay in Arabic. If that's not good. How do we produce dictators in a theme that holds relevance well beyond the Middle East on which we focus? This is not the first time, but the third, we've had the pleasure of welcoming Dr. Onda to the Middle East centre community. He first came in 2009 after the publication of Friendly Fire and then again in 2015 after the English translation of the Automobile Club of Egypt.
And I'm so happy to be welcoming you live from New York City, doctor, on that. Welcome back. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for inviting me and thank you very much for the wonderful introduction you made. Well, I think so warmly, I love. Now we go to work. And writing novels or newspaper columns, you are a dentist. Hence, we call you doctor. Other medical metaphors come to you so naturally. So explain for us in forensic terms, what do you mean by diagnosing dictatorship as a syndrome?
Talk us through the book. Well, you know, that is in medicine, there is a difference between the disease and the central because the disease is this order of some organ or some system in the body. But when you have signs and symptoms which are repeated every time together. We call this syndrome. So I thought there the syndrome would be the right description for dictatorship because I made it a surge.
And I noticed that there are many, many similarities between dictators and dictatorships all over the world. In the book, I'm not only talking about the Arab dictators, I tried to understand the phenomena in Africa and Latin America, in Europe. And interestingly to me, I found that the phenomena is repeating itself like a syndrome with the same signs and same symptoms. Sometimes dictators are seeing even the same sentences, you see.
So there were sentences quoted, for example, by Bokassa, the African dictator, and the same sentence was said by a Sisi. And for me, this is very important because it's significant because it means that they think the same way. And that's why they say the same thing. Accordingly, I try to understand the phenomena and I try to explain how it happens and how we could cure the syndrome. And I think that it's in the way of diagnosing an ill and then subjecting that analysis to thinking about cures.
That means your book has actually got a very positive message as well. Absolutely. The assumption is that the idea that the dictator as an individual could at some point impose himself on a nation of millions of people. This is not true. What happens is that some people, at some point, they are prepared to accept the dictator or sometimes they are waiting for the victims. And this idea was presented for the first time by French social order in the 16th century.
And I explained this in the book. It's Yandilla. What she. They love what she wrote. Unfortunately, he died in the age of 31 and he wrote one single book. And this book is very important. The book is called In French Ludi Score Dila with Jude Death. You could, of course, easily translated to the discoursed of voluntary servitude. And he is presenting for the first time the idea of the dictatorship is immune to utter relish.
It's not one sided religious that the people accept or are prepared at some point. And usually usually the deal is they give up their freedom and then in return they have protection usual. But you cast the people on the one hand almost as the victims of dictatorship. But there's also, in your analysis, a notion of complicity of the people in making the monster of the dictator.
And in the opening of your book, you tell a personal account of your experience of going out with your father at the end of the 67 June war, confronting the crowds in that moment of crisis where they realised that they suffered defeat at that Nasser had led them into this defeat. And yet still, they saw Nasser as the necessary leader. They would not accept his resignation.
Talk us through a little bit about how, even as a child, your eyes were open to this complicity between society and the dictatorship. Well, that's my father was, as I wrote in the book, was a writer, a lawyer and he was leftist and he very easily told me that despite the fact that NSA is achieving very good things for poor people, but it will never work because you need freedom first to protect the achievements.
And that's exactly what happened after the death of Mossad. Just all their achievements fell apart. The comparison I tried to make is that Nozette was defeated miserably and the people took to the street for him to stay. And on the other hand, I mean, the comparison was Winston Churchill, who led Great Britain to a great victory in the Second World War. And then after that, he lost the election. And I concluded that in Egypt, by that time, there was this syndrome of dictatorship.
And in England it wasn't the case. So people were capable to keep their critical thinking. They were careful to say that Churchill is a great man, but is not necessarily the right man now to be prime minister. That was not our case in Egypt. And I found a very interesting book by Dolfi Hakim, you know, whose who's dopier? Of course, you wrote that a ton of conscious. It is a small book, but it's really in the phenomenon into the syndrome.
He said, I will never forgive myself, that I felt that this regime was lying. But I was attracted. I was seduced by the charisma of the dictator, by the propaganda machine. And I found this very important. And I tried to explain everything inside the central. I think one of the strengths of the book is that you don't pin the syndrome as a feature of Arab society, but you globalise it.
You're constantly pulling examples from other parts of the world that have confronted dictatorship and where societies have been drawn into supporting and enabling dictatorships. But how do you view dictatorship in its Middle Eastern context? I mean, is this a particular problem of politics in our region?
Well, there is a common mistake has been always done by some people as they are to put all the Arab nations on the same line and to try to analyse the situation in all sorts of nations on equal basis, which is the Arab nations. Of course, they share many things like their language, mostly religion. The history was colonialism and everything. But. Native societies are very different as far as the progress and the conscious may be concerned.
Accordingly, you see, for example, in the Gulf area, that idea of the ruler as a public servant. It's almost doesn't exist. Of course, I have my full respect to the Gulf societies, but we're trying to understand. They believe that that is the head of the tribe or their father or their protector or the head of the family. That's how they see that order. That was not the case in Egypt because, as you know, we had a very early experience in democracy.
We had the first parliament in the 19th century and read the first constitution in nineteen twenty three. And we had relatively liberal experience before the military coup d'etat, 1952. Accordingly, you refeeding to some model in the way and this you could see it easily. When Mubarak was overthrown by the revolution and he was brought to justice, that was an anger all over the Gulf states, at least by the royal families. First, they didn't understand how could you?
And that was said, how could you put your own father behind the bars, you know? Second, I believe that Egypt's influence is extremely important in the region. So they felt threatened themselves as rulers because if this will happen in Egypt, it could happen in the Gulf area as well. So I think to understand the Arab societies, we should understand the background of each society because they don't have really the same background. Second, we have the problem of religion. It's a big problem.
Of course, I'm not against the religion, but our interpretation of the religion, especially the Wahhabism. I know what you mean or what is a bit. Is pushing the people to obey the ruler. And the message is very clear on the Web is that you should obey the Muslim ruler even if he is corrupt, even if he is a criminal. It is brutal. You should obey. And, of course, this will have an influence on the attitude of the people.
So the idea is that you learn through their religion to obey the shade or to obey the pope. In Egypt for the Christians. And then you will obey the dictator easily because you're totally prepared by the religion to obey. Well, I don't think that you are yourself naturally inclined to obedience. And I think that as a writer, you've always been pushing back at those elements of the government that have been autocratic or dictatorial in so many of your novels.
There is the figure of the dictator in the background and Yacoubian Building. It's the big man. And he figures there's a shadowy puppet master behind the scenes in Chicago. You have the visit of the president and the way you portray the president is very clear about the feelings you have for the abuse of power that the president had come to represent.
If one goes to your Wikipedia page and it looks at all the long list of the awards that you've received, it's really noticeable how unloved you are by the thought of publishing elite in your own country. So I think that you've been pushing back on dictatorship all along. But is there something then that that's been actually encouraging your creative writing? Did you find that you were inspired by dictatorship in your writing? Of course. Of course.
Because you you write because the distance between what happens and what should happen becomes too much to be accepted, you see accordingly. That's how you you get inspired. And I know through friends that in some societies that society of prosperity and equality and people don't have almost any problem. The inspiration for literature becomes less, you'll see. Of course, I would like my country and the Arab world to be okay.
I'm not saying that we should suffer from dictatorships so that they could write if we will have democracy. I'm quite sure I will have some other topic to write about. But it's true that I have been inspired by the injustice, especially the injustice. No, it comes through so clearly in both your fiction and in your non-fiction. The column that you would write for at Shorouk and as material, your you know, you used to sign your articles, Democracy is the Solution.
And we always thought that that was in reference to the Muslim Brotherhood who were saying that it's Islam that's the solution. But, Doctor, I know he's putting democracy forward, but no, in light of the most recent book, The Dictatorship Syndrome. I mean, it's almost as though you're trying to answer that the solution to dictatorship is democracy. And is this where your thinking has been evolving in your non-fiction writing? Yes, of course, I think that democracy is a very, very important idea.
The people of the regime in Egypt and I must say that we have the same regime since 1952, was different versions. Probably the current version in the most brutal one. But we have had the same regime. You know, you drink coffee and you drink coffee. There was milk or sugar without sugar. But basically, you drink coffee. So we have been drinking coffee, you know, too long. Since 1952, you know.
So they say all the time there is an argument which that the regime is presenting that we are not prepared for democracy. Not now. You know, I must remind you here that Nozette said when he arrived to power, the officers said that we are going to stay only for six months. And then after that, we got to make elections that will organise elections and then we will go back. We will leave the politics, you know. And they haven't done this for 70 years. On the other hand.
I have a real problem with the political Islam, and I think for many reasons, and you will find this in my writings and also in my novels. I believe that Islam is a great religion. But the idea of when you present Islam as a model for a state, you present a fake history, which never happened. Unfortunately, the political Islam shift, they recruit the young people who didn't read history and they don't want to read this. There was no is an Islamic state based on religion in our history.
Never happened. You know, what happened is an empire like all the old empires, which were based on my sect and your conspiracy. And you could find this easily in a double ibsa and Adonal my way. Even in Dallas and the fact that you presented Donatello's marnia as an Islamic state. This is a big lie, you know, because what happened is that the Ottoman colonialism was even worse than the British colonialists. And we could go to a very famous historian. Yes.
Oh. Describes the first day of ultimate occupation to go. They killed 10000 people who were not soldiers kidnapped. It the 17th century. Yes. Study a century either. Yes. So the idea is that all this all what is presented in the political Islam is a fake history.
Just to to use the religious feelings of the young people and to make, you know, to present the kind of simple history which is totally fake, that everybody is against us, that the West and the West is one one single thing for them, that the West is against us, is against Islam. We should make that we had to conquer that those people who are against Islam. And accordingly, I think it's totally feetfirst.
Second, the groups of political Islam and I'm talking here about the Muslim Brothers and the Salafi people, the Senate people existed after that, the boom of the oil. You know, before that, there was more Salafi people. But the Muslim Brothers, they joined every time the dictator. They helped the dictator against the democratic force beginning from 1952. That's this, the same cycle. Muslim Brothers had, the dictator said, to get rid of love and democracy.
And then at some point they asked NLD to pay the bill and he refused and he put them in prison. And then after that, they said that released them. And so this is exactly what happened of the Egyptian revolution. The army used their Muslim brothers against the revolutionaries. And then at some point it was too much. They send them to prison. Cause I'm not justifying any Masek. I'm not justifying any violation of human rights whatsoever.
This is something that I'm trying to understand. I'm trying to explain my position against the political Islam. You know, and of course, your position is well known. And you were very outspoken in your publications on your views about the Muslim Brotherhood and about Mohamed Morsi's presidency and for motherhood to bring this experiment to an end.
But, of course, you've got a lot of criticism for that as well. And I think that you have always, in a sense, I expressed to your views openly and freely invited criticism both from those who represent the kind of military secular elite and those who represent the religious opposition like the Muslim Brotherhood, which leaves you in a very uncomfortable place in Egypt. No, I don't.
I really don't care because I think that, you know, edness talking about I said that all there is to say always what you think and to do always what you say. I try to do that. So I have been always attacked by both sides. The people who are Sisi supporters and the Muslims. Why? Because they cannot tolerate. And they have the same mentality. They can not tolerate anything against their propaganda.
So the propaganda of the Muslim Brothers is that Morsi was the first elected ruler of Egypt and he was overthrown. This is not exactly what happened, but it's the first. May I may. May I express my will be the first ruler elected or chosen by the people who was Muhammadiyah. And then after that, there were such that rule, 1924, free elections after the Constitution. So, one, it is not true. Second, they said that he was a seven present.
Very good. A civil president should not have tens of thousands of militants who could use violence to attack his opponents at any point. What she did that she did that in the Supreme Court. What she did that against the media city. You know what? She was a member of a very mysterious underground group with militants. And yet you could get back to Mussolini. Western Union was not military. Mussolini was almost any form of the black church, as you know.
I can not say that Mussolini was a civil prison. This is not true. Third, do you believe that when the army is killing the people in the street? And when the Army is doing is committing a Masek every month during 2011, do you believe that the army will allow the results of any election if they don't like the results? Could you imagine that the army was getting the people in the streets in Egypt overnight will be democratic and he will accept the fact that more she won.
Number four, there is a problem that it is a case against the elections of Morsi and there were many violations. And these case we have three judges who just resigned not to see the case. Why? Because if they said that Qaddafi won, it means that Sisi has no place in power. So they didn't want to do that. Nobody talks about that. And Morsi, when he came to power, I and other people accepted. Right. Despite the fact that, of course, I don't believe that it was free elections at all.
But anyway and then he made a constitutional decree November 2012. Nobody took some of it according to criticise it. Yes, no small criticising. He is this is destruction of the idea of democracy. Definitely. I mean, somebody will according to this decree. Well, bottom line is, will make the Egyptian law. And he will put his presidential decisions above the law. What kind of democracy is this?
Well, a lot of good doctor dictatorship for just a minute, because your views on the Morsi presidency, I think, are familiar to us. And I want to give us our audience chances. Well, I should say your audience. Then I'm going to ask probably another question to Dr. ULDA before we'll open up to your questions so that we can broaden the conversation to please. If you'd like to ask a question, go to the Q and A bar on your screen and type in your question.
My colleague Michael Willis will be bringing your questions back to us in just a moment. If you wish to be named, put your name on the question. If you want your question to be anonymous but anonymous, text your question. We will respect your wishes, but I'll be handing the floor over to you, to your audience in just a moment.
But let me come back to your book, because you end the book with a chapter on prevention of dictatorships and growth and you focus on charisma and idols and religion and chauvinism and conspiracies. I look at you now and your new life in Brooklyn, and I'm just wondering, are you making any suggestions or giving any advice to American voters in November's elections by your prescription for coming out of dictatorships and drug?
What do you expect me to say? Of course, I'm against was the club, and I think Mr. Trump is very dangerous and I could see many signs of the dictatorship syndrome happening in America. You know, people who don't care really about their freedom and they need that here, too. They need somebody to protect them from the immigrants and all this stuff.
And, of course, you have Trump has been useful because I think because the experience of Trump has showed that the democratic system in America has serious problems and those problems should be fixed. You see why? Because Trump is a god of class, a citizen. Which was not the case for Bob, of course, or any other. He's classy. He is, as we say, in French comedy for his very rich is white Protestant, you know, has been.
He has very good contacts, you know. And you see how many times the local stops before drunk. You go to Wooler committee, for example, report. You go to many things. And this guy hasn't presented yet his tax returns. You know, it's unbelievable. And it is unbelievable that a president is sitting president has a lawyer who admits that he made negotiations with two prostitutes and then the lawyer is in prison. But Mr. Trump is OK. And you could imagine easily if Obama was caught with a prostitute.
What good to have you see. No, I just go through the list again. You talk you focus on charisma. I think about Trump and the way he appeals to his crowds, those big rallies. You talk about religion and I think about its appeal to the conservative and evangelical Christians. You talk about chauvinism. And I think about his appeal to the old right of white supremacists.
You talk about conspiracies and I think about Q And on one of the things about your book that for a reader who is American but works on the Middle East is I can see that you are diagnosing a syndrome that really has a universal applicability. And I think in this moment, we shouldn't sit back and go, oh, this is a critique of Egypt and those Egyptians have got to clean up the house.
I think we all have to wake up and think about what it means to confront dictatorship and not to be a society that enables or becomes complicit in the syndrome. Thank you very much. This is really what I had in mind when I wrote the book. It's not just about Egypt. It's not about the Arab world. It's everywhere. And you'll find the same thing and the same phenomena. And I tell you, for example, in France is not is no different. You have that extreme right in the front as you learn.
And they are presenting themselves as the protectors of the French people against the immigrants, the Muslims, the terrorists, you know. And of course, you can not with this propaganda. There was a statistic that the last 10 years. 85 percent of the victims of the terrorist attacks were of people or Muslims or coloured people. So the white victims, of course, any any single victim. For me, you know, is is it a big drama? But I'm just talking about how the propaganda could work.
You know, we I'm talking we as non-white Muslims, we have been victimised by terrorists, you know, much more than anybody else. And we are accused of being terrorists in the same. I could go on with you at great length, but I can see a Q and A boy that's beginning to fill up and I know our audience is going to grow increasingly impatient with me dominating this conversation.
So I'd like to invite my colleague, Michael Bidis, who has been monitoring the questions that the audience has been giving us to join us now and to share the questions from the audience. Michael, over to you. Thank you, Eugene. Yes, lots of questions coming in. But, Doctor, I love the first one coming in. Do you think people have been brainwashed for a long time to obey their leader? We'll take easily to democracy. I'm sorry, I didn't hear. Could you repeat the question, please?
And the question is, do you think that people who have been brainwashed for such a long time with the lack of freedom, lack of a justice system will take very easily to democracy? No, no. But this is this is our our duty to try to you know, I tell you, of course, I write novels as an art. I'm not writing novels, you know, for any political will.
But I try and I think any anybody who's intellectual who could give to the people somehow thinking about their conscious, about understanding what is happening should must do that. But it is not easy. Yes. Thank you very much for the question. You know, we have been brainwashed. We have had a terrible propaganda and we learnt to rely on our father and our father. Unfortunately, we had many fathers, none of them. To me, it was a good one.
We begin by Mohammed Naguib and then Nauset and then Sadat. And then Mubarak. And then Sisi. And we learn to deal with those dictators as if they were our fathers. You know, I had a debate on Egyptian TV after the revolution with the prime minister of Mubarak and he resigned after the debate. I met your feet and I was surprised. Of course, I was supported by all the people of the revolution and many people. But I was surprised that people I didn't I didn't insult the prime minister.
I didn't say anything, which is not adequate. But I just practised my right as a citizen. I asked head, what did you do that? What did you do that way? Where are the people who killed the protesters? You know, you're protected. I mean, a discussion that could happen in any democratic country or which is happening every day. And I found some people or I would say maybe people who didn't like that. And they said, how could you talk to your father this way?
And I said, listen. My father died, you know. And he's not my father. And yes, we need time and we need efforts to get the people back to the conscience of the world. Yes. Which leads in very nicely to the next question. You described the syndrome or the disease, as you said, and more more of a syndrome. What is your prescribed treatment for this syndrome? Well, the treatment exists. I wrote the treatment in the book. But I could just briefly say, what is the treatment?
The first element of the treatment is to understand that Central is not to be seduced by a hero. The idea of the hero is very dangerous. And why? Because the hero will be above anything. According you could see that the countries or the people who have had democratic experience, they resisted the EU, even if he was a real hero and you could see what happened with Churchill. What happened was the one who was a real hero, you know, so we should not accept the idea of the hero.
Anybody in power is a public servant and he is working for us. And, of course, the conscious and the religion, the religion is very dangerous and we should be careful. I'm not against the religion, but I'm against the religious concept which presents or prepare the people to accept dictators. Which I then the follow up question to that. Thank you. Is the whole idea, therefore, of the benevolent dictator coming from Frank Demona is you don't believe that that is a syndrome.
There are no benevolent dictators. It is something like, you know, we'll know what that was. That was a very famous that that happened in France is that it could be translated that enlighted the logic of the dictator is good. And it's something like the honourable thief that is that is a contradiction inside the term, you see. And of course, I'm not saying that all dictators were a big failure. Probably we have our Arab dictators have failed more than any other dictator in every everything.
But, of course, you have some dictators who began was big achievements. I must tell you that when Hitler arrived to power, there were eight million unemployed in Germany. And after a few years, there was no one single German who was unemployed. But look what happened me. The problem is that you begin with achievements and then there is something called lost solitude, you dictator that solitude of the dictator. And it's a category of fiction writing in Latin America.
The dictator becomes totally disconnected because he uses all the time what he wants to hear. And he's disconnected from reality. And then at some point, I wrote that in the book, there is that fatal, that terrible decision. The terrible decision, for example, for Hitler was to attack the Soviet Union, for Mussolini, it was to take Greece for possession. He was to support the terrorist terrorist attacks. For now said, was 1967 for Saddam Hussein with the invasion of Kuwait?
You will find always in the ad. Even if he began, which could happen was good achievements. But at some point, he will have a fatal decision. And this goes in history without one single exception. Thank you. Next question comes from aliens I eat and she says. Going back to the possible treatment, the role of education, do you blame a lot of what has happened on the lack of a good education in the Arab world, particularly in Egypt?
Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you very much. But I would just move the question a little bit and modify it, and I'll tell you. Do you think the dictator is interested, really, to give good education to the people? I would say no. I have many, many. I have really evidence that they don't care. They want to give the good education for the elites and the elites are related to the religion, but they understand dictators or even they feel that the good education is a threat.
Which is true. Accordingly. Again, it's the duty of the intellectuals and the educated people to try to educate the people who didn't have the opportunity to get a good education. But I don't think a dictator would educate really the people. If he does, that is going to be very dangerous to. Thank you very much. Well, I have a question about what extent your own personal experiences need yet influence your thinking about dictatorship.
How much of it is a product of your life? I was born and raised under a dictator. I now I will. We didn't see any. The book is your wardrobe. I get it. My generation. I don't think any any other person saw any democracy. But as I told you, this version is the most aggressive version of this image. So I was banned from writing in there under Mubarak just two months before the revolution.
But as soon as Mr. Sisi arrived to power, I was banned from writing any TV appearance, banned from publishing, banned from everything. Of course, I'm a dentist and I still practise dentistry. So I was asking myself if Mr. Sisi at some point will arrest my patients and they were lucky enough to be arrested because they just gave to fix their teeth. But I got some point I had to go to. I teach creative writing in America. And then was my new novel, which will appear in English in April.
I was brought to a military court, a military court in Egypt because of the novel. And of course, I was not in Egypt and I didn't send any lawyer for two reasons. First, it won't change anything because the military court, that decision had been taken already. And second, I don't recognise the fact that a novelist could be brought to a military court because of involvement. So this is the most aggressive version of the Seeb regime.
Thank you very much. Question on the role of social media, has it made dictatorship worse? Well, no, I don't think so. I think that social media has been has been a headache to daughter dictators. And the evidence is that it is banned in many countries. Some forms like what's happened value, but also they make a kind of propaganda against the social media. My personal experience is that I have a Twitter photic number, three million and four hundred thousand followers.
And this is three times three times the circulation of all the Egyptian newspapers together. You know, accordingly, it's very hard to ban me or to stop me because thanks to the social media, without the troops should be there. It would have been impossible. So I think, of course, they tried to use that dictator, that dictatorships try to use the social media and they send officers to get training out of control and stop and have to make egging on some accounts.
But then to add, the social media has been very useful against the dictator. Other dictators, of course. Thank you. Switching to map the monarchies, do you think it's a distinctive type of dictatorship or is it really the same as the Repub, the Republican notions of dictatorship? Is it. No. What we the. A dartboard is different than the king in the West. The king in a democratic country, as you know, is just a symbol.
And he's not ruling or she's not ruling the king in the heart of what is a real ruler. You see. And you see, for example, that in the kingdoms in the Arab world, they leave a space for know discussion about Libya. But there is the red line. Before the king or the royal family. And the king is ruling, I'm not against any kingdom, but against a ruling king because a ruling king is a terrible dictator.
I would say if any country they would like to keep the king, he should be or he should be a constitutional king, not just a ruler. Thank you. Question from Otto Barot here in Oxford, particularly about the role of censorship and the threat of retribution and how is it affecting how you think it affects Jemera? And also how has it affected the way that you have written and discussed these actions?
Personally? Well, the idea censorship means simply that something is banned and something is allowed. And that was the case under Mubarak. We don't have censorship anymore in Egypt because nothing is allowed. Accordingly, we don't have censorship. We have the regime controlling everything. Every single words either written or said on TV in Egypt has been approved by an office. So we don't have censorship. We have no we have no freedom of expression at all.
Under Mubarak. We didn't have the freedom of expression. We had the freedom of talk. Because, as you know, the freedom of expression, is it democratic to. You write something, you accuse somebody in power, something should be done in the parliament. No. Or even by a court or whatever. This is a freedom of expression. What we had under Mubarak was the freedom of talk in the sense that Mubarak was telling us, we are writers. You write whatever you want. I will do whatever I want.
Now, we don't have freedom of expression at all and we don't have freedom of talk. And if you just push if you like something I wrote against Sisi, you could be in trouble if you ate something like your understanding. What is happening in Egypt. It's even worse than other laws. So why? Because the regime has become like a wounded tiger.
And if you read a little bit about the animals, a wounded tiger is much more dangerous than Tiger was not wounded because the tiger is not wounded, has self-confidence. So he's not going to attack everybody. Once the tiger has been wounded, it will attack everybody because he doesn't have self-confidence. And that's exactly what is happening by the regime. Mr. Sisi is almost every months, every month he talks all the time he has conferences or the Taliban.
This is a typical dictator attitude. But every boss, he is repeating the same sentence. What happened in 2011, refeeding to the revolution will never happen again. Thank you. Question from Emma, Emma. All the details, as you reference in Egypt and elsewhere, are men. How does gender play a role in both the construction of dictatorship and response? A good citizen. Thank you very much. And the biblical question and again, all the questions that wonderful. You can not be progressive, partially.
And that's a subject is like a dictator will never believe, really, really. And the rights of the woman and he will never believe in the rights of the by dualities. Why? Why? Because this is his Colchis. He could pretend to do some reforms on the surface and here you could get back to Suzanne Mubarak as an example, you know, but they pretend you cannot be a dictator who is abusing the people, who doesn't believe that the people have the right to decide.
And on the other hand, you would support the equality between men and women. This would never happen. It's a it's a package of conscience. And then when you're a dictator, get back to to the relation between Mussolini and the church, between Franco and the church. You know, the dictator is our father and he doesn't like or he doesn't accept any attitude by any woman against the principles of our family. This has been repeated. Sisi is the last one with it said.
Thank you. Next question. A few questions coming through about the role. Do you think the military play in all of this, particularly obviously in Egypt, but elsewhere as well? The military should defend the country. This is only road. And any military which is exceeding this rule is very dangerous to everybody. The military is an organised force to defend the country. We have in Egypt as your I think you know, that the military has.
We don't we don't have state reliable statistics. And this is not a sign of any dictatorship. You would never have reliable statistics in a dictatorship because the dictatorship that the people are lying all the time. So you don't know. But we know that the military has projects in every field in Egypt.
I don't understand how the military could have projects to sell your fish or to sell tomatoes or to sell fruits or to make you know, so the military should be if there will be a democracy in Egypt or in any country. The military should do the role of the military, which is to defend the country. Nothing more. Thank you. You're welcome. Well, I think we've come to the point of the evening where we have to bring things to a close.
I say that with a heavy heart because looking at my screen, I can see we have 43 questions stacked up on the queue in a line. So this it really. This is a conversation that we could be taking late into the night. It tells you something about the degree in which you engage your audience and you have provoked their thought. Our thought, indeed. We're going to continue with this exploration of the dictatorship syndrome over the next seven weeks.
And I will invite you to come enjoyed in the audience in future weeks to see. My pleasure. Yes. I think you'll find that this is truly one of the books for our times and it will be a great deal of discussion. So for that, thank you. Is very, very indebted to you. We have taken the decision to keep these webinars to one our firm so that our audience, which has been huge and very appreciative, will patient us through to the end.
But I'm going to close this with one hour strictly. And so my apologies to all of you whose questions we didn't get to. I hope that you'll be with us next week and we'll get another chance to air your questions then. I do want to remind you that we will have next week webinar at the same time, where we will visit the themes of the book as they apply to the case of Iran are Yum items all day from Princeton and Chavous Ronge Badami from St. Andrews.
We'll be speaking on authoritarian or revolutionary reflections on the nature of the state in the Islamic Republic of Iran. And that event will be chaired by Professor Edmond Hertzke. So I really hope that you will all join us then. But I would like to close with a final word of thanks to our speaker tonight. I know it was wonderful and was wonderful to have you back. Thank you so very much. Thank you, Jeanne. Thank you. Thank you.
All the people, my friends, all made it possible or made it happen. And thank you for the audience. And I hope we could meet after the Colvard 19 problem. We could meet freely, physically. Thank you, Jim. It has been very, very interesting and useful to me. I must tell you that my meeting, any meeting would weather with the leaders to me and I think to any author is very useful. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And on that note, thank you all for joining us. And good night from Oxford.