and associates and feminists and progressive men and women -- we went in the streets demonstrating against the war but we didn't stop it at all. why, why? because of individualism and it's embedded here with pragmatism with individualism that we are imprisoned in the individual. but the collectism is important. how to collect the individual elimination with the collective elimination and the evolution we start when the majority are eliminated, number one, there is a mechanism of that revolution. number one, awareness when we

start to know and then when we start to act, then when we start to be collective. because if as an individual i do nothing, if i am eliminated as an individual, i do nothing. even if i am not a very progressive writer. my effect is very small but really when we organize and that's why i believe in organization. in fact, we have two major objectives in our association, the arab women solidarity association. number one, to unveil the mind. we are as writers -- we're not only writers. we have to unveil, to help in unveiling our mind and the mind of others. and just by the knowledge, by having the courage to speak up our mind -- we may be wrong and

then we learn from discussion, from different opinions, but we have to speak our mind and pay the price because freedom has a price. freedom means responsibility. you have the price of creativity. you have to pay it. in order to do it. nothing without a price. so our major one objective in our association is to unveil the mind. so reeducate people and to reeducate the self, to undo what education did to us, to undo what religion did to us, we have to work on that individually and collectively. and then the other goal is to organize. when the majority start to have irreversible true knowledge of what's happening in the world, there will be a social

revolution. >> so i'm interested in how you actually have done this in -- worked on this in egypt. we know you in part as a major campaigner on the question of female circumcision and female gentle mutilation? and when are we in that struggle today? >> of course, dictatorship in our countries, like sudan, are supported by dictators here. we cannot separate between local dictatorship and global dictatorship. and they are one and they oppress us. when i was in prison, we didn't hear any voice from the united

states authorities. though, some other writers work with the government and they are imprisoned, you'll find them in the media, in the "new york times" and everybody asking for their liberation. but really when dissident writers, real dissident, creative writers are imprisoned, the global powers are silent. because they support the local powers. the local dictators. some people think there is democracy in the west or in america and in europe. which is not true. because maybe you have some freedom here, some democracy. but it's very limited. you must -- you must have a lot of money to be elected president. if you do not have money, you cannot be barack obama. you cannot be.

in our region, dictatorship is very visible but here dictatorship is more hidden, but they are connected together. and that's why when our organization was closed down, our organization was closed down in 1991. because we stood against the gulf war. so there was -- we didn't hear big voices or the american authorities or the global powers say, why you? you closed this association. so the problem is, we are not really oppressed by our local regime only. we are oppressed globally and, in fact, you cannot separate the global from the local. now, they use one word, glocal. it means they are collected.

the other thing is, of course, is the struggle. is a continuous struggle but we are winning. i'll give you good news. we are winning because in spite of the fact that they closed the egyptian branch of the arab women's solidarity association, we were functioning under the international arab womens solidarity organization. and we organized seven international conferences. many of them in cairo. and then going back to cairo because i won the case against the government and against the fundamentalists. just a few months ago because they wanted to take my egyptian nationality from me because i wrote a play, you know, just writing a play. so they took me to court and

they wanted to rob me of my egyptian nationality. but i was lucky because there is a movement now in egypt and among the judges that are against fanatic fundamentalism. and they are very critical of the link between the local government and male colonial powers in the white house, and those judges, through those judges, i won my case. so, in fact, the struggle is going on and there is a movement in egypt, like in any country, forward and there is a movement backward, and then going back to egypt now, after winning my case, and organizing the eighth

conference of the women solidarity association. that's why i'm optimistic, you know? i'm optimistic. i feel maybe we are beaten, we are beaten sometimes, but we come forward. we are beaten and we come forward. >> you have great confidence in the people in egypt. and you think that if they -- if they were given a clear picture of the world, they would develop a democratic society, a society in which women would be equal and in which there would be no female circumcision and no male circumcision either. what gives you that confidence? what gives you the confidence that if we just -- if you just keep writing, you and your organization and your friends keep writing, that at some point things will go better? because after all, you've been writing for a while now and you and other writers, and you have

had an organization and the general situation in egypt doesn't seem to be improving. it doesn't seem to be terrifically much a place to be optimistic about it although i'm glad to hear you're optimistic about it now. so i'm wondering what gives you this confidence in the revolutionary potential of the people, if i may put it that old-fashioned way? >> well, safe confidence is very much related to creativity and it's something that we develop since we are young. it comes also from the parents and from some of the teachers, so -- and you fight for it. and you become optimistic. i think optimistic people have such confidence. optimism means having power. power having the hope. when i'm optimistic, i have hope. and hope is power.

this is related to self-confidence. and like holding the pen, when you hold the pen and write, this is confidence. it means you have something to say. i remember many people i feel they are writers. they are creative. i am inspired by them. i tell them why don't you write? they say, oh, we cannot -- we don't have the confidence to write, you know? so i think everyone here in this room can write. writing is like talking. like breathing. it's something natural. writing is not something related to a few genius people. everybody can write. but they don't -- this confidence is robbed of us when we are young and we have to keep it. and develop it. so that we can -- we can do it.

so i am optimistic. and even in prison, i was in prison, and everybody -- my friends in the city were crying and saying, oh, you will be killed. and this was under sadat. i was optimistic. in fact, i didn't have any reasonable -- but it's not a matter -- it's not a matter of the cortex, the superficial cortex. i believe in reason. but real reason because some people say, reason or logic, as our friend in the "new york times" was saying, reason has no passion. no, reason has passion but sometimes through education, reason become superficial only in the cortex, you know?

so it doesn't really -- so there was no reason in prison. no rationale or no -- nothing in the air that give me hope. because sadat was saying, i will kill them. but still something -- the inner voice of the writer and the years -- the safe confidence, the inner voice of the creative writer comes to you and tell you, you will survive. and i felt i will survive. and that i'm surviving, you know? >> yes. but you've also had to spend some time outside your country. >> yes. >> in part because you have been very critical, as you were this evening, of the role of religion, in our society and in your society and at the moment in your society, there's a very powerful fundamentalist,

religious movement which is committed, among other things, to killing people that it disapproves of. and i'm wondering what it is that persuades you that you're safe to go home right now? apart from optimism, which i would like to share. >> because there is no safe place -- there is no safe place, number one. you know, i can have a car accident or the plane -- you know, for me, i developed maybe because of my medical profession or something, i feel that death and life are one. i'm not afraid of death. death is very beautiful, in fact. we are brought up to be afraid of death. this is part of religion. you know? that's how -- the fear of death

is the major cause that writers have the courage to write what they think. and there are a lot of religious taboos everywhere. even here. you cannot really criticize christianity or judaism, but of course you have freedom, much more freedom than us. i wrote a play called "god resigns of the summit meeting." [laughter] >> and i spent ten years of my life comparing the koran to the old testament, to the new testament. i studied them firm. i went even to england and studied there because i wanted to understand the word of god.

what's that? what god says and then i discovered that those holy books are full of contradictions, racism, hostility toward women, hostility to the other, the stranger, the infidel, morality, morality for men, morality for women. i didn't find real morality in religions or in religions. i didn't find freedom to think or to criticize. i felt a lot of hostility with the other. you ought to kill the infidel in all religions. so i started to write. i started to express because knowledge is irreversible. i cannot go back and abolish my knowledge.

the problem i would like to say, what i noticed -- and this is a big problem now, political problem. that nobody criticizes judaism or christianity. they criticize only islam. and i wrote about muslim women in the market, how women writers, muslim women writers, who attack islam only, they become rich and known and they are everywhere. so attack islam is easy. just attack islam and your book will be everywhere. and we have to be very cautious of that. this is the fashion. it's very easy. i give you example to say well, islam is against modernity. you cannot modernize under islam. islam is violent. you created the infidel under

islam. but go and study christianity. it's full of that, or judaism. even -- just remember in serbia how the christians killed the muslims under christianity. because some people say christianity is very specific. christ said when somebody slaps you, you give him -- and he was very -- there is no violence in christianity. no, go and study christianity and study the history of christianity. it's full of blood. the fight in europe. and judaism. you know, palestine, palestine people were killed because of the verse in the old testament, the promised land. so i would like to say and maybe people would not like that, we

have to be just. we have to be fair. we have to be fair because this attack on islam only is unfair. and also unscientific. it's political. it's male colonial. and it justifies the killing of muslims everywhere, in afghanistan, in palestine, everywhere. and as i told you, bin laden and george bush are twins. who encouraged the islamic fundamentalist movement? it was the american male colonial power to fight the soviet union and communism. so they are twins. they work together and then they quarrel. sadat was killed by the islamic groups he created. in egypt. so the son kills the father. it's a very common story in history.

i hope i answered your question about religion. [laughter] >> i'm not famously committed to defending religion, but it strikes me that looking at those same text you could also find the moments of something positive. there are wars in the name of religion but there are also hospitals. there are -- where i grew up, some of the best doctors were christian missionary doctors who came with christianity and driven -- drawn by christianity come to work for people in a poor country and they did a good job. and i say this not because i have any metaphysical commitment to religion because it seems to me that we live in a world in

which most people, unlike you and me, are attracted to some faith or other, and if we're going to make peace in the world, i'm not sure telling all of them that the first thing we want them to do is to abandon their religion is going to be a good way of moving forward. so i'm wondering -- suppose you -- suppose you met -- i mean, gandhi, martin luther king, these are people who have religious inspirations. i assume you have some sympathy with both of them. and there are many fine figures i mentioned to you the other day when we were speaking over dinner the president of al-azar, the mosque university who invited the archbishop of canterbury from the pulpit who had said if god wanted to created one he would have. he would have created one but he

created many. i find myself resonating with the words of that religious figure, and i wonder if though many things have been done in the name of religion we should remember things have been done in the name of irreligion too, stalin, hitler, pol pot, not religious any of them. >> i agree but i disagree. i think we need to clarify the mind. the evidence of evolution is very evident now. you know, the evidence of evolution became very, very evident. and people need to have clarity, not to be confused. and religion is confusing, in fact. it's confusing. you don't know. it makes everything ambiguous.

and i am not -- of course, there are christian, muslim, jewish, hindu doctors who are very kind under the so-called spirituality. and i'm very critical of the word "spirituality" but i prefer people who are kind and also eliminated. r!ñhígvmqóój;?. i am killed by msççiwq"z3çre. people -- people who are religious because they are not killed by it. they are not killed by it. so it's amazing to go to church to go to church and listen to the music and to eat and to socialize so it's nice to go to church. but they are not killed. people are killed under the name of god. so we have to be careful about that.

and also you mentioned a very important point in relation to -- ah, i spoke about the evident evolution is very evident. what religion, in fact, hinders social evolution. it encourages counter-revolution. look at the taliban. what do we call -- how -- look at the taliban, what they are doing. i am receiving letters from afghan women and from iraqi women because iraqi women are also in a very bad situation because of revival of religious fundamentalist movement. and some iraqi women, they write to me and they tell me, why, you know, we were much better under saddam hussein but now under

saddam hussein there was no religious strife. there is no conflict between the sunni and the shia. we could walk in the street with no veil and we could go to universities. now we cannot walk in the street. in afghanistan, the taliban burned the women who go to schools. so women now in iraq and afghanistan, between fires, between the hell of the fundamentalist fanatic movement and stirring occupation and they are linked, foreign occupation encourages fundamentalist religion. you see now in afghanistan how the american army is indifferent to women problems. because they want to have relation with the power, with the religious power with the

taliban. so they sacrifice women rights in order to have alliance with the power. and this is happening all the time, in egypt also. when we had the revival of the islamic groups and the christian groups, et cetera. and the muslim brothers wanted to have -- to connect with the government and the government wanted to connect with the muslim brothers who have power. they sacrifice. that's why it's very important to have principles. religious people are a bit -- are not generalizing but religion encourages fragmentism, you know? not ethics. people think morality and ethics in religion, no, it encourages

pragmatism. we need to stick with principles, justice, love, peace. what is peace in religion? what is peace? there is war all the time. if you are fighting the infidel, if you are fighting the stranger, the other, what is peace? i didn't find peace. did you find peace? >> well, again -- [laughter] >> i find myself -- i'm not sure i like being where i am in this -- [laughter] >> in the place where i am but it is important that in those large crowds that you said rightly were ignored when they spoke around the world against the invasion of iraq, there were many people who were there speaking for peace in the name of the quaker movement, which is a powerful christian tradition which has been opposed to warfare consistently for a very

long time and very bravely in times when it's been extremely unpopular in the united states, opposition of war is usually unpopular in the united states but the intensity of that unpopularity has changed from time to time and quakers really have suffered -- subjected themselves to enormous suffering for religious reasons in order to disconnect themselves from the peace. >> i remind you of your father. what happened to father, you know, in ghana? >> well, he was locked up. but my father -- i think my father would have said and i'm sure he would have said part of what motivated him in his resistance to what he thought of, i think, correctly, as an oppressive regime was his faith, his christian faith in justice, in human equality and in the equality of all people. >> he was a freedom fighter. >> avenues freedom -- he was a

freedom fighter in part motivated by his religion, which is one of the examples which makes me resistant to the idea that the problem is religion in itself rather than particular forms of religion. i'm happy to agree with you, of course, but the -- i'm deeply opposed to the taliban and what they've been trying to do. and i do agree with you the taliban exists and it has the power in part because of very foolish decisions made by the united states in its foreign policy in pakistan and afghanistan. i completely agree with all of that. but if i'm looking for allies to -- in the struggle to protect women's rights in afghanistan, i'm expecting, among my allies, to have quaker friends. i think even some catholic friends, baptist friends, people

who are not just anti-islam but prowomen's equality and who see women's equality as something that is a consistent part of their religious beliefs even though they would admit their tradition has to be criticized for playing a role in the past, in the continuous oppression of women. so, i suppose, really the choice is between an evolutionary and a revolutionary view of religion. do we want to see religion as something where we can pull good things out of it into the future or do we want to see it as something we eradicate in the revolution because nothing could become of it. i guess at least i'm persuaded that the answer has to be the revolutionary answer in that particular case. ..