When The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions: Egypt's Dismissal of An Errant Justice Minister

Beware of the Ides of March!! Last month, the New Egypt engaged in a rare administrative act: The summary dismissal of its Justice Minister. Dated March 13, 2016. Well done!! Counsellor Ahmed Al-Zind was a well-meaning person. But he has a disease. Incurable. Is called "shooting from the hip." Or diarrhea of the mouth. And Al-Zind shot from the hip, or the mouth, 3 times.

An Arab adage says: "The third hit hurts the most." So former Minister Al-Zind met his quota of imbecilities. When the New Egypt, now under reconstruction, hurts, there is little room for "MAALESH" (Never Mind).

A license for "let go," well-suited for a permissive environment. Intolerable, when the New Egypt is scrutinized in every step, in any direction it takes.

This is especially so in the realm of the administration of justice. Thousands upon thousands of cases are an overload in every court. In a national mood that uses the Court as a wailing wall. The newly-found freedoms in Egypt of post-January 25, 2011 have created a highly litigious environment. Creating a near paralysis in moving the legal calendar from "docket" to "judgment." From "judgment" to effective and humane "execution" (INFATH).

In such a fluid environment, Al-Zind found his salvation. Even before he had the exalted post of Justice Minister for his country. The very country that exports its justice models to the rest of the Arab World.

Here follow the events that fit the description of: "the road to hell being paved with good intentions."

Big Mouth Salvo No. One: While he was President of the Judiciary Council, Al-Zind, watched in justified horror a spectacle. Hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood bullies besieging the Supreme Constitutional Court. Intimidating it for having adopted a legal opinion: One-third of the Islamic lower chamber of Parliament violated election laws. So Parliament was disbanded. The Brotherhood resorted to its well-practised fascism: intimidation. Shut that court down!!

A la Nasser in 1954. That is when the cry went up: "Down with the Constitution." The great jurist Al-Sanhoury, head of the Council of State, was beaten up in his office.

As judges of the Supreme Constitutional Court sneaked to their offices through back doors, Al-Zind fumed. And rightly so. But his good intentions suffered from a dangerous absence. Absence of international judicial knowledge.

Directing a threat at the Brotherhood ring of fire, Al-Zind's fuming produced only derision. For he publicly stated: "I shall sue the Government (the Islamist Government) before the International Criminal Court." Alarmed, I sent a word to some members of the Council of State. "Al-Zind should know that there is no private litigation before the ICC. He has no standing. He does not seem to comprehend the tenets of universal jurisdiction under the 1998 Rome Charter of the ICC."

In return, I got an unacceptable response. It amounted to: "He didn't meant it!!" Well, if he didn't mean it, why embarrass himself and the judiciary, and Egypt, by making that burp in public?

And if he meant it, he should have known that the ICC litigation is not private. It is government-anchored; premised upon a decision by the UN Security Council; instituted by a directly damaged party; and to all kinds of other limitations. Primary among these is "inability" of a national judiciary to act. The so-called "subsidiarity" principle.

Big Mount Salvo No. Two: Al-Zind is now in a different capacity. Now is the time for him as Justice Minister to vent in the name of a Cabinet headed by a technocrat, Prime Minister Sherif Ismail. An engineer. The government of Egypt has put on its finishing touches.

With the new Parliament, you now have three co-equal branches of government. As per the Road Map, produced through consensus of the select national forces, including Muslims and Copts, in July 2013. Ending the reign of Brotherhood terror.

That Brotherhood had been judiciously declared a "terror organization." For its conducting a systemic organizational violence, aimed at cowing the newly regained secularism. Fronting university students as its shock troops. Under the false banner of "public demonstrations." Freedom of expression and assembly, which were violently prohibited under Islamist (un-Islamic) rule.

The battle ground moved to previously lawless Sinai. An Asian Egypt ceded de facto by Morsi to Hamas. So north Sinai was infested by Hamas tunnels. But southern Sinai has been blessed by tourism. The armed forces in the North, under the unified command of Field Marshal Askar, took the brunt of armed terror. Casualties resulted.

With that, Al-Zind's Big Mouth grew bigger. Shot again out of anger at the casualties inflicted on the defenders of Egyptian security. Good intentions. But stupid performance. Al-Zind's reaction was utterly out of line.

He declared, and I translate from his Arabic: "I will only be at ease when I retaliate by killing 10,000 Brotherhood supporters in retaliation for each soldier killed."

The opposition to that injudicious threat was swift. It came from senior members of the Egyptian judiciary. One of them was Counselor Mahmoud Raslan, head of the Legislative Unit of Egypt's Council of State. His remarks went as a spear into the heart of Minister Al-Zind's profanity. "Those words should not be coming from a Justice Minister. He is supposedly aware of the role of the judiciary in these matters."

Not surprisingly, Al-Zind verbal bomb was a gift to the Brotherhood's propaganda machine. Through Al-Zind, the odious culprit, the Brotherhood, was now playing one of its historic roles: "Poor Islam is again victim of apostates and usurpers." Foreign funding poured in; so-called "human rights organizations" jumped into the artificial fray.

And Egyptophobia found another hanger to hang its diatribes:

• Security measures were unjustifiably deemed as anti-human rights measures;
• A murdered young Italian doctoral student was automatically seen as a victim of official Security forces. Even before the Italian-monitored Egyptian investigations of that tragic event;
• The propaganda machine of the Muslim Brotherhood abroad, generously funded by Arab and non-Arab sources, was gleeful at every utterance by Egyptian officialdom which could be interpreted as signs of regression of the Rule of Law;
• Even the so-called indigenous Egyptian media poured oil on the fire. A fire ignited by Minister Al-Zind. Abusing their newly-found freedom to find reason to exhibit false bravery through its own falsehoods.

So by your calculus Mr. Al-Zind, you threaten to kill one million terrorists (10,000 x 100 victims). That is three times the calculated strength of ISIS before its recent losses!! Bravo for the Zind killing machine!!

Enlightened anti-jihadism calls for cooperation of the adversary, ideologically and demographically. The real task is to peel off from the Muslim Brotherhood the elements which are ready to swear off violence. Integrating such elements and rehabilitating them is not through crazy threats.

The Prophet Muhammad had counselled: "Love thy friend moderately, guarding against his turning one day into a foe. And love thy enemy moderately, hoping for his turning one day into a friend." The New Egypt cannot hope for ultimately breaking up the Muslim Brotherhood if it denies itself the chance of possibly luring them back into the fold. Particularly at this phase of Brotherhood's internal altercation.

On this, I quote former President Nixon. He, the conflict-oriented Republican leader opened, through Kissinger, communication with China. His famous adage: "Sometimes if you hate so much, you may destroy yourself."

Islamic ethos was fourteen centuries ahead of Nixon. The Quran put it elegantly and succinctly: "But if they incline to peace, then incline to it, and trust in God. Indeed, He is the All-Hearing, the All-Knowing" (Chapter 8/Verse 61).

Big Mouth Salvo No. Three: The Prophet Muhammad throughout his Mission, suffered enough. And more suffering after his passing. Especially through the murderous campaigns of the Ummayads. Killing of Imam Ali, and his two sons, Al-Hassan and Al-Hussein. In our age, every idiocy by a so-called Muslim has become enough of a pretext to attack Muhammad. And guess what: No true Muslim could, on religious grounds, attack either Moses or Jesus.

Muhammad has never engaged in any armed conflict, except in self-defence. "Unholy War" has never been an Islamic concept. It is a crusader concept. Concept for power, not for the great Christian faith of love and peace.

History is a great lighthouse - A MANAR!! It teaches unalterable truths:

• Faith is non-negotiable. Buried deep in the heart. A snatching hand of compulsory conversion cannot reach it.
• In Islam there is no proselytizing. No evangelizing. Muhammad had nothing to do with the barbarity of the Ottomans in the Balkans. Or with Wahabbism, convoluted from a reform movement into a police theocracy. Or with the fictitious split between Sunni and Shii. Or with Muslim immigrants to Christian Europe abusing their refuge into Islamic Bantustans.
• Nor has Moses to do anything with Netanyahu's rampant settler occupation of lands allotted under international law and through UN resolutions to a Palestinian State. Nor has Jesus Christ anything to do with Western occupation of Muslim lands. He preached "love." And imperialism is about suppression.
• So why go to find guilt with the clean hands of heavenly messengers of revealed or non-revealed faiths as systems of human values? Why mix faith with governance? A combustible formula!!
• Empires also fall when minority rights are ignored. When the "Millet System" was observed, the Ottomans were on the rise. All religions were allowed to be practised. Constantinople was only interested in taxation and army recruitment. But when the so-called Islamic scholars (ulama) assumed ascendancy, minorities became second class citizens, including the Arabs.
• Thus was born the "Great Arab Rebellion." Not by Lawrence of Arabia, but Al-Sharif Hussein. He put secular nationalism above an Islam whose golden seat was occupied by a brutal empire on its way to extinction.

Apparently, Al-Zind was a student of neither law, nor history, nor the role of faith. "Breach of the Peace" is an offense which includes acts of destruction or menacing public order and tranquility. Not only violent acts. But also acts and words likely to produce violence in others. 

Ex-Minister Al-Zind, had certainly "breached the peace" of his country. His Big Mouth is what led him to the exit door for his "disorderly conduct."

So why, Mr. Al-Zind, threaten to imprison every malfeasant, "even if he was the Prophet himself?!" You are bearing His name "Ahmed;" and the name of his cousin "Ali." And the name of Ibrahim who symbolizes the unity between Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Isn't your full name "Ahmad Ali Ibrahim Al-Zind?" 

If your real thinking matches your very words, I have an out for you, now that you have been kicked out of the Cabinet: Change the spelling of your last name to "Al-Zinad," (the Trigger?) Judges who know you, Al-Zind, told me that you don't read!! Good Riddance!!