Constantino Diaz-Duran, thank you so much for this piece.

Free Kareem Amer!

A great injustice is taking place today in a city that was once as cosmopolitan as our dear Manhattan. Egyptian blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman, better known as Kareem Amer, has been detained on and off for a year in Alexandria, Egypt, charged with a series of crimes that include “spreading information disruptive of public order,” “incitement to hate Muslims,” and “defaming the President of the Republic.”

As students at a world-renowned university, we have a platform that allows our voices to be heard. Kareem’s release is just the kind of cause we should use it for. It is morally imperative that Columbia students join in solidarity for this 22-year-old student, whose only real crime has been having the courage to speak his mind while living under a totalitarian government.

Kareem was first arrested on Oct. 26, 2005, following a long (and to some, blasphemous) blog post he wrote after the Maharram Beh Riot, a violent confrontation between Muslims and Coptic Christians. Having witnessed the violence, and what he called the “brutality, inhumanity, and thievery” of some of his fellow Muslims, Kareem wrote, “We should stand courageously and boldly against these teachings.” These are teachings, he continued, “that became a plague on humanity and are not supported except by extremists like [Osama] bin Laden, [Abu Musab] al Zarqawi, [Ayman] al Zawaheeri, and the thugs that assaulted our Coptic brothers, burned their homes, stole their properties, and tried to assault their religious men and destroy their churches.”

After Kareem’s release from jail a couple of weeks later, he seemed even more adamant in his fight: “It is very terrible that freedom would be taken from a human being because of an opinion or belief of his, but … it is very beautiful that his detention would be an encouragement for him to stick by his principles, and a reason for him to defy and hold on to what he thinks is right, even if he violates the traditions and beliefs of the majority of the people within the boundaries of his society.”

The controversy earned him a further honor. He was expelled from Al-Azhar University, one of the Islamic world’s premier higher-learning institutions. He studied law there, hoping to specialize in human rights. Incidentally, it should be mentioned that he has been one of the most outspoken supporters of women’s rights in the Arab blogosphere.

His expulsion did not dampen his criticisms of his society. He may find it harder now to become a lawyer, but he claims to be freer. “As I was being investigated, I discovered-for the first time-that being a student at Al-Azhar University means I was a slave, owned by it,” he said. “They were expecting me to deny or evade responsibility of my free and courageous opinions-they were waiting for me to give birth to a second personality during the investigations-but how preposterous!”

How brave, I say. The true magnitude of his words might be hard to grasp by someone who has always lived in a free society-and trust me, the U.S. is a free society, President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney notwithstanding. Realizing that Hosni Mubarak has been the president of Egypt since before Kareem was even born might help us put things into perspective. Kareem has lived his entire life under the rule of one person, under the boot of the same totalitarian government. In his words, his arrest last year meant only that he was “moved from a big jail to a small disciplinary cell because [he] did not follow the rules that the 70 million Egyptians are forced to abide by, and [he] broke the widespread traditions of the Great Jail of the Arab Republic of Egypt.”

Kareem is now back in the “disciplinary cell.” He was arrested again on Nov. 6 and is being held at a detention center in Alexandria. It is not certain how much longer he will be held. Human rights organizations across the world, including Amnesty International, have protested his detention and expressed concern about the fact that he is being charged with religious crimes. He is a prisoner of conscience, jailed for having something that many of us need more of-guts.

An online petition has been established to collect signatures for Kareem’s release. But we should not stop at that. We have the resources to raise more awareness about this injustice, and we should put them to good use.

I would like to think that, as Americans and Columbians, we share Kareem’s commitment to freedom. Like Kareem, we believe that all men and women deserve equal protection under the law. Like Kareem, we believe that government and religion should never be mixed. Like Kareem, we have the energy that youth provides. Unlike Kareem, we are able to voice our opinions freely. Let us not abandon him in his fight for liberty.

The author is a student in the School of General Studies majoring in American studies.

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