...he was one of the great intellectuals of the 1940s who completed
their higher studies in the West and returned to their country to
apply what they had learned there—lock, stock, and barrel—within
Egyptian academia. For people like them, “progress” and “the West”
were virtually synonymous, with all that that entailed by way of positive
and negative behavior. They all had the same reverence for the
great Western values—democracy, freedom, justice, hard work, and
equality. At the same time, they had the same ignorance of the nation’s
heritage and contempt for its customs and traditions, which they considered
shackles pulling us toward Backwardness from which it was
our duty to free ourselves so that the Renaissance could be achieved.

Autor: Alaa Al Aswany