Reflections of Tyranny
By Ahmed AboHamad
I knew humans I loved
who would have been tyrants
if given the chance.
And I …
what would I have been?
When I witness wrongdoing, I’m disturbed … not just by the act itself, but also by what it reveals I am capable of as a human being. It makes me aware that our institutions do not merely protect us from others; they also protect us from ourselves. In other words, witnessing wrongdoing exposes the fragility of the systems and institutions that condition our possibilities, shape our choices and character, and protect us from our worst impulses.
Growing up in rural Egypt in the early 2000s, my village, on the Nile Delta, was a microcosm of the larger world. Among the people with whom I share ancestry, I saw exploitation, petty conspiracies, and cruelty – siblings locked in bitter disputes over the division of inherited land, encroachment by neighbors (usually relatives) to steal a few inches of land, and unfair, informal labor arrangements even within the same household. I saw cruelty inside families: mothers burning their children’s hands with a hot spoon to “teach” them a lesson. And within both formal and informal schools, teachers beat students until they bled. Such punishments were not just socially tolerated but sometimes encouraged. It was also common for parents to have a favorite child (usually a male), granting him privileges that were blatantly unfair to his siblings.
But I also saw selflessness and boundless love. It was common for people to feed passing strangers that they might never see again, to send a plate to neighbors whenever a meal was cooked. I have seen family members pretend to be full so someone else could eat the last piece of bread, and others who would give their organs freely so that another (sometimes a stranger) might live. Some did these things pretentiously, some out of tradition and habit, but many out of a simple, sincere care for others.
It is hard to speak about these contradictions with people in the West, knowing how easily they can be weaponized to reinforce dehumanizing and demonizing narratives. My purpose in recounting them is to remind myself that multiple truths can coexist simultaneously, and that kindness and cruelty can be attributed to different aspects of the same community. And these realities are clearly inseparable from the intergenerational traumas that shaped the lives of the fellaheen.
[United Arab Republic, Postage Stamp of AbdulRahman AlKawakibi, 1960]
My grandparents’ generation was the first to own small plots of land that they cultivated. Earlier in their lives, they and the generations before them had lived as sharecroppers or day laborers, and their living conditions were functionally similar to enslavement, even if not legally classified as such. The traumas of displacement and abduction to serve colonial armies (some went so far as to mutilate themselves to avoid conscription) left deep scars that manifested in complex social ills. [1, 2] The violence of the state was often reenacted within the home.
I also learned that some people and circumstances bring out the best in us, and some bring out the worst. That is why I am terrified of myself, afraid of what my circumstances might one day turn me into. I know people, many of them dear to me, who, had they been granted power, would have become tyrants. Missed opportunities and rejections, then, may be blessings, if only because they humble us. They spare us from discovering what we might have become if we had more power to abuse.
In his 1902 The Characteristics of Tyranny and the Catastrophes of Enslavement, the Syrian thinker AbdulRahman AlKawakibi (1849-1902) offered one of the earliest modern Arab critiques of tyranny and its social foundations. He defines tyranny as conceit in one’s own opinion, pride that prevents one from accepting advice, and insistence on independence of judgment even in matters of shared rights. Consider one of the most iconic quotes:
The common people are the tyrant’s strength and sustenance. Through them, and upon them, he acts without restraint and exalts himself; he enslaves them, and they rejoice at his might; he seizes their wealth, and they praise him for sparing their lives; he humiliates them, and they laud his grandeur; he incites them against one another, and they take pride in his clever policy; if he squanders their resources, they call him generous; if he kills some of them without mutilating, they consider him merciful; he drives them toward the perils of death, and they obey him out of fear of reproach; and if some of the self-respecting rise against him, he fights them as though they were aggressors. In sum, the common people slaughter themselves with their own hands, driven by fear born of ignorance and stupidity (37; my translation).
What I find striking in AlKawakibi’s definition is how it locates the root of tyranny in narcissism, yet he ultimately places the responsibility for tyranny on all members of society. Tyranny, for him, is not confined to rulers; anyone with authority could exercise it. Whenever a society normalizes conditions of tyranny, even the subordinated reproduce domination, often reenacting it downward.
AlKawakibi’s analysis also brings to focus the epistemic machinery that sustains tyranny. He asserts that tyranny distorts reality in the minds of its subjects. Tyranny and ignorance are thus interdependent: tyranny thrives on ignorance and actively nurtures it, corrupting our perception, judgment, and relationship with truth. Subjects of tyranny cannot discern their own interests, nor the tyrant’s nature, except through the tyrant’s own frameworks and narratives.
Tyrants, as narcissists, are enemies of the truth. They hate knowledge not only for its emancipatory potential but also because it possesses a power greater than any other: it reminds tyrants of their own insignificance and delusions. For AlKawakibi, fear is an epistemic force that mediates how reality is perceived and what action seems possible. Where there is no accountability, tyranny is born. What enables tyranny, then, is both the fear of the people and the fact that the tyrant has nothing to fear.
Freedom therefore begins when we realize that the tyrant’s fear of losing power exceeds our fear as victims of tyranny. Redirecting our fear away from others and toward ourselves could be an emancipatory practice. In other words, if it is true that our tyrannical impulses are kept in check by fear, then perhaps the fear of what we could become is not such a terrible thing to cultivate; it is compatible with, and can even sustain, the courage to resist tyranny.
Notes
[1] For more information on abduction and slavery in Egypt during World War I, see Kyle J. Anderson. The Egyptian Labor Corps: Race, Space, and Place in the First World War. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2021.
[2] For more information on military conscription in Egypt (1805-1848), see Khaled Fahmy. “The Nation and Its Deserters: Conscription in Mehmed Ali’s Egypt.“ International Review of Social History 43 (1998): 421-436.
References
AlKawakibi, AbdulRahman. Taba’I’ AlIstibdad WaMasari’ AlIsti’bad [The Characteristics of Tyranny and the Catastrophes of Enslavement]. Cairo: Kalimat Arabia for Translation and Publishing, 2011.
Ahmed AboHamad is a Ph.D. candidate in Philosophy at the University of Connecticut, where he also earned his M.A. in Philosophy and completed graduate certificates in Human Rights and in Intersectional Indigeneity, Race, Ethnicity, and Politics (IIREP). Prior to joining UConn, he graduated summa cum laude with honors from Connecticut College, majoring in Biological Sciences and Philosophy. His areas of interest include Political Philosophy, Ethics, the History of Philosophy, and Moral Psychology.