What if the Spanish Picasso were Kuwaiti? What if the Italian painter Salvador Dalí were Kuwaiti? What if the German Beethoven were Kuwaiti? Or if the most famous American director, Steven Spielberg, were Kuwaiti? Or if the Russian ballet choreographer Petipa, the Ukrainian (Russian) novelist Leo Tolstoy, the Greek philosopher Socrates, and thousands of other exceptional talents in philosophy, art, culture, literature, and dozens of other fields of thought, invention, and engineering held Kuwaiti citizenship? Positive creativity is a difficult matter and requires a free environment. Just as artists, intellectuals, novelists, writers, and journalists need creativity, so do teachers, engineers, and government employees require a free atmosphere to produce, innovate, and progress. An atmosphere of oppression, repression, and prohibition goes against freedom, creativity, and human nature; thus, Picasso would lose his desire to paint after creating two paintings if a ministry inspector objected to the presence of something resembling a breast in one of them. Leo Tolstoy would tear apart what he had written in the chapters of his novel if the censor refused to approve what he had written, and Steven Spielberg would retire from directing if the censor prohibited a shot he disliked, and so on with Beethoven, Chopin, Mohamed Abdu, Umm Kulthum, and thousands of other creators.
On the day Kuwait excelled in theater, sports, singing, novel writing, directing, storytelling, painting, and others, there was freedom, and there was a civil state. When it became closer to a religious state, all those creative expressions vanished, education regressed, corruption increased, the mental state of employees deteriorated, and the citizen became a partner in the destruction. Khaled Al-Nafisi, Abdul-Hussain, Ghanima, Souad, and hundreds of others did not emerge from nothing; they were the product of a free environment. Other creators who preceded them by decades, before the emergence of oil, such as Fahd Al-Aaskar, Khaled Al-Faraj, and the sons of Ezra, Saleh and Dawood Al-Kuwaiti, also owe their achievements to the prevailing atmosphere of freedom, which we replaced with a harsh and rigid culture abandoned even by those who introduced us to it. The margin of freedom has gradually diminished, supported by influential parties at various stages, and it continues to shrink, and we do not know when the turnaround will occur.
Allow me to recount the following two examples, Your Highness the President: The articles of the constitution stipulate the civil nature of the state, and sound reasoning advocates the same. We lived for nearly half a century and long before that, without hearing of "distance learning" in the last ten days of Ramadan! How can this be accepted in this era we are in, with all that education is suffering from in terms of backwardness? Aren’t these behaviors indicative of a religious state?
There is also the case of Dr. Nayef Al-Mutawwa, who works as an assistant professor of psychology at the College of Medicine at Kuwait University. He is a well-known individual with local and international contributions and is licensed as a doctor, educator, and therapist from several universities inside and outside of Kuwait. He holds three doctoral degrees from accredited universities. Dr. Nayef was surprised a few days ago by the issuance of a fatwa from a “Sharia teacher” in response to a question from one of his students, stating that attendance in his lectures was not necessary due to the “Sharia teacher's” doubts, presumably, regarding Dr. Nayef's views and positions.
After some of his students skipped his lectures, Dr. Nayef verbally protested what had happened, followed by a written complaint to the administration of Kuwait University, but as of the time of writing this article, no entity has taken action to put an end to this disregard for the state’s systems and its civil laws. It is worth noting that the one who issued the fatwa is aware that he "might" only face verbal reprimand at worst, but he achieved his goal of severely damaging the reputation and status of a "creative personality."
Should we submit to the opinions of the mufti and the like while we are in the year 2024?
