Souad Massi played in the International Festival 2011 in the West Bank city of Ramallah! This was very happy news for me, especially because I have a huge crush on Massi.
So why can't Egyptians, Syrian and Lebanese musicians, writers, actors and intellectuals go to the West Bank and Gaza and show their solidarity with Palesitnians? It is either because they are cowardly or lazy. Scared to face criticsm of "normalization" "we will never allow our passports to be stamped by the Zionist entity", or "do you know how difficuilt it is to enter Palestine?!" Cowardice or Lazy is all it is. Edward Said was right. Egypt and Jordan are in peace, albeit a cold one, with Israel, but they can go to Israel, can help Palestinians and raise their spirits, and experience the daily humiliation Palestinians go through. Enough of this lousy excuse of normalization already.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Excerpts from Culture and Resistance, conversations with Edward Said
Conversations with Edward W. Said. Interviews by David Barsamian. South End Press. 2003
From page 15
After you visited Israel, you went to Egypt, where you encountered some parochialism. Did that take you by surprise?
No, because I confronted it before. That is to to say, what you notice amongst Palestinians, whether inside Israel or on the West Bank and Gaza, is a sense of isolation. There's no question that they live under the shadow of Israeli power. What is missing is easy and natural contact with the rest of the Arab world. As a Palestinian, you can't get to any place in the Arab world from Israel or the West Bank and Gaza without going through a fairly complicated procedure, which causes you to think three or four times before you do: crossing the border, you need permits, you go through endless customs. I must say, for Palestinians traveling throughout the Arab world - and this is also true of me, and I have an American passport, but the fact that it says on it that I was born in Jerusalem means that I'm always put to one side - you're automatically suspected. So traveling and being in contact with the Arabs in the Arab world for Palestinains is very difficult.
More important even that is that very few Arabs who are not Palestinians come into Palestinian territories, and hardly any at all, practically none, go to Israel. One of the themes - and this is kind of complicated thing to explain, amongst the nationalist and radical intellectuals of most Arab countries, which would include the Gulf people, it certainly includes Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan - has been the opposition to what they called "normalization," tatbee in Arabic, meaning the normalization of life between Israel and, in the case of Jordan and Egypt, Arab states who have made formal peace with Israel. The peace with Egypt is described, as it is with Jordan, as a cold peace. The peace with Egypt is described,a s it is with Jordan, as a cold peace. In other words, ordinary Jordanians or Egyptians, don't go to Israel, have nothing to do with Israelis. Israeli tourists go to Jordan and Egypt and visit the historic sites in buses for short periods of time. But beyond that, there's very little in the way of the kind of intercourse, say, exchanges between universities, learned societies, businesses, and so on, that occur between European countries or neighboring countries otherwise at peace in any other part of the world. One of the reasons for this has been the general refused, as an act of solidarity with Palestinians, of these intellectuals to have anything to do with Israel.
The problem this poses for Palestinians, trying to build institutions, is they are being cut off from the kind of help they can get from Arabs. For example, physicians and other medical professionals from Egypt, Syrian, Lebanon or Jordan could come and assist Palestinians in setting up clinics and hospitals. They could be involved in a whole range of activities from administration to the production of pharmaceuticals. But it doesn't happen because of this stance against normalization. Similarly, university students who read important scholars, journalists, writers, and poets from various Arab countries don't get the opportunity to meet them.
When I now encounter Arabs and go to those Arab countries, I say to them, especially to to the Egyptians, you can go to Palestine. You can go through Israel, because Israel and Egypt are at peace. You can take advantage of that to go to Palestinians and go to their institutions and help them, appearing, speaking, being there for some time, training them. No, they say, we can't possibly allow our passports to be stamped. We won't go to the Israeli embassy and get visas. We won't submit to the humiliation of being examined by Israeli policemen at the border or their barrier.
I find this argument vaguely plausible on one level but really quite cowardly on the othe. It would seem to me that if they took their pride out of it, if they did go through an Israeli checkpoint or barricade or border, they would be doing what other Palestinians do every day and see what it's like. Second, as I keep telling them, by doing that it's not recognizing Israel or giving Israel any credit. On the contrary, it's going through that in order to demonstrate and be with Palestinians and help them. For example, as Palestinians face the Israeli bulldozers as they expropriate land and destroy houses for settlements, it would be great if there were a large number of Egyptians and Jordanians and others who could be there with Palestinians confronting this daily, minute-by-minute threat. And the same in universities. Well-known writers, intellectuals, historians, philosophers, film starts could go, but they say, We don't want to have to request visas from the Israeli consulate in Cairo. I said, You don't even have to do that. You can ask the Palestinian Authority, which has an ambassador in Cairo, to give you an invitation to go to Gaza, and then you can go to the West Bank.
So there are ways of getting around it. It's not so much only parochialism as also a kind of laziness, a kind of sitting back and expecting somebody else to do it. I think that's our greatest enemy, the absence of initiative [my emphasis]. We're always expecting that the Israelis are out there, the Americans, concocting conspiracies, the Ford Foundtion. Many people want to work with these people groups but are afraid to do it publicly. They do it surreptitiously. And in public they express opposition and say, We are going to remain untouched by this. We are not going to normalize. We refuse to have anything to do with imperialism. We refuse to sit down and plan something that could actually help Palestinians and actually deal with Israel, not as a fictional entity but as a real power that is in many ways negatively affecting Arab life.
For me, the great symbol of this is the fact that in no university that I know if in the Arab world - none of these universities are free in any case, they're all highly politicized and there are all kinds of pressures on professors and students, which is quite obvious - but in no important Arab university is there, for example, a department of Israeli studies, nor do people study Hebrew. And this is true even of Palestinian universities, where again, you can understand it is a kind of defense against this great power which has intervened in all of our lives, that we don't want to have anything to do with it. But for me the only salvation is in fact to encounter it head-on, learn the language, as so many Israeli political scientists and sociologists and Orientalists and intelligence people spend time studying Arab society. Why shouldn't we study them? It's a way of getting to know your neighbor, your enemy, if that's what it is, and it's a way of breaking out of the prison which suits the Israelis perfect to have Arabs in, whether Palestinians or others.
...
One of the things that I try to do , in a very uncompromising and quite open way, is to say, We have to break that attitude. We have to break out of our self-constructed mind-forged manacles and look at the rest of the world and deal with it as equals. There's too much defensiveness, too much sense of aggrieved, unfulfilled whatever. This is in part account for the absence of democracy. It's not just the despotism of the rulers, not just the plots if imperialism, it's not just the corrupt regimes, not just the secret police. It's our intellectuals' lack of citizenship and keep insisting on. For myself, since there is little that I can do at this distance, whether in person or through my writing, is to keep making that point. The only way to change a situation is oneself doing it, reading, asking, encountering, breakout of the prison.
From page 23
Daniel Barenboim is a world-famous pianist and conducted who was born in Argentina, grew up as an Israeli. You've had some interesting musdical interactions with him.
We met seven or eight years ago and quite surprisingly we've become close friends. He travels a great deal, as do I. Sometimes our paths have crossed. We've tried to do things. We've had public discussions, not political ones so much, because he's not a politician any more than I am, but we talk about things like music and culture and history. He's very interested as an Israeli or Jewish musician in the work of people like Wagner, who represents you might say, the total negation of Jews but was a great musician. So he's interested in that paradox whereby culture and music work in parallel and create contradictions at the same time. We're doing a book together based on that theme. But he's also very dissatisfied, as I, with the prevailing orthodoxy in his own community. He hasn't lived in Israel recently, and last year refused to do anything with the Israel Philharmonic for the fiftieth anniversary of Israel. He is very much opposition to the occupation of the West Bank. He speaks openly about a Palestinian state. He's a man of courage, an unorthodox personality. Music connects us, but also the facts of biography. He arrived in Palestine, or Tel Aviv, which is where his family lived, roughly about the time that my family was evicted.
We have a very warm and cordial relationship. I arranged recently for him, in fact last week, the first time ever, to play a recital at Bir Zeit, the leading West Bank university. It was a great gesture on his part. Bir Zeit was shut down by the Israelisfor four years during the Intifada. The president had been deported for twenty years, between 1974 and 1994. Only a couple of months ago, a student was killed by Israeli troops near the campus. There's this long history of animosity and hostility between Bir Zeit and the Israelis.
So it was difficult to accept at first the idea of an Israeli coming to play there. But it worked over time, and it was a fantastic success. It was one of the great events of my life, and if I can speak for him, of his life, that he was able to do this and transcend in an act that was purely cultural but also a human act of solidarity and friendship, offering his services, which God knows in any concert hall in the world would be in tremendous demand and are very costly. He's at the very top of the musical profession as a great pianist and a great conductor. He came simply as an individual to play. He brought his own piano with him, since there are no pianos that are any good there, to play a recital for an essentially Palestinian audience, ironically, in the hall in the university called Kamal Nasser Hall, named after a cousin of the president, who has been assassinated in Beirut in 1973. He was a very good friend of mine, and I was there when it happened. The assassination team was led by Ehud Barak, who is today a leader of the Labor Party and was an intelligence commando officer at the time.
All of that gave the evening a very high emotional and I would say cultural resoncnce that was lost on absolutely no one there. Zubin Mehta came, a great friend of Dnaiel's. He's the conducted of the Israel Philharmonic. He's an Indian. He's avidly pro-Israeli. He'd never been to the West Bank. But he came. Tears were streaming down his face. It was an event of considerable important, precisely because it wasn't political in the overt sense. Nobody was trying to make a milling, score a point. It was just a humane gesture, an act of solidarity based on the friendship between myself and Barenboim and a gradually expanding group of Palestinian friends who admire and like him and with whom he likes to be. He's taken the position, I think quite correctly, that if Israel is going to continue to exist it has to to exist in relations of friendship and equality with Arabs and Muslims [my emphasis]. He's desperately anxious to learn Arabic. He's a very unusual, remarkable, advanced case of a prophetic genius. There aren't too many of them around. I hope we can sustain this kind of activity over time.
From page 15
After you visited Israel, you went to Egypt, where you encountered some parochialism. Did that take you by surprise?
No, because I confronted it before. That is to to say, what you notice amongst Palestinians, whether inside Israel or on the West Bank and Gaza, is a sense of isolation. There's no question that they live under the shadow of Israeli power. What is missing is easy and natural contact with the rest of the Arab world. As a Palestinian, you can't get to any place in the Arab world from Israel or the West Bank and Gaza without going through a fairly complicated procedure, which causes you to think three or four times before you do: crossing the border, you need permits, you go through endless customs. I must say, for Palestinians traveling throughout the Arab world - and this is also true of me, and I have an American passport, but the fact that it says on it that I was born in Jerusalem means that I'm always put to one side - you're automatically suspected. So traveling and being in contact with the Arabs in the Arab world for Palestinains is very difficult.
More important even that is that very few Arabs who are not Palestinians come into Palestinian territories, and hardly any at all, practically none, go to Israel. One of the themes - and this is kind of complicated thing to explain, amongst the nationalist and radical intellectuals of most Arab countries, which would include the Gulf people, it certainly includes Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan - has been the opposition to what they called "normalization," tatbee in Arabic, meaning the normalization of life between Israel and, in the case of Jordan and Egypt, Arab states who have made formal peace with Israel. The peace with Egypt is described, as it is with Jordan, as a cold peace. The peace with Egypt is described,a s it is with Jordan, as a cold peace. In other words, ordinary Jordanians or Egyptians, don't go to Israel, have nothing to do with Israelis. Israeli tourists go to Jordan and Egypt and visit the historic sites in buses for short periods of time. But beyond that, there's very little in the way of the kind of intercourse, say, exchanges between universities, learned societies, businesses, and so on, that occur between European countries or neighboring countries otherwise at peace in any other part of the world. One of the reasons for this has been the general refused, as an act of solidarity with Palestinians, of these intellectuals to have anything to do with Israel.
The problem this poses for Palestinians, trying to build institutions, is they are being cut off from the kind of help they can get from Arabs. For example, physicians and other medical professionals from Egypt, Syrian, Lebanon or Jordan could come and assist Palestinians in setting up clinics and hospitals. They could be involved in a whole range of activities from administration to the production of pharmaceuticals. But it doesn't happen because of this stance against normalization. Similarly, university students who read important scholars, journalists, writers, and poets from various Arab countries don't get the opportunity to meet them.
When I now encounter Arabs and go to those Arab countries, I say to them, especially to to the Egyptians, you can go to Palestine. You can go through Israel, because Israel and Egypt are at peace. You can take advantage of that to go to Palestinians and go to their institutions and help them, appearing, speaking, being there for some time, training them. No, they say, we can't possibly allow our passports to be stamped. We won't go to the Israeli embassy and get visas. We won't submit to the humiliation of being examined by Israeli policemen at the border or their barrier.
I find this argument vaguely plausible on one level but really quite cowardly on the othe. It would seem to me that if they took their pride out of it, if they did go through an Israeli checkpoint or barricade or border, they would be doing what other Palestinians do every day and see what it's like. Second, as I keep telling them, by doing that it's not recognizing Israel or giving Israel any credit. On the contrary, it's going through that in order to demonstrate and be with Palestinians and help them. For example, as Palestinians face the Israeli bulldozers as they expropriate land and destroy houses for settlements, it would be great if there were a large number of Egyptians and Jordanians and others who could be there with Palestinians confronting this daily, minute-by-minute threat. And the same in universities. Well-known writers, intellectuals, historians, philosophers, film starts could go, but they say, We don't want to have to request visas from the Israeli consulate in Cairo. I said, You don't even have to do that. You can ask the Palestinian Authority, which has an ambassador in Cairo, to give you an invitation to go to Gaza, and then you can go to the West Bank.
So there are ways of getting around it. It's not so much only parochialism as also a kind of laziness, a kind of sitting back and expecting somebody else to do it. I think that's our greatest enemy, the absence of initiative [my emphasis]. We're always expecting that the Israelis are out there, the Americans, concocting conspiracies, the Ford Foundtion. Many people want to work with these people groups but are afraid to do it publicly. They do it surreptitiously. And in public they express opposition and say, We are going to remain untouched by this. We are not going to normalize. We refuse to have anything to do with imperialism. We refuse to sit down and plan something that could actually help Palestinians and actually deal with Israel, not as a fictional entity but as a real power that is in many ways negatively affecting Arab life.
For me, the great symbol of this is the fact that in no university that I know if in the Arab world - none of these universities are free in any case, they're all highly politicized and there are all kinds of pressures on professors and students, which is quite obvious - but in no important Arab university is there, for example, a department of Israeli studies, nor do people study Hebrew. And this is true even of Palestinian universities, where again, you can understand it is a kind of defense against this great power which has intervened in all of our lives, that we don't want to have anything to do with it. But for me the only salvation is in fact to encounter it head-on, learn the language, as so many Israeli political scientists and sociologists and Orientalists and intelligence people spend time studying Arab society. Why shouldn't we study them? It's a way of getting to know your neighbor, your enemy, if that's what it is, and it's a way of breaking out of the prison which suits the Israelis perfect to have Arabs in, whether Palestinians or others.
...
One of the things that I try to do , in a very uncompromising and quite open way, is to say, We have to break that attitude. We have to break out of our self-constructed mind-forged manacles and look at the rest of the world and deal with it as equals. There's too much defensiveness, too much sense of aggrieved, unfulfilled whatever. This is in part account for the absence of democracy. It's not just the despotism of the rulers, not just the plots if imperialism, it's not just the corrupt regimes, not just the secret police. It's our intellectuals' lack of citizenship and keep insisting on. For myself, since there is little that I can do at this distance, whether in person or through my writing, is to keep making that point. The only way to change a situation is oneself doing it, reading, asking, encountering, breakout of the prison.
From page 23
Daniel Barenboim is a world-famous pianist and conducted who was born in Argentina, grew up as an Israeli. You've had some interesting musdical interactions with him.
We met seven or eight years ago and quite surprisingly we've become close friends. He travels a great deal, as do I. Sometimes our paths have crossed. We've tried to do things. We've had public discussions, not political ones so much, because he's not a politician any more than I am, but we talk about things like music and culture and history. He's very interested as an Israeli or Jewish musician in the work of people like Wagner, who represents you might say, the total negation of Jews but was a great musician. So he's interested in that paradox whereby culture and music work in parallel and create contradictions at the same time. We're doing a book together based on that theme. But he's also very dissatisfied, as I, with the prevailing orthodoxy in his own community. He hasn't lived in Israel recently, and last year refused to do anything with the Israel Philharmonic for the fiftieth anniversary of Israel. He is very much opposition to the occupation of the West Bank. He speaks openly about a Palestinian state. He's a man of courage, an unorthodox personality. Music connects us, but also the facts of biography. He arrived in Palestine, or Tel Aviv, which is where his family lived, roughly about the time that my family was evicted.
We have a very warm and cordial relationship. I arranged recently for him, in fact last week, the first time ever, to play a recital at Bir Zeit, the leading West Bank university. It was a great gesture on his part. Bir Zeit was shut down by the Israelisfor four years during the Intifada. The president had been deported for twenty years, between 1974 and 1994. Only a couple of months ago, a student was killed by Israeli troops near the campus. There's this long history of animosity and hostility between Bir Zeit and the Israelis.
So it was difficult to accept at first the idea of an Israeli coming to play there. But it worked over time, and it was a fantastic success. It was one of the great events of my life, and if I can speak for him, of his life, that he was able to do this and transcend in an act that was purely cultural but also a human act of solidarity and friendship, offering his services, which God knows in any concert hall in the world would be in tremendous demand and are very costly. He's at the very top of the musical profession as a great pianist and a great conductor. He came simply as an individual to play. He brought his own piano with him, since there are no pianos that are any good there, to play a recital for an essentially Palestinian audience, ironically, in the hall in the university called Kamal Nasser Hall, named after a cousin of the president, who has been assassinated in Beirut in 1973. He was a very good friend of mine, and I was there when it happened. The assassination team was led by Ehud Barak, who is today a leader of the Labor Party and was an intelligence commando officer at the time.
All of that gave the evening a very high emotional and I would say cultural resoncnce that was lost on absolutely no one there. Zubin Mehta came, a great friend of Dnaiel's. He's the conducted of the Israel Philharmonic. He's an Indian. He's avidly pro-Israeli. He'd never been to the West Bank. But he came. Tears were streaming down his face. It was an event of considerable important, precisely because it wasn't political in the overt sense. Nobody was trying to make a milling, score a point. It was just a humane gesture, an act of solidarity based on the friendship between myself and Barenboim and a gradually expanding group of Palestinian friends who admire and like him and with whom he likes to be. He's taken the position, I think quite correctly, that if Israel is going to continue to exist it has to to exist in relations of friendship and equality with Arabs and Muslims [my emphasis]. He's desperately anxious to learn Arabic. He's a very unusual, remarkable, advanced case of a prophetic genius. There aren't too many of them around. I hope we can sustain this kind of activity over time.
Posted under
Arab-Israeli conflict,
Edward Said
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Saddam donated 21 million dollars to the Library of Alexandria and Mubarak recorded the donation in the name of his wife
Mubarak denied Iraq's donation to the Library of Alexandria and recorded the donation in his wife's name removing Iraq's from the honor list.
In 1989 President Mubarak and his wife traveled to Iraq where they were met by the late President Saddam Hussein in a welcome celebration. One of the reasons for the trip was to collect donations to revive the ancient Library of Alexandria. In the event Mubarak mentioned to Saddam that the late Saudi King Fahad Abdullah, the late UAE president Zayed and other emirs of the gulf donated to the project. Saddam asked how much they donated. The Saudi king donated twenty million, the UAE president also donated twenty million, the sultan of Omani donated five million and the emir of Kuwaiti donated six million. So Saddam decided to donate twenty one million dollars to the library. Mubarak and his wife were surprised by his decision, particularly when Iraq was still recovering from the devastating Iraq-Iran war and its economy was fragile. Saddam swiftly wrote the cheque and handed it to Mubarak and his wife. And that is how just one of the compliments Iraq paid to Egypt went unnoticed.
The Library of Alexandria was opened four years later in a huge celebration inviting guests and official delegates from all over the world (execpt Iraq!). A mural was displayed noting the names of persons and countries that donated to rebuild the library all mentioned except its biggest donor: Iraq and its late president Saddam Hussein.
And the days passed and we said There is no power but with Allah and hoped that the Arabic Egypt will one day acknowledge the donations it received from Iraq and demand from its president to admit its considerable donations to the Library of Alexandria, but it didn't happen.
Until the January 25th Revolution which disposed Mubarak and took him to court. And here we are reading what Egyptian newspaper The Seventh Day published from the testimony of the disposed president during the investigation conducted by the public prosecutor that he raised seventy million dollars to rebuild the Library which included twenty million from Sheikh Zayed, twenty million from King Fahad, five million from Sultan Qabus and twenty one million from Saddam Hussein, which will make it the first time Mubarak ever acknowledges the donation Iraq made to the library.
Part translation
Might wants to also read Egypt's Role in the Destruction of Iraq
In 1989 President Mubarak and his wife traveled to Iraq where they were met by the late President Saddam Hussein in a welcome celebration. One of the reasons for the trip was to collect donations to revive the ancient Library of Alexandria. In the event Mubarak mentioned to Saddam that the late Saudi King Fahad Abdullah, the late UAE president Zayed and other emirs of the gulf donated to the project. Saddam asked how much they donated. The Saudi king donated twenty million, the UAE president also donated twenty million, the sultan of Omani donated five million and the emir of Kuwaiti donated six million. So Saddam decided to donate twenty one million dollars to the library. Mubarak and his wife were surprised by his decision, particularly when Iraq was still recovering from the devastating Iraq-Iran war and its economy was fragile. Saddam swiftly wrote the cheque and handed it to Mubarak and his wife. And that is how just one of the compliments Iraq paid to Egypt went unnoticed.
The Library of Alexandria was opened four years later in a huge celebration inviting guests and official delegates from all over the world (execpt Iraq!). A mural was displayed noting the names of persons and countries that donated to rebuild the library all mentioned except its biggest donor: Iraq and its late president Saddam Hussein.
And the days passed and we said There is no power but with Allah and hoped that the Arabic Egypt will one day acknowledge the donations it received from Iraq and demand from its president to admit its considerable donations to the Library of Alexandria, but it didn't happen.
Until the January 25th Revolution which disposed Mubarak and took him to court. And here we are reading what Egyptian newspaper The Seventh Day published from the testimony of the disposed president during the investigation conducted by the public prosecutor that he raised seventy million dollars to rebuild the Library which included twenty million from Sheikh Zayed, twenty million from King Fahad, five million from Sultan Qabus and twenty one million from Saddam Hussein, which will make it the first time Mubarak ever acknowledges the donation Iraq made to the library.
Part translation
Might wants to also read Egypt's Role in the Destruction of Iraq
Monday, July 18, 2011
One state just a slogan, for now
I agree with Chomsky, a long time supporter of a binational (one) state solution but also a supporter of the two state settlement of Israel and Palestine divided by the 1967 lines. The one state is just a slogan for peace and justice. Why should people be divided by borders, afterall? But a slogan like "let's all live together in one place" isn't going to get us anywhere. Going with the international consensus and law for a two state based on the 67 lines would be a first good step. Then economic cooperation and political stability between the two populations enjoying equal rights will erode the borders to a single state, or possibly kibbutzing to a non-state solution.
Posted under
Israel,
Israeli occupation of Palestine,
Palestine
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Nasr Abu Zayd On A Humanistic Reading Of The Islamic Tradition
Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd is a well-known Egyptian Islamic scholar. In 1982, he joined the faculty of the Department of Arabic Language and Literature at Cairo University. In 1995, he was promoted to the rank of full professor, but controversies about his academic work led to a court decision of apostasy and the denial of the appointment. A hisbah trial started against him Islamist groups and he was declared a heretic (Murtadd) by an Egyptian court. Consequently, he was declared to be divorced from his wife, Cairo University French Literature professor Dr. Ibthal Younis. This decision, in effect, forced him out of his homeland and seek refuge in the Netherlands, where he now works. In this interview with Yoginder Sikand, he speaks about his work and reflects on his efforts to promote a humanistic reading of the Islamic tradition.Sikand: You have been writing on the question of human rights in Islam for a long time now. What are you presently working on?
Nasr Abu Zaid: I am presently working on a project that explores and develops the notion of the rights of women and children in Islam. The aim of the project is to promote knowledge of the traditional sources of Islam, such as the Qur’an, the Sunnah or practice of the Prophet and fiqh or Islamic jurisprudence, within Muslim communities so as to help promote general awareness of these rights. Alongside this, the project also seeks to critically look at aspects of tradition that might appear to militate against these rights.
In the course of your work how do you relate to those aspects of the historical Islamic tradition which you think might be opposed to the notion of women’s and children’s rights?
Every tradition has both negative as well as positive aspects. The positive aspects are to be further developed, while the negative aspects need to be discussed closely, to see if they are indeed essential elements of the faith or are actually simply human creations.
How does this work relate to what you have been previously engaged in?
I see it as part of my long interest in Islamic hermeneutics, the methodology of understanding the Qur’an, the Sunnah and other components of the Islamic tradition. Of particular concern for me are certain assumptions in popular Islamic discourse that have not been fully examined, and have generally been ignored or avoided. Thus, for instance, Muslim scholars have not seriously reflected on the question of what is actually meant when we say that the Qur’an is the revealed ‘Word of God’.
What exactly does the term ‘Word of God’ mean? What does revelation mean? We have the definitions of the Word and revelation given by the traditional ‘ulama, but other definitions are also possible. When we speak of the ‘Word of God’ are we speaking of a divine or a human code of communication?
Is language a neutral channel of communication? Was the responsibility of the Prophet simply that of delivering the message, or did he have a role to play in the forming of that message? What relation does the Qur’an have with the particular social context in which it was revealed? We need to ask what it means for the faith Muslims have in the Qur’an if one brings in the issue of the human dimension involved in revelation.
Are you suggesting that the Qu’ran cannot be understood without taking into account the particular social context of seventh century Arabia?In other words, are there aspects of the Qur’an that were limited in their relevance and application only to the Prophet’s time, and are no longer applicable or relevant today?
What I am suggesting is that in our reading of the Qur’an we cannot undermine the role of the Prophet and the historical and cultural premises of the times and the context of the Qur’anic revelation. When we say that through the Qur’an God spoke in history we cannot neglect the historical dimension, the historical context of seventh century Arabia. Otherwise you cannot answer the question of why God first ‘spoke’ Hebrew through his revelations to the prophets of Israel, then Aramaic, through Jesus, and then Arabic, in the form of the Qur’an.In a historical understanding of the Qur’an one would also have to look at the verses in the text that refer specifically to the Prophet and the society in which he lived. Some people might feel that looking at the Qur’an in this way is a crime against Islam, but I feel that this sort of reaction is a sign of a weak and vulnerable faith. And this is why a number of writers who have departed from tradition and have pressed for a way of relating to the Qur’an that takes the historical context of the revelation seriously have been persecuted in many countries. I think there is a pressing need to bring the historical dimension of the revelation into discussion, for this is indispensable for countering authoritarianism, both religious and political, and for promoting human rights.
Could you give an example of how a historically grounded reading of the Qur’an could help promote human rights?
Take, for instance, the question of chopping off the hands of thieves, which traditionalists would insist be imposed as an ‘Islamic’ punishment today. A historically nuanced understanding of the Islamic tradition would see this form of punishment as a borrowing from pre-Islamic Arabian society, and as rooted in a particular social and historical context. Hence, doing away with this form of punishment today would not, one could argue, be tantamount to doing away with Islam itself. By thus contextualising the Qur’an, one could arrive at its essential core, which could be seen as being normative for all times, shifting it from what could be regarded as having been relevant to a historical period and context that no longer exists.
If one were to take history seriously, how would a contextual, historically grounded understanding of the Qur’an reflect on Islamic theology as it has come to be developed?
As I see it, Sunni Muslim theology has remained largely frozen in its ninth century mould, as developed by the conservative ‘Asharites. We need to revisit fundamental theological concepts today, which the Sunni ‘ulama, by and large, have ignored, for there can be no reform possible in Muslim societies without reform in theology. Till now, however, most reform movements in the Sunni world have operated from within the broad framework of traditional theology, which is why they have not been able to go very far.
How would this new understanding of theology that you propose reflect on the issue of inter-faith relations?
When I suggest that we need to reconsider what exactly is meant by saying that the Qur’an is the ‘Word of God’, I mean Muslims must also remember that the Qur’an itself insists that the ‘Word of God’ cannot be limited to the Qur’an alone. A verse in the Qur’an says that if all the trees in the world were pens and all the water in the seas were ink, still they could not, put together, adequately exhausted the Word of God. The Qur’an, therefore, represents only one manifestation of the absolute Word of God. Other Scriptures represent other manifestations as well. Then again, many Sufis saw the whole universe as a manifestation of the ‘Word of God’. But, today, few Muslim scholars are taking the need for inter-faith dialogue with the seriousness that it deserves. Most Muslim writers are yet to free themselves from a rigid, imprisoning chauvinism.
How does this way of reading the Qur’an deal with the multiple ways in which the text can be understood and interpreted?
The Qur’an, like any other text, can be read in different ways, and there has always been a plurality of interpretations. The text does not stand alone. Rather, it has to be interpreted, in order to arrive at its meaning, and interpretation is a human exercise and no interpreter is infallible. As Imam ‘Ali says, the Qur’an does not speak by itself, but, rather, through human beings. True, Muslims from all over the world, do share certain rituals and beliefs in common, but their understanding of what Islam and the Qur’an are all about differ considerably. It is for us to help develop new ways of understanding Islam that can promote human rights, while at the same time being firmly rooted in the faith tradition.
Yoginder Sikand works with the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy at the National Law School, Bangalore
Adapted from indianmuslims.in
Posted under
Islam
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Our Debt to Zionism
Einstein was in debt to Zionism and yet he was not in favour of a Jewish state. Today, Zionism and a Jewish state are synonymous. Chomsky calls this the "degradation of Zionism." Early Zionism had two currents, political and cultural. Political Zionism advocates a Jewish state whilst cultural Zionism focuses on social and spiritual enrichment, and a non-political settlement through Arab-Jewish cooperation. Of course Zionism originated as a solution to Jewish oppression in Europe, not as some libertarian experiment. Herzl thought cultural Zionists like Einstein, Chomsky and Buber were living in Lala land, which is somewhat true given the circumstances of mandate Palestine. When the anarchists of the first kibbutzim first settled in Palestine in the early 20th century they were disgusted by some of the local Arabs Jews who owned land and exploited their workers (ie capitalists). But then again, it's not like you can't have racist anarchists like you do today who deliberately build their kibbutzim on the borders of Gaza and Palestinian towns in the WB..
From an address on the occasion of the celebration of the "Third Seder" by the National Labour Committee for Palestine, at the Commodor Hotel in New York City, April 17, 1938. Published in New Palestine, Washington, DC, April 28, 1938
Albert Einstein
Rarely since the conquest of Jerusalem by Titus has the Jewish community experienced a period of greater oppression than prevails at the present time. In some respects, indeed, our own time is even more troubled, for man's possibilities of emigration are more limited today than they were then.
Yet we shall survive this period too, no matter how much sorrow, no matter how heavy a loss in life it may bring. A community like ours, which is a community purely by reason of tradition, can only be strengthened by pressure from without. For today every Jew feels that to be a Jew means to bear a serious responsibility not only to this own community, but also toward humanity. To be a Jew, after all, means first of all, to acknowledge and follow in practice those fundamentals in humaneness laid down in the Bible -- fundamentals without no sound and happy community of men can exist.
We meet today because of our concern for the development of Palestine. In this hour one thing, above all, must be emphasized: Judaism owes a great debt of gratitude to Zionism. The Zionist movement has revived among Jews the sense of community. It has performed productive work surpassing all the expectation anyone could entertain.This productive work in Palestine, to which self-sacrificing Jews throughout the world have contributed, has saved large number of our brethren from direst need. In particular, it has been possible to lead a not inconsiderable part of our youth toward a life of joyous and creative work.
Now the fateful disease of our time -- exaggerated nationalism, borne up by blind hatred -- has brought our work in Palestine to a most difficult stage. Fields cultivated by day must have armed protection at night against fanatic Arab outlaws.
...
Just one more personal word on the question of partition. I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in the peace than the creation of a Jewish state.Apart from practical consideration, my awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain -- especially from the development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks, against which we have already had to fight strongly, even without a Jewish state. We are no longer the Jews of the Maccabee period. A return to a nation in the political sense of the world would be equivalent to turning away from the sprititualization of our community which we owe to the genius of our prophets. If external necessity should after all compel us to assume this burden, let us bear it with tact and patience.
One more word on the present psychological attitude of the world at large, upon which our Jewish destiny also depends. Anti-Semitism has always been the cheapest means employed by selfish minorities for deceiving the people. A tyranny based on such deception and maintained by terror must inevitably perish from the poison it generates within itself. For the pressure of accumulated injustice spreads strengthens those moral forces in man which lead to a liberation and purification of public life. May our community through its suffering and its work contribute toward the release of those liberating forces.
Adapted from Ideas and Opinions (1954) Wings Brook, New York
From an address on the occasion of the celebration of the "Third Seder" by the National Labour Committee for Palestine, at the Commodor Hotel in New York City, April 17, 1938. Published in New Palestine, Washington, DC, April 28, 1938
Albert Einstein
Rarely since the conquest of Jerusalem by Titus has the Jewish community experienced a period of greater oppression than prevails at the present time. In some respects, indeed, our own time is even more troubled, for man's possibilities of emigration are more limited today than they were then.
Yet we shall survive this period too, no matter how much sorrow, no matter how heavy a loss in life it may bring. A community like ours, which is a community purely by reason of tradition, can only be strengthened by pressure from without. For today every Jew feels that to be a Jew means to bear a serious responsibility not only to this own community, but also toward humanity. To be a Jew, after all, means first of all, to acknowledge and follow in practice those fundamentals in humaneness laid down in the Bible -- fundamentals without no sound and happy community of men can exist. We meet today because of our concern for the development of Palestine. In this hour one thing, above all, must be emphasized: Judaism owes a great debt of gratitude to Zionism. The Zionist movement has revived among Jews the sense of community. It has performed productive work surpassing all the expectation anyone could entertain.This productive work in Palestine, to which self-sacrificing Jews throughout the world have contributed, has saved large number of our brethren from direst need. In particular, it has been possible to lead a not inconsiderable part of our youth toward a life of joyous and creative work.
Now the fateful disease of our time -- exaggerated nationalism, borne up by blind hatred -- has brought our work in Palestine to a most difficult stage. Fields cultivated by day must have armed protection at night against fanatic Arab outlaws.
...
Just one more personal word on the question of partition. I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in the peace than the creation of a Jewish state.Apart from practical consideration, my awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain -- especially from the development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks, against which we have already had to fight strongly, even without a Jewish state. We are no longer the Jews of the Maccabee period. A return to a nation in the political sense of the world would be equivalent to turning away from the sprititualization of our community which we owe to the genius of our prophets. If external necessity should after all compel us to assume this burden, let us bear it with tact and patience.
One more word on the present psychological attitude of the world at large, upon which our Jewish destiny also depends. Anti-Semitism has always been the cheapest means employed by selfish minorities for deceiving the people. A tyranny based on such deception and maintained by terror must inevitably perish from the poison it generates within itself. For the pressure of accumulated injustice spreads strengthens those moral forces in man which lead to a liberation and purification of public life. May our community through its suffering and its work contribute toward the release of those liberating forces.
Adapted from Ideas and Opinions (1954) Wings Brook, New York
Some bookmarks
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- I have been reading accounts of the demise of the Lebanese left with some ambivalence. After all, has the word “left” come to only mean supporting the resistance? Is supporting Hezbollah, the group that is only the most recent incarnation of Lebanese resistance to Israel (and an incarnation with troubling economic policies, at that), all it takes to win your “leftist” credentials in Lebanon today? What about other historically progressive issues, such as questions of gender and economic equity, or political rights and the freedom of expression? Since the protests began in Syria, many Lebanese activists who consider themselves part of "the left" (you can see many of them, chain smoking their way through cups of coffee in cafes) have been wringing their hands over the fate of the Syrian regime while self-proclaimed “leftist parties” have been chest pounding their way through Ras Beirut. I recently told a friend of mine that I was working on a piece for Jadaliyya about the fatwa issued by Lebanon's Mufti “analyzing” a proposed civil law to protect women and children (but not, it seems, men) against domestic violence. This particular "leftist" patiently explained to me that now is not the time write about these “micro” issues, not while the “greater good” is at stake. My friend was telling me that my time and intellect were better spent writing about “the big picture.” But what exactly is this bigger picture if not an intricate mosaic of interconnected inequalities, and what is the “greater good” if not a silent prayer for those people that will be sacrificed in order to achieve it?
- Writing this lament from Beirut while a revolution is being brutally oppressed in Syria and while Israel continues to threaten the next invasion, I think of Iraq in 2003. Sitting in that Baghdad hotel room one month after the US led invasion and destruction of most of that country, and remembering the posters of Saddam Hussein hastily pasted on the streets of Beirut following those Scud Missiles in 1991, I felt cheap. Just as I feel cheap today, arguing with some self proclaimed “leftists” that we can be against authoritarianism and against US-Israeli interests. That we can be both pro-democracy and pro-Palestine, both pro-revolution and anti-Zionist. That we should not allow our fear of what might come after stop us from acting with our principles, now.
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Slovenian philosopher: “Antisemitism is alive and kicking in Europe”
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However, Zizek did not officially endorse or even talk much about BDS – and when he did it was because he was prompted to during Q&A. His two clear statements about BDS were that a) he is not 100% behind it and b)he supports a movement that is initiated jointly by Palestinians and Israeli here in the region.
Rather, Zizek spent almost two hours with the crowd’s undivided attention talking about antisemitism, capitalism and the place of the Jew in the world. He warned that antisemitism is “alive and kicking” in Europe and America and asserted that the State of Israel should worry more about Christian right antisemitism rather than wasting its energy on self-proclaimed Jewish anti-Zionists. He said that the Christian Zionists in America are inherently antisemitic and that Israel’s willingness to embrace their support is baffling.
He started his talk by saying that when he was invited to speak in Tel Aviv (most of his trip was spent in Ramallah with Udi Aloni), people reassured him there are still some “good Israelis” left that would love to hear him, as if trying to convince him of why he should bother to step foot inside Israel. Zizek said he doesn’t like this approach.
- As someone familiar with Zizek’s ideas and who is well acquainted with his poignant criticism of Israel, I was quite pleased, because I didn’t need to hear over again from him how Israel is occupying the Palestinians. And really, as a philosopher who spends his time in Europe, what could he renew for us on that? But of course, an activist in the audience was not happy that he did not devote enough time to criticizing Zionism, so she asked him why that is.
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Al-Ahram Weekly | Egypt | Revolution in their eyes
- Moving on, Bishara noted what both Egyptians and Tunisians know: in both revolutions, the revolutionaries didn't take over power; they "knocked on its door" but "didn't assume it". This, he said, "will have massive consequences on Egypt's history in the future and on other Arab regimes." In Egypt, like in Tunisia, the military is in charge. "These are not new elites in power," he said. What happened, Bishara added, is that a part of the outgoing regime's ruling elite practically sided with the revolution's demands and were forced to reform.
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Norman G. Finkelstein » Reasoned rejection of one-state position
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