The Widespread Duplicity of Arab Intellectualism
Last September, Iraqi born poet and pan-Arab cosmopolitan Khalid al-Maaly published an article on Arab intellectualism in the Berliner Zeitung. Conclusion: not so much with the moral authority thing. Now that article has been translated and posted on Sign and Sight, a English-language German site:
During the 1980s, a friend of mine – a left-wing, secular-minded Syrian writer living in Paris at that time – surprised me by his open admiration for the newly organised Hizbullah... His joy over the 9/11 attacks, as well as his admiration for Osama bin Laden and his "blow at the heart of America," fit the rest of his political development only too well. He constantly sought justifications for Islamist acts of violence...
Unfortunately, this brief biographical sketch might all too easily be extended to a large proportion of Arab intellectuals. Many of them are characterised by a carefully masked double standard. In their home countries they present themselves as guardians of traditional Arab values, but when writing in other languages for foreign audiences they express very different, more cosmopolitan views. The Arab intellectual behaves like a despotic father. No internal family matter may be exposed to the outside world; regardless of what the reality may be, a façade of unbroken unity must be maintained... Many Arab writers and publishers regard themselves as secular, enlightened and critical – in other words, as intellectuals who stand up for freedom of speech and, of course, for human rights. Two months after the 9/11 attacks, during an Arab book fair, a rumour suddenly made the rounds that an aircraft had crashed into a high-rise building in Italy... Numerous publishers and editors shouted Allahu akbar... these intellectuals are welcome guests at conferences on Euro-Arab dialogue. But I wonder about the value of such events, when some participants lack all credibility and the emphasis is on mere politeness and flattery.
As long as much of the Arab world is mired in what is increasingly recognized as deep social pathologies (warped by seething resentment and trapped by perverse conspiracy theories), it seems increasingly likely that dialogue can provide only a cocoon of false security for the West and proof of irreconcilable differences for the Arab and Muslim world. What's needed is not dialogue but critique: there is a large swatch of the Arab and Muslim world that is violent and sexist and racist and homophobic and anti-Semitic in degrees and kinds that simply do not exist in the West. Someone needs to tell them that, not in the form of multiculturalist dialogue ('you tell me how you see it and I'll tell you how I see it') but as an insistence on that being the truth of the matter. (h/t: MR reader Tom)
During the 1980s, a friend of mine – a left-wing, secular-minded Syrian writer living in Paris at that time – surprised me by his open admiration for the newly organised Hizbullah... His joy over the 9/11 attacks, as well as his admiration for Osama bin Laden and his "blow at the heart of America," fit the rest of his political development only too well. He constantly sought justifications for Islamist acts of violence...
Unfortunately, this brief biographical sketch might all too easily be extended to a large proportion of Arab intellectuals. Many of them are characterised by a carefully masked double standard. In their home countries they present themselves as guardians of traditional Arab values, but when writing in other languages for foreign audiences they express very different, more cosmopolitan views. The Arab intellectual behaves like a despotic father. No internal family matter may be exposed to the outside world; regardless of what the reality may be, a façade of unbroken unity must be maintained... Many Arab writers and publishers regard themselves as secular, enlightened and critical – in other words, as intellectuals who stand up for freedom of speech and, of course, for human rights. Two months after the 9/11 attacks, during an Arab book fair, a rumour suddenly made the rounds that an aircraft had crashed into a high-rise building in Italy... Numerous publishers and editors shouted Allahu akbar... these intellectuals are welcome guests at conferences on Euro-Arab dialogue. But I wonder about the value of such events, when some participants lack all credibility and the emphasis is on mere politeness and flattery.
As long as much of the Arab world is mired in what is increasingly recognized as deep social pathologies (warped by seething resentment and trapped by perverse conspiracy theories), it seems increasingly likely that dialogue can provide only a cocoon of false security for the West and proof of irreconcilable differences for the Arab and Muslim world. What's needed is not dialogue but critique: there is a large swatch of the Arab and Muslim world that is violent and sexist and racist and homophobic and anti-Semitic in degrees and kinds that simply do not exist in the West. Someone needs to tell them that, not in the form of multiculturalist dialogue ('you tell me how you see it and I'll tell you how I see it') but as an insistence on that being the truth of the matter. (h/t: MR reader Tom)
