الخبل الثوري في الملف السوري

(nydailynews.com)

حضرت منذ بضعة أيام إجتمامعا مع روبرت فورد، سفير الولايات المتحدة لسوريا. بعد ذلك، وفي ظل تصاعد أعمال إرهابية في صفوف المعارضة السورية–مما أدى مؤخراً إلى إغتيال الشيخ محمد البوطي في جموع من طلبة العلم–اشارك بعض ملاحظاتي عن الخبل الذي أصاب الحوار العام عن سوريا، خاصة عند كثير من السوريين المغتربين. هذه مذكرة لهم.

لا حاجة لي أن أذكر أسماء، ولكن اقول بصفة عامة إنه لا جدال في أن منظومة المعارضة متنافرة وأنها فشلت تماماً في تركيب اجندة سياسية موحدة. لا جدال أيضاً في أن المعارضة أصبحت عندها مشكلة إرهاب مفزعة بين صفوف مقاتليها. ويؤسفني أن أرى أعضاء المعارضة يضغطون على المسؤولين الامريكان المترددين للتدخل العسكري. أخيراً وليس آخراً، المقاومة ليست عاجزة عن النفوذ العسكرية المنتظمة فحسب، بل أنها لا تستطيع (أو ليست مستعدة؟) للتفاوض مع حكومات أخرى من أجل إيجاد حل سياسي لإنهاء الحرب الأهلية والعنف الطائفي الراهنين. (من البديهي لماذا إستقال معاذ الخطيب وبرهان غاليون) كل ذلك ليس كلامي–ولكن كلام مسؤولين.

(aei.com)

كيف إذن نفسر الخبل الثوري عند كثير من السوريين–خاصة في المهجر–الذين يخدعون أنفسهم بأن المعارضة شريفة وذات سيادة؟ بدلاً من نقاش حد وعاقل عن ضغط أو التفاوض مع حكومات من أجل إيجاد حل لإنهاء سفق الدماء، أنصار ال-”ضد” وال-”مع” يتبادلون شتائم رذيلة ويخاطبون بعض مستخدمين هراء الجهاديين، يجادلون سيئات وحسنات الموتى ويمجدون “شهداؤنا” و يقبحون “قتلاهم.” أنا اتحدث عن مغتربين يعتقدون في موأمرات توبخ نظام الأسد بسبب وقوع أي عمل إرهابي في البلد، دون ادنى فهم للموضوعية والنقد الذاتي. وهل الحرب الأهلية عبارة عن أكثر من تبادل عمليات ارهابية بين نظام ومعارضة؟ سوريا اليوم أكثر وحشية من ادمى يوم في لبنان في الثمانينيات أو العراق سنة ٢٠٠٦. مظاهر الإرهاب في قلب مقاتلي المعارضة–بما فيها تفجير المساجد والبنايات العامة والحكومية وإرتكاب مجازر في القرى– ومن ثمة إنفلات البلد بأكمله واضح بين لكل مواطن سوري مبصر–لكل شخص يفضل إحياء أبناء بلده على إطفاء غليان ثأره. دعنا ننطق كلمة حق في زمن الخبل– النظام المجرم (الإرهابي) أوجد خصما في صورته!

المعارضة ضلت سبيلها، وانصارها المخبلين هم انداد التأامريين من صفوف أنصار النظام الذين ينسبون كل كوارث البلد لأمريكا، إسرائيل، إلخ. وقد أصيب الحوار العام عن سوريا بخبل شديد–مصالح تنوح من ناحية بسبب مأساة إنسانية لا مثيل لها، ومن ناحية أخرى تطالب بتصعيد التدخل العسكري. كان الهدف المزعوم لهذا التهافت المتلف هو إنقلاب دكتاتور مستبد ومنح شعب حقه في حكم نفسه. لكنه حرم الشعب السوري من حقه الأهم والجوهري–الحياة.

Stop and Think! Another Evil Lurks in Syria

(islamtoday.net)

I had the opportunity to meet Robert Ford, the US ambassador to Syria, this past week. I was invited for my efforts promoting Arab Studies in the city of Houston. The meeting was also attended by a number of Syrian, Arab and American professionals, including some members of the so called “Syrian Opposition.” I have no intention of recounting all the political issues discussed at the meeting. I want rather to share just a couple of points mentioned, which are of great importance but none of which are confidential.

What struck me was the consensus that the Syrian Opposition has a “major terrorist problem,” and—furthermore—is alarmed that terrorist activity is beginning to take over the movement. I was also struck by just how incoherent the Syrian Opposition remains. In this vein, no one disputes that the opposition has “completely failed” to put forth a unified, political agenda, and—furthermore—that the US needs to have a better idea who to talk to. I learned just how utterly dependent and the Syrian Opposition is on American help, and their desperation for some sort of US military intervention—despite the fact that the US has not limited itself to humanitarian aide for now. (It is not for no reason that the previous two presidents of the SNC–Muaz al-Khatib and Burhan Ghalioun–walked away)

(al-jazeera.net)

There is ample evidence that terrorist groups are gaining the upper hand within the Syrian opposition fighting on the ground: the assassination of Muhammad al-Bouti, disputed reports of chemical weapons, village massacres, and bombing government or public building irrespective of the civilian cost. Any sober minded individual can see the marks of terrorism on the ground. But such is war—a regime and its opposition terrorizing the civilian population.

I say this to draw attention to the hysteria shared by much of the Syrian expatriate community, who go to pains to illustrate the Syrian Opposition as anything more than an incoherent, incompetent and at increasing illegitimate organization, unable to control the tide of terrorism taking over its ranks on the ground. I am talking about expats who would rather believe in conspiracies than accept that terrorism is now part and parcel of the opposition they support. The sectarian fighting in Syria today is on average more bloody that the Lebanese civil war in the 1980’s or Iraqi civil war in 2006.

This hysteria has now spread to the entire discourse on the Syrian civil war. International interests escalate the violence on the one hand and yet bewail an unprecedented humanitarian crisis on the other. Instead of any intelligent debate on which governments to lobby at once, intelligent people–proponents and opponents of the regime–squabble using nauseating jihadi lingo, eg. talking about “our martyrs,” “their dead,” and playing judge to their “sins” or “virtues.” The current nonsensical discourse privliges toppling Assad at the expense annihilating Syria altogether. Somewhere in the hysteria of opposing his regime and giving the people the right to rule themselves, the Syrian people were robbed of heir most basic right—to live.

Debating Western Influence in the Middle East – Lessons from Taha Hussein and Jalal Ale-Ahmad

Foreign governments–like the US, UK, France and Russia–and international organizations–like the IMF and UN–continue to exert tremendous influence on the fate of the Middle East. The current Iranian nuclear crisis, military aid to Israeli, the Syrian opposition and recent loans made to the hobbling Egyptian economy are a potent sampling of this reality. It is no coincidence that in courses like the one I currently teach–entitled the “Modern Middle East”–that the region enters into “modernity” via its subjugation to the European colonial enterprise beginning in the late 18th century. However, the connection between western influence on the one hand and the fate of the region on the other has always been hotly debated.

In this vein I am moved once again to share some insights following another lively discussion with my students. In the mid 20th century, as nations in the Middle East struggled for economic and political sovereignty, intellectuals came to different conclusions about western influence in the region. Two of these intellectuals are the Egyptian, Taha Hussein (d. 1973), and the Iranian, Jalal Ale-Ahmad (d. 1969). Like many elites Hussein believed that the only way to strengthen Egypt was through “Europeanization” (i.e. Westernization)–a case made amply clear in his works, including The Future of Culture in Egypt. By contrast Ale-Ahmad characterizes this kind of obsession with Europe as a disease usually translated as “Occidentosis” or “Westoxification” (Pers. gharbzedgi). The name of his famous book which bears this name draws a sharp division between East and West, and insists that the former remain colonized to the latter by means of consumerism and industrialization. Their ideologies were built to some degree on the secular and Islamist undercurrents within Egyptian and Iranian society at the time, but continue being debating across the greater Middle East today. I leave you with a quote by Hussein as well as Ale-Ahmad.

(civicegypt)

In order to become equal partners in civilization with the Europeans, we must literally and forthrightly do everything that they do; we must share with them the present civilization, with all its pleasant and unpleasant sides, and not content ourselves with words or mere gestures. …For our national defense we need a strong army, one equal in men and equipment to that of any potential aggressor. Our forces must be organized on the European pattern, particularly with respect to the training of soldiers, officers, and the various categories of specialists. I think all Egyptians would agree with this…We want to be like the European nations in military power in order to repel the attack of any aggressor and to be able to say to our English friends: “Thank you, you may go; for we can now defend the Canal.” Who wants the end must want the means; who wants power must want the elements constituting it; who wants a strong European-type army must want European training.

We also need economic independence. No one doubts or disputes this. Indeed, we clamor for it and importune the government to do whatever it can as quickly as possible. We want this independence not for its own sake, but for the protection of our wealth and resources. I do not mean we should be independent of the Hejaz, Yemen, Syria, and Iraq, but independent of Europe and America. We must therefore use the same means that the Europeans and Americans use to defend their national economies. This would entail, among other things, the building of schools to train our youth for this purpose. Again, who wants the end must want the means. It is not enough, not is it logical, for us to seek independence while we behave like slaves.

Further, we want scientific, artistic, and literary independence so that we may be equals, not slaves of the Europeans in these aspects of life too. Desiring this intellectual and concomitant psychological independence, we naturally must want the means, namely, studying, feeling, judging, working, and organizing our lives the way they do. We want, finally, to be free in our country, free from both foreign pressure and domestic inequity and oppression. The former requires strength, the latter democracy. If we aim at these ends we must adopt the means to acquire them. These are the means by which the European and American countries acquired their independence and their democratic government. Now that we have succeeded in restoring the honor and self-respect that come with independence, it is our plain duty to protect what we have won. We must rear a generation of Egyptian youth who will never know the humiliation and shame that was the lot of their fathers. Some Egyptians object to Europeanization on the grounds that it threatens our national personality and glorious heritage. I do not naturally advocate rejection of the past or loss of identity in the Europeans; …the only time that we might have been absorbed by Europe was when we were extremely weak, ignorant, and possessed of the notion that the hat was superior to the turban and the fez because it always covered a more distinguished head!…Although great powers imposed their will on us for many centuries, they were unable to destroy our personality. I am merely asking that the preservatives of defense, religion, language, art, and history be strengthened by the adoption of Western techniques and ideas
–Taha Hussein, The Future of Culture in Egypt

(irdc)

Looking more closely, we see many traces of this turn to the West. The water of life was in the Eastern darkness, but Alexander, who went in search of it, was a Westerner. Our own Nizami of Ganja called him a prophet, confounding him with Dhu’l-Qarnayn. The Garden of Eden is in the West, and ambergris always comes from the northwestern seas. Baghdad, the Mecca of the Manichaeans, was at the western edge of the Iranian plateau. The Zangi and Byzantine armies were compared to night and day or to the locks and the face of the Beloved. Perhaps for that reason no Eastern harem lacked for Byzantine slave girls, the heralds of day, imbued with whiteness and white luck. Regard gnosis for all its orientosis (if one may so term it): Sheykh San ‘an, the anchorite of the desert, falling for a Byzantine slave girl, apostasizes and dons the zunnar. Even Nargis Khatun, mother of the expected Mahdi of the Shi ‘is, is a slave girl of Byzantine extraction. There are many other examples we could quote. For us, never a callow, bigoted people, the way west has always been open. Like Sa’di, we went to Mecca via Tripoli to be set to corvee labor. Or we went to Karbala and Najaf to lay down our burdens. Or now we go to Europe to live it up.

All this traffic with the West is natural for a people who want every day to live better, know more, and die more at peace than the day before. There’s nothing extraordinary about it. It is inter-course with neighbors near and far. It is to seek to widen one’s humanity in other existential molds. What is strange is that, al though until some three hundred years ago our westward regard had, as its sole aspect, motive, and cause, hatred, jealousy, and rivalry, these have since been replaced by rueful, worshipful longing. We had always felt jealousy or hatred toward the West. We competed with her. We fought for her verdant lands, busy ports, placid towns, and steady rainfall. All through those bygone times, we regarded ourselves as worthy of possessing such bounty and our own beliefs and customs as true. We called them unbelievers; we saw them as lost souls. If despite the Sasanians’ fanatic Zoroastrianism we gave refuge to their scholars fleeing Alexandria and Con- stantinople, we evaluated these by our own criteria. At times we went so far as to declare open season on their lives and goods; thus we raided westward all we could.

All this rancor and competitiveness was a justification or motive for us to further extend the Assyrian domains, while tempering Assyria’s crudity. We thus brought cedar from Lebanon and gold from Lydia. We propagated the works of Aristotle during the European dark ages through our translations. We imported the Roman legion and Roman architecture. Whatever may be said of these two thousand years of transactions with the West, for all the reciprocal destruction (itself emblematic of life), each side came out the winner. Neither lost a thing.

If we have not dealt as two friends, we have certainly met as two rivals. And what could be better? We contributed silk and oil. We provided a passage to India, to Zoroaster and Mithra. We traveled in the quiver of Islam as far as Andalusia. We placed turbans from India and Khorasan on the heads of Islam. We transformed the divine farr into the halo and set it about the heads of the saints of Christianity and Islam.40 The list goes on and on. But for these last two or three centuries, we have known the other side of the coin: envy and regret.

We have forgotten the spirit of competition and come to feel in its place the spirit of helplessness, the spirit of worshipfulness. We no longer feel ourselves to be in the right and deserving. (They take the oil, because it is their right and because we cannot stop them; they manage our politics, because our hands are tied; they take away our freedom, because we’re unworthy of it.) If we seek to evaluate some aspect of our lives, we do so by their criteria, as prescribed by their advisors and consultants. Thus do we study; thus do we gather statistics; thus do we conduct research. This
makes sense insofar as science has universal methods: scientific methods bear the imprint of no nationality.

But what is curious is that we marry just like the Westerners. We pretend to be free just like them. We sort the world into good and bad along the lines they lay out. We dress like them. We write like them. Night and day are night and day when they confirm it.’ One would think our own values had been abrogated. We even pride ourselves in thus being their one-eyed offspring. One of the two ancient rival wrestlers has been demoted to the position of ring keeper; the other owns the ring. And the ring is filled with lust, stupidity, boasting, and vanity. What has happened in these last couple of centuries? What has happened to turn things upside down? Let us again turn to history to find out.

–Jalal Ale-Ahmad, Occidentosis: A Plague from the West

A Humanistic Reception of the Qur’an

El-Badawi, Emran. “For All Times and Places”: A Humanistic Reception of the Qur’an. English Language Notes 50.2 (2012): 99-112.

(from freedomphoenix.com)

“Humanism” is a perennial philosophy that gives primacy to the honor and frailty of the human condition.Two of its core values, “reason and compassion,” are demonstrated in the literary rationalism of Xenophanes (d. 475 BCE) and the ethics of Confucius (d. 479 BCE) respectively. Humanistic values are evident throughout the great teachings and literary works of all world civilizations including the Qur’an. This study explores the Qur’an’s humanistic language and teachings that is the clarity of its articulation and the rhetorical qualities of its argumentation, as well as the text’s ethical dimension, which stresses humankind’s inherent intellect, freedom, and accountability for a diverse modern audience through the eyes of the text’s “first audience.”

This audience was composed of the individuals for whom the text was primarily intended, and who belonged to Arabia in the Late Antique/Pre-Islamic Period (ca. sixth-seventh century CE; Cf. jahiliyyah) and Early Islamic Period (Cf. sadr al-islam; the Sufyanids). This time period was centuries prior to the development of the traditional forms of Islam that emerged in the Classical Period of Islam (ca. tenth-thirteenth century CE).

When traditional Muslims today think of the Qur’an—especially in its original Arabic form they will likely appreciate the text as the literal Word of God, warning against the horrors of eternal hellfire, bringing good news of eternal paradise and, ultimately, as a means of personal salvation (furqan). Insofar as traditional Jews and Christians are familiar with the Qur’an, they might find its beliefs, parables, and laws in close dialogue with those of Hebrew and Christian scripture, but also in direct competition with them. Critical scholars of the Qur’an are likely to subject its text to the tools of rational inquiry and intellectual discourse…

Continue reading…

Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd: A Film Screening at AUC

On February 24, The American University in Cairo will be screening a documentary on the final years of the late Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (d. 2010). It is a reminder that Abu Zayd’s work–his suffering–have a place in post-revolutionary Egypt and that hope–although scarce–lives on even after his passing. In the handful of conversations I had with him, I recall his tremendous humility, but also his strong sense of purpose.

“Belief, like fear or love, is a force to be understood as we understand the theory of relativity and principals of uncertainty. Phenomena that determine the course of our lives. Yesterday, my life was headed in one direction. Today, it is headed in another. Yesterday, I believe I would never have done what I did today. These forces that often remake time and space, that can shape and alter who we imagine ourselves to be, begin long before we are born and continue after we perish. Our lives and our choices, like quantum trajectories, are understood moment to moment. That each point of intersection, each encounter, suggest a new potential direction.”

باسم يوسف وناجح ابراهيم: مناظرة بين الاسلاميين والمعارضة

قامت الجامعة الأمريكية بالقاهرة مؤخراً باستضافة باسم يوسف وناجح إبراهيم لمناظرة بينهما عن أحوال مصر بعد الثورة، وخاصة نقاش دور الإسلام في الدولة(الممثل الآن من قبل الرئيس مرسي وجماعات الاخوان المسلمين). المناظرة في نظري الفريدة من نوعها إذ أن كل من الضيفان حافظ على أدب الإختلاف وعبر عن رأي فئة كبيرة من الشعب.

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