Intellectual Pirating
By Tarek A. Ghanem
Freelance writer – Cairo
05/09/2002
The exposé of Islam is under the command of the media, academia and literati: and its out in the open. Islamophobia, we are told, is order of the day and the Muslim world is the empire of evil. At last, the civilized (principally Western) world, psychic and aggressive as it is, is pleased with finding its new sacrifice for the sake of artificial idols of supremacy, superiority and self-righteousness. Already secularism made itself the custodian of human consciousness and liberty, ousting the Judeo-Christian heritage and any other religious promise or enterprise. And now the shot is on Islam.
The drums of vehemence are beating so loud and sanity had its throat cut by the pitchforks of nihilism. Even the light of reason is overshadowed by the seriousness of the pack of swaggering ignorance—to a degree that cannot be outshined. The time for polemics is due and the space is infinite. It is not only a fashionable wholesale business. Stardom is given, profit is made, and prizes are furnished too.
Ride the Wave
A cold-blooded wave of hatred in literature has targeted Islam and Muslims. The phenomenon is not incomprehensible. Before the carnage of 9/11 such works were isolated (the most well known is Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses). Yet, never before has there been a wave with such height and intensity, and indeed such fascination.
Oriana Fallaci
Oriana Fallaci, an Italian author in her seventies who rode the European, fashionable wave (yet still ongoing) of sharply jumping from left to right, published a new book La Rabbie e l’Orgoglio (Anger and Pride). In it racism is the standard. Racism is even intellectualized in some passages: “…the sons of Allah multiply like rats.” It is a best seller in both Italy and France selling one million copies.
Fallaci has never denied that her work is racist. Evidently, her loathing for Muslims seems to compensate for her outrageous favoritism for Jews. She seems to be in awe of the “Shakespearean figure” (her words) Ariel Sharon and his works—the ideal mentor for mass murderers.
The eloquent Muslim writer Rana Kabbani, who lives in Paris, says regarding this:
Had this book's victims been anyone other than Muslims, it would not have been published, and certainly not by any self-respecting house. But Muslims are fair game now and to defame them en masse has become not only respectable, but also highly profitable. The defamer has nothing to fear, as there are no laws to check such vitriolic prejudice, nor do Muslims have the organised self-defence groups that Jews have formed so successfully to silence would be anti-semites (Guardian, June 11, 2002).
Kabbani referred to high-profile Jews, in particular Bernard-Henri Levy, who rejected her onslaughts.
If that is not enough, the Noble Prize novelist Michel Houellebecq could not fulfill his literary dreams without bashing Islam and other faiths. In an interview in French daily Le Monde he declared Islam to be the “stupidest of all religions.” He added that Islam is a dangerous religion and “materialism is a lesser evil [than Islam].” His racist passion includes other races and nationalities like Japanese, German and American. Although it may seem ironic that such an award winner is a pornographer, Stalinist, xenophobic, nihilist, chauvinist and caused other anti-feminist and racist controversies, it could be that traits like this are actually prerequisites to winning the latest Impac award: the world's richest literary prize!
This depressing image calls to mind the timing of last year’s Noble prize in literature awarded to V.S. Naipaul - the travel writer living in the darkness of post-modern ignorance and in his loathe for Islam, and even his own country, India. His remark on Islam being worse than imperialism is a case in point.
In modern literary circles, where the writer is the saint of the secular paradigm, prophesying about the duality of the world forms and artistically witnesses the encounters of life forces, such writers are nothing but intellectual demons preaching intolerance, racism and hatred. They subsist under their “victim mentality” of multiculturalism and blind generalizations.
Pipes Along with his Pipe Nightmares
Daniel Pipes
Moving towards the “scholarly” end of the spectrum, we find the new-crowned specialist and architect of the threat of Islam, Daniel Pipes. Although Pipes does his homework and his research (as a result of his prestigious Harvard education) his mind cannot escape the “orientalist” paradigm. In fact, it is custom-made to fit his former job as “an advisor” to the US State Department. For him the existence of Islam is a menace and being a Muslim, by definition, is political. His earlier hoax, In the Path of God: Islam and Political Power, is fat in size but thin in accuracy, and can be summed up as: Muslim resurgence is synonymous to fundamentalism and is a product of the oil boom. Its main founders are Saudi Arabia and Libya, and the main supporter is Russia.
Parvez Manzoor, a renowned Muslim thinker wrote concerning this book:
Here is a link, if ever it was in need of a demonstration, between the academic Orientalism of Harvard and the grisly Realpolitik of the State Department. The only talent that Pipes really possesses is scurrility and the only argument he knows is calumny. As a tireless crusader of the ideology of Western dominance and as an ardent member of the Lodge of US-Israeli Freemasonry, Pipes has wielded his stock invective against Islam and Muslims with considerable skill; nonetheless, his scholarly diatribe, the present work clearly shows, is a monumental exercise in frivolity, banality and paranoia.
Pipes displays his theatrical horror of Islam in his column in The Washington Post as nothing but intellectual terrorism. The items on his literary agenda can be covered rather simply in two points: Islam is a threat that must be eradicated; and “Islamist” (in his view, fanatic) is equated with terrorist who is not physically and ideologically different from the average Muslim living next door. Nurturing and amplifying the mass Islam-is-the-threat obsession, he is profiting from the sales of his latest literary labor, Militant Islam Reaches America; the latest stage of his ideological sickness.
9/11 and 9-1-1
The literary blackening of Islam is multi-layered and deep-rooted. Part of it stems from the classical problem of orientalism that has backfired on Western mentality (amidst its expansion to disguise all Asian civilizations and representations with a focus on Islam). In the beginning, the ideas of God, man, nature and society in Islam were ridiculed and demonized, and claimed as inferior to Christendom. As orientalism evolved, it infected scholarship, travel literature and fiction. This furnished the theological and military dominance of the Crusaders, the intellectual superiority of the Renaissance, the backwardness of the occupied under imperialism, and the dependence of the underdeveloped in accordance to the “civilized” (“us”) benchmark, of course.
The criminal bloodshed, which bastardized the name of Islam and stained it by the blood of the victims, opened the door wide open for such cultural and ideological upsets. There is also the absurdity of the “clash of civilizations.” But the actual clash on the level of civilization between the Muslim world and the West is uneven: in the technological, developmental, productive, military capabilities, and intellectual, political, and religious discourses. In fact, the very idea of “globalization” proves the deception of this unmatched course of conflict. The course of collision has only involved America and certain organizations, and not the entire West, or the entire Muslim world.
Maybe 9/11 has strengthened the stereotype image of Muslims as “terrorists.” It has also showed the ideological and intellectual standpoints of the West and the “other” as a case of cultural victimization. The other’s victimization of “us” (being “us” the west or “us” the Muslim world) as well as its threat and its (distorted) image, is the new mechanism of cultural relativism on historical, social and political levels. There is also the self-assurance about the other being uncompromisingly wrong. But due to the West’s violation of what is moral, tolerant and accepting of the “other,” the relation between the two sides is disproportionate and dysfunctional.
Such intellectual and ideological propaganda deserves effort and time due to its roots and penetration. A long-term cultural rapprochement is indispensable at this point where the two sides can come to an understanding in each other’s logic and on each other’s own terms. Cultural exchange programs and a strong awareness campaign about the Muslim world and the diversity of its cultures, languages, races and origins are possible scenarios.
Our “Pride and Anger” Now
Salman Rushdie
On seeing the cruel attack on Islam and Muslims (which actually nourishes and mushrooms hate on the “other” side) there is a need to counter such hostile environment on Islam, Muslims and Arabs. It is imperative to institutionalize and intellectualize groups that discriminate against Muslims. In a world where racism and persecution are universally condemned, Muslims cannot be singled out as undeserving in the struggle for modern human and civil rights. To achieve such an objective one can follow in the footsteps of the African-Americans and Jewish communities in America and other Western countries. It is really stunning how powerful efforts against anti-Semitism can defend their minority groups as well as attack the slightest, and in many cases fabricated, insults (even anti-Israeli occupation or apartheid criticisms).
Jewish efforts to create an anti-Semitic platform after the holocaust were far reaching. They accompanied the biggest wave of immigration in the twentieth century to Palestine and the revival of Hebrew (an ancient language) in twenty years. This shows that there are the possibilities with organization and planning.
All the while the Muslim world and the Muslim communities in the west receive severe animosity and offensives from the mighty American arsenal and Western media.
The Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (AADC) is a remarkable model - despite its short existence, limited community work, and hostile surrounding environment – especially in the aftermath of 9/11. With the nightmarish awakening of extreme European right-wingers and their racist political agenda, such Arab and Muslim Committees must be instituted. On another level, the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) must create an international anti-Islamic discrimination committee against animosity towards the Muslim faith and sentiments.
The turmoil of the post-modern, blasphemous The Satanic Verses must be dealt with as a warning (somehow Rushdie was recently graced by appearing in the movie Bridget Jones's Diary). Islam, which deserves a tolerant and intellectually stimulating space for dialogue, cannot be obscured by politics of despair. Muslim communities fulfilled their role in following the legalities of filing a lawsuit against Houellebecq in France. There is no need for book burning or a reward for killing the offending writer. The intellectual heritage of a “book-for-book” under the magnificent days of Muslim civilization is an example that may be burdensome to Muslim intellectuals, but actually must be adopted. This is the way by which Muslim sorrows and pains on the severe attacks on their faith, beliefs and pride, that grief, can be relieved.
The author encourages your comments. Please e-mail him at t.ghanem@islam-online.net |
