A Brief Thought . . . .

The following is an excerpt of a Nagib Mahfouz (Egyptian novelist and winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature) from Hisham Sharabi’s Neopatriarchy: A Theory of Distorted Change in Arab Society . . .


"He leads a contemporary [i.e., “modern”] life. He obeys civil and penal laws of Western origin and is involved in a complex tangle of social and economic transactions and is never certain to what extent these agree with or contradict his Islamic creed. Life carries him along in its current and he forgets his misgivings for a time until one Friday he hears the imam or reads the religious page in one of the papers, and the old misgivings come back with a certain fear. He realizes that in this new society he has been afflicted with a split personality: half of him believes, prays, fasts, and makes the pilgrimage. The other half renders his values void in banks and courts and in the streets, even in the cinemas and theaters, and perhaps even at home among his family before the television set."


While Mahfouz wrote this years ago, it still applies to what I see in Syrian and Arab society. Recently I was out to lunch with an Arab Christian in one of the many dinning establishments in Damascus. And as nearly all of the ‘modernized’ dinning establishments that feature versions upon western themed food, this place had a television and was tuned to one of the 20 or so main Arab Music Video channels. Amidst video after video full teeming with sexuality, I heard the call to prayer echo from one, then another mosque around the neighborhood. After a little bit, one the waiters turned the channel to what I’m sure was a Saudi based-station, for the afternoon prayer. As soon as the prayer was over, he flipped back to Western inspired, Arab-interpreted, music television – brimming with breasts and gyrating hips. I began to laugh and was asked, “What is so funny?” I explained that I found the juxtaposition between half-naked music videos and religiosity (which implicitly upholds “the modest’ and ‘the chaste’ as virtues for women) without even a pause, without even a cursory nod to a glaring contradiction, struck me as hilarious. She found it funny after I explained it, and said: “yah, you get so used to these things that it doesn’t even seem weird . . .“ I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to it.

Who's Afraid of Norway?

So the following is from the front page of the Sunday Times of London. I know this guy in the article, Evan Nord, from my Arabic courses. I'm not going to go into this issue too much here. Here's a few thoughts, however, just in case you are wondering.

1. Damascus is covered with signs that tell all Syrians to avoid the following Danish companies . . . well, I can't name them because I never heard of any of them except for Legos!!

2. Lately, I've been feeling a bit of Schadenfreude with this whole 'cartoon' upheaval. I tell the kids from the EU: Hey, welcome the American reality in the middle east: most disfavored nation(s) status.

3. Sorry for the lack of posting on the blog . . . I've been busy with school and social stuff and mostly (however) Arabic. . . More to come, I promise.




The Sunday Times - World


The Sunday Times February 05, 2006


Focus: Freedom v faith: the firestorm
Not since the Salman Rushdie affair have secular Europe and Islam traded insults so vehemently. Stuart Wavell on the cartoons that threaten to force us apart


A small child led the religious chanting as the crowd converged on the French embassy in Damascus. They had come from the mosque where a preacher had inveighed against the "blasphemous cartoons" in Europe. It was not a wise place for a Norwegian to be.
By publishing Danish caricatures of the prophet Muhammad, a Norwegian newspaper had helped to pitch Europe into the worst cultural clash between Islamic religious beliefs and western freedom of expression since Salman Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses in 1989.



Even Nord, a Norwegian visitor to the local university, was curious to see the demonstration. Reaching the embassy, those in front began to scuffle with a line of police and the crowd's anger grew.

Then, without warning, a Syrian grabbed Nord and addressed the crowd: "This is my friend. He is a Norwegian and a good man."

A pin's drop could have been heard as a menacing silence came over the crowd. The Syrian then hoisted the Norwegian on to his shoulders and commanded: "Speak for your country."

The student surveyed his hostile audience for a moment before addressing them in Arabic. "This is just an embassy," he said in a loud, clear voice. "It is not the country. This incident is the result of lack of understanding. We need to understand each other better and then hopefully we will have the chance to live in togetherness and we can show proper respect for you. Inshallah (God willing)!" The crowd roared in approval. But the goodwill did not last: yesterday they set fire to the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish embassies.