Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) is aware of this, which
is why it has harassed television journalists for the last year, and
interfered with broadcasts. The demonstrations this year after the deaths
of dozens of “Ultras”, supporters of the Al-Ahly football club at Port
Said (who were often in the front line against the security forces), or
for the first anniversary of the revolution, did not bring as many people
as last year onto the streets. This was not just because of the weariness
and anxiety of many people, but because these protests were not given
positive coverage by the major Arab television stations.

It is less relevant now to make a distinction between old and new media,
since content moves easily from one to another: the press publishes
online, and television stations broadcast most of their programs online
too. Al-Jazeera has been innovative in this area because of its
difficulties broadcasting to certain countries (US secretary of state
Hillary Clinton may have praised its coverage of the Arab revolutions but
it still cannot broadcast by satellite to North America). During the
Israeli offensive against Gaza in January 2009, Al-Jazeera’s website,
launched in 1998, was ahead of many of its international rivals; it
allowed other sites to use its reports, published under a Creative Commons
licence at a time when it was almost the only media organization covering
the offensive from inside Gaza. It reinforced its relationship with
internet users by entering into a partnership during the January 2011
uprisings with X Media Lab, an international digital media thinktank.

Television choice

It would be impossible now to impose a total blackout on news in the Arab
world, with more than 700 television channels, hundreds of thousands of
bloggers and nearly 40 million Facebook users. But are all these outlets
and linked networks enough to ensure choice, especially in television,
still the most important opinion-former?

The 2011 revolutions brought down dictatorial regimes and ended, perhaps
forever, the more ridiculous practices of subservient news channels, such
as starting each bulletin by reporting what the head of state did that
day. The move towards limited pluralism, noticeable for a few years now,
is picking up momentum — the Algerian authorities appear to have agreed to
open up the audiovisual sector to competition. There will necessarily be
more private players in the media sector; what matters will be their
relationship with the political establishment.

The record over the past 12 months is not encouraging, even in those
countries like Tunisia which had a rapid changeover of power. Nessma TV,
Tunisia’s main private channel (set up in 2009 by local investors and
Mediaset, owned by Silvio Berlusconi), did quickly sever its links with
the old regime, even though it had supported the channel. But circles
close to political Islam thought Nessma TV’s programming provocative,
particularly its decision to broadcast Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi’s
animated film criticizing Iran’s religious authorities and even depicting
the Prophet. The Islamists were furious that it was shown just before the
elections and dubbed into Tunisian dialect, which they regard as a threat
to the use of classical Arabic. The matter indicates the tensions within
public opinion, and reflects badly on the ability of private media to
fulfil the mission of reporting the news.

In Egypt, the uprising discredited the state channel, which continued to
show peaceful images of the Nile while everyone else in the world was
broadcasting live the clashes between protestors and police. A dozen
private initiatives sprang up after the revolution, started by experienced
professionals with wealthy backers, or amateur activists relying on
enthusiasm. The SCAF quickly decided to postpone the launch of any new
channel, and threatened a return to censorship. The journalist Yosri Fouda
exposed this threat when he resigned on air in October 2011.

The most prominent channels all represent a mainstream political or
economic force: Al-Hayat is owned by the leader of the Wafd Party, Sayed
al-Badawi; Misr25 is the unofficial voice of the Muslim Brotherhood; ONTV
— the last channel still supporting the revolution — is financed by the
billionaire Naguib Sawiris, founder of the Free Egyptians Party. The
weakest players have been eliminated, or deflected, such as Tahrir TV
(where the well-known opposition figure, Ibrahim Issa, is a journalist),
which was bought by the businessman Suleiman Amer who removed critical
voices. The new political order has not changed the economic model: few
initiatives could survive without advertising revenue or the support of
powerful investors, who are rarely far from the circles of power.

Fading star

The upheavals of 2011 did not unseat the dominant channels. Al-Jazeera and
Al-Arabiya, set up in 1996 and 2003, remain important political tools for
Qatar and Saudi Arabia, who can use them to undermine regimes in Libya and
Syria, while not covering repression in Bahrain.

Al-Jazeera has just celebrated its 15th anniversary, but its future is in
doubt. The events of 2011 and their popular slogans — like “The people
want…” — could describe Al-Jazeera’s editorial ambition to give a voice to
the real players, while affirming national and religious identity. It used
to be known for its professionalism and independence, to the point where
it seemed able to dictate its agenda regionally, but lost credibility
during the Arab Spring.

After the honeymoon period of the first revolutionary movements,
Al-Jazeera’s complete alignment with Qatar’s diplomatic policy
(intervention in Libya and Syria) made it just like the other channels
that act, officially or semi-officially, as vehicles for the political
sympathies of their backers. Many commentators believe it has departed
from the professional standards of its director general Waddah Khanfar,
who resigned (or was fired) in September 2011. There have been many other
resignations, a sign of unrest among its journalists. And there have been
protests in Damascus, and even Tunis, against Al-Jazeera, until recently
so popular that it seemed untouchable. Its star is fading, at a time when
Qatar’s diplomacy relies on the trust of the Arab public. The range of
news channels in the region will grow this year, with Al-Mayadin in Beirut
(headed by Ghassan Ben Jiddo, former Al-Jazeera correspondent in Lebanon
who resigned), and Alarab, an international news channel in the Gulf
funded by the Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal.

Bin Talal, who owns Rotana, the Arab world’s largest entertainment
company, has chosen the financial media corporation Bloomberg as a
partner, and also has business links with Rupert Murdoch who has made no
secret of his pro-Israel and ultra-conservative opinions, and who is
preparing to launch his own Arab channel, Sky News Arabia. Alarab will be
based in the Bahraini capital, Manama. After rumors that it would have its
headquarters in Beirut or Cairo, then Doha (entailing an arrangement with
the Qatari authorities) or the United Arab Emirates, no one foresaw
Bahrain as the choice. Not only does this mini-state have no experience in
the news industry, there is still unrest and repression there, provoked by
the military intervention of Gulf states in March 2011, led by Saudi
Arabia

Bin Talal has never made a secret of his political ambitions, and he has
invested a lot in this trans-Arab news channel (he is its sole owner,
unlike his position at Rotana). Setting up in Manama is an attempt to give
the channel an original stance between the official voice of Al-Arabiya
and the more anti-establishment one of Al-Jazeera. Its editor will be
Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist critical enough to have been recently sacked
from the Saudi newspaper Al Watan. Alarab already has a motto: “Freedom
and development” — an echo no doubt of the social network slogans of the
Arab Spring, but also a reference to the direction Bin Talal wants to see
policy go in the region, towards an “Islamic-style” capitalism. The
success of this path has become clear following the region’s more reliable
recent elections.

YVES GONZALEZ-QUIJANO is an academic working on Arab affairs.

thanks to mondediplo.com.

Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York. His most recent book The Arab Spring: The End of Postcolonialism has just been published by Zed.

Begin with D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915). Whether you were a Union stalwart or a slavery-mourning rebel in the early 20th century, the Civil War had been a holocaust for your side. All the same, the battle scenes in Griffith’s film are awesomely thrilling, and the film may well have been seen by more people in its years of theatrical life than any film since. Jump ahead to Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan (1998) – no one quite forgets the electric horror of the opening Normandy sequence, which even the film’s detractors still applaud as bravura filmmaking and hypnotic.

However conflicted the war film might be, the genre has always resonated with the gravitas of fear and sacrifice. As it should. Even the gung-ho propaganda films the United States and virtually every other industrialized nation produced during World War II possessed elements of ruefulness and a sense of moral tragedy. Start counting the genre’s greatest entries – from King Vidor’s The Big Parade (1925) to All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Anthony Mann’s Men in War (1957), the scalding movies of the Japanese New Wave, the bitter satires and documentaries about the Vietnam era, Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line (1998) and so on – and you’re quickly saturated with outrage. In other words, war films are almost by definition anti-war films, if not in their overt political agenda, then in their subtext and human experience.

Lately, however, “war films” – movies about full-on military combat, assisted by CGI effects that crank the experience up into rampaging mayhem – are of a different breed. They have been largely since 9/11. War movies are now fantasies, in terms of both their content and the degree to which they encourage adolescent America to suckle on its own childish ideas about war, heroism, killing and death. Coming soon to a theater near you are Battleship, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, the semi-satirical Iron Sky (Nazis attacking from the moon) and World War Z (global combat against zombies).

In the last decade, the most visually whole-hog of war epics include Battle: Los Angeles, Troy, 300, Captain America: The First Avenger, The Lord of the Rings, the Narnia films, the Transformers films, and the series’ various imitators. Between them enough hard-drive amperage has been expended to keep New York City lit for a year. But more to the point, they are visions of war detached from reality. Mention should be made of a few recent anomalies: Act of Valor (effectively a feature-length recruitment ad produced with help from the U.S. Navy), Red Tails (Lucasfilm’s cartoonish depiction of the Tuskegee Airmen) and Steven Spielberg’s War Horse, the less said about which the better.

War is no longer something to be very anti- about. Being involved in endless low-grade wars that don’t impact our daily lives, we seem to have acclimated to it as a form of entertainment we can either savor or ignore. Predictably, the popular films that entail warfare are now massive and operatic celebrations of armed conflict and military power. The contexts in which the chaos takes place–robot battles, spaceship invasions, ancient armies–appear to have been purposefully chosen for the absence of suffering and moral dilemma. The new movies have taken the lucrative lesson of first-person-shooter video games (like the popular Call of Duty) to heart: War sells if it’s a simulacra, a game, a ridiculous spectacle. In effect, the commercial entertainment industry mimics and manifests the Wolfowitz/Cheney program of open-ended, low-impact, profitable nonstop war all on its own.

We are the cogs in the machinery, and our role as citizens and movie watchers, for more than 10 years now, has been to shop, watch and be mindlessly beguiled. The actual battles in West Asia may as well involve alien robots. What matters is that war, real or cinematic, not ruin a perfectly decent Saturday evening.

Michael Atkinson has written or edited many books, including Exile Cinema: Filmmakers at Work Beyond Hollywood (2008) and the mystery novels Hemingway Deadlights (2009) and Hemingway Cutthroat (2010).

The main idea was how copies of real things particularly stimulate the fascination of the public. The fact that a real object is presented in an artificial space produces an amplification of feelings: horror, beauty, terror, inspiration, etc. Among the copies and reconstructions he analyzed, we find President Lyndon Johnson’s Oval Office, a medieval witch laboratory, a statue of the Mona Lisa and a copy of the Venus of Milo. His conclusion was that the culture of fake is built on the idea of retrieved reality. If you read this 1975 book now, you can see how a region develops a mania to be the central attraction of the world, and therefore buys everything, even if it is not necessarily authentic.

The fascination in the American parks and museums comes from the fact that the copy should be as close to reality as possible. Nowadays this culture of fake has been transferred to another part of the globe, the rich kingdoms of the Gulf, such as Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia. In this transfer we witness a new step further from reality. If the American culture of entertainment is based on the principal of the perfect copies of the world, in the new lands of fake, the copy of the copy is also somehow fascinating. Las Vegas has its copy of the Egyptian Pyramids. This is fascinating. When you look at the big cities of the Gulf, you feel they are making copies of Las Vegas.

´The fascination in the American parks and museums comes from the fact that the copy should be as close to reality as possible. Nowadays this culture of fake has been transferred to another part of the globe, the rich kingdoms of the Gulf, such as Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia´

It is not surprising for a city to want to combine economic prosperity with the culture of entertainment. But when it comes to the art world, things can become problematic. We enter the Louvre or the Guggenheim and we immediately know that we are in the fascinating world of simulacra, that we step out of the real reality. In a couple of years there will be not one single Louvre, the one in Paris, nor one single Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the one in New York, as copies of both are planned to open soon in the city of Abu Dhabi. You step into one of those copies and you know that you are in a double layered simulacrum. What special fascinating effect will this have?

One thing sounds even more intriguing. In the world of museums and cultural institutions the exchange of exhibitions or collections is common practice. Thus National Museums of the United Arabs Emirates (UAE) could normally develop a collaboration policy with these prestigious museums. Is there a need to build copies of all museums? Where is the prestige? In the fact of owning copies or in the ability to truly attract the entire world? What is the real point to making copies? To develop a truly artistic dynamic or to fill the region with artworks? All this has more to do with the art market than with cultural and artistic concern.

Paul Cézanne’s “The Card Players” and Mark Rothko’s “White Center” can no longer be seen in the most prestigious galleries of New York, London and Paris. They are henceforth hosted in Qatar. The first was bought for the modicum sum of 72,840,000 USD; the other appears to have been sold for 250 million USD. Rothko’s work was seen in western galleries for the last time in 1998 and 1999 when it travelled from the National Gallery in Washington, to the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York before it arrived at the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris. The last journey was made more recently to the East; from now on it is to be seen in the galleries of Doha, the capital of Qatar, or in some Qatari private collection.

Not only works of art are emigrating to the Persian Gulf, so are the major actors in the world’s art scene and market. The biggest companies are delocalizing. The Fine Art Fund Group from London is operating in the region via a partnership with NBD, the Emirati bank based in Dubai. Others like JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank have also established art funds in the region. Everybody has, or wants to have his Middle Eastern Branch in the Dubai International Financial Center or in one of the towers of Kuwait, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh or Jeddah. Don’t be surprised then if you see high-profile artists such as Japanese pop artist Takashi Murakami or the French sculptor Louise Bourgeois exhibiting in the museums of these cities. With its 11 billion and still rising value, the Middle Eastern art market is becoming the center of the world’s transactions of art, according to Sarah Hamdan, journalist for the New York Times.

What is true for art also applies to many other cultural domains. It is the same when it comes to cinema for example. Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha all have their own international film festival which are constantly becoming larger. They are able to screen the most recent films and to invite the biggest stars. Winning a prize at one of these festivals is a major argument for any filmmaker to take part. Prizes range from 20,000 for best actor/actress to 100,000 USD for best film. Nowhere else in the world will you find this, not even at the most prestigious festivals such as those of Cannes, Berlin or Venice. Only in this part of the world is it permitted to believe that the 1001 nights is not merely a fairytale. This is how these young festivals practically stole the leading roles of prestigious older ones in the so-called Arab world, such as those of Carthage (Tunisia) and Cairo (Egypt).

´´Winning a prize at one of these festivals is a major argument for any filmmaker to take part. Prizes range from 20,000 for best actor/actress to 100,000 USD for best film. Nowhere else in the world will you find this, not even at the most prestigious festivals such as those of Cannes, Berlin or Venice.´

It sounds as if the Gulf attraction of the art world is, in some sense or another, a Faustian invitation. You enter these new cities and you accept you are in a world of fake and illusion. They are all like the Las Vegas of the Middle East. You go around in any capital of the small kingdoms of the Gulf: Kuwait, Bahrain, Emirates, and you will feel as if you are in the attractive neighborhoods or even in one of the casinos of American cities. In only a few decades hundreds of skyscrapers where literally built on the sand. Architecture and styles come from all kinds of fantasy; you are in the world of superlatives. Hence it is not surprising to know that the tallest building in the world is not in New York, Paris or London. The tallest building in the world is no longer the Freedom Tower in New York City, but Burj Dubai in the UAE. You can’t help feeling that it is too easy and that it is more like toy cities being built in empty spaces thanks to a huge effort of engineering and human intelligence. But the main reason it takes your breath away is the smell and the color of money. It is as if all these buildings were made of banknotes and coins.

The Italian writer made a statement that undisputedly applies in this case: the world of fake, whenever it comes to art, is built on the basis of a “sales pitch”. What makes the value of a work of art increase is that it is bought by one wealthy person from another wealthy person. This doesn’t mean that these buyers and sellers necessarily know the artistic value of what they are doing. They are clients of international agencies specialized in these kinds of transactions. The auction houses, such as Christie’s Middle East branch of the famous London based company, regulate the circulation of the collections and control the entire market. The question then is who is using who? Is it the rich emirs who are using these companies to enter the world of the art business or are the others using the money of the richest Gulf families to enhance the value of the works of art and reintroduce them to the market?

On a more global level, it is also a matter of transaction between riches. The whole philosophy of building is based on the most savage western capitalism. The biggest building projects in our time and all over the world are symbolically associated with commercial prosperity. Every flourishing city has to have its own World Trade Center(s). Out of the tallest buildings in the world, most are in the Gulf: Alhamra Firdaous Tower (Kuwait City), Etihad Towers (Abu Dhabi), Burj Khalifa (Dubai), Infinity Tower (Dubai), The Kingdom Tower (Jeddah). They are competing with the big world trade centers such as those of Shanghai and Singapore. Trade and tower construction always go together. Wherever and whenever there is money, there is a desire to be the biggest. In any epoch, man tried to be bigger than his neighbor. Every Pharaoh wanted a taller Pyramid. In our time we also have our pharaohs. If you look at the cities in the Gulf region you will see that they are also competing among themselves, and all of them are trying to copy the American skyscrapers: the Freedom Tower or the Empire State building. In the end the capitals of all these kingdoms and emirates look like districts in a metropolis.

There is indeed something related to excessiveness in this copying phenomenon: towers and the desert don’t suit each other. From the perspective of town planning, skyscrapers are associated with big megalopolis with millions of inhabitants. But all these countries have small populations: Qatar for example has no more than 300,000 nationals and Dubai barely has one million inhabitants. What legitimates the construction of such frivolities and whether they respond to a real need, depends on who is building them. Most of the time, if not always, the architects come from the western world. Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill Architecture, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill supervised the most important projects. The copy of the Louvre has been designed by French architect Jean Novel, the one of the Guggenheim by Canadian architect Franck Gerry.

Cultural projects are also directed by non locals, most of the time. Jean-Paul Engle left the prestigious auction house Christie’s (London) for a more profitable position as director of public art programs at the Qatar Museum Authority (Doha). The director of the Abu Dhabi Film Festival is the American Peter Scarlet and the first director of the Dubai International Film Festival was the British Simon Field, former director of the International Film Festival Rotterdam. The Doha Tribeca Film Festival seems to be a partnership between the Doha Film Institute and the New York based Tribeca Enterprise. Both the festival and the institute are led by American journalist Amanda Palmer.

All these projects and the way they are made give the idea of a turnkey or a “subcontract” culture. Whether it is about architectural plans or other cultural projects, it is always a question of a fake copy of fakeness. To say it in short, it is as if you have an empty plot of land which you want to fill. You fill it with buildings for trade and business and when you have enough gold – read: black Gold- you can buy more luxurious products like works of art and art projects. But then, if things are not really assimilated, adapted, transformed, you have a kind of hysteric caricature of culture and modernity. In that game, money is the key tool to overpass unfortunate countries which could in the past develop important and historical tradition in culture: Egypt, the Maghreb, and Syria. When you are able to recruit the best professionals and the most experienced programmers it is easy to move the centre of the globe or at least to pretend to.

What makes these futurist oases, as if from a science-fiction movie, emerge in the middle of nowhere? This area was, until the sixties, nothing more than a desert with Bedouins and fishermen. Some of them were happier because they used to fish pearls. Since the discovery of oil, towers started to grow like palm trees but in metal and reinforced concrete. In a few decades these small kingdoms emerged like new forces in the region, right on the crossroads of old civilizations like the Mesopotamian, the Persian, the Phoenician and the Roman in the North and the Yemenite in the South. Nowadays they represent a huge power in the region. They inherited an historical religious power (Mecca, the holy city of Islam is in Saudi Arabia). Economically they are also so strong that they are able to impose a political leadership in a region reaching from the Middle East to the Maghreb, from the Persian Gulf to the African coast of the Atlantic Ocean.

Umberto Eco was of course right when he talked about the power of money in the art world in general. But when you look at what is going on in the kingdoms of the Gulf in perspective of the world order, you may think that the cultural policy is not without any connection to some plans. Being themselves organically connected to western economies in general and to the American one in particular, they are the main suppliers of energy, they are among the most important buyers, they are also the politically strategic allies in the region. The leadership that countries like Qatar and Saudi Arabia hold, can be seen concretely and clearly in the manipulation of the current Arab uprisings that they try to stifle. And this is only the tip of the iceberg, when you consider that their influence has been going on for decades already.

In this game, culture is secondarily important. One thing is clear when you look at all this: there is no real intention to develop local talents so that something authentic could emerge from this region. What matters is commerce, and if culture sells, then why not? This is possible as long as the pumps are working. But when cars start to use other fuel than oil, when there is no monopoly like that of traditional energy sources, when the world’s oil reserves dry up… no one will have the monopoly of the sun anymore, nor the wind.

Sarah Hamdan, “An Emirate Filling Up With Artwork”, in the New York Times of 29 February 2012.

Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyperreality, San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986.

Naast tandarts en schrijver is Al Aswani ook politiek actief. Zo is hij medeoprichter van de politieke beweging Kefaya (Genoeg). Die beweging ontstond als gevolg van de Tweede Intifada eind 2000 en werd in 2003 de ruggengraat van het verzet tegen de oorlog in Irak. In 2004 kreeg ze de naam Kefaya en richtte zich op de pogingen van de Egyptische regering om de zoon van Moebarak als diens opvolger naar voren te schuiven. Nadat Moebarak in 2005 voor een vijfde ambtstermijn werd verkozen, verloor de beweging aan kracht. Ze kreeg onder andere het verwijt een te smalle basis te hebben – het intellectuele milieu in Caïro – en zich te veel te concentreren op de figuur van Moebarak zonder met hervormingsvoorstellen te komen. Niettemin was het ontstaan van Kefaya een belangrijk moment in de opbouw van het protest tegen Moebarak. Een van de stichters, Hany Anan, verklaarde: ‘We are showing Egyptians that we can challenge the ruler, we can tell him we don’t want you, that’s enough, you go, and we can do this in public and still go back to our homes, maybe with some wounds or some bruises, but we still go home.’

In 2010 verzamelde  Alaa Al Aswani een aantal politieke commentaren die hij in de Egyptische krant Shorouk publiceerde. Hij  schreef ze tussen 2008 en 2010, dus in de periode die voorafging aan de Arabische Lente. Voor velen kwamen die opstanden als een donderslag bij heldere hemel; zelfs veel kenners van de Arabische wereld waren totaal verrast door de gebeurtenissen in Tunesië  en onmiddellijk daarna in Egypte: twee dictators die in enkele weken tijd van het politieke toneel verdwenen na massaal protest van de straat. Wie de commentaren van Al Aswani leest, beseft echter dat er in Egypte al jarenlang iets broeide.

Niet toevallig eindigt Al Aswani ieder krantenstuk met dezelfde zinsnede die een soort van rijm wordt: ‘Democratie is de oplossing’. In tegenstelling tot vele anderen geloofde Al Aswani wél in de mogelijkheid van een opstand tegen het regime: ’Ik was er zeker van dat de revolutie aanstaande was. Veel van mijn Egyptische en buitenlandse vrienden waren dat niet met me eens  en beschuldigden me van misplaatst optimisme en een onrealistische vorm van romantiek. Geen moment verloor ik mijn vertrouwen in het volk, hoewel het niet gestaafd werd door enig bewijs,’ schrijft Al Aswani in zijn inleiding. Al Aswani begreep ook dat de opstand niet geweldloos zou zijn: ’Rechten worden niet verleend maar veroverd.” schrijft hij met veel wijsheid en inzicht in het wezen van de politieke strijd, want ‘(w)at Egyptenaren vragen is niet een beperkte wijziging in de politiek maar een allesomvattende, radicale hervorming.’

Al Aswani’s vertrouwen in het Egyptische volk blijkt uit iedere pagina en wordt soms beeldend uitgedrukt: ‘Egyptenaren zijn als kamelen: ze kunnen slaag, vernedering en uitputting een lange tijd verdragen maar als zij dan in opstand komen doen ze dat zo plotseling en met zo’n kracht, dat je die gewoon niet kunt bedwingen.’ Het Egyptische volk is onder de pen van Al Aswani natuurlijk ook een idealistische notie: het is meer de uitdrukking van zijn verlangen naar een volk dan de beschrijving van een concreet bestaand volk. Zo heeft Al Aswani het eveneens regelmatig over de ‘ware islam’. Ook die islam is  meer het voorwerp van een verlangen dan van een beschrijving. Soms incarneert dat ideaalbeeld zich in een historisch moment, zoals voorjaar van 2011 op het Tahrirplein: ‘De mensen die ik op Tahrir zag waren nieuwe Egyptenaren, die niets te maken hadden met de Egyptenaren waar ik normaal gesproken iedere dag mee te maken heb. (…) Op Tahrir zag ik het hele Egyptische volk vertegenwoordigd: Egyptenaren van alle leeftijden en achtergronden, kopten en moslims, jongeren en ouderen, kinderen, vrouwen in Nikab en vrouwen zonder, rijken en armen. (…)  Een sfeer van volledige tolerantie zorgde ervoor dat de demonstranten iedereen die anders was accepteerden en respecteerden.

We mochten dan verschillende opvattingen en ideologieën hebben, het belangrijkste was dat we allen hetzelfde doel hadden: de dictator  ten val brengen  en vrijheid voor Egypte verkrijgen.’ Al Aswani vergelijkt de gebeurtenissen op en de organisatie van het Tahrirplein met de Parijse Commune (1871). Na twee maanden werd die volksopstand echter bloedig onderdrukt. Het Egyptische volk slaagde er weliswaar in om de dictator te verdrijven, maar of daarmee de revolutie is voltooid is nog maar de vraag. Egypte staat inmiddels helaas ver van de eensgezindheid die enkele mythische dagen lang op het Tahrirplein heeft geheerst.

In zijn commentaren uit 2008-2010 schetst Al Aswani Egypte als een land in een oceaandiepe  politieke, sociale, economische, religieuze en culturele crisis. De kwestie van de erfopvolging (waarbij de zoon van Moebarak vooruit werd geschoven als de volgende president), het machtsmonopolie van de familie Moebarak, de wijdverspreide corruptie, het repressieve politieapparaat, de werkloosheid, de enorme armoede, het verval van de gezondheidszorg en het onderwijs, de radicalisering van de islam, de verzuring van het openbare leven: het is geen fraai beeld dat Al Aswani van zijn land schetst. De Arabische titel van zijn bundel commentaren luidt niet toevallig: Waarom komen Egyptenaren niet opstand?

Anno 2010 onderscheidt Al Aswani een drietal mogelijke verklaringen waarom de Egyptenaren niet tegen het hun aangedane leed reageren. Een eerste verklaring is dat de aanhoudende onderdrukking de Egyptenaren opgezadeld heeft met een erfenis van lafheid en onderworpenheid. Een tweede verklaring is dat de revolutie wel mogelijk is, maar wordt tegengehouden door talrijke obstakels: de onderdrukking, de gebrekkige organisatie van de massa’s, de concentratie op het eigen materiële overleven. Veel Egyptenaren gaven de voorkeur aan vluchten: ze gingen naar de oliestaten om daar te werken of trokken zich terug in de religieuze idealisering van de beginperiode van de islam: ‘Met behulp van Saoedisch oliegeld en de zegen van het Egyptische regime werd er een agressieve promotiecampagne gevoerd voor de wahabitische interpretatie van de islam, die moslims verplicht hun heerser te gehoorzamen, hoe onrechtvaardig of corrupt hij ook is.’ Maar voor Al Aswani ligt de werkelijke verklaring voor het uitblijven van de revolutie in de aard van de Egyptenaren zelf. Ze zouden minder geneigd zijn om geweld te gebruiken en daardoor meer bereid zijn om compromissen te sluiten.

Het hierboven aangehaalde beeld van de Egyptenaren als kamelen spreekt voor zich. Daarmee verklaart Al Aswani echter eigenlijk niets. Moeten we ervan uitgaan dat er zoiets bestaat als de eigen aard van een volk die niet door historische gebeurtenissen en historische ervaringen is getekend? De sociale en economische verklaringen zijn overtuigender dan een verwijzing naar de eigen aard. Het feit dat Egypte niet alleen staat in zijn revolutionair verlangen versterkt dit.

De politieke,  economische en culturele analyse die Al Aswani maakt van Egypte gaat op voor veel Arabische landen, waarin de combinatie van corruptie, politieke hypocrisie, onderdrukking, religieus extremisme, werkloosheid en armoede tot een explosieve revolutionaire cocktail heeft geleid. Het valt trouwens op dat Al Aswani in zijn inleiding niet verwijst naar de opstand in Tunesië, die voor de revolte in Egypte ongetwijfeld als een model moet hebben gefunctioneerd. De verwijzing naar de aard van het Egyptische volk is in deze context een wat vreemde gedachtenkronkel van Al Aswani, precies omdat hij elders in zijn commentaren steeds de nadruk legt op de impact van de erbarmelijke politieke, economische en sociale context op de moraal van de Egyptenaren!

Al Aswani schrijft helder, coherent en direct. Meer dan eens structureert hij zijn commentaren door zijn argumenten te nummeren: ten eerste, ten tweede, ten derde, et cetera. Hij kent de Egyptische maatschappelijke situatie zeer goed. Zijn status als bekend en gerespecteerd schrijver geeft hem toegang tot de allerhoogste kringen en zijn beroep als tandarts brengt hem dan weer in contact met de gewone Egyptenaar. Van die beide ervaringen maakt hij dankbaar gebruik om de samenleving door te lichten. Hij schrikt er daarenboven niet voor terug om ministers bij naam te beschuldigen en te bekritiseren.

De gebundelde commentaren zijn in drie hoofdstukken verdeeld. In het eerste hoofdstuk concentreert Al Aswani zich op de figuur van Moebarak en op de kwestie van zijn opvolging. In het tweede hoofdstuk schrijft Al Aswani over het volk en over sociale rechtvaardigheid. Hier worden thema’s als de positie van de vrouw, het fundamentalisme en de plek van de Kopten aan bod. In het derde hoofdstuk gaat Al Aswani in op de vrijheid van meningsuiting en de onderdrukking door de staat. Aan de hand van die drie invalshoeken schildert Al Aswani, zoals gezegd, een somber beeld van de eigentijdse Egyptische samenleving. Je kan zeggen dat de kwestie van de opvolging van Moebarak intussen is geregeld. Dat klopt: Egypte moet op dit ogenblik geen schrik meer hebben van een mogelijke presidentiële erfopvolging of van een machtsmonopolie van de familie Moebarak. Maar de grote uitdagingen voor het land liggen wellicht in een noodzakelijke mentaliteitsverandering (rond bijvoorbeeld de omgang met vrouwen of de interpretatie van de islam).

Al Aswani staat een humanisme voor, maar beseft ook dat een loutere oproep tot een ethisch réveil niet helpt zonder de noodzakelijke politieke hervormingen: ‘We kunnen mensen niet vragen hun plichten te vervullen terwijl ze niet eens de meest elementaire rechten genieten. We kunnen mensen niet verantwoordelijk houden als we hun niet een minimum aan rechten verlenen.’

Al Aswani schreef deze politieke commentaren in de twee jaar die aan de Arabische Lente voorafgingen. Als men ze leest vanuit de huidige situatie vallen enkele meningen van Al Aswani bijzonder op. In veel stukken spreekt Al Aswani zijn lof uit over de morele integriteit, de intellectuele capaciteiten en de leiderskwaliteiten van Mohamed El Baradei. Hij schrijft hem ook een grote vertrouwdheid met het Egyptische volk toe. Op zijn beurt zou het volk, volgens Al Aswani, veel vertrouwen hebben in El Baradei. In de periode 2008-2010 is El Baradei voor Al Aswani dus de meest geschikte opvolger van Moebarak, maar El Baradei is intussen volledig van het politieke toneel verdwenen en zal niet deelnemen aan de toekomstige presidentsverkiezingen, niet in de laatste plaats omdat hij geen basis had onder het volk.

Na de val van de dictator was er slechts één politieke groep goed georganiseerd: de Moslimbroeders, en zij kwamen als grote overwinnaars uit de bus. Tijdens de verkiezingen manifesteerde zich daarnaast een tweede belangrijke religieuze groepering: de extremistische salafisten. De liberale partijen hinken op dit ogenblik ver achterop in het Egyptische politieke landschap. Het is daarom opvallend dat Al Aswani in zijn commentaren uit 2008-2010 de politieke rol van de Moslimbroeders lijkt te minimaliseren. In november 2009 schrijft hij: ‘Wat de Moslimbroederschap betreft, kan gesteld worden dat het Egyptische regime diens rol en invloed sterk overdreven heeft. Het heeft de Broederschap neergezet als boeman om de westerse landen zo veel angst aan te jagen dat ze meegingen in de dictatuur en de opvolgingskwestie. De Moslimbroederschap is, als het gaat om aantallen en invloed, niet in staat een meerderheid te verwerven in wat voor vrije verkiezingen dan ook maar, war mensen opkomen om te stemmen.’ Hij voegt hier verder nog aan toe: ‘Democratische hervormingen zijn voldoende om religieus extremisme te doen verdwijnen.’ Is Al Aswani hier veel te naief en te optimistisch? Komen in zijn opvatting over de populariteit van El Baradei en van de Moslimbroeders zijn dromen de plaats in van de werkelijkheid? Het is wachten op een volgende bundeling van commentaren om te zien hoe Al Aswani zijn positie bijstelt.

Alaa Al Aswani, Over Egypte. Reflecties op het ontstaan van de revolutie, De Geus, 2011, ISBN 978 90 445 1986 0

François Hollande won the presidential elections with almost 52 percent of the votes. Since the François Mitterand years, he will be the first socialist president of the Republic. In his campaign he promised “change” to French voters. However I argue that rather than change, it is the tacit desire for going back to normal that determined the tone of the elections.

The day after the elections, the French newspaper Liberation published on its cover page Hollande’s picture and the caption that reads “Normal!” with an exclamation mark.  What does the normal stand for? Does it mean that it was expected that he won the elections as the polls had predicted?  Or does it mean that Hollande represents ordinary people and French ways, against the ostentatious liberal figure of Sarkozy?

The vote for Hollande translated in the first place the desire to get rid of Sarkozy.  His aggressive style as a president, personalization of power, volatility in his decisions made him unpopular. In contrast with the super presidency of Sarkozy that irritated many French citizens, Hollande presented himself as a “normal President” meaning serious, consensual (“rassembleur” was his trademark in French) and a reliable statesman in conformity with the Republican State traditions. Many explained his success in terms of his capacity to follow in the footsteps of the legendary heritage of François Mitterand who embodied state power almost like a monarch. In this respect, we can interpret the “normal” as going back to Republican State traditions represented by the left.

During the pre-election television debate, Sarkozy attacked Hollande and implied that the aspiration for “normalcy” stood for mediocrity. To belittle his rival he reminded us that Mitterand was not an ordinary politician and that given the present context of economic crisis France needed more than ever an exceptional president, like himself, to lead the country. The fact is he already had his chance in the 2007 elections, coming to power with the same promise of changing, modernizing and liberalizing the French economy and its institutions. But the expected economic reforms did not succeed in consolidating French leadership in Europe. France lagged behind Germany in terms of economic growth, productivity, competitiveness and unemployment rates. During the campaign debates, Germany was the regular reference point as the successful economic model. On the other hand, the Socialist Party introduced the Keynesian model of economic growth as an alternative to the policies of austerity; proposing an economic programme that expands the state and public spending while creating employment and increasing the rate of income tax.

In denial?

In general, observers agree that little was said by anyone at all about the country’s dire economic straits.  French society does not seem to be prepared to acknowledge the gravity of the economic situation and wants to hold onto their rights and privileges as guaranteed by the social welfare state.  Before the elections, the British weekly The Economist, spoke of France as “a country in denial” and sarcastically described the elections “as the most frivolous campaign” devoid of any serious engagement with the economic situation. So, we can interpret the vote for Hollande, not so much as a radical desire of change and implementation of reform, as a desire to go back to the pre-crisis period, hoping that this does not prove to be an illusion. The socialists, however, have opened up a new window for approaching the economy in an alternative way. They have weakened a dominant ideology that presented neo-liberal politics as an unquestionable article of faith, the only right way, as “normal”.

The fact that the French are not fully facing up to the economic crisis does not mean that they are not anxious about their future. The rising popularity of the far right party illustrates very well the fertile ground for nationalist feelings and discourses of xenophobia. The economic crises facilitate the scapegoating politics targeting immigrants and Muslims, which singles them out as responsible for taking up jobs, abusing the welfare state, and invading French society with their religious visibility and backward cultural norms.  With this anti-European, nationalist, and anti-immigrant Islamophobic politics, the female face of the far-right Party, Marine Le Pen achieved almost 20 percent of the votes and has become a key figure in the political arena.  She has consolidated her leadership of her father’s party, “Le Front National” but furthermore emerged as the potential leader of the right. Indeed, Marine Le Pen is the second winner of this campaign; she has succeeded in setting her political agenda and imposing it. Sarkozy, in order to attract the far right constituency, had no compunction in adopting her security discourse. But in doing so, he not only surrendered himself to the political agenda of the rival, but also gave legitimacy to radical right politics.

The normalization of far right politics and racisme d’en haut

The “normalization” of far right politics is the key to understanding the changes in the European political panorama and public life. For the last ten years, we have been witnessing a phenomenon not limited to France but shared throughout Europe, the proliferation of public figures and voices that signal the end of multiculturalism, criticize politically correct norms of public speech, and search incessantly for ways to rid themselves of taboos against racism.

A succession of public controversies around Islam – namely the headscarf of young students in the public schools, total veiling, the burkha in the streets, helal meat, street prayer – have preoccupied the public scene in most European countries. These debates end up by erasing the well established distinctions between right and left, and creating a consensus on the need to condemn and prohibit such religious and cultural practices. The values of secularism and feminism have been doggedly advanced as superior and distinctive values over and against those of Muslims living in Europe. The politics of tolerance and pluralism have been condemned not only by right wing politicians, but also by intellectuals from the left and secular backgrounds. Philosopher Jacques Ranciere has drawn attention to the changing forms of racism, not that racism supposed to be rooted among the underprivileged lower classes, but the one initiated and promoted from above, by state power boosted by the intellectuals. He named such racism “racisme d’en haut”.  More recently, the day before the Presidential elections, Alain Badiou published an article on “le racisme des intellectuels” in the newspaper Le Monde (5 may 2012), addressing his  criticism to the intellectuals who reinvented the “Islamic threat” and defended the superiority of the western civilization -  thereby contributing to the proliferation of anxious discourses on immigration, cultural racism and Islamophobia in France. He directly blames those intellectuals who facilitated this mental development aiding the ascension of fascism to power.

The rising popularity of these new faces of the right surfs over the dynamics of “normalizing” widely-shared anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic discourse. Secular-left and conservative-right join hands in making anti-Islamic and anti-immigrant politics appear quite “natural”. As many say, “we should not diabolize the Front National”, they are as legitimate as any political formation. One hears among the voters of Marine Le Pen that there is no shame in voting for a person who represents the feelings and anxieties of the people, and who is ‘one of us’.  Besides the new faces of the populist right are not like the first generation of patriarchal anti-Semitic mouthpieces; they speak against homophobia, they declare themselves feminist and they defend secularism. And they are not marginal. The more they turn the political agenda against Islam, the more they become central players in the system.

A normal future

Economic recession, anti-Islamic discourses and nationalist feelings are reshaping the public sphere in Europe. In such a context, what does Hollande’s promise of being a normal president signify? There are several leitmotifs around ‘the normal’ that might be competing with each other. Going back to normal republican traditions of the left implies the defense of secularism, “la laicite”, the community of the nation and egalitarian values among its citizens. But there is another move to the “normal”; it is the normalization of far right ideas, the way anti-migrant, anti-islam discourses appear natural and consensual.

How will the socialist party defend Republicanism, the politics of “laicite”, and women’s rights without converging with the new popular right?  Anti-Islamic politics of the far right and economic recession are the two most important threats to European democracies. Can socialism be an alternative to these destructive waves? A French socialist victory bears a historical importance way beyond its national borders, for Europe in general.

Will going back to normal imply developing alternatives to economic crises, acknowledging a multicultural France (defending “France metisse” as only the leftist communist candidate Jean-Luc Melanchon managed to do), expanding democratic pluralism and embracing the European ideal? This may be way too optimistic. But at least the victory of Hollande gives us hope that far right ideas and politics can be avoided as aberrations. And that requires a new awareness on the part of European intellectuals.

About the author
Nilüfer Göle is professor of sociology at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris and the director of Europublicislam: Islam in the Making of a European Public Sphere, a research project funded by ERC Advanced Grant. She is the author of Islam in Europe: The Lure of Fundamentalism and the Allure of Cosmopolitanism (Marcus Weiner, Princeton, 2010)

thanks to opendemocracy.net

Besides, these are already those French “stragglers” who were accused of having voted “No” in the referendum on the draft European Constitution– One opposes them to the educated, urban modern middle classes who are the social salt of our well-tempered democracy.

Let’s say that this France “from below” {Joe Publique Francais?–GP} is in these circumstances the donkey in the fable, the scabby and mangy “populist” from which comes all the Le Pen evil. That said, this political-media resentment against “populism” is strange. Could democratic power, of which we are so proud, be allergic to one’s worries about the people? Democratic power being the opinion of these very people, and also more. When asked “are policy makers concerned about what people like you think?” the entirely negative response “not at all” increased from 15% of the total in 1978 to 42% in 2010! As for the total positive responses (“Very much” or “somewhat”), it declined from 35% to 17% (for this and other interesting statistical indications, refer to the special issue of La Pensée, “Le peuple, la crise, et la politique” by Guy Michelat and Michel Simon). That the relationship between the people and the state is not a trustworthy one is the least we can say.

Must we conclude that our state doesn’t have the people it deserves, and that the somber Le Pen vote certifies this democratic insufficiency? To strengthen democracy would require the government to elect another people, as Brecht ironically proposed…

My thesis is rather that two other culprits should be highlighted: the successive leaders of state power, both the left and right, and a significant body of intellectuals.

Ultimately, it is not the poor of our provinces who have decided to limit as much as possible the basic right of workers in this country, whatever their nationality of origin, living here with their wives and children. It is a socialist minister, and then all those of the right who have rushed into the breach. This is not an undereducated rustic who proclaimed in 1983 that the Renault strikers – in fact mostly Algerian or Moroccan – were “immigrant workers (…) agitated by religious and political groups which are based on criteria that have little to do with the French social realities “.

It was a socialist prime minister, of course, to the delight of his “enemies” of the right. Who of us had the good sense to say that Le Pen actually speaks to real problems? An Alsatian militant of the Front Nationale? No, it’s prime minister Francois Mitterrand. This is not the stunted population of the rural interior that created the detention centers that imprison, without any real right, those who are also deprived of the opportunity to acquire legal papers of their presence here.

This is not the frustrated immigrants in the outskirts of our cities  who made the order, heard across the world, to issue French entry visas at the rate of a trickle, all while boosting eviction/deportation quotas that must at all costs be carried out by the police. The succession of restrictive laws that attack freedom and equality of millions of people who live and work here under a pretext of otherness, this is not the work of “populism” unleashed.

At the helm of these legal crimes, we find the state, plain and simple–All successive governments, since Francois Mitterrand, and then relentlessly thereafter. In this area, and these are just two examples, the Socialist Lionel Jospin made known the moment he came to power there was no question of abolishing the xenophobic laws of Charles Pasqua; the socialist Francois Hollande indicated that the regularization of the undocumented would not be decided under his presidency moreso than under that of Nicolas Sarkozy. Continuity in this direction is clear. It is this stubborn encouragement of the state that shapes the ugly racialist opinion and reaction, and not vice versa.

I also don’t believe it to be unknown that Nicolas Sarkozy and his gang were constantly on the forefront of cultural racism, raising high the banner of “superiority” of our dear Western civilization and voting in an endless succession of discriminatory laws whose wickedness appalls us.

But finally, we fail to find a left that rises up in opposition with the strength demanded by such determined reactionaries. The left even often stated that it “understood” this demand for “security”, and voted without emotion for such flagrantly paranoid decisions as those aimed at expelling from public space any particular woman because she covers her hair or her body.

The left’s candidates announce everywhere they are leading a ruthless fight, not so much against the corruption of the capitalists and the dictatorially ascetic budgets as against undocumented workers and recidivist juveniles, especially if they are blacks or Arabs. In this area, both the right and left have trampled every principle. It was and is, for those who are deprived of papers, not a State of law, but the state of exception, the state of non-law. They are the ones who are insecure, and not wealthy nationals. If we were, which God forbid, be resigned to deport people, it would be better that we choose our rulers rather than the very respectable Moroccan or Malian workers.

And behind all this, for a long time, for over twenty years, who do we find? Who are the glorious inventors of the “Islamic menace”, which according to them is in the process of disintegrating Western society and our beautiful France? Who but the intellectuals engaged in their infamous task of fiery editorials, twisted books, and rigged “sociological surveys”? Is this a group of retired provincials and workers in de-industrialized towns who patiently erected the whole affair of the “clash of civilizations”, the defense of “republican pact”, the threats to our beautiful “secularism”, the “feminism” outraged by the daily lives of Arab women?

Isn’t it unfortunate that only the leaders of the far right (who only pull the chestnuts from the fire) are interrogated– without ever exposing more often the overwhelming responsibility of those on the so-called “left”, and more often the teachers of “philosophy ” rather than the supermarket cashiers– why not those who passionately argued that the Arabs and blacks, especially young people, are corrupting our educational system, perverting our suburbs, offending our freedoms and insulting our women? Or that there were “too many” in our football teams? Exactly as one use to speak of Jews and “{insert racial slur here}‘s”– that because of them eternal France was threatened with death.

There have been, of course, the emergence of fascist splinter groups labeling themselves as Islamic. But there are just as well fascist movements labeling themselves in defense of the West and Christ the King. This fact does not prevent any Islamophobic intellectual from incessantly praising our superior “Western” identity and to arrive at lodging our admirable “Christian roots” in the worship of secularism–And Marine Le Pen (one of the most fierce practitioners of this religion) has finally revealed the kind of political kindling that spreads its flames.

In truth, it is the intellectuals who invented the anti-working-class {antipopular} violence, particularly directed against the inner city youth, which is the real secret of Islamophobia. And it is governments, unable to build a civil society of peace and justice, who delivered the foreigners, and the first Arab workers and their families, as fodder for disoriented and fearful electorate. As always, the idea–no matter how criminal–precedes power, which in turn shapes the opinion that it needs. The intellectual–no matter how appalling–precedes the minister, who constructs her followers.

Books–no matter how disposable–arrive before propaganda, which misleads instead of instructs. And thirty years of patient effort in writing, invective and clueless electoral competition find their dismal reward in tired minds as in the voting herd.

Shame on these successive governments, who all competed on related themes of security and the “immigrant problem”, so as to cloud the fact that they primarily served the interests of the economic oligarchy! Shame on the neo-racialist and crudely nationalist intellectuals, who patiently covered over the void left inside the people by the temporary eclipse of the communist hypothesis with a layer of nonsense about the Islamic menace and the ruin of our “values” !

link to original at lemonde.fr

”Is het belangrijk voor migranten in Europa, en vooral migranten intellectuelen, om zich te buigen over de Tweede Wereldoorlog en de Holocaust?”

Immers, zelfs onze Mark Rutte – historicus – heeft onlangs gezegd dat het verleden, hoewel belangrijk uiteraard, weinig aantrekkelijk is voor de nieuwe generatie Europeanen. Misschien verklaart dit waarom Rutte niet wist wat de Hollandsche Schouwburg is. Als we vandaag de dag het bestaan van de EU willen rechtvaardigen, dan het liefst als een ingewikkelde constructie die ons grotere economische welvaart garandeert. Maar laten we deze kijk even laten voor wat het is en teruggaan naar de vraag van Huyssen. Is het belangrijk voor migranten in Europa, en vooral migranten intellectuelen, om zich te buigen over de Tweede Wereldoorlog en de Holocaust?

Ook al lijkt het antwoord intuïtief in de richting van een bevestiging te gaan, toch merk ik in mijn eigen omgeving op dat migranten – het geldt vaak niet minder voor autochtonen – weinig echte interesse hebben in de Holocaust. Landen zoals Iran en Marokko zijn historisch wel betrokken geraakt met de Tweede Wereldoorlog en met de Holocaust, maar Iraniërs en Marokkanen laten meestal geen bijzondere interesse blijken voor het onderwerp. Ze zullen misschien wel denken, laten we ons voorstellen onbewust: “Mijn familie heeft niet geleden in die tijd. Mijn vrienden hebben er niet mee te maken gemaakt. Het is iets dat in Europa is gebeurd en lang geleden ook nog.”

Het mag niet verbazen dat heel veel mensen zich waarschijnlijk zo voelen, als ze überhaupt over de kwestie na zouden denken. Er lijkt een kloof te bestaan die moet worden overwonnen, die niet kan worden onderschat. Het gaat vaak niet om het herinneren van vrienden of familie. Het gaat om het herinneren van anderen, vreemden. Is dat zinvol? Is het zinvol om niet alleen geografisch, maar ook historisch te migreren, naar het verleden van al die vreemden?

We zouden politieke redenen kunnen geven om deze “migratie in de tijd” te willen. Als het gaat om Iraanse migranten, dan lijkt het politieke doel vrij duidelijk: meer begrip voor de geschiedenis van Joden, vooral vanwege het hedendaagse conflict met Israël, zodat een eerlijkere interpretatie van de geuite emoties vandaag mogelijk wordt. Het doel is dan om Iraniërs bewuster te maken voor wat uitspraken van politici kunnen aanrichten. Niet dat ze zich daar al niet van bewust zijn, maar meer historische kennis zou het begrip waar het om gaat kunnen verdiepen.

Zo’n soort argument kan ook worden gegeven voor moslims in het algemeen in Nederland. Begrip voor de huidige, kleine Joodse bevolking in Nederland is belangrijk. Maar de moslims hier zijn een gediscrimineerde minderheid en doorgaans zeer kritisch over het beleid van Israël. Deze zaken bemoeilijken het doel van een migratie naar het verleden van vreemden, ten onrechte. Gediscrimineerd worden is geen goede reden om zich niet te interesseren in het verleden. Het toont slechts de eigen kleinheid aan. Het politiek conflict in Palestina, hoe we daar ook over denken, kan gescheiden worden van de verhalen van de vreemdelingen van wie het lot er toe doet. Een migranten intellectueel in Nederland kan zich niet veroorloven geen verstand te hebben van deze verhalen.

Behalve het politieke argument is er een maatschappelijke reden die gegeven kan worden voor een migratie in de tijd. Als migranten zich identificeren met de geschiedenis van Nederland en Europa, dan is dat goed voor de ontwikkeling van Nederlands en Europees burgerschap. Integratie. Het belang van de intellectuele tijdreis ligt dan niet in de eerste plaats bij de verhalen van toen, maar bij de noodzaak van vandaag om erbij te horen, om zich thuis te kunnen voelen. Herinneren als een middel om een lid te worden van een groep. Het gaat dan om “membership entitlement” en niet per se om “enlightenment relevance”, een onderscheid dat we even lenen van Amartya Sen. Er is een noodzakelijke spanning tussen het belang van verlichting en het belang van zich kunnen identificeren met een gemeenschap. Beide zijn belangrijk, maar de laatste is dat in grotere mate.

””In de eerste plaats is de onmogelijke taak van migratie in de tijd, naar het verleden van vreemden, belangrijk vanwege die particuliere verhalen en niets anders.”

Migranten zouden zich niet bezig moeten houden met de Holocaust zodat ze zich op een begripvollere manier kunnen mengen met politieke kwesties of zodat ze aan zichzelf en de natie kunnen tonen dat ze goede, geïntegreerde, burgers zijn. In de eerste plaats is de onmogelijke taak van migratie in de tijd, naar het verleden van vreemden, belangrijk vanwege die particuliere verhalen en niets anders. Deze taak heeft tegelijkertijd een algemene “enlightenment relevance”. Het verandert het karakter van de migranten intellectueel. Maar waar te beginnen? Ik zal hieronder drie mogelijke en belangrijke bronnen aanraden.

Een strip. Het is natuurlijk niet eenvoudig om zomaar te duiken in de geschiedenis van de Holocaust. Een toegankelijke introductie is de strip MAUS, gemaakt door Art Spiegelman. Het gaat over het leven van Anja en Vladek Spiegelman, Arts ouders, die beide Auschwitz overleven. De Duitsers heeft Spiegelman afgebeeld als katten en de Joden als muizen. Steeds weer herinnert Spiegelman de lezer op een impliciete manier dat het hier gaat om een verschrikkelijke metafoor, die door het racisme is gemaakt en in feite een groot leugen is. Achter de maskers van muizen en katten toont Spiegelman steeds weer mensen, maar zij kunnen zich niet zomaar ontdoen van deze opgelegde metafoor.

De maskers zijn een kunstzinnige manier om de machtsverschillen tussen de mensen te tonen. De strip is zeer gelaagd, zeer indringend en leert over de ervaringen van Arts ouders en over zijn tweede generatie die de oorlog niet mee had gemaakt maar wel de gevolgen moest ondergaan.

 Een film. Vergeet Schindler’s List of La vita e bella. De documentaire Shoah van Claude Lanzmann is beter geschikt voor een serieuze studie van de Holocaust. De film duurt maar liefst negen uur lang en bestaat volledig uit interviews met slachtoffers, denkers en enkele daders of betrokkenen. Ik weet nog goed dat ik de film voor het eerst keek, samen met mijn Joodse filosofiedocent. Het maakte een diepe, blijvende indruk op ons beide. Zoals Voltaire zijn vertrouwen in de natuur verloor na de aardbeving van Lissabon, zo begrijpt de kijker beter waarom de filosoof Adorno vertrouwen verloor in de mens. Er zijn gesprekken in deze film die ik nooit meer kan vergeten.

Maar de film heeft ook een meer praktische functie in de lijn van mijn betoog. Lanzmann leert de kijker namelijk ontzettend veel over de Tweede Wereldoorlog en de Holocaust. Feiten. Details. De documentaire eindigt niet met een kitscherige happy ending zoals in La vita e bella, maar met een trein op weg naar een vernietigingskamp.

Een boek. Ik heb twee zeer toegankelijke bronnen genoemd, een strip en een documentaire. Een boek is geschikt om de inspanning verder te verdiepen. Heel bekend is natuurlijk het boek van Hannah Arendt over het proces van Eichmann. Harry Mulisch heeft een zelfde soort boek geschreven dat makkelijker te lezen is en net zo goed (De zaak 40/61). Maar in de Nederlandse context is vooral het werk van Jacques Presser leerzaam en inspirerend. Presser was een Amsterdamse Jood en een getalenteerd historicus. Zijn bekendste werk heet simpelweg Ondergang met als ondertitel De vervolging en verdelging van het Nederlandse Jodendom 1940-1945 (twee decennia later gepubliceerd in 1965). Wat dit boek voor mij zo bijzonder maakte is de schrijfstijl. Het lukt Presser om op een zeer objectieve manier de feiten heel precies weer te geven en tegelijkertijd de lezer in het hart te raken, maar ook om de objectieve feiten kritisch te interpreteren. Ter illustratie de eerste alinea van de inleiding:

“Dit boek behelst de geschiedenis van een moord. Een moord, tevens massamoord, op nimmer gekende schaal, met voorbedachten rade en in koelen bloede gepleegd. De moordernaars waren Duitsers, de vermoorden Joden, in Nederland ongeveer honderdduizend, nog geen twee percent overigens van het totaal aantal slachtoffers, door deze Duitsers bij hun Endlösung der Judenfrage gemaakt. De hier te lande woonachtige Joden werden in een proces van ontrechting en isolering van vrijwel alles beroofd, weggevoerd en in wetenschappelijk-systematische, technisch welhaast onberispelijke stijl omgebracht. Stadsbewoners en plattelanders, orthodoxen en vrijzinnigen, gezonden en invaliden, ouden en jongen, gezinnen en enkelingen, Nederlanders en vreemdelingen: mannen, vrouwen en kinderen. Zonder overhaasting, weldoordacht, geregistreerd en gereglementeerd. De moordenaars waren niet zelden bruten en ongeletterden, maar dikwijls ook gestudeerden en intellectuelen met een onuitroeibare voorliefde voor literatuur, beeldende kunsten en muziek; velen hunner waren zorgzame huisvaders, geenszins verstoken van Gemüt, vrijwel allen vierden het Kerstfeest en hervatten daarna hun arbeid: de moord op ontelbare mannen, vrouwen en kinderen, weerloze mensen, medemensen.”

Migranten intellectuelen, negeer Rutte, negeer de cultureel-politieke status quo. Vergeet het eeuwige gezeur over integratie. We kunnen het ons niet veroorloven om zulke bronnen niet te kennen en om de juiste redenen, die er werkelijk toedoen. Een strip, een film en een boek. Ze zijn begrijpelijk voor iedereen. Niet voor “membership entitlement” maar voor “enlightenment relevance”. De migratie naar het verleden, naar het verleden van anderen, van vreemden, en niet alleen van de “eigen” geschiedenis, is een wezenlijk onderdeel van onze ontwikkeling.

JPO’M: What is the central thesis of your new book?
HD: That in the aftermath of European colonialism, a series of regimes came to power in which knowledge production was conducive to postcoloniality. These were the kind of ideological formations that resulted in political leaders like Hosni Mubarak, or Ben Ali. They come from a combination of Third World socialism, postcolonialism, nationalism and native Islamism. But this has come to an end. So Arabs and Muslims are now on a level playing field. As a result, you have not only new regimes that will come to power, but new regimes of knowledge that will come to power.

JPO’M: You argue that “the West” has lost its potency, why so?
HD: Well even if you look at the construction of the term, it’s a binary opposition that was never a solitary construct: just look at the recent book by Niall Ferguson: The West and The Rest – “West” was always in juxtaposition and necessitates “the East, Islam, Arabs, or the Orient “ in order to justify itself. My primary proposition is that this binary has collapsed, not just in the west. The whole notion imploded in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The formation of the European Union already posited a different set of priorities that were not always automatically conducive to US strategic, globala and imperial interests. Now there are marked differences. So this idea of the west in binary opposition doesn’t have the same potency that it did from the early nineteenth century to the height of the Cold War.

JPO’M: In your book you maintain that “Islam has exhausted itself”. Are you thinking about the collapse of the Islamic Republic of Iran?
HD: I think the Islamic republic has lost both its potency, and its legitimacy. As soon as the revolution in Egypt happened in January 2011, the leader of the Islamic Republic called it an “Islamic revolution”. The Muslim Brotherhood then responded by saying that it was not an Islamic revolution, but an “Egyptian revolution”. The Islamic republic has lost 30 years of legitimacy, because it has been 30 years of repression. What we are experiencing right now is its aftermath: the formation of a very potent, active, and effervescent, public space, which is not under the control of the ruling regime in the Islamic Republic. It has worked itself into a garrison state with no organic link to the rest of the society. Regimes like the Islamic Republic have no legitimate link with the people except for brutality and violence.

JPO’M: You seem quite confident that the Arab Spring will not become hijacked by Islamic fundamentalists. What evidence do you have to support this argument?
HD: I am very confident of this. First of all we have to understand that the Islamic theocracy was one revolution in one nation-state. Two factors distinguish the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Number one, they are Sunni’s, not Shiite. Therefore the proclivity of the Shiite communities to support charismatic leaders like Ayatollah Khomeini, does not exist in the overwhelming Sunni population of the region. Furthermore, none of these ideologies, such as that of the Muslim Brotherhood, have any particular claim over the majority of the population. Certain football teams in Egypt are more popular than the Muslim Brotherhood. Also, the example of the Islamic Republic is the best historical mirror to hold up in front of the Arab population, for what not to do. Lastly, and most significantly, what we are witnessing in the Arab world is transnational.

JPO’M: Will women play a significant role as the Arab Spring moves forward?
HD: Well women’s rights and feminist movements have been in the Arab and Muslim world for a very long time, in both a secular and an Islamic version. The Arab Spring has simply expanded the public space in which the women’s rights movement will be exercised. Women are integral to this movement. I guess the question we face is not whether a Sharia-type inquisition or an Islamist rule will guarantee women’s rights, but the other way around. It is now time for women’s rights organisations to protect the individual rights of women’s civil liberties against any of the many potential atrocities of the state. The women’s rights movement is integral to the public space. We should be far less concerned about whether or not the Muslim Brotherhood comes to power in Egypt, or for example, whteher or not it will impose anti-women and misogynistic rules and regulations, than we should be about the absolute necessity of the formation of women’s rights organisations, unions and assemblies, to protect the civil liberties of women.

JPO’M: You also posit that racism plays a dominant role in Middle Eastern countries; do you believe this will change?
HD: Unfortunately the racism that exists in the Arab world against Iranians or against North Africans, is a societal fact. The change in the ruling regimes does not necessarily mean a change in the society. The new regime of knowledge will have to emerge from the public space, which needs to cleanse itself of this sort of innate racism. That is a product of ethnical nationalism, something which has been quintessential in the forming of these racist tendencies. The more we are distanced from the formations of ethnic nationalism, as they were integral to post-colonial ideologies, the more the public space will provide an opportunity for us to articulate anti-racist and anti-misogynistic arguments.

JPO’M: Will the relationship between the US and Israel change in the light of the Arab Spring?
HD: Up until now the United States and Israel have had one singular role in the region to play: that of the counterrevolutionary. They have been in cahoots with Saudi Arabia to prevent this tsunami of democratic revolutionary uprisings, or, to micromanage it to their benefit. The main reason for the false alarm around the Iranian nuclear project by Israel is to distract attention from the fate of Palestinians, and from the democratic disposition of the Arab Spring. Israel has built itself upon the very ideology of opposing Arab democratic conditions. It is chiefly responsible for trying to control them, seeking to detract from these revolutionary uprisings.

JPO’M: Could you explain this idea of getting beyond Edward Said’s Orientalism?
HD: I will begin by emphasising that we are all standing on the shoulders of the giant that was Edward Said. What I have to say is not a negation of Said, but a confirmation of what he says by transcending it. We need to change the interlocutor, and the fictive white man that was sitting in Edward Said’s mind, who spent a productive and magnificent life trying to convince him that the Palestinians were wronged. This does not result in a very significant change. But as a result, I believe in establishing solidarity, first of all horizontally, in the nations across the Arab, and Muslim world ─ but also in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. This kind of interlocution is far more important than trying to convince any fictive white person. There is a comparative and cross-national revolutionary uprising that necessitates these solidarities. It makes it possible for us to have interlocution not only within the public space, but also with our friends and comrades across continents.

JPO’M: And the US, how do you see their role?
HD:I don’t see any opportunity in American political culture to change things. The extraordinary power of money and special interests makes it absolutely impossible for the United States to be representative of the public in any meaningful way. They will continue to play this radically anti-revolutionary function ─ in cahoots with Saudi Arabia and Israel ─ but to no purpose, because these democratic uprisings are so deeply rooted, so pervasive, that they will not be diverted.

JPO’M: Will this inevitably mean a violent struggle between Israel and other Arab states?
HD: Well we have to make a distinction between the ruling Zionist regime and the Israeli people. I conclude my book with a quotation from a group of Israelis who want to be part of the Arab spring. So I have every reason to believe that very soon Israelis will overcome their Zionist psychological barrier, and join their brothers and sisters in the Arab world. This will result in the only sensible outcome and the only scanario in which the Israeli/ Palestinian conflict can be resolved: a one state solution.

JPO’M: In your book you accuse the novelist, Salman Rushdie, of using the western media to promote his career. Did he not have a right to free speech when Muslim clerics were publicly calling for him to be murdered?
HD: I think Salman Rushdie has the right to say whatever he wants in a great novel like Midnight’s Children or indeed in a stupid novel like The Satanic Verses, and the reaction to any novelist’s work should be literary criticism. You either like the book, and you endorse it, or you dislike the book and you write a negative review of it. I categorically denounce the fatwa against Salman Rushdie. But after that fatwa, Rushdie became integral to the massive propaganda machine of Islamaphobia. This was not only irresponsible; I consider Rushdie as rather responsible for advocating Islamophobia in both Europe and America.

JPO’M: You have argued that every state, throughout history, has been formed from a violent struggle, yet you argue here that this is not a violent revolution. Doesn’t every revolution incur violence at some level?
HD: Well we are having a violent race for power right now in Syria, where you have China, Russia, and Iran on one side, and the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Israel on the other side, infusing violence into the situation and radicalising it. The Americans, the Saudi’s, and other Gulf states have decided to finance those who are fighting. The main violence is perpetrated by the Assad regime. As far as the race for state control is concerned, violence is still ongoing. But my concern is with the public space, and with the formation of institutional resistance, internal tyranny, and external imperialism. I understand how states operate, but my focus is more on the institutional formation of various ways of preventing a totalitarian regime from taking shape.

JPO’M: So you believe any level of violence will debilitate this revolution?
HD:  My position is that as opposed to throwing a Molotov cocktail, or getting armed and shooting at people, the revolutionary forces need to be translated into institutional resistance to tyranny. This should come in the form of labour unions, women’s rights organisations, and student assemblies. Blind violence is entirely counterproductive. What is absolutely necessary, and what ultimately prevents tyranny, is the formation of these three institutions.

JPO’M: In the last chapter of your book you say, “the Arab Spring has ended the Foucauldian reading of power and the politics of despair he theorized in his reading of governmentality.” Could you expand?
HD: I detect a certain structural predisposition in Foucault’s notion of governmentality: this idea that government moves from institutions of repression into our mentality, and that our mentality in turn becomes integral to these oppressive regimes. My argument is that in the Arab Spring, we are liberated into a moment where the institutions of repression do not work, where a new form of subjectivity can be formed, which must lead to a new condition of govermentality.

JPO’M: Do you see your book as contributing to the revolution?
HD: Yes, I believe this book in some small way is my contribution to this revolution. I quote Marx who says, “We should not interpret the world but change it”. I say by interpreting the world the way I do, I change it in some way.

www.opendemocracy.net/