6 - 12 September 2001
Issue No.550
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 6 - 12 September 2001 Issue No.550 |
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Inspiration and admiration
Sir- I would like to congratulate you on the addition of the article "Limelight" to your already very rich weekly newspaper. I have read each and every one of them. But this week (Al-Ahram Weekly, 30 August - 5 September) it was not only the beautiful style and language that attracted me, but the subject of the article himself, Mr Youssef Chahine. I am one of his many admirers. I believe that he is a great thinker and philosopher. I was extremely impressed by his film, Destiny; Mr Mounir's song moved me deeply. To the people who have not seen the film, the song only represents words applied to music, but together with the film it acquires strength and great depth of meaning.I noticed that the honours that Mrs Lubna Abdel-Aziz mentioned and that Mr Chahine quite deservedly received, making us all proud, are all from foreign organisations. Did she mean to mention the foreign ones only, or did Egypt forget to honour one of its great sons? I would really like to know the answer to this question.
Mrs Abdel-Aziz: keep on writing, you are an inspiration.
Mr Chahine, go on producing! We are in admiration.
Dr Reine Naggar
Agouza
Wanted alive
Sir- In the brilliant article "Cloning humans" (Al- Ahram Weekly, 30 August - 5 September) we read that "Attempts to rise to the challenge of a new understanding of the world cost the lives of many of humanity's greatest thinkers in the past, such as Al- Hallaj, Giordano Bruno and Galileo."I am sorry: I don't know who Al-Hallaj is. Giordano Bruno (one of humanity's greatest thinkers?) was burned at the stake by the Inquisition; but Galileo was obliged to abjure and he did not lose his life.
Paolo Lombardini
Zamalek
The world's to blame
Sir- I am an American who has just read Hani Shukrallah's article "Suicide's not painless" (Al-Ahram Weekly, 23-29 August), reprinted on Jewish Peace News (a Yahoo group).The Internet may have made our communication with those across the waters ever easier, but the mingling of cultures preceded it long ago. I am once again moved by how much easier it has become for humanity to find common wavelengths with those previously believed to be "foreign." My understanding is that the US government desires to maintain its precious Israeli alliance at all costs, having apparently given no real thought to how such relations would be smoother, less costly financially -- and morally -- were it to, say, issue some conditions to facilitate the restoration of peace in this region. It could, if it chose to, but I sense it is simply the shortcomings of "standard political thinking" which prevent it from doing so. So everybody, as Mr Shukrallah aptly notes, is abandoning their moral compass in this aggravated situation. The antagonists each claim a moral or religious justification to their continuation of violence, and the political justifications of the US take on the "higher purpose" to which both sides each attribute their struggles.
To anyone who is truly aware of the goings-on and these moral failures, it is a dark time to be a US citizen -- maybe no different than being a citizen in World War II Germany. I believe part of the problem with this crisis is that mankind's own evolution toward setting enforceable codes of international morality is as yet uncompleted, leaving us without sufficient means to enforce our hard- earned international protocols. We, as a world, are as much to blame as either antagonist.
B Kaufman
author, Internet Peace Plan
US
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