20 - 26 September 2001
Issue No.552
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 20 - 26 September 2001 Issue No.552 |
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Plain talk
It took me longer to write my column this week. Amidst the recent tragic events it seemed to me that any subject would be dwarfed and overshadowed by the heinous terrorist attacks. How can I write about stage drama when a tragedy was unfolding on a much larger stage? How can I review a novel when we are hearing stories that match the greatest of world fiction?
I must have gone through dozens of newspapers and magazines, both in Arabic and English since that fateful day of 11 September. One thing that struck me about the coverage in general is that writers attempted to use a rather elevated discourse -- a high language, perhaps, to suit the extraordinary events. Shunning "journalese" many writers resorted to literary motifs and references which made their articles read like literary essays or even passages taken from best sellers.
At some points during my readings I was amazed at how grief could inspire good writing. Even the titles chosen for the articles smacked of literature: "The terrible beauty of hatred and destruction" an obvious reference to W B Yeats's "A terrible beauty is born" from his poem Easter 1916.
And there were human stories that emerged and that can compete with any high fiction: stories of love, of courage, of anger, and also of sympathy. There are the stories of the passengers on the doomed planes, who called their loved ones as they were hijacked -- just to say "I love you." As Fergal Keane puts in his article in the Independent Review "Those three most beautiful words in our language, words we shy away from in daily life, are the only comfort in a world turned upside down."
But how can one talk of beauty when things are so ugly? Isn't there a contradiction here? But then the ugly anger of Othello also produced beautiful poetry. Undoubtedly this moment of global anguish has produced many paradoxes as feelings wavered between anger and grief, love and hate, the desire to retaliate immediately and the advice to restrain.
Not all Western coverage of the events smacked of beauty, though. These terrorist events have also proven an opportunity for the ugly head of racism and anti-Arab, anti-Muslim sentiments to rise high. However, in the midst of the anger and the desire to find a culprit to blame -- especially in the US -- there were also voices arguing that the terrorist act should not automatically and categorically be associated with Islam; that the battle is not with Islam. Is this simply paying lip service to political correctness? Thomas Friedman, often the subject of criticism in Arab political circles, argued in a New York Times article that "The real clash today is actually not between civilizations, but within them -- between those Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and Jews with a modern and progressive outlook and those with a medieval one. We make a great mistake if we simply write off the Muslim world and fail to understand how many Muslims feel themselves trapped in failing states."
Middle East analyst Stephen Cohen remarked "President Lincoln said of the south after the Civil war 'Remember, they pray to the same God.' The same is true of many, many Muslims. We must fight those among them who pray only to the God of Hate, but we do not want to go to war with Islam, with all the millions of Muslims who pray to the same God we do."
Jim Hoagland echoes the same idea in the Washington Post when he writes "This is not a war between nations, religions, or classes. It is a broad conflict that pits moderates against extremists within Islam. Those who believe in open societies against those who believe in revenge and chaos instead of civilization."
Let us hope that these sayings reflect the beliefs of not only the political analysts but ordinary, angry, and bereaved American citizens.
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