18 - 24 October 2001
Issue No.556
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 18 - 24 October 2001 Issue No.556 |
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Plain talk
Naipaul has been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. This news has created a furore in many parts of the world. In England there has been a feeling of surprise mixed with discontent. After all many English writers have been subjected to scathing attacks by Naipaul. Indeed the whole of the British life and thought has been the target of the writer's vehement sarcasm.
In our part of the world, and in Islamic countries there was a different kind of reception. In one of his books Naipaul accused Islam of being at the root of the destruction of national cultures in Asia, mentioning Indonesia, India and Malaysia as examples. This has been taken as an attack against Islam.
A representative of the Nobel Committee defended Naipaul on the grounds that the Trinidad born writer's remarks referred to Islamic fundamentalism. This defence cut no ice with Muslim thinkers.
This is not the first time that criticism of the Nobel award in literature has been levelled. According to Paul Valley in the Independent Review "scorn has routinely been poured upon the intellects, the judgement and motives of the judges. The writer goes on to suggest that political opportunism is at the heart of the selection. Valley gives the example of the award to Seamus Heaney, the Irish poet, which came "at a timely point in the Irish peace process, just as Nadine Gordimer's award appeared to mark the death of Apartheid." He goes on to mention other award winners, like the Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka and the Chinese writer Gaoxingjian, who was a persona non grata with Beijing.
Some Arab and Islamic writers now believe that awarding the prize to Naipaul, with his supposedly anti-Islam stance has something to do with the present situation.
I will not venture to argue this point. What I want to do is to oppose Naipaul's claim that Islam destroyed the national cultures in Asia. Here I would like to paraphrase what John Badean wrote under the title The Arab Role in Islamic Culture. Bedean believes that within the setting created by the spread of Islam a new culture was created.
And created is the precise and proper term. For what happened, goes on Badean, "was not the imposition of a foreign culture by invasion, not the same process that carried western civilisation to the East during the period of European colonialism." Islam did not try to destroy local cultures and superimpose its own, as did European colonialism across almost all of Africa.
The distinctive and richly hued civilisation that characterised the Muslim world at its height was formed "in situ." It came into being, in Badean's words, "within the new state, giving identity and character to the new order that resulted from Islam as it spread among alien peoples. Its major components were at hand within the varied life and traditions of the people -- classical literature, Hellenistic thought, Byzantine institutions, Roman law, Syriac scholarship, Persian art."
As a result of this variety of cultures, outstanding achievements of Muslim cultures appeared and Muslim civilisation -- rich, sophisticated and varied -- became the mark of the societies of the Islamic world and took their place among the great cultural achievements of human history. A varied and colourful tapestry of Muslim culture was woven. In every field -- literature, theology, philosophy, science, geography, architecture -- there are notable Muslim names.
This colourful tapestry of culture was very apparent in an exhibition of Islamic art held in London some years back. I had the pleasure of visiting the exhibition and was greatly impressed, albeit surprised, at the diversity of the exhibits on display. It was all Islamic art but there were great differences between the art of Persia, India, Syria, Turkey, Egypt etc. Yet the bond between those diverse examples of Islamic art was the belief that emanat
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