Laila Lalami

The July 2002 issue of Harper’s Magazine includes an excellent article by Edward Said, titled “The Folly of Simplifying Islam.” The bulk of the article concerns the widely held idea that there is only one Islam: homogeneous and wholly “other.” Said places part of the responsibility for the popularity of these views on scholars such as Bernard Lewis, whose training and expertise concern Turkey, but who is interviewed left and right as an expert on Islam and the Middle East.

The most interesting part about the piece, however, is the question it raises about the role of fiction in our lives. Said opens the article by talking about a Danish journalist who flew in to New York to interview him and apologized that she hadn’t had a chance to read the Koran before coming to see him because the book was sold out in Copenhagen. This surprised Said very much and, he says,

I asked my Danish interlocutor by way of analogy, “If you met a Syrian coming to visit Denmark for the first time would you suggest he should prepare himself by reading the Bible or by reading Hans Christian Andersen?” Without hesitation she answered, “Andersen, of course.” I then suggested that reading great contemporary novelists from the Islamic world, writers such as Naguib Mahfouz, Tayeb Salih, Jabra Jabra, or Yashar Kemal, might be more worthwhile than plowing through the Koran, since, I went on to say, you mustn’t imagine that Muslims wake up in the morning, reach for their handy Koran, then go out during the rest of the day and do what it says.

The article closes with this paragraph:

Above all, “we” cannot go on pretending that “we” live in a world of our own; certainly, as Americans, our government is deployed literally all over the globe–militarily, politically, economically. So why do we suppose that what we say and do is neutral, when in fact it is full of consequences for the rest of the human race? In our encounters with other cultures and religions, therefore, it would seem that the best way to proceed is not to think like governments or armies or corporations but rather to remember and act on the individual experiences that really shape our lives and those of others. To think humanistically and concretely rather than formulaically and abstractly, it is always best to read literature capable of dispelling the ideological fogs that so often obscure people from each other. Avoid the trots and the manuals, give a wide berth to security experts and formulators of the us-versus-them dogma, and, above all, look with the deepest suspicion on anynone who wants to tell you the real truth about Islam and terrorism, fundamentalism, militancy, fanaticism, etc. You’d have heard it all before, anyway, and even if you hadn’t, you could predict its claims. Why not look for the expression of different kinds of human experience instead, and leave those great non-subjects to the experts, their think tank, government departments, and policy intellectuals, who get us into one unsuccessful and wasteful war after the other?

Do pick up the issue, it is worth a read.

I was away in La Jolla for a few days. Will start blogging again as soon as I am caught up on everything.

So we set our clocks to 4:30 AM to watch the Germany-U.S. quarter-finals, but slept right through the alarm. The U.S. team lost! But it’s still a huge achievement to have made it to the quarter-finals.

The story of a woman who was recruited to be a suicide bomber but then changed her mind. Israeli Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer did the interview.

I have a bit of a problem. I was reading Lolita, and, concurrently, Vera, a biography of Vera Nabokov and her relationship with her husband.

Meanwhile, I had ordered Six Months Off, and that came in the mail last week, so even though I’m already two months into my sabbatical, I started reading it in case there was some information that might prove useful (but that’s fluffy, and surely that doesn’t count.)

Then Fast Food Nation, which Alex had ordered for me because I mentioned once, a long, long time ago that I wanted to read it, also came in the mail. I started reading it and realized it was a great way to help me stop eating junk food (while being educated about the merits and problems of the fast food industry.)

And a couple of weeks ago, I also started Dreams of Trespass, an overly exoticized memoir by the Moroccan sociologist Fatima Mernissi. Now, just yesterday I went up to my stack of just-purchased-not-yet-read books and pulled out House of Sand and Fog when Alex said “You can’t be serious.”

I don’t know why I’m doing that. I really ought to sit down with one book, read it through, and then move to another. I must be compensating, since I finally have time to read however much I want.

From the Christian Science Monitor:

It’s not easy to assemble a reading list of books dealing with racial discrimination. For many years, for instance, “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee had an unquestioned place in classrooms. The 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel portrays the trial of a black man in a southern town and offers an unqualified condemnation of racism. Yet today, some say it is patronizing. The writer is white, the narrator is white, and a noble (and educated) white man defends an innocent (but uneducated) black man.

The shifting ‘canon’ of multicultural lit

The article lists other books that are often challenged. Besides To Kill A Mockingbird there’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn The piece is worth a look, as it also lists works that are now classics but were once challenged, ‘new’ classics, and buried somewhere at the bottom, a bibliography of Arab and Arab-American fiction.

There is more bloodshed today, with yet another bombing. And Israel is re-occupying the West Bank (formally anyway. Informally, the IDF had been in the West Bank intermitently since March.) This is a recipe for disaster.

Christiane Amanpour is reporting that:

The Palestinian Authority is dropping a demand for the right of return for refugees — one of the most contentious issues blocking a Middle East peace deal — and is making other major concessions on peace with Israel in a two-page document sent to the United States, Palestinian officials said Wednesday.

The officials said the document, given to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, includes concessions on a number of key issues that caused previous peace efforts to fail. Most significantly, the Palestinians said, they have dropped the demand for right of return for refugees who fled or were removed from land that became Israel in 1948. Instead, they said, they are calling for a just and agreed-upon solution to that problem.

Other concessions in the brief note.

I can’t believe how well the US team is doing the World Cup. They’ve just ousted Mexico, and now they’re going to be in the quarter-finals!

For the members of the U.S. soccer team, the most improbable day of their careers dawned today with a phone call from President Bush, who told them how proud he was of their performance, while confessing he knew little about the game they play. (…)
“The world of soccer is shrinking. It’s truly a global game now,” U.S. Coach Bruce Arena said. “Federations from all over the world can compete with anybody. At the end of the day, the great ones — such as the Germanys, the Englands, the Italys — they are still going to be there. But we can compete against those countries on a given day.” (…)
Sombrero-wearing Mexican supporters filled one end of the stadium, dangling signs that read “Vamos Mexico! Si Se Puede! (Let’s Go Mexico! Yes It’s Possible!) Across the way, a smaller band of flag-waving Americans bounced up and down, their banners proclaiming “The Yanks Are Coming!”

Indeed they are. Next up is Germany. I really believe the US team can beat them. Germany’s already lost quarter-finals in the two previous Cups to other smaller teams, so why not with the US?

More bloodshed in the Middle East, this time a despicable attack on a bus in Jerusalem, which killed 20 people and left dozens wounded.

The way it’s been going for the last few months (decades) is like this: illegal occupation and horrible bombings (which is the cause and which is the consequence depends on your allegiance). Then the Bush Administration spoon feeds us more sound bites like Arafat needs to do more, condemn the violence, peace process, etc. It’s never going to end. Except perhaps when the laws of nature (human reproduction) change the givens in this terrible mess.

Meanwhile, Ted Turner gave an interview to The Guardian newspaper in which he was quoted as saying:

“Aren’t the Israelis and the Palestinians both terrorising each other?” says Turner, who is vice-chairman of AOL Time Warner, which owns CNN, in an exclusive interview with the Guardian. “The Palestinians are fighting with human suicide bombers, that’s all they have. The Israelis … they’ve got one of the most powerful military machines in the world. The Palestinians have nothing. So who are the terrorists? I would make a case that both sides are involved in terrorism.”

CNN chief accuses Israel of terror

Interestingly enough, this quote is absent from Ted Turner’s own news network, CNN.

Note: I just checked (at 6:50 pm) and now CNN has a retraction of sorts. Of course. You can read about it here.

Elsewhere, Syria, one of the countries that the Bush Administration lists as a state sponsor of terrorism, has a key figure in the September 11 attacks in custody. The Post claims that a German national of Syrian origin was arrested by Morocco and then expelled, with US knowledge, to Syria (rather than to his country of citizenship). So it appears that there has been at least one other arrest beside the three that Morocco spoke about last week. Here is an excerpt from the Post

Syria remains on a State Department list of regimes that sponsor terrorism. And Syrian officials have begun to complain that the United States is not acknowledging its assistance in the war against terrorism. According to Arab intelligence sources, the Syrian debriefing of Zammar, 41, is providing the United States with critical information on the genesis of the plot to attack New York and Washington as well al Qaeda’s structure and possible plans.
It is unclear if U.S. officials have direct access to Zammar or whether the Syrians put questions from the United States to the prisoner and then report back. But an Arab source said Zammar has become another check on information the United States gleans from the interrogation of al Qaeda prisoners worldwide, including the captured senior bin Laden Lieutenant Abu Zubaida.

Now the interesting part is the apparent lack of communication at the highest (intelligence) levels between the US and other countries. The article goes on:

German intelligence sources said today that they were only informed by U.S. officials Thursday of Zammar’s imprisonment in Syria after an article in The Washington Post raised questions about his whereabouts. Zammar is being held by the Syrian authorities on long-standing charges that he was involved in a bombing plot in the country, Arab officials said.
German officials here expressed displeasure that both Morocco and Syria violated their obligations under international law to inform them of their citizen’s arrest. They also said the United States, an ally, had shut them out of the operation to detain Zammar.

This is an open letter that was published in The Guardian, though, interestingly enough, not in American newspapers.

Let it not be said that people in the United States did nothing when their government declared a war without limit and instituted stark new measures of repression. The signers of this statement call on the people of the US to resist the policies and overall political direction that have emerged since September 11 and which pose grave dangers to the people of the world.(…)
We believe that people of conscience must take responsibility for what their own governments do - we must first of all oppose the injustice that is done in our own name. Thus we call on all Americans to resist the war and repression that has been loosed on the world by the Bush administration. It is unjust, immoral and illegitimate. We choose to make common cause with the people of the world.

Read the letter in its entirety on The Guardian website: We won’t deny our consciences.

The BBC also ran a piece on this: US artists oppose war on terror.

Signatories among writers include Russell Banks and Barbara Kingsolver. Here is the NION website.