Democratic Palestine : 33 (ص 26)
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- Democratic Palestine : 33 (ص 26)
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thought, as well as the contributions of Christian Arab
thinkers from the renaissance up to the present, Moreover, he
considers such contributions as a kind of conspiracy against
the world of Islam. Equally, he rejects the interaction of
human cultures and the concept of nationalism. Thus, he
resorts to communalism which fragments society.
A former Marxist and influential journalist in Egypt, Adel
Hussein, reiterates the ideas of Abdul Melik and Hanafi in his
Towards a New Arab Ideology. Yet he elaborates a new con-
cept which is the relationship of science to faith. In his view,
the science of the West is not suitable for the East, not because
of local particularity or uneven social development, but
because of the eternal contradiction between the materialism of
the West and the spiritualism of the East. ‘Materialism is
atheism which can never be a basis for building a scientific
theory, because real science is faith. Consequently, there can
never be any science, knowledge or culture beyond the faith of
Islam. Such an outlook involves, among other things, racism
and a call for self-isolation, as well as a communalist tendency,
in addition to turning science into a normative question,
changing its meaning from place to place, leading to the im-
possibility of any scientific laws.
The above-mentioned names are well-known and highly in-
fluential in the sphere of Arab culture. They hardly speak
about economic and political dependency, imported
technology or the fact that the dominant classes live on the
consumption of European commodities. They see only the
culture of the West, which in their view is the culture of ra-
tionalism, secularism, socialism, Marxism, etc.
While the above-mentioned names, along with many others,
are cloaked in the mantle of new fundamentalism, there are
others whose function is the same, even if by a different
method. This other method is formalism or structuralism. Its
outstanding spokesman in the Arab world is Mohammed Abdo
Al Jabiri from Morocco, who wants to elevate Arab thought
through radical criticism. He draws a line of demarcation
between science and ideology, and sees all Arab thought as an
ideological discourse which must be replaced by scientific
discourse. In his view, the ideological is that which comes close
to politics, social classes or the citizens’ daily problems. Al
Jabiri puts himself above all the social classes and political
thought, to deal with the Arab mentality, the Arab personality
and its autonomy, and Arab discourse, etc. Doing so, he
eliminates all concrete realities to build up a formal relation-
ship between two abstract poles, i.e., the Arab and scientific
discourse.
Although Al Jabiri bases all his work on the exclusive dif-
ference between the scientific and the ideological, he does not
see any necessity to dwell on the social conditions which govern
the process of producing scientific knowledge, or the causes
which bring about either ideological or scientific discourse.
According to him, the production of scientific knowledge ap-
pears to be based either on individual genius or subjective in-
spiration close to prophecy. What is strange about this man of
thought, who concentrates on the pure principles of science
26
free of all social conditions, is that he sometimes moves from
theory to politics in order to build a relationship of similarity
between Arab nationalism and Islam, whereby the former
becomes Islamic to the extent that the latter becomes Arabic.
Ultimately, Dr. Al Jabiri demands that the Arab mentality be
reformed in order to be capable of understanding modern
science and technology. Consequently, the Arab revolution has
to be a technological revolution!!!
The above-mentioned names are not exceptions; they reflect
the image of the dominant Arab culture which revolves, in
general, around two abstract poles, i.e., science and faith.
Seeking refuge in abstraction, it refrains from criticizing the
existing political regimes, if not supporting them, directly or
indirectly, because it considers them capable, sooner or later,
of materializing the Arab-Islamic dream by adding the Quran
to imported technologies.
Certainly, the forces of rationalism have not lost all their
positions in the cultural arena. They are still there in the con-
tributions of a galaxy of thinkers, such as Samir Amin who
continues his research on the problem of socialism in condi-
tions of backwardness and dependency; the brave militant,
Fuad Zakaria, who is fighting old and new fundamentalism;
Abdullah Al Orewi who played an important role in the seven-
ties; the scientist, Mahmud Amin, etc. Yet these democratic
and rationalist forces are deprived of the actual possibility of
expounding their ideology. They fight from defensive posi-
tions, or rather, they fight while retreating in a sense. The
dominant forces produce both their ideology and its reader at
the same time, while besieging the rationalist intellectual as
well as his audience.
Although the theoretical scene is gloomy, the case of the
novel is somewhat different.
THE SPECIAL ROLE OF THE NOVEL
The novel occupies a vanguard position in the realm of con-
temporary Arab writing. It is the literary practice which is
closest to the genuine questions of reality, as well as to the
problems of the Arab individual. The novel attempts to mirror
the daily reality and the social process which has produced it.
Sometimes, it may come so close to daily events that it takes
the form of a social document. This is what makes the novel
the best sphere for identifying the features of the Arab reality
in the decades after the June defeat.
The June 1967 defeat was the most serious event in modern
Arab history. Its significance and results surpassed those
brought about by the establishment of Israel in 1948. Israel’s
establishment was an expression of the defeat of the Palesti-
nian people and the impotence of the Arab regimes in a certain
historical period when they were dependent on the colonial
forces. But the June defeat was an expression of the defeat of
the Arab revolution as a whole. Arab novelists have dealt with
that defeat which was only possible because of the repressive
policies which rendered the Arab individual defeated before
the combat began. The atmosphere of defeat is there in When
We Gave up the Bridge, a novel by Abdulrahman Munif, >
Democratic Palestine, June 89 - هو جزء من
- Democratic Palestine : 33
- تاريخ
- يونيو ١٩٨٩
- المنشئ
- الجبهة الشعبية لتحرير فلسطين
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