What Arab Academia needs is the opening of state archives!
A short comment on "The knowledge constituency versus the ignorance lobby" which a friend shared.
I read this because you shared it. I didn't find it that outstanding and found it to be full of the same deafness it decries. it is way too simplistic--and if the man is an Arab--it is not clear whether it is a symptom of self-conceit or awkward moment of self-loathing. While it is indeed great to know about all world's events and history and while it is great academically to make trips to see where events were transcribed into human living memory, while all of that is great--this is not as grand or as enlightening, or as vital or useful to the Palestinian national struggle as the article made it look like. While it is shameful that a professor is pressured to quit his post because of a choice of an academic experience he thought was useful--again the value of it could be debated--is condemnable, this is hardly the greatest problem facing Palestine. The event itself is a product of the general atmosphere of absence of freedom, and absence of a collective will to determine what is and what is not of value--the absence of this is something that Arab and Muslim liberals generally support in some rather bizarre ways by preaching democratic ideals only when there is no seriousness about them. When the popular will is a factor, the Arab liberal class, by and large, stands on the side of oppressors.
That is the real problem. Palestinians know enough about the Jewish plight and about the Nazi crimes against Jews and others. What the Arabs lack is not knowledge of the victories and agonies of others. What they truly lack is a knowledge of their own history and of others' contribution to it. That is the problem which academic freedom may one day help remedy. The rest is quite trivial. Ask any Arab child from the Atlantic to the Gulf and s/he will tell you Hitler killed 6 millions of the world Jewry. This we learned in elementary school, and then again in high school, and then again at the university. It is something any sensible man would condemn. When Muslims and Arabs had control over whatever then remained of their lands, they protected the Jews who lived with them. The only story the zionist propagandist of the world have to lash out at Arabs is a few programs by al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni, a man who escaped a death sentence by the British and ran to their adversary at the time, Hitler.
But subsequent to those horrible atrocities, which Muslims have nothing to do with, every child in the Arab world also knows that Jews killed thousands of Palestinians and made millions of them refugees. True, it is not the fault of all Jews; it is not reflective of the religion itself or the culture, but that is certainly what the state of Israel did and continues to do remorselessly. The role of Arab leaders in the loss of Palestine, the archival facts about that, not a trip to Europe, is what Arab and Palestinian youth need.
This kind of liberal apologia is rather pathetic. The professor deserves sympathy, no doubt, for the undue pressure he was subjected to, and this is again another reason to call for a real and meaningful democracy, not the kind that Arab liberals want of course.
But to laud him as some kind of hero is--to use an all too familiar cliche--to make a mountain out of a molehill.
I read this because you shared it. I didn't find it that outstanding and found it to be full of the same deafness it decries. it is way too simplistic--and if the man is an Arab--it is not clear whether it is a symptom of self-conceit or awkward moment of self-loathing. While it is indeed great to know about all world's events and history and while it is great academically to make trips to see where events were transcribed into human living memory, while all of that is great--this is not as grand or as enlightening, or as vital or useful to the Palestinian national struggle as the article made it look like. While it is shameful that a professor is pressured to quit his post because of a choice of an academic experience he thought was useful--again the value of it could be debated--is condemnable, this is hardly the greatest problem facing Palestine. The event itself is a product of the general atmosphere of absence of freedom, and absence of a collective will to determine what is and what is not of value--the absence of this is something that Arab and Muslim liberals generally support in some rather bizarre ways by preaching democratic ideals only when there is no seriousness about them. When the popular will is a factor, the Arab liberal class, by and large, stands on the side of oppressors.
That is the real problem. Palestinians know enough about the Jewish plight and about the Nazi crimes against Jews and others. What the Arabs lack is not knowledge of the victories and agonies of others. What they truly lack is a knowledge of their own history and of others' contribution to it. That is the problem which academic freedom may one day help remedy. The rest is quite trivial. Ask any Arab child from the Atlantic to the Gulf and s/he will tell you Hitler killed 6 millions of the world Jewry. This we learned in elementary school, and then again in high school, and then again at the university. It is something any sensible man would condemn. When Muslims and Arabs had control over whatever then remained of their lands, they protected the Jews who lived with them. The only story the zionist propagandist of the world have to lash out at Arabs is a few programs by al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni, a man who escaped a death sentence by the British and ran to their adversary at the time, Hitler.
But subsequent to those horrible atrocities, which Muslims have nothing to do with, every child in the Arab world also knows that Jews killed thousands of Palestinians and made millions of them refugees. True, it is not the fault of all Jews; it is not reflective of the religion itself or the culture, but that is certainly what the state of Israel did and continues to do remorselessly. The role of Arab leaders in the loss of Palestine, the archival facts about that, not a trip to Europe, is what Arab and Palestinian youth need.
This kind of liberal apologia is rather pathetic. The professor deserves sympathy, no doubt, for the undue pressure he was subjected to, and this is again another reason to call for a real and meaningful democracy, not the kind that Arab liberals want of course.
But to laud him as some kind of hero is--to use an all too familiar cliche--to make a mountain out of a molehill.
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