The Arabs have lost sight of their history. This is something true of myself, and true of other Arabs of my generation. My own understanding of Middle Eastern history only began about a year ago, when I began reading up on it for lack of formal education. The more I learn of my history, the more aggravated I am by my education. I know my own story - though it is the exception in some respects - is true of many Arabs of my generation.
The problem with the education of Arabs - and Muslim Arabs, as most of us are - is its love affair with the origin story of Islam. Any Muslim with even a modicum of Islamic knowledge can rattle off the story to you: how the Prophet was visited by Gabriel, how he kept God's word a secret between himself and his wife at first, then revealed it to his family, and then to the greater Meccan public. They can tell you of the migration to Madina - the hijra from which the Muslim calender begins; the conflicts between the Jewish tribes and the glorious victories against great odds; the return to Mecca, where no blood was shed in a peaceful takeover; the Prophet's death, and the subsequent era of the four 'rightly guided' Caliphs. They will tell you that this era ended with the assassination of Ali Ibn Abi Talib.
That story is drilled into our heads from the first moments of our lives, and retold again and again by parents and teachers. It was the Golden Age of Islam, we are told, before Muslim society was corrupted. The Golden Age, before divergent sects evolved. The Golden Age, when Islam was most triumphant.
But little else is taught. Oh, sure, you get some knowledge - about the greatest heights of the Muslim empire in the 9th and 10th centuries and the Israel/Palestine conflict. But all this is in the shadow of the Golden Age. Saudi Arabia is perhaps the greatest testament to how revered the Golden Age is, where, despite all its potential to be a major Middle Eastern and world player, the monarchy chooses instead to rule as though they still lived in the 7th century.
It says a lot that the greatest testament to the Golden Age is the cultural failure that is Saudi Arabia. The royal family is morally corrupt, not just by Islamic standards but by broader, universal standards, as evidenced by stories such as this, where a prince battered to death his manservant. Women's rights have barely penetrated the country, where men and women are segregated and female independence is denied in almost all aspects of life. Every weekend, hordes of Saudis visit Bahrain to enjoy its more liberal values - from being able to enjoy their day without it being dictated rigorously by prayer times, to going out clubbing and drinking.
Perhaps you see where I'm going with this. The Golden Age, if it even existed, has today eclipsed the history of the Arabs, and the 1400 years between the mythical Golden Age and the present day take a back seat - if they aren't completely wiped out of memory.
Monday 28 February 2011
Monday 21 February 2011
What's going on in Bahrain and why?
Just over a week ago when Mubarak resigned, I mused briefly on whether or not the revolution would spread to Bahrain, here. Of all the things that could've happened, I didn't expect Bahrain to be the very next country to grip the world after Egypt, but in the last week it's been almost all anyone's talked about. Now the spotlight has begun moving away from us and onto Libya - and good thing too, they need the world's support more than Bahrain does. The acts of the Bahraini government are incredibly mild compared to Ghaddafi's.
I've been asked by a fair few people in the last week about the protests going on, and now that the outcome of the revolution draws increasingly closer and clearer, I felt it'd be appropriate to shed some light about the entire situation.
This article ended up quite a bit longer than I originally thought it would be. If you read this to the end and are neither my lecturer or my parent, you deserve a biscuit.
I've been asked by a fair few people in the last week about the protests going on, and now that the outcome of the revolution draws increasingly closer and clearer, I felt it'd be appropriate to shed some light about the entire situation.
This article ended up quite a bit longer than I originally thought it would be. If you read this to the end and are neither my lecturer or my parent, you deserve a biscuit.
Sunday 20 February 2011
Mary Wollstonecraft
About a hundred years before the feminist movement took off, there was Mary Wollstonecraft. Wollstonecraft's book, Vindication of the Rights of Woman, is one of the very earliest feminist texts. In it she derides both the male treatment of women, and the women's treatment of themselves.
Her argument, at its core, is a) that women are purposely educated in such a way as to be kept 'childlike', narrowminded and beautiful, with that being all they know and b) that were they educated the same way as men, there would be no difference. Today her arguments are proven; women have just as much right to any job as men including army service, and girls today tend to perform better in school.
But going back to the 18th Century, when men still dominated, her ideas were radical. She said that women were ruled by their beauty, peaking at the age of 20 when they were most beautiful, while men who work and philosophise don't reach their peak until 30. Women must marry upwards to advance in status and wealth and be, as such, pretty birds in a cage for their husband. This is the sum of their entire lives, ruled by their youthful beauty and over with their first son and old age.
They are also childlike, she states, being unable to control their tempers or themselves. And thus they are inadequate mothers, as you wouldn't want a child to raise a child.. She also argues that men, despite displaying affection and polite, are actually condescending. They may treat women like royalty but scoff at the thought of a woman leading them.
Her answer to this female weakness is education. Wollstonecraft says that all a woman is taught is how to be beautiful, and as such that is all she knows. But were they educated as men are, then they would be equal to men, both physically and mentally.
Wollstonecraft was ahead of her time (by about a hundred years). Of course, we know today that what she says is by and large a truth. Today, with no discrimination between the genders in education, there is little difference between a man and a woman, and there is evidence to suggest girls perform better than boys in education (I put some of it down to self-fulfilling prophecy; when people keep pushing statistics like that in your face, it doesn't exactly fill a kid with scholarly passion).
Her argument, at its core, is a) that women are purposely educated in such a way as to be kept 'childlike', narrowminded and beautiful, with that being all they know and b) that were they educated the same way as men, there would be no difference. Today her arguments are proven; women have just as much right to any job as men including army service, and girls today tend to perform better in school.
But going back to the 18th Century, when men still dominated, her ideas were radical. She said that women were ruled by their beauty, peaking at the age of 20 when they were most beautiful, while men who work and philosophise don't reach their peak until 30. Women must marry upwards to advance in status and wealth and be, as such, pretty birds in a cage for their husband. This is the sum of their entire lives, ruled by their youthful beauty and over with their first son and old age.
They are also childlike, she states, being unable to control their tempers or themselves. And thus they are inadequate mothers, as you wouldn't want a child to raise a child.. She also argues that men, despite displaying affection and polite, are actually condescending. They may treat women like royalty but scoff at the thought of a woman leading them.
Her answer to this female weakness is education. Wollstonecraft says that all a woman is taught is how to be beautiful, and as such that is all she knows. But were they educated as men are, then they would be equal to men, both physically and mentally.
Wollstonecraft was ahead of her time (by about a hundred years). Of course, we know today that what she says is by and large a truth. Today, with no discrimination between the genders in education, there is little difference between a man and a woman, and there is evidence to suggest girls perform better than boys in education (I put some of it down to self-fulfilling prophecy; when people keep pushing statistics like that in your face, it doesn't exactly fill a kid with scholarly passion).
Tuesday 15 February 2011
Rousseau
The Romantic era came after the Enlightenment, the age of empiricism. There is a simple and large difference between the two lines of thought: where enlightenment philosophy and empiricism relies on logic and the literal, romanticism is a thing of emotions and idealism. Subjectivity over objectivity.
Rousseau is the fundamental Romantic philosopher. He eschewed the enlightenment philosophies and thought little of the greatness of Man. He saw what he regarded a beautiful innocence in nature and simplicity, respecting the 'noble savage' and holding that the theoretical state of nature was a decent state of being. Having said that, he also realised that humans have come too far along the path of civilisation to ever return to that state of nature, when we were most like animals.
His theory was that the state of nature (theoretical as it may be) was interrupted when one man first fooled another man that a patch of land belongs to him. Personally, I disagree with him on this, for the simple fact that there are territorial animals. Dogs, for example, claim their land by marking it with their urine and will continue to defend it from other dogs, but they have nothing close to resembling what we might call civilisation. We are territorial by nature as by having territory we preserve ourselves. In a state of nature, for example, this territory might include a fruit tree or a grassy plain where animals graze. It is in our interest to keep others from acquiring these assets, so that we might survive - and survival is inherently selfish. Then again, there are nomadic tribes which we might not call civilised, such as the indigenous North Americans or Arabian bedouins. These people, while they have a culture and a society between themselves, believe the land to be a communal possession of everyone, with their only property being their animals, clothes, tools and tents. So perhaps I'm not really making much of a point here...
Still, having said that, I would say that civilisation began when large numbers of people came together, and the surplus of food was enough that they could do other things than focus constantly on their survival. As far as I'm aware (and my awareness extends to a documentary I watched on iPlayer a few months ago), this is the commonly held view of the birth of civilisation, as the people naturally congregated together and formed the first cities in ancient Babylon. But perhaps I'm taking Rousseau's words too literally. Perhaps, all he is saying is that the selfishness of ownership is the 'original sin', as such, of civilisation.
Rousseau is the fundamental Romantic philosopher. He eschewed the enlightenment philosophies and thought little of the greatness of Man. He saw what he regarded a beautiful innocence in nature and simplicity, respecting the 'noble savage' and holding that the theoretical state of nature was a decent state of being. Having said that, he also realised that humans have come too far along the path of civilisation to ever return to that state of nature, when we were most like animals.
His theory was that the state of nature (theoretical as it may be) was interrupted when one man first fooled another man that a patch of land belongs to him. Personally, I disagree with him on this, for the simple fact that there are territorial animals. Dogs, for example, claim their land by marking it with their urine and will continue to defend it from other dogs, but they have nothing close to resembling what we might call civilisation. We are territorial by nature as by having territory we preserve ourselves. In a state of nature, for example, this territory might include a fruit tree or a grassy plain where animals graze. It is in our interest to keep others from acquiring these assets, so that we might survive - and survival is inherently selfish. Then again, there are nomadic tribes which we might not call civilised, such as the indigenous North Americans or Arabian bedouins. These people, while they have a culture and a society between themselves, believe the land to be a communal possession of everyone, with their only property being their animals, clothes, tools and tents. So perhaps I'm not really making much of a point here...
Still, having said that, I would say that civilisation began when large numbers of people came together, and the surplus of food was enough that they could do other things than focus constantly on their survival. As far as I'm aware (and my awareness extends to a documentary I watched on iPlayer a few months ago), this is the commonly held view of the birth of civilisation, as the people naturally congregated together and formed the first cities in ancient Babylon. But perhaps I'm taking Rousseau's words too literally. Perhaps, all he is saying is that the selfishness of ownership is the 'original sin', as such, of civilisation.
Friday 11 February 2011
Mubarak Resigns!
Al-Jazeera's live coverage here.
I've been following the Egyptian revolution for the last 2-to-3 weeks now, particularly enjoying the coverage by The Independent and Al-Jazeera English. My interest in the revolution has only in small part been due to being a journalism student and a follower of news. It's really as an Arab that I find myself invested in the outcome of the Egyptian people's fight, and wondering how far the fires will spread. More specifically, I wonder whether it will spread to my little backwater of Bahrain, though analysts have little belief revolution will reach the richer oil states. But who knows? The victory of the Egyptian people will only help to fan the flames, and perhaps the recent crackdown and infringements of human rights will cause the people to stir.
Egypt is many things: one of the USA's ally in the Middle East, Israel's friendliest neighbour, and a centre of Middle Eastern culture. Both the Fatimid Caliphate in the 10th-12th centuries AD, and the Mamluke Sultanate in the 13tt-16th centuries held Cairo as their capital. Egypt was one of if not the very first Middle Eastern country to be touched by the Industrial Revolution, and in the 50s gave rise to Arab nationalism during the presidency of Gamal Abdel Nasser. Cairo is also home to one of the oldest film industries in the world and was the birthplace of the Arabian renaissance of the 19th and 20th centuries.
So with Egypt's revolution a success - its civil and largely bloodless revolution a success - it can only be good news for the rest of the Middle East. What is reason to rejoice for the people is reason to be concerned for the regimes. Saudi Arabia is reportedly furious with the outcome of events, and the US's decision to ask Mubarak to leave will no doubt hurt its position with all their Middle Eastern allies, including perhaps Israel, who must be uneasy of the potential for an anti-Israeli political party coming to power.
Another point of interest is today's 'siege' on the state broadcaster's building, which is accused of being pro-Mubarak and not reporting truthfully on the protests. It leaves me wondering as to the potential of a truly free press opening in Egypt in the future.
On a slightly different note, The Arabs: A History by Eugene Rogan is a book I've been reading over the past two months. The book is (or was, as I've bought more since) the latest in a series of history texts I've read on the subject in an effort to educate myself on my own cultural and historical background, and the first I would consider a worthwhile read. The writer is a lecturer of Middle Eastern Studies at Oxford and the book, being published in 2009, is perhaps one of the best and most recent published on the modern history of the region. What struck true to me then and amuses me now is the pessimistic outlook of the book:
To quote one Al-Jazeera reporter: "I've seen people give birth; I've seen people get married; I've seen people graduate. I've never seen people as happy as they are here."
I've been following the Egyptian revolution for the last 2-to-3 weeks now, particularly enjoying the coverage by The Independent and Al-Jazeera English. My interest in the revolution has only in small part been due to being a journalism student and a follower of news. It's really as an Arab that I find myself invested in the outcome of the Egyptian people's fight, and wondering how far the fires will spread. More specifically, I wonder whether it will spread to my little backwater of Bahrain, though analysts have little belief revolution will reach the richer oil states. But who knows? The victory of the Egyptian people will only help to fan the flames, and perhaps the recent crackdown and infringements of human rights will cause the people to stir.
Egypt is many things: one of the USA's ally in the Middle East, Israel's friendliest neighbour, and a centre of Middle Eastern culture. Both the Fatimid Caliphate in the 10th-12th centuries AD, and the Mamluke Sultanate in the 13tt-16th centuries held Cairo as their capital. Egypt was one of if not the very first Middle Eastern country to be touched by the Industrial Revolution, and in the 50s gave rise to Arab nationalism during the presidency of Gamal Abdel Nasser. Cairo is also home to one of the oldest film industries in the world and was the birthplace of the Arabian renaissance of the 19th and 20th centuries.
So with Egypt's revolution a success - its civil and largely bloodless revolution a success - it can only be good news for the rest of the Middle East. What is reason to rejoice for the people is reason to be concerned for the regimes. Saudi Arabia is reportedly furious with the outcome of events, and the US's decision to ask Mubarak to leave will no doubt hurt its position with all their Middle Eastern allies, including perhaps Israel, who must be uneasy of the potential for an anti-Israeli political party coming to power.
Another point of interest is today's 'siege' on the state broadcaster's building, which is accused of being pro-Mubarak and not reporting truthfully on the protests. It leaves me wondering as to the potential of a truly free press opening in Egypt in the future.
On a slightly different note, The Arabs: A History by Eugene Rogan is a book I've been reading over the past two months. The book is (or was, as I've bought more since) the latest in a series of history texts I've read on the subject in an effort to educate myself on my own cultural and historical background, and the first I would consider a worthwhile read. The writer is a lecturer of Middle Eastern Studies at Oxford and the book, being published in 2009, is perhaps one of the best and most recent published on the modern history of the region. What struck true to me then and amuses me now is the pessimistic outlook of the book:
...journalist and author Samir Kassir [an anti-Syrian Lebanese assassinated in 2005]... had published a remakable essay exploring what he termed the "Arab malaise" of the twenty-first century. It reflected the disenchantment of Arab citizens with their corrupt and authoritarian governments. "It's not pleasant being Arab these days," he observed. "Feelings of persecution for some, self hatred for others; a deep disquiet pervades the Arab world."
[...]
Kassir, himself a secular nationalist, held the modernizing reforms of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries... as an era "when Arabs could look to the future with optimism." This is clearly no longer the case. The Arab world views the future with growing pessimism, and the secular vision no longer inspires the majority of the population. In any free and fair election in the Arab world today, I believe the Islamists would win hands down.Roughly a month ago today, this would still have been a truthful statement. How quickly things change. The people of the Middle East have been filled with the optimistic spirit of change, the Egyptian revolution calls for true democracy, and the Muslim Brotherhood, the oldest Islamist group, are both more moderate and less influential, with little public support should they enter future elections.
To quote one Al-Jazeera reporter: "I've seen people give birth; I've seen people get married; I've seen people graduate. I've never seen people as happy as they are here."
Volunteering for WINOL
It's the first WINOL bulletin of 2011 and I was called on by Charlotte Clarke to come help out. It was pretty interesting to catch a glimpse of what we'll be doing next year. I came in around 2 PM and was put to work straight away running back and forth between TAB9 and the TV studio delivering messages on Charlotte's behalf. Closer to 3 PM when the bulletin was meant to go live I was put to the task of running the VTs when given the cues, which was surprisingly stressful. As the bulletin's live, there's little room for error, and the order they were run in was subject to last second changes.
There was a familiar feeling of tension in the studio. It was only a year ago that I and three others wrote, directed and performed our own play, and though I could do little but sit and watch the problems arise one after the other, I felt oddly at home watching the crew wrestle bad lighting, malfunctioning headsets, glitchy audio and necessary, demotivating delays. Despite all these troubles, however, the bulletin was finally broadcast - 15 minutes late - and with little issues during it, save for one very large one during the sports segment (which has since been edited out, I think).
All in all, it was an exciting afternoon. I'll probably be back to volunteer for more in the coming weeks; it's interesting to see what we'll be doing next year.
There was a familiar feeling of tension in the studio. It was only a year ago that I and three others wrote, directed and performed our own play, and though I could do little but sit and watch the problems arise one after the other, I felt oddly at home watching the crew wrestle bad lighting, malfunctioning headsets, glitchy audio and necessary, demotivating delays. Despite all these troubles, however, the bulletin was finally broadcast - 15 minutes late - and with little issues during it, save for one very large one during the sports segment (which has since been edited out, I think).
All in all, it was an exciting afternoon. I'll probably be back to volunteer for more in the coming weeks; it's interesting to see what we'll be doing next year.
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