Following are excerpts: [1]
"For Hundreds of Years, the Pen and the Rifle Have Been Intertwined"
"For hundreds of years, our Arabic language has been saturated with deep-rooted violence. For hundreds of years, the pen and the rifle have been intertwined and have come to use the same language… Our poems are replete with [images of] bloodshed, killing, swords, spears, rifles, bullets, missiles, and car bombs… Our stories are [full of] battles, ambushes, and corpses… We have come to view destruction as beautiful and to eulogize it, while letting the flowers wither and die.
"We view others with hostility and hate them even when they are good and pure. [This has been so] from the time of Nebuchadnezzar through [the time of] Al-Hajjaj [Ibn Yousef] and up to the time of the contemporary tyrants… who are wrapped up in bloodshed and killing….
"After writing violent texts for hundreds of years, our culture has become a culture of violence, death, and destruction. This violence has swept through the Arab lands, from the Atlantic to the Gulf, so that the entire infrastructure of all the Arab countries is on the brink of collapse."
What Is the Arab Intellectual's "Role in Immunizing Arab Society Against Violence [?]"
"There are questions that bother me greatly, which I present here to the intellectual elite: Is our intellectual activity violent? If the answer is yes, is it possible to discover exactly what cultural, religious, or ideological causes have brought about this loathsome blind extremism? Is it possible to confront this violence and extremism and transform it into cultural behavior which befits a modern society desiring to be constructive?…
"I want to ask: What is the vision of the Arab intellectual, and what is his role in immunizing Arab society against violence and extremism in both thought and action?…
"I propose that the role of the intellectual is to focus on reforming [our] language and words, to replace the violent words, which he uses daily, with words that are more mild and objective, divorced from [bombastic] rhetoric…
"Finally, let me say that we badly need a cultural and linguistic awakening… so that the rifle and the pen [cease to] use the same language."
Endnote:
[1] Al-Jazirah (Saudi Arabia), May 27, 2009.
