Arabs and cultural emancipation

Genuine liberation can be achieved through the celebration of and respect for languages, memories and heritage of all

Culture constitutes an essential element of social and political liberation. As people rise up across the Middle East and North Africa, the diversity of their cultures is not only the means but also the ultimate goal of their liberation and their freedom. Though historical imperialism was primarily political and economic, it was also cultural; it imposed ways of life, habits, perceptions and values that rarely respected the societies under its domination, that seized control of minds, a true colonisation of human intelligence.

Globalisation extends to culture, often leading, in the societies of the Global South, to self-dispossession. Genuine liberation, the march toward dignity and democracy, require a “cultural uprising” in all dimensions of its popular, artistic, intellectual and religious expressions. We need to point out the importance of culture and the arts in undertaking the task of re-appropriation: the tools of thought and tradition must be used to lend shape and substance to the sense of belonging that alone can guarantee the well-being of individuals. Such is the function of applied ethics. If there is no culture without religion, and no religion without culture, and if, finally, culture is not religion, the issue must be explored; the complex questions of values, meaning, spirituality, tradition and the arts — the factors that give form to history, memory, nations and identities; that transmit well-being and freedom, or fail to — must be faced squarely.

Arab and Muslim majority societies are riven by religious and cultural tensions that have at times torn them apart. The role of the religious reference is a subject of constant discussion and heated debate over relations with tradition and with Arabic — or other national languages — have set ruling elites and intellectuals at loggerheads.

Close examination and study of these experiences leads but to one sole conclusion: we are dealing with a complex, deeply rooted malaise. Its dimensions are manifold: cultural, religious, linguistic and therefore, a fortiori, strongly identity-related. It cuts across all social sectors, all classes, and all trends of thought, from secularists to Islamists and from atheists to believers, whether observant or not. The attraction-repulsion complex vis-à-vis the West is not new; it existed even before the colonial period. It has created an ambiguous relationship in which imaginations are fascinated and attracted by the now-global western culture, while the same force of attraction is rejected by the analytical, cultural and ethical conscience that is experienced as self-dispossession, colonisation and on occasion as the violence of cultural rape. The aspirations and contradictions that have arisen must be acknowledged, as they can be enlisted as a driving force for liberation movement, or become obstacles that paralyse societies by trapping them in sterile confrontations that perpetuate the identity crisis rather than solving it.

Much has been written, quite justifiably, about the new ‘internet culture’ of the young cyber-dissidents of Tunisia and Egypt, not to mention the rest of the Middle East and North Africa.

Mastery of new technology

Their mastery of the tools of communication and their ability to express themselves have earned them praise. To the West, they conveyed the reassuring impression that they were speaking the same language as ‘us,’ that they shared ‘our’ values and ‘our’ hopes. No one can deny their extraordinary progress as communicators: the younger Arab generation succeeded in conveying a message, both at home and abroad, that traditional political forces had, over a half-century of political involvement, failed to do. The power and effectiveness that flow from mastery of new technology cannot be underestimated: the ‘internet culture’ is also the expression of genuine power. Still, the precise nature of its power cannot but raise questions about how deeply-rooted the mass protest movements in the Middle East and North Africa really are. Are young people reclaiming themselves and their freedom through the use of modern means of communication, or are the means of communication stripping Arab young people of their identity?

The question is imperative, for a political liberation movement accompanied by cultural ill-being (in addition to the potential for economic manipulation) would be bound in the long run to fail. Full respect for the memory and the psychology of peoples, attentiveness to their aspirations and reconciling them with themselves are historical imperatives. The ‘Arab problem’ was never simply one of the violent dictatorships that succeeded political decolonisation; it has always lain in the perpetuation of an alienating and paralysing, if not destructive, intellectual colonisation.

The process of reclaiming the self is one of reconciliation with meaning. Cultures, along with the religions that shape and nurture them, are value systems, sets of traditions and habits clustered around one or several languages, producing meaning: for the self, for the here and now, for the community, for life. Cultures are never merely intellectual constructs. They take form through the collective intelligence and memory, through a commonly held psychology and emotions, through spiritual and artistic communion. The Arab awakening cannot afford to overlook these, the fundamental dimensions of freedom and of the liberation of individuals and societies.

Cultural emancipation is imperative, and will require a holistic approach. As a first step, self-representation must be reformed through education. In the Middle East and North Africa, this first step is still remote. If the message of religion is to be reconciled with spirituality, cultural fulfilment can only be achieved through the celebration of and respect for the languages, memories and heritage of all, and with the positive integration of minority ethnic affiliations and dialects. Along with the West, Africa, the Islamic Orient and Asia have fallen into the trap set by the negative effects of globalisation, including but not limited to exclusivist, sectarian if not deadly claims to culture and identity. The same claims are omnipresent in the Arab world as well. Hence the importance of cultural policies, which must be developed in tandem with social policy, drawn from the common ground that determines the sense of national belongs.

Culture lends meaning a horizon. Everything in the heritage of culture and tradition is worthy of celebration. To achieve cultural liberation means calling into question all possible forms of parallel and/or secondary alienation: economic dispossession is devastating, just as cultural imperialism can be. Spirituality, posited as a point of recall, as a quest for meaning in and through itself, individually and collectively, is an act of liberation. Yet it must be part of an open, constructive involvement that, acting from within society and in full respect of the pluralism that distinguishes those of the Middle East and North Africa, will determine the ultimate goals that body forth the cultures whose substance constitutes the narrative of each nation.

To assert culture, memory and identity is to assert that they are meaningful, to affirm that they are capable of addressing the challenges of the day. To assert one’s self is to become a subject, to take full responsibility for one’s heart, body and mind, as well as for one’s fellows, one’s society, and for nature itself. The imperative of coherence is incontrovertible; the very condition of genuine wellbeing and freedom. Western societies are today taking stock of the deficiencies that afflict them, that undermine the principles of democracy by maintaining a culture of fear and insecurity. Insecurity of mind is the negative image of peace of heart. Arab societies are undergoing a similar crisis, in a different way perhaps, but with equal intensity. They suffer from a malaise of incoherence, and no amount of reform, or of political freedom, will resolve the feeling of unease that has sapped the foundations of East and West alike.

Source: http://gulfnews.com/opinions/columnists/arabs-and-cultural-emancipation-1.1003271