The Turin Book Fair opened the day before yesterday, against a background of bitter dispute. Israel is this year’s guest of honor.
We are told: “Culture and politics must not be mixed.” “To boycott the Fair is to deny Israel’s existence, to seek its destruction and disappearance.” We’ve heard it all before.
In response to the boycott appeal, the President of Italy opened the Fair in person on Thursday, May 8. It was not a political but a cultural gesture, we are told. Of course! Meanwhile, the accusations fly, hot and heavy. Israel’s ambassador to Italy has saluted the President’s action as a refusal to knuckle under to the diktat of those who, in boycotting the Fair, “seek to deprive Israel of its legitimacy.” In posing as victim, the ambassador may well be the only one to grasp the true political implications of the President’s decision. Dark irony, indeed.
Again, Israel poses as the victim of bigots, extremists, and madmen! The same tired refrain, the old song, tried and true. Shame, and again shame.
Those who talk about the boycott of the upcoming Beijing Olympic Games have at least had the decency to mention Tibetan victims of Chinese policy. That is the least they could do! But when it comes to Palestine we hear not a word, read not a single line, and view not a minute of television airtime: the Palestinian people does not exist. Gaza is being stifled, blockaded, transformed into an open-air prison, a ghetto; starvation stalks the land. What do we hear? Nothing. Summary execution and torture? Mere trifles. The wall of shame encloses no one, nothing. Israel’s settlement policy steals no one’s land. A people is suffering, its basic rights, its very existence denied? Don’t bother us with details.
At the Turin Book Fair, Israel and freedom of expression are the victims. The Palestinians have ceased to exist, their oppression, their suffering erased.
I am filled with shame and revulsion at the abject, crawling politicians and media; yet greater shame for all the token Arabs and/or Muslims and/or citizens, those spineless, groveling bondsmen of the mighty.
Let my sorrow be revolt: calm revolt, confident patience. Let the promise of History be memory.
Beware. Victory is not all that it seems.
0 response
Professor Ramadan,
we are with you, in patience. Your courage gives us strength, your strength gives us courage. History will judge us all, and in the end victory will belong to Truth.
What can we do? Everybody to whom I speak is convinced that the Jews and the Israelis are persons of superior intelligence, qualities and achievements, whilst all the Muslims are a bunch of miserable mad terrorists. People have been well indoctrinated. Be patient, time will tell. Your strategy is correct, follow Ghandi’s example.
We need to get out of the intellectual dark ages the muslim world has been in for too long. And when I hear and read work of dr. Ramadan´s and other´s I´m optimistic about the future. Never mind the corrupt leaders and the extremists, we can think for ourselves. When muslims build a strong discourse, this can’t be dismissed. But it takes time.
It´s really a shame that the finest Arab/ muslim thinkers are in the west- in exile or by choice, while our countries are governed by crooks.
It´s not just indoctrination, it´s, sadly, empirics as well. I think Tariq Ramadan understands this well: the best thing msulims can do for themselves and for the umma is to devellop an intellectual spirit again, that’s the great ‘jihad’ of our time.
It’s such a shame how much human recources in the muslimcommunity goes wasted. In muslimcountries because the eduactionalsystem doesn’t work, but also in western countries because muslims don’t reckognize the importance of education, or even think western education is against islam. So many of our talented youth goes wasted.