Saturday, December 03, 2005

Syrian thinker Tayyib Tizini offers his criticisms of the Damascus Declaration in an interview with Al-Mustaqbal. He, as a staunch secularist, disagrees with the marriage between politics and Islam posited in that declaration, and fears Kurdish separatism. He also strongly disagrees with the absence of references to the Palestine question in the declaration. Tizini signed the Hums (not Hummus) Declaration, but not the Damascus Declaration. I have signed the potato declaration last year. He accuses Syrian and Lebanese press of vengeance toward the "other." But I think that the Lebanese press is worse because 1) it ostensibly is "free" while the Syrian media are mere tools of the government; 2) Lebanese media, especially Hariri media and An-Nahar exhibit blatant racism toward all Syrians while the Syrian media have not exhibited racism toward all Lebanese--hostility to Hariri rags and tools is not racist, by the way.