Sadiq Jalal Al-Azm, yet again

On the 10th anniversary of the death of the principled Edward Said, Sadiq Jalal Al-Azm (the person who used to accuse Arab intellectuals of being agents of Mossad and CIA for daring to meet with a Harvard Professor, Roger Fisher, and a person who considered all Arab intellectuals to be his inferior because they are not as radical as he is, tell a Kuwaiti tabloid that he has reached the conclusion that "Edward Said is wrong, and that the Orientalists are right".  For that, I wish to apologize to Edward Said because I tried in 1993 to make peace between the two men.  I sincerely apologize to Said and to his admirers for that sin, and I will for the first time reveal what Said told me about Al-Azm (when he learned that I was seeing him in DC that year when he was at the Wilson Center) that the Zionist devotees of Bernard Lewis had invited Al-Azm only to annoy Said and told me that Al-Azm is specializing in "licking Zionist asses".  Said was so right about this man and I was so wrong.  This is a man who justified his transformation to me back in 1993 by saying meekly on the phone: "We lost ya As`ad.  The Jews have won".  These are his exact words.  In this same interview Al-Azm also said that the sectarian violence in Syria is not worrisome because the attacks are only directed by the rebels against the Alawites. (thanks Hanane)


PS For clarification.  Al-Azm used to urge me to intercede with Said to end the latter's boycott of him.

Edward Said on Noah Feldman

Some people go to their own pages on Wikipedia and add or change materials for their own benefit and glory.  The epitome of narcissism.  Noah Feldman (who is now mentioned as a Supreme Court candidate) whose knowledge and writings about the Arab world and Islam amount to no more than vapidness and stereotypical generalizations and who once questioned whether Arabs act "rationally", has a page on Wikipedia and it says that Edward Said only wrote against Feldman because he did not think that he was experienced enough.  This is what Edward Said had written about Feldman: "The late Edward Said, writing last year in Egypt’s Al-Ahram Weekly, observed that the U.S. media described Feldman as “an extraordinarily brilliant expert in Islamic law, [who] had studied Arabic since he was 15, and grew up as an Orthodox Jew. But he has never practiced law in the Arab world, never been to Iraq, and seems to have no real practical background in the problems of post-war Iraq. What an open-faced snub not only to Iraq itself, but also to the legions of Arab and Muslim legal minds who could have done a perfectly acceptable job in the service of Iraq’s future. . . . [T]he contempt is thick enough to cut with a knife.”"

The Early Fouad Ajami: the myth of the former Leftist or Arab nationalist

I woke up today and decided to read the earliest writings of Fouad Ajami.  I never believed the notion that he was some Arab leftist or Arab nationalist in his youth (they remind me of stories that Obama was a rabid Palestinian advocate in his early political career).  There is no trace whatsoever of that.  Read his "Israel and Sub-Saharan Africa: A Study of Interaction" (African Studies Review, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Dec. 1970).  Ajami was still a graduate student in Seattle when he published that study (or freshly finished with the PhD).  He did not once speak about Israel the way Arabs then--especially then--spoke about it.  Also read "On Nasser and His Legacy" in Journal of Peace Research, vol. 11, no. 1 (1974) when he observes that "An interesting feature of Arab radicalism is its shallowness and confinement to slogans" (p. 49).  Or read his piece about the Arab-Israeli war of 1973 in Middle East Ghosts, Foreign Policy, No. 14 (Spring 1974).  In all those early writings there are traces of the later Ajami, especially in his tone about Israel.  But what confused people is that he was friends (or friendly) with Edward Said.  On that bear in mind two things: 1) Edward Said was politically different in the 1970s than he was in his later years and advocated a political settlement with Israel early on (and Anwar Sadat recommended him--as some of you may remember--to head a Palestinian government-in-exile) so the friendship between the two in the 1970s does not imply that Ajami was a radical then.   By the 1990s, Said moved against the two-state (non) solution.  2) Said had friends who were politically different from him (he was friends with Samir Khalaf, for example).  But of course the later Edward Said who became* quite vehemently opposed to Oslo and its consequences spoke fiercely against Ajami and the role of some Arab-Americans in the service of Zionism.

*I should have written "wa" because he was opposed to Oslo from the very beginning.  I meant from saying "becoming" that he was increasingly opposed to Oslo and its consequences.

They never dared to attack him when he was alive; so now they attack him because he is dead. The trashing of Edward Said in Al-Hayat. Following the lead of fanatical Zionists here in the US, this writer by the name of Sayyid Mahmud, writing in a newspaper funded by Wahhabi fanatical royals, dares in a silly article in Al-Hayat to suggest that the writings of Edward Said on media coverage of Islam are not that different from the views of Islamic fundamentalists. This attempt by these Saudi publications, which are contributing to the campaign by the Saudi royals to win Washington's favor, to emulate the criticisms of Edward Said in the likes of Commentary magazine will not obscure the motives of the House of Saud's media. Said lived a secular life, and died as a secular.

Edward Said and the Syrian conflict II

I do find it despicable that someone would resort to claiming that a dead person WOULD HAVE supported his causes had he been alive. That is exactly what Subhi Hadidi did in the Qatari-funded, Al-Quds Al-`Arabi, the other day.  He claimed that Edward Said would have supported the "Syrian revolution".  Comrade Joseph Massad reminded me that the best way to "guess"--if we are to resort to such tactics and methods, which we should not out of respect for the dead--the views of Said toward the Syrian conflict, we can compare his views by analogy to his stance toward Iraq in 1990-91 and in later years.  Said despised the regime of Saddam Husayn but he equally despised and loathed the Iraqi exile opposition of Ahmad Shalabi and Kanan Makiyya.  There is no guessing there.  Said most likely would have despised the Syrian regime and the Saudi-supported Syrian exile opposition and "revolution", unless you think that Said would have sympathized with the Bin Ladenites of the glorious Syrian "revolution".

Yassin Hajj Saleh on Edward Said

Writing in An-Nahar supplement (the paper is the Lebanese right-wing, racist (against Syrians and Palestinians) sectarian Christian publication which is almost dead), Yassin Hajj Saleh mentions Edward Said.  But let me say that writing in An-Nahar about secularism and revolution is like writing in a Nazi publication about Judaism and secularism.  I am used to Zionist habitual distortion and misconstruing of Said's ideas but this one is too vulgar for my taste: he claims that Said argued for authenticity when Said was consistently opposed to that. The conclusion of Culture and Imperialism is an indictment of authenticity.  I know that Saleh's English is limited but he can at least read them in Arabic: they are available. (thanks Amer)

PS Oh, and the rest of the long article is pure vapidness masquerading as cliched enlightenment.

Subhi Hadidi and Edward Said

Subhi Hadidi wrote an article in Al-Quds Al-`Arabi today in which he claimed that Edward Said would have sided with the Syrian "revolution", had he been alive.  I think that this argument about the views of a dead man toward current events is unethical and futile.  How if we agree that the living should speak on behalf of the living, and the dead should be left alone: only their work (and the interpretation of their work) can speak for them.  But I can't for the life of me imagine Edward Said on the same side with March 14, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the US.  But this conversation should end out of respect for the dead.

Adonis thinks that Yo-Yo Ma is a woman. So here is a lousy text of Adonis' speech at Columbia University in honor of Edward Said. I can't speak on behalf of Edward Said but he would have been nauseated by this lousy speech. It is another low for a desperate man who wants the Nobel Prize, even if he receives it while crawling at the entrance of AIPAC in Washington, DC. He is trying in the introduction of the speech to dazzle the White Man in New York City with his knowledge of high culture. He makes a reference to "the famous female musician" Yo-Yo Ma--I kid you not. And notice that he gives Israel specific instructions on how to become "an organic member" of the Middle East and speaks--like members of Congress--about "the guarantee of Israeli security." I don't know who invited him to Columbia but he clearly harmed the memory of Edward Said's work with this lousy (in style and substance) speech.

Saudi media against Edward Said. This is what I need now. The vulgar right-wing pro-Wahhabi fanatics offering an evaluation of the late Edward Said. Here, the right-wing Iranian pro-Shah neo-con, Amir Taheri, evaluates Edward Said, and decides that he was more a political activist than an academic. And I hereby declares Amir Taheri to be more a right-wing propagandist than anything else.

Lies, ignorance and racism: 34 days of humiliation for Israel

I finished yesterday during flying and waiting at airports the book 34 Days: Israel, Hizbollah, and the War in Lebanon by Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff. I am reviewing it for the Journal of Palestine Studies so I will unload there but I will say a few things. Where do I begin. It is fair to say that Israeli writings on the Arab world (we need not to never refer to it as Israeli Orientalism because I do have respect for classical Orientalism, notwithstanding its political and methodological problems--I mean it would be insulting to knowledge and scholarship to compare Raphael Patai or Itamar Rabonovich to Ignaz Goldziher or Maxime Rodinson or Louis Massignon, etc) is characterized by: 1) utter racism for Arabs; 2) ignorance on basic facts and realities and the collection of large number of errors and mistakes in one book; 3) horrible language skills; 4) the ease in which authors lie and fabricate to serve Israeli propaganda interests; 5) conflation between the pseudo-scholarship and the stance of the Israeli government--whichever it is. This is a book that should have carried the stamp of the Israeli Ministry of Offense and may be distributed for free by Israeli embassies. I can't imagine Arab intellectuals (the ones with standing and I am not talking about the servants of the House of Saud) having this subservience to the ministry of defense of their country. It would be discrediting for them. And to lie with such ease? Every encounter in which the Israeli terrorist troops were humiliated is made into a heroic stance by the Israelis, including the battles of Marun Ar-Ras and Bin Jubayl. At Bint Jubayl, the ambush is not an ambush, according to these two authors. And the entire account is replete with references to Arabs comparable to references to blacks in books in the US in the 19th century. They even justify the murder of Arab civilians: "The killing of innocent people, it would seem, is part of the price of war." (p. 161). Notice they said the killing and not the accidental killing. But this book really portrays a fight between Israelis and animals. And how they lie. Remember when Edward Said threw a rock at Israel from south Lebanon? The two authors described the incident as follows: "Professor Edward Said went to the Fatma Gate to be photographed, seated in his wheelchair, tossing a stone at an Israeli soldier."(p. 39) (The picture of the stone throwing appears above--do you see a wheelchair?) Their account of Lebanese politics and Hizbullah is so ill-informed. But they make it clear that they are covering only one side. They have no intention to cover a war from both sides: they refer to a few MEMRI translations of Nasrallah's speeches to account for the lack of balance in coverage. Oh, no: they did to the other side; they interviewed Arab journalist "N.", as they called him, because he visited Lebanon. Their accounts of the heroism of the Israeli soldiers is rather laughable but only if you forget that those soldiers are famous for killing women and children. And to justify the killing of women and children those two authors simply invent and lie and fabricate: On Qana massacre they say that "Convincing evidence was available that Hizbullah had brought in bodies of victims of other bombings in order to intensify the impact.(p. 162). They don't tell you that the evidence is and the book does not bother with documentation of the lies and fabrication. Of course, journalists and international relief workers were at the scene right away and Hizbullah would not have had the chance to do what they say they did. But there are funny bits in the book: funny if you are into killing of civilians, as the authors and the bulk of the Israeli public is. In cabinet meeting, the Israeli Attorney General Meni Mazuz was asked about killing civilians, and his Zionist legal opinion was that: "international law allowed harming civilians..." (p. 86) And the book is so propagandistic that it omits all the embarrassing episodes of Israeli terrorist operations, like the kidnapping of a farmer because his name was Hasan Nasrallah, or the claim that three Iranian soldiers were found in South Lebanon. And you read the book and confirm to yourself that the Israeli media (and much of scholarship--hence the necessity of the boycott--complete and unconditional) are mere arms of the state military/intelligence apparatus. Look here: "The Northern Command decided to turn to the [Israeli] media" (p. 7), i.e., to use them to plant stories. Lebanese and Arabs should read this book: there are important revelations. The Saudis urging for a continuation of the war, Saudi Arabia and UAE sending love messages to Israel, Sanyurah sending messages through the French to the Israelis during the war, the utmost concern in the US and Israel for the status of Sanyurah, the clear symmetry between Sanyurah's seven points and Israeli goals during the war, etc. And the mistakes in names and places can fill pages: Husayn Rahhal (a media official in Hizbullah) is identified as "Hussein Rachel" (p. 102), and did you know that a Lebanese politician by the name of "Bashar Gemayel" was "liquidated" during the Batata Revolution (p. 266); they keep referring to a village in South Lebanon by the name of "Randoria" and there is no such village by that name there, unless they mean Ghanduriyyah; and did you know that the Supreme Leader in Iran is called "Haminai" (p. 257). Kid you not. Israel will not go down in one blow: the chance existed and missed back in 1948 and 1967. The defeat of Israel will be cumulative: one military humiliation after the other. You read the book and conclude: that Hizbullah really knew how to skillfully fight, humiliate, and outsmart the Israeli war machine in this war, and you confirm to yourself that, as Avi Shlaim (with whom I disagree on several things, like his support for Oslo and his love affair with the Hashemites of Jordan) described it in his new book, Israel and Palestine, "Israel has become “a rogue state”: it “habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism—the use of violence against civilians for political purposes.”

I regularly read books by authors who adhere to an ideology of hostility against Arabs and Muslims. Efraim Karsh is an example. When I saw his Islamic Imperialism: A History book, I thought that it could be interesting. I finished it on the plane yesterday. What a failed project: an interesting idea but so badly executed by our author. What promised to be an original argument in favor of Islamic imperialism thesis, turned out to be a regular blow-by-blow account of Islamic history. Nothing new: nothing new at all. The author, of course, relies not on the entire sweep of existing scholarly literature and primary early sources on Islam, but he selectively quotes from them hoping to paint the most negative image. But he did not know that by that he was undermining his own case. Obsessed with finding negative and unfavorable stories and anecdotes, he relished telling you about drunken caliphs, and internecine warfare in the body of the Ummah. But that clashes with the thesis of the overarching goal of Islamic Empire that those caliphs were seeking. But what is rather comical is that the way Karsh (who has an obsession with Edward Said bordering on the malady) defines (or not defines) the goal of Islamic imperialism. So for him, Nasser, Muhammad, all the caliphs, concubines, Aflaq, Arafat, Husayn, Faysal, Edward Said, Bin Laden, Saddam Husayn, Hasan Banna, Sayyid Qutb among others were ALL seeking the same goal of establishing "Allah's Empire" as he later calls it. So intent is he on superficially making his case, that he mistranslates any usage of the word dawlah (state) as "empire."(p. 64) Even the 1967 war which was launched by Israel and led to expansion of the Zionist state is treated as an attempt by Nasser to--you guessed it right--establish "Allah's Empire." So if Arabs defend their lands from Israeli invasions and attacks, they are no more than trying to establish an Islamic Empire. The part of the book that reaches the Ottoman Empire is based on the established literature, and is written chronologically--with an eye for the bizarre and the unusual: I mean why is it important for him to tell us about the Umayyad Caliph Yazid's attachment to his pet monkey? Is the attachment to a pet monkey another evidence for Karsh of the existence of "an Islamic Empire"? But the later part is the most confused and incoherent hodge podge that I have seen: he would talk about Nasser, and then go back to Churchill, and then go back to Sharif Husayn, and on and on. He does not understand the meaning of `Ayyarun in Islamic history (p. 48): he lists the one meaning of it, but it has different (opposite) meanings. Ibn Mandhur said that `Ayyar can be used to praise or to blame. And his book is so tied to his hostile agenda, that he can't get himself to admit what even classical Orientalists have admitted: the clear contributions of the Arab-Islamic civilization in the various fields. For him, all the contributions were mere reflections Hellenistic culture and science. Even Arabic literature is based on Hellenistic "motifs and themes."(p. 68) His main nemesis is Nasser: he even claimed that Nasser never ventured outside of Egypt when Nasser fought in the 1948 war, and that Nasser never cared about the Arabs (he comically quotes King Husayn on Nasser and tells us that Nasser used to "confide" in him). But this is the season for a book like this: anybody who has a hostile agenda toward Muslims and Arabs is now in high demand, and will be published with enthusiasm in the US. At least classical Orientalists had qualities of erudition, knowledge, rigor, meticulousness, and vast language skills. The present-day imitators are but a caricature of classical Orientalists.

Saudi media and Edward Said

For the last two years, and coinciding with the advancement in the Saudi-Israeli alliance, the Saudi media (and now academe) have been launching a campaign against Edward Said and a stringent defense of classical Orientalism.  Al-Majallah (the mouthpiece of the Prince Salman's media empire) published a cover story a few months ago and had Joshua Muravchik write the leading article against Said. (thanks "Ibn Rushd")

Obama on Edward Said

""And yet, Said’s theoretical approach in the course left Obama cold.” Remnick then quotes a friend of Obama’s who also took the course: “My whole thing, and Barack had a similar view, was that we would rather read Shakespeare’s plays than the criticism. Said was more interested in the literary theory, which didn’t appeal to Barack or me.” According to Remnick, the young Obama referred to Said as a “flake.”
[...]

You may know that Said’s three most influential books are Orientalism, Covering Islam, and Culture and Imperialism, all of which deal with Western stereotypes and caricatures of the Orient and of Islam, of Arabs and Persians.

[...]

But is it too much to ask of anyone concerned with our Middle Eastern policy to read Said’s trilogy—that is, before they encourage a military attack on Iran by proxies—be they French, Israeli, British, or Saudi Arabian? Wouldn’t it be truly audacious if Barack Obama, class of 1983, had done a close enough reading of the three Orientalism texts—with their subtext of humiliation endured by colonized peoples—to cite them as a reason for his praiseworthy reluctance to move from sanctions to violence? That before he wasted one more life, one more dollar in Islamic Afghanistan, Obama showed some interest in his old professor instead of reading the dubious Robert Kagan? And furthermore, that the president of the United States consider following the fine example of the president of Columbia University and be willing to meet with Iran’s, shall we say, flaky, President Ahmahdinejad? After all, Obama has already visited another religiously intolerant abettor or terrorists and officially anti-Israel head of state, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia."

"For your information: we spoke Arabic at home. Edward knew not only the Mashriqi dialect of Lebanon, Palestine and Syria, but also the Egyptian dialect, and he could easily flip from one to the other. He read the language with ease and was an avid reader of Arabic poetry. He lectured in Arabic, conducted interviews with the media in Arabic, and read the Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat daily. He could write in Arabic, although he had not been trained to do so, and had greater fluency writing in English. His friends, colleagues and students knew his mastery of many languages. He was a stickler when it came to understanding the meanings and uses of words. I would like to point out to your readers an essay written by Edward in Raritan, V21, No 4, entitled “Living in Arabic”. This essay should end all speculation.
Perhaps it hasn’t occurred to Irwin that “Said still dominates the debate thirty years on” because he articulated something profound and substantial that opened the field to greatly needed debate. MARIAM C. SAID".
I can add to this, that Edward made a point to deepen his knowledge of Arabic in the early 70s when he took private lessons (for a year, I think) from one of the well-known professors of Arabic at AUB (I forgot which one. Was it not Maqdisi?). I felt that he had tremendous appreciation for the Arabic language, and made a point to speak it among Arabs. He once complained about an Arab student--a Lebanese, unsurprisingly--at Columbia because Edward said that he would greet him in Arabic, and the other would respond in English. (thanks Amer)

I decided to post this picture (From left to right, Michelle Obama, then Illinois state senator Barack Obama, Columbia University Professor Edward Said and Mariam Said at a May 1998 Arab community event in Chicago at which Edward Said gave the keynote speech. (Image from archives of Ali Abunimah). I am certain of this: if Obama advances in the presidential race, the dirty trickmisters of the Clinton campaign will make a big deal of this picture. Mark my words. (Ali: the Clinton campaign people may make you very famous, soon. Beware).

I have written against this guy, Noah Feldman before. A New York law professor who arrogantly was hired to teach Iraqis about law making, just after the American invasion and occupation. Of course, now he wants to distance himself from the occuapation's problems. I have written before against him: how he had said that people in the Middle East region dont always act rationally, or that he was opposed to the elections in Iraq because "the wrong" people could win (see the introduction or preface of my Saudi Arabia book where I have the full citations--I also have them somewhere in the archives of this site). Here, he claims that Edward Said was opposed to his role with the US occupation apparatus because he is Jewish. That is absolutely not true. Edward Said was opposed to the arrogance of this law professor (no matter what his religion is) who thought that he can teach Iraqis under occupation about law making. (I forgot who sent me this link, but thanks).

….off to Lebanon. I will be there until early July. Whenever I go to Lebanon I tell my mother to not allow any cleric in the vicinity of my dead body, if I die or get killed. The Lebanese state does not recognize you as a citizen if you are an atheist. (For friends and media: my Hotel (for those who know me, it is the same Hotel) number in Beirut is left on the answering machine of my home in California). Yes, we have email in the Middle East. I cannot believe that you would even ask. The internet connection in Damascus was slow, but reliable last year. They have T-1 lines in Beirut. Last year, when I went to the traditional Suq Al-Hamidiyyah in downtown Damascus, this boy approached me and said in Damascene English: “Welcome to Suq Al-Hamidiyyah.” I was upset. “What? You think I am some tourist” I said in Arabic. I did not want to be seen as a tourist. It is my hair, I thought. It is my hair, I hoped. It is weird: I do not mind being a tourist in Athens, but not in Damascus or Beirut. Am I a tourist when I derive a particular and extreme pleasure from swimming in the Mediterranean waters now, although I grew up around that sea? My trip to Lebanon feels deficient if I do not swim in that sea? At least I never carry cameras, and do not take pictures, and certainly do not romanticize that obnoxious country (in terms of culture, government, identity, and pretensions) Lebanon the way Lebanese ultra-Nationalists do. I get offended when cabdrivers in Beirut tell me that “you must be living abroad.” This while I make an effort to never ever slip a foreign word in conversations, and I speak on TV and in lectures in classical Arabic to not appear as an outsider. But I am. Only two weeks ago some American man in Modesto yelled at me, after a silly argument over traffic,: “Get out of MY country.” You do not want to feel that you are an outsider in more than one place. What if you are an outsider in everyplace. That was Edward Said’s idea in the title of his memoirs (Out of Place). But in a way you are; I know I am. I used to feel guilty for fitting in here better than in other places; now I do not. A friend of mine who has known me for years told me recently: “You have to accept it As`ad. You have become Americanized.” I agreed with her. Of course, I do not believe in borders or nationalities or passports, ideally. But borders are reinforced, fortified, and enlarged by prejudices, security fears—real and imagined, patriotism and patriots, flags, national anthems, national dishes, presidential campaigns, potatoes, balloons, hatred, and by “Bin Laden” and “Bush.” I will update the site from London, Beirut, and Damascus. There are people I want to meet to try to understand the situation in Iraq, namely Anis Naqqash, Hasan Nasrallah, and Ayatollah Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah. The last two studied in Iraq, and Fadlallah was born in Najaf. (Meeting religious leaders reminds me of this: In the late 1980s, when Husayn Musawi (then leader of Islamic Amal and now Executive Assistant to the Secretary-general of the Party of God (Hizbullah) was a “big name” in Western media, linked by US to series of bombings, hijackings, and kidnappings, I went as a graduate student to interview him in Ba`albak in the Biqa` valley. During the interview, he asked me if I had eaten. I said: No. He asked his son Hisham to bring me some food. There came Hisham with a delicious tray of Arabic breakfast food that I love. I immediately began to eat. Musawi looked at me fiercely and intensely, and asked: “Have you not forgotten something?” I said: “What?” He said: “Don’t you know that food is more delicious when you precede it by saying In the Name of God, the merciful, the compassionate?” I paused but then continued to eat.) I would have met George Habash, but he is in Jordan, and I do not trust my person to the rule of King `Abdullah, whose intelligence hooligans burnt my picture in public in Amman at a silly demonstration they organized after one AlJazeera appearance by me in which I ridiculed the silly king. The billionaire Prime Minister of Lebanon, whom I despise, could not stand me. I went to interview him for an article, and he was so visibly offended that I showed up—the way I always show up—in jeans, Polo shirt, and New Balance running shoes . I felt he wanted to throw me out of the window. His media advisor is a friend of mine, and he looked at her angrily—“How could you bring in this jerk? ” I felt he was telling her. I would not go to Iraq; I never visited Iraq under Saddam, and I would not go now, despite the liberation by “Bush.” Even “Bush” would not visit his “liberated” Iraq for more than a few snuck hours. It will not be practical for me to offer poetry from there as I do not have access to my personal library. Have you read Benjamin’s essay on book collection? You should. The transfer in Iraq will occur when I am there. I will tell you if anybody notices. And please, as you remember D-Day’s anniversary, feel free to celebrate the WWII war, remember fondly the Vietnam War, and cheer the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but…without me.

Sadiq Al-Azm dead, his family confirmed.

Sadiq Al-Azm has died, his family in Germany confirmed.  He was one of the best known writers and polemicists of the post-1967 Arab world.  I first met him in the late 1970s, when as a young revolutionary Marxist at AUB, and I was writing a long (unpublished) study of the colonial role of the American University of Beirut.  He talked to me about his experience at AUB and how the right-wingers at the University (especially the Lebanese, like Charles Malik and Samir Khalaf) wanted to get rid of him in the 1960s, before he was fired.  What struck me about him at the time was how friendly and how accessible he was.  He does not carry himself like the typical Arab intellectual and would love to engage with young students.  He was at the time teaching at the philosophy department at Damascus University--if I am not mistaken or maybe he was working at the Palestine Research Center--not sure.  That was my first and only encounter.  I read at the time his articles in Dirasat Arabiyyah which he had written after the 1967.  They were thrilling to me at the time, as was the writings of Al-Afif Al-Akhdar who was far to his left and was one of the first Arab Marxists to offer anti-Leninist, anti-Stalinist critiques of Soviet Marxism and its branches in orthodox Arab communism.  I also heard about him from my uncle, Naji AbuKhalil (still alive and lives in Paris), who knew him from the days of the Movement of Arab Nationalists and from its mouthpiece, Al-Huriyyah where my uncle and Ghassan Kanafani among others worked and contributed.  He was close--like my uncle--to Nayif Hawatmah and the DFLP leadership and both would attend politburo meetings without being official members of the Front.  But I only got to know Al-Azm well in the 1992-1993 academic year, when I spent a year as a scholar-in-residence at the Middle East Institute while teaching at Georgetown when Hanna Batatu was on sabbatical.  Al-Azm had finished a year at Princeton's Center for Middle East studies and was spending a year at the Wilson Center.  Bassam Haddad and I got to know him well, and would socialize over Arabic food often (often at Bassam's home).  He was still very nice and very accessible and very engaging with younger students.  He would sometimes ask me to speak on his behalf (often about Arab secularism) when he could not fulfill an obligation for whatever reason.  I liked him at the time but was surprised that his family name meant much to him: he would tell me (more than once) the story of his teasing Mustafa Talas's wife (from the "elite" Jabiri family) about their elite backgrounds and that he would tell her that if your family is blue-blooded my family is purple-blooded, or words to that effect.  I also saw him with his family (his wife and his son Ivan, who was studying at American University in DC at the time, if my memory serves me).  But I had a rift with Al-Azm at the end of the academic year when I noticed that his attitude toward Zionism and American Zionists and Israeli academics have softened, as when he accepted to speak at WINEP.  (He later canceled his appearance).  But when we discussed his newly moderate views on Arab-Israeli issues,  I remember his answer which shocked me, he said: "The Jews have won, ya As`ad." (In Arabic: اليهود انتصروا).  I was surprised at the sentiment and at the phrasing of the sentiment.  During the year, because I liked Sadiq, I tried (with his encouragement) to mediate between him and Edward Said.  Edward was adamant against any reconciliation with him and told me that the Zionists at Princeton only invited him to US because of his critique of Orientalism.  We would exchange publications over the years and I would send him materials to his address at Damascus University.  Ironically, Al-Azm was never associated or close to Syrian opposition and his strong opposition to all forms of Islamism perhaps made his relations with the regime less conflictual.  He held a senior position at Damascus University, as is known.  I never saw him during the years until a few years ago when I ran into him at MESA in Boston.  I could only say this to him: You are now a liberal democrat? How ironic.  He said: something to the effect: that we need to breathe. And I said: there are many ways to breathe other than liberalism, or words to that effect. The encounter was civil but very brief.  Ironically, in all those decades when I lived in the US, Al-Azm would rarely if ever be invited to speak at American colleges and universities.  Only his friends at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University would invite him, along with Arab American organizations, like the AAUG.  But his critique of Said endeared him to many American Zionists.  I also changed my mind over the years about his writings of post-1967 (under the rubric of "self-criticisms" which are covered in Fouad Ajami's The Arab Predicament) and the writings of Adonis in the same period.  I wrote against them in Arabic and regard them as full of generalizations and crude Orientalist essentialism.    His role in the Syrian exile opposition and his resort to sectarian critiques after 2011 shocked me and shocked many of his former admirers--as his positive remarks about Islamists of Syria.  I wish I can remember him prior to this period, and I wish personally that he opposed the Syrian regime long before 2011.  In fairness to him, it was not easy to oppose the Syrian regime from Lebanon as the henchmen of the regime often killed Syrian dissidents in Lebanon.  Killing of Syrian dissidents in Lebanon by the regime did not even stop after the Syrian army withdrawal from Lebanon in 2005.  I believe that Al-Azm took his feminism seriously and practiced it in his life.  He was as a person--politics aside--far better and modest and kinder to younger Arabs (and Western students) than most Arab intellectuals I know--if not all.  Condolences to his family.  

Barenboim: take your piano away from here

Samer Abboud sent me this (I cite with his permission): "I hope that you are well. I just noticed your post on Miriam Said's comments, I hope you do not mind me writing you about this. A few years ago I attended a conference in memory of Edward Said and they showed a film produced by the foundation called Knowledge is the Beginning, or something to that effect. It began with Barenboim suggesting that 'both sides' have made mistakes and that basically they should just shut up and get over it and live together (they were passing through a checkpoint if I remember correctly). I doubt this was intentional by the filmmakers but there was a clear division (to me at least) between Said and the Arab musicians on the one hand, and Barenboim and the Israeli students on the other. I would be very, very surprised and disappointed if Said associated himself with Barenboim's garbage talk about both people making mistakes, etc. It was my first experience with Barenboim and I was extremely unimpressed and a bit sad that Said had so strongly associated with him. The only critical reflection offered by Barenboim during the film was the standard Israeli peacenik bullshit -- the state of Israel should continue to exist but it should be nicer to its neighbors and everything will be fine."

Samir Khalaf: the messanger of Western colonization in Beirut. I don't have time to elaborate on this, but feel obligated to write something. Samir Khalaf sent one of his silly pieces (in English) to appear in An-Nahar in Arabic (it was translated by the paper for today's issue). This is a man who grew up all his life in Lebanon, and yet can't speak Arabic, let alone write it. He was a professor at the American University of Beirut when I was a student there, but I never took classes with him. I heard that I would politically not get along with him at all. Once Tarif Khalidi sent me to talk to him about my MA thesis, and he looked in pain when I mentioned Marxism. He later settled in the US, and when he did not get the job he wanted at Princeton, he suddenly discovered Zionism. And he blamed his situation at Princeton on Zionism, although I am willing to bet all my fruits in my house that he never ever stepped foot in a Palestinian refugee camp only a mile or two from his house in Beirut. And let me also raise this issue: if Zionists were behind his not getting the job at Princeton, why was that? It is not that he is some great champion of the Palestinian cause? Did he ever utter a word of support for the Palestinians for the Zionists to obstruct his job pursuits? Who are you fooling. Unfortunately, the late Edward Said (who was friends with him) gave him the political cover that he did not deserve--it was ironic that he once chaired a panel on Orientalism at a Said conference in Beirut. I mean, Khalaf's work is but a Lebanese branch of classical Orientalist dogmas--but without the language skills, without the erudition, and without the rigor. At a closed conference that the Canadian government held in the early 1990s (Michael Hudson, Ghassan Tuwayni, Charles Rizq, George Corm, and I were among the guests), Khalaf in a moment of candor expressed his views on matters Shi`ites. He said that Shi`ites in Lebanon are just impatient. He said that if only Shi`ites could be patient--that yes they are garbage collectors, shoe shiners, and farmers but that in 30 years or more they will be what Christians are: lawyers, engineers, and doctors. He said that this will come and that Shi`ites need to relax and just wait. When one Shi`ite member of the audience protested he stressed that he is not sectarian or prejudiced, and that he held no animus toward Shi`ites. When he was growing up, the family's maid was Shi`ite after all, he added. When I read his lousy piece today, I could only think of that because the piece is dripping with sectarian contempt. His thesis is that Fu'ad Sanyurah represents a "civilized Muslim" while those who oppose him are the Muslim sand niggers, that Khalaf does not believe belong to Ras Beirut. Notice his nostalgia in his schmaltzy writings on Lebanon for Beirut of pre-civil war Lebanon. He can't understand why things can't go back to the Beirut of class and sectarian exclusivism of the pre-war period. This is the sectarian vision of Samir Khalaf. And look at his really amateurish sociological observations about charisma--and look how he talks about it as if it is merely an Arab phenomenon. The West--his idealised and unreal West--is based only on reason. Notice that this man who knows really really nothing about Arab affairs, and certainly nothing about Arab culture, puts Nasser and Bin Laden in the same basket. I am not fan of Nasser, but come on. You can't compare Bin Laden to Nasser, this is like comparing Samir Khalaf to Max Weber or to C. Wright Mills--Khalaf is the Bin Laden in the analogy. Samir Khalaf: even the King of Jordan had to learn Arabic. Oh, and you are so lame and so uncourageous for remembering to criticize the Syrian regime now. You had ample opportunities to criticize the Syrian regime in the past.