People in the West are discovering, with anxiety and fear, that sex in the Muslim world is sick, and that the disease is spreading to their own lands.
---Kamel Daoud.
'When his master said, "We have good food," the house Negro would say, "yes, we have plenty of good food." "We" have plenty of good food. When the master said that "We have a fine home here," the house Negro said, "Yes, we have a fine home here"..When the house started burning down, that type of Negro would fight harder to put the master's house out than the master himself would...
The house Negro usually lived close to his master. He dressed like his master. He wore his master's clothes. He ate food that his master left on the table. And he lived in his master's house-probably in the basement or the attic-but he still lived in the house.'
--Malcolm X.
~
When someone is presumptuous enough to think that they can think and speak on behalf of "the Arab world" or "the Muslim world" you take note because it usually indicates the presence of a house niggah in the house. "People in the West". Crikey! To think, this person is supposed to be a novelist, something that should, you think, be a reason to suggest that he has at the very least has a token notion of the particularity of human lives.
To state the bleedin' obvious: it would be no surprise if, in some 'Muslim countries' (what is even meant by that term?), there are lots of truly horrific things going on or that there is a kind of everyday misogyny that goes unheard. But has this joker stopped to consider another hypothesis: "People in the West" are discovering that sex in the "non-Muslim world" is also sick?
~
"As always, we are judged by our language."
Of course, one can exhibit fascist tendencies in any language (Strumpet being a case in point) but you do wonder if an English sensibility (which includes some awareness of the correct use of language) militates against some forms of extremism? The language is shot though with doubts and partial uncertainties ("perhaps", "maybe," "er," "possibly," "you could say..," "in some sense..," "on the one hand..,") and all of that makes it more difficult for extreme voices to rear their ugly head.
On the other hand, there is often something small and petty about the 'island race'. Not sure if that's just your usual confluence of a small town mentality and cultural (and/or racial) homogeneity. So, there's a strain in the English sensibility which is also loutish, xenophobic, almost, but it is hardly ever a dominant one and is usually tempered by the wider and deeper counter-currents of tolerance and mildness. Be that as it may, thirty years on after neo-liberalism and those harsher tendencies have come to the fore. What, exactly, has the legacy of liberalism been?
~
To hear Americans speak of freedom or democracy usually produces a bout of justified merriment on the other side of the pond. It's not just that they've supported so many dictators and been involved in so many questionable 'escapades' (to put it politely)..it's the sheer wide-eyed naivete of their pronouncements, it's the candour with which these views are expressed, with not even the slightest whiff of hesitation or sophistication. And so it follows that there is a remarkable absence of even the vaguest hint of what other people might think of those blunt and brash statements. The fact that most people can see through those 'ideas' ("the land of the brave and the free") is something that is wholly lost on them.
That America is rapidly becoming the laughing stock of the world, however, is only now becoming all too painfully obvious.
And so, what of the 'Party of Abraham Lincoln'?
'The Republican Party, having spent years courting the basest impulses in American political culture, now sees the writing on the wall. It reads "Donald Trump," in very big letters.'
--David Remnick.
Trump in the house? Now, there's a thought to ponder for the world's greatest democracy!
~
And now we are engaged in tense—potentially hostile—engagements with Muslims around the world. It made sense in dealing with Germany before World War II or with Russia during the cold war for serious people to have read Mein Kampf or Das Kapital. Yet many of those fighting for Germany or Russia had themselves not read Mein Kampf or Das Kapital. The same cannot be said of Muslims and the Koran.
--Gary Wills, NYRB.
Who, exactly, is this "we?
---Kamel Daoud.
'When his master said, "We have good food," the house Negro would say, "yes, we have plenty of good food." "We" have plenty of good food. When the master said that "We have a fine home here," the house Negro said, "Yes, we have a fine home here"..When the house started burning down, that type of Negro would fight harder to put the master's house out than the master himself would...
The house Negro usually lived close to his master. He dressed like his master. He wore his master's clothes. He ate food that his master left on the table. And he lived in his master's house-probably in the basement or the attic-but he still lived in the house.'
--Malcolm X.
~
When someone is presumptuous enough to think that they can think and speak on behalf of "the Arab world" or "the Muslim world" you take note because it usually indicates the presence of a house niggah in the house. "People in the West". Crikey! To think, this person is supposed to be a novelist, something that should, you think, be a reason to suggest that he has at the very least has a token notion of the particularity of human lives.
To state the bleedin' obvious: it would be no surprise if, in some 'Muslim countries' (what is even meant by that term?), there are lots of truly horrific things going on or that there is a kind of everyday misogyny that goes unheard. But has this joker stopped to consider another hypothesis: "People in the West" are discovering that sex in the "non-Muslim world" is also sick?
~
"As always, we are judged by our language."
Of course, one can exhibit fascist tendencies in any language (Strumpet being a case in point) but you do wonder if an English sensibility (which includes some awareness of the correct use of language) militates against some forms of extremism? The language is shot though with doubts and partial uncertainties ("perhaps", "maybe," "er," "possibly," "you could say..," "in some sense..," "on the one hand..,") and all of that makes it more difficult for extreme voices to rear their ugly head.
On the other hand, there is often something small and petty about the 'island race'. Not sure if that's just your usual confluence of a small town mentality and cultural (and/or racial) homogeneity. So, there's a strain in the English sensibility which is also loutish, xenophobic, almost, but it is hardly ever a dominant one and is usually tempered by the wider and deeper counter-currents of tolerance and mildness. Be that as it may, thirty years on after neo-liberalism and those harsher tendencies have come to the fore. What, exactly, has the legacy of liberalism been?
~
To hear Americans speak of freedom or democracy usually produces a bout of justified merriment on the other side of the pond. It's not just that they've supported so many dictators and been involved in so many questionable 'escapades' (to put it politely)..it's the sheer wide-eyed naivete of their pronouncements, it's the candour with which these views are expressed, with not even the slightest whiff of hesitation or sophistication. And so it follows that there is a remarkable absence of even the vaguest hint of what other people might think of those blunt and brash statements. The fact that most people can see through those 'ideas' ("the land of the brave and the free") is something that is wholly lost on them.
That America is rapidly becoming the laughing stock of the world, however, is only now becoming all too painfully obvious.
And so, what of the 'Party of Abraham Lincoln'?
'The Republican Party, having spent years courting the basest impulses in American political culture, now sees the writing on the wall. It reads "Donald Trump," in very big letters.'
--David Remnick.
Trump in the house? Now, there's a thought to ponder for the world's greatest democracy!
~
And now we are engaged in tense—potentially hostile—engagements with Muslims around the world. It made sense in dealing with Germany before World War II or with Russia during the cold war for serious people to have read Mein Kampf or Das Kapital. Yet many of those fighting for Germany or Russia had themselves not read Mein Kampf or Das Kapital. The same cannot be said of Muslims and the Koran.
--Gary Wills, NYRB.
Who, exactly, is this "we?
2 comments:
Super entry, Mir sahib. Very probing and potent analysis.
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