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Terrorism and the Failure of Patriotism

"Arab Spring", Ethics, Immigration Issues, Islam in Europe, Terrorism Issue


Joan of Arc—Miniature from the 15th century (detail)

By Anouar Majid, Tingis, February 2, 2015

Many people are asking what, exactly, is causing Muslims to be behind so many acts of terror and whether something could be done to change the situation for the better. The alienation of immigrant youth in Europe, the failure of Arab autocrats to provide a sense of hope to new ambitious generations, the growing disenchantment with the uneven promises of the global economy, and the perceived wrongful occupation of countries in the Middle East are some of the main explanations for the eruption of Islamic extremism in recent decades. Although these reasons play a role, they are byproducts of a disposition that is rarely discussed: the failure of nation-states to inculcate a strong sentiment of patriotism in its citizens.

While Western elites around the world are more interested in the concerns of their exclusive club of privilege, Muslims have weaker attachments to their nations than they do to the idea of an Islamic community, or umma. Whether one is a Muslim in Morocco, France, or China, the lure of Islam is more powerful than loyalty to nation. This is, in a nutshell, one of the major causes of Islamic terrorism today, but it is an issue that has yet to get the attention it deserves. Continue reading Terrorism and the Failure of Patriotism →

A Jeffersonian Moment in Paris

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Ethics, Islam and Christianity, Islam in Europe

I had the great honor of attending the presentation and celebration of my friend Serge Berdugo’s book project on the rehabilitation of Jewish cemeteries in Morocco. The event took place at the Institut du Monde Arabe, a magnificent cultural center dedicated to highlighting the cultures of the Arab world. The Institute is headed by the exuberant socialist intellectual Jack Lang, who served as France’s minister of culture throughout much of the 1980s and twice as minister of education in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Ministers, ambassadors, rabbis, imams, bishops, intellectuals, diplomats and many others came together to celebrate Morocco’s millennial Jewish history, the country’s diversity, and many other virtues that single out Morocco in the region and, in some cases, the world.

Following the presentation of the book, three French Moroccans—an imam, a rabbi, and a bishop—all practicing in the same district of Évry, a suburb of Paris, were awarded medals of honor by the King of Morocco through his sister, Princess Lalla Meriem. It was during this moment that France’s Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, a man who has been in the limelight following the recent terrorist acts in Paris, walked to the podium, condemned all forms of discrimination, and then proceeded to explain the badly misunderstood concept of laïcité (which approximates the American idea of secularism) by showcasing the three men of god who were being honored as perfect examples of why laïcité protects freedom of religion by keeping the government out of people’s private faiths.

It is often said that France went too far with its anti-clerical revolution, but Valls gave his nation’s ideology—laïcité—a decidedly Jeffersonian meaning.

Bravo.

With Latefa Ahrrare in Rabat

Development, Film and Video, Gender and Sexuality, Morocco, Music and Dance

by Anouar Majid, Tingiata, April 15, 2014

The most controversial actress in Morocco and the Arab world gave me a tour of Rabat, the capital of Morocco. To say that it was a unique experience would, quite frankly, be a huge understatement. Parking attendants, men in uniform, women with hijabs and jellabas, food sellers and everyone—literally—who saw Latefa greeted her with smiles and affection. People took photographs with her and asked for new performances. She is truly a people’s artist, one who uses a container (labelled “cont’n’art”), among other tools, to foster awareness about health and difficult social issues.

The car ride, as you could see in the video, was, in itself, a fascinating spectacle. The free-spirited Latefa sang throughout most of trip, ending, most appropriately, with the theme of Carmen, reminding us that women are born to be free, not objects to be hidden away.

Saladin Days in Oslo

"Arab Spring", Conferences and Talks, Islam in Europe, Terrorism Issue


Anouar Majid, far right; Olivier Roy to the left

by Anouar Majid, Tingitana, March 6, 2014

Olivier Roy gave a spirited and light-hearted lecture at Oslo’s Litteraturhuset on secularism Islam and the West, followed by comments from a Norwegian expert on terrorism and myself. As happens to me nowadays, I chose not to comment on, or highlight, the finer points of his critical analysis of the terms “secular” and “religious,” but to express my barely disguised exasperation with the tropes that have blocked the Muslims’ mind for more than two centuries. The question, in the end, is not whether religion is misread, or whether it is good or not, but whether we are condemned to define ourselves in terms penned down for us by scribes from antiquity and the early medieval period. I don’t care much about secularism, but I do lament the waste of our mental faculties and our entrapment in mythologies that are totally dissociated from our current experiences. The prophets of Scripture spoke the languages of their people; who will speak for us today? –

Europe and the Challenge of Islam

Conferences and Talks, Islam in Europe, Islamophobia, Literature, Orientalism

by Anouar Majid, Tingitana, March 1, 2014

With the intriguing illustration above, Afternposten, the largest Norwegian newspaper, published my article titled “Europe and the Challenge of Islam.” This is the opening salvo of a three-day event called Saladin Days that starts Monday in Oslo’s House of Literature, when I will give a keynote address by the same title. We will, in the course of the conference, discuss and debate issues related to religion, secularism and reflect critically on the legacy of Edward Said, the great literary and cultural theorist.

Cafe Literati

Literature, Morocco


Cafe in Tangier; photography by Anouar Majid

by Anouar Majid, Tingitana, December 3, 2014

Say what you may about Tangier in Morocco, anyone who doesn’t know its cafe life and culture is missing out on the soul of the city. Cafes in Tangier are hard to describe; people gather in them, singly or in groups, talk about everything, and while away their days and nights to make room for the next cafe visit. Customers do read a lot of papers in them and, on occasion, as in these pictures I took around 10: 20 am on January 3, 2014 at the legendary Grand Cafe de Paris, even smoke cigars in the process.

Morocco is a nation of cafes. But the main reason Moroccans go to cafes is to talk and comment on everyday experiences; this is how communities are forged and cemented. Moroccans are different from Westerners in this sense—conversations to them are pure literature and theater. Who needs to write, read, or watch plays when one can experience literary euphoria orally?

Humans without Gods

Bible and Holy Land, Books You Should Read, Ethics, Islam and Christianity, Judaism


Theobald von Oer, The Weimar Court of the Muses (1860)

by Anouar Majid. Tingis Redux, August 7, 2013

For many years now, I have shared my utter amazement at how human beings living in the 20th and 21st centuries could still believe that the gods of the Bible and the Koran are as real as the computer or mobile device in their hand, the cars they drive, or the many people, animals, or trees they see and touch. When I ask people if God exists, many say yes. But when I ask them how they got to know Him (God in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition is unmistakably male), they quote their holy books as evidence. I have yet to meet someone who had a direct encounter with God; our knowledge of the Almighty relies heavily on our faith that Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed had exclusive access to Him, and that the books that tell us about these privileged encounters are the uncorrupted truth.

Most of us have been indoctrinated into such beliefs since childhood, so that by the time we start defending God against unbelievers, the best we can do is rationalize the faiths we inherited from our parents, families, and social environments. Take away the holy books and the theologians that have spent millennia preaching their dogmas and we are left with only our mere existences, alone with the elements, without any guide to show us how to make sense of our lives. This is, in fact, how the world was in ancient Greece before Christianity took over and condemned philosophy to perdition. And this is the world that the British philosopher A. C. Grayling wants us to rediscover in his newly published book, The God Argument: The Case Against Religion and for Humanism (2013).

Grayling doesn’t talk about the role of writing and scripture in the making of religions; he is more interested in making a humanist case against the basic assumptions of the three monotheistic religions. (Buddhism, Jainism and Confucianism, for example, are better understood as philosophies, not religions in the sense Westerners understand the term.) Such religions, a “hangover from the infancy of modern humanity,” a collection of “superstitions of illiterate herdsmen living several thousands of years ago,” expressions of the “pre-scientific, rudimentary metaphysics of our ancestors,” and a relic of the distant unlettered past are “essentially a stone-age outlook in the modern world.” It would be as if today’s governments still depended on the power of astrology and magic to govern people and run their affairs. This survival, needless to say, is astonishing in an age when science has made great strides—but, then again, science has yet to make a significant impact on many parts of the world, including the Islamic one. Continue reading Humans without Gods →