Letter from Syria
Superhighway to Damascus
By Ammar Abdulhamid
BOOKFORUM
June 22, 2005
One of the most significant deficits in the Arab world today—and one
which the highly publicized United Nations Arab Human Development
Reports have so far failed to mention—is the staggering absence of young
voices on the intellectual scene and in the public debate concerning
societal and political reform. This is perhaps the starkest
manifestation of the "knowledge gap or deficit" referred to in the
reports, issued annually by the United Nations Development Program to
monitor socioeconomic and political conditions in the Arab states. Arab
countries, it seems, have somehow ceased to produce
intellectuals—artists, novelists, poets, and political and social
analysts—who could navigate new courses and harness popular sentiment to
help lift their countries out of the morass in which they are mired.
Take Syria, which has historically produced more writers and thinkers of
great renown than any other Arab state. In contrast to the dozens of
figures who emerged on the country's intellectual scene in the '60s,
'70s, and '80s, there is hardly a single figure in Syria today who is
capable of galvanizing popular interest. Indeed, no author, poet, or
thinker below the age of forty has managed to make a name for him- or
herself within the country, much less in the Arab world at large.
In the meantime, the older, familiar voices—Adonis, one of the most
daring and creative contemporary Arab poets; Nizar Qabbani, hands down
the most popular Arab versifier, inspiring singers throughout the Arab
world with his works; Saadallah Wannous, the most prolific Arab
dramatist; and Sadiq Jalal al-Azm, the courageous critic of contemporary
Arab thought, both religious and political—continue to dominate. And
this despite the fact that Qabbani and Wannous are dead, and Adonis and
al-Azm are in their seventies, with Adonis living in Paris and al-Azm
spending most of his time teaching abroad, in Europe, the United States,
and Japan.
What happened? A number of factors are responsible. For one, a climate
of fear continues to prevail in Syria, thanks to the severe limits on
freedom of expression and assembly still imposed by the Baathist
government. Every Syrian below the age of forty was raised under the
rule of the Baath Party, which seized control of the country in a bloody
coup in 1963. Syrians of this generation have vivid recollections of the
dictatorial rule of Hafez al-Assad, father of the current president, and
the horrific crackdowns of the late '70s and early '80s, as well as the
1992 massacres in the central Syrian city of Hama, where more than
fifteen thousand people were killed and buried in unmarked mass graves.
This kind of repression has, naturally, fostered an attitude of
political and social apathy among young Syrians and stifled the spirit
of free inquiry. Add to this an outmoded educational system that values
rote memorization over critical thinking, societal and cultural taboos
on the criticism of "traditional values," and a serious shortage of
activities, social clubs, and national programs designed to discover and
support talented individuals in the arts, humanities, and social
sciences, and the dearth of young intellectuals today should come as
little surprise.
The above factors have also contributed to a decrease in exposure to
modern philosophy and the intellectual trends of the West, so that even
as limits on freedom of speech in the Middle East are now being
challenged as a result of the introduction of the Internet and the
proliferation of Arab satellite-TV networks, the few young voices in
Syria who have managed to emerge (most of them in their late thirties
and forties) have often shown a woefully inadequate understanding of
contemporary global realities. Instead, they tend to fall back on the
dated, nationalistic rhetoric of their predecessors rather than
attempting to critique it. Thus the problem of inadequate human
resources, which the UN reports identify, seems to affect not only the
professional sphere but the intellectual scene as well, a situation true
of nearly every Arab country, to varying degrees.
And yet, lifting the limits on freedom of expression and fostering the
development of young intellectuals aren't enough. There is a clear need
to bridge the gap in knowledge that separates the Middle East from the
rest of the world. This requires broad exposure to modern Western
thought—not only academic and cultural exchange programs, involving
scholars, students, and artists, but more important, the adoption of a
large-scale effort to translate into Arabic works of Western philosophy,
the humanities, and the social and political sciences, classical and
contemporary alike. According to the 2003 Arab Human Development Report,
fewer than 4.4 books per million people are currently translated
throughout the Arab world each year, in comparison with 519 in Hungary
and 920 in Spain. Given that the total population of the Arab world is
around 250 million, the total number of books translated into Arabic
each year is around 1,100.
In the past, similar translation efforts have, over time, led to an
intellectual and cultural renascence in the societies that have
championed them. This was the case in the Arab world in the ninth
century, when Arab scholars set about translating Greek and Aramaic
works on philosophy and science. There is a strong argument to be made
that a serious commitment to translation, in tandem with programs
designed to encourage young Arab minds to grapple critically with these
texts, could have a similarly beneficial effect today. It is a
time-consuming undertaking, to be sure, but then, cultural battles are
won only through decades of interaction and introspection. Cultures do
not change overnight. Naturally, considering the ambitious scale of such
a project, it cannot be entrusted solely to the Arab regimes or
independent Arab publishers, who are struggling to get by. Rather, an
alliance of state, independent, and international institutions is needed
to provide funding and work out a plan adequate for such a vast
enterprise.
One major channel for this undertaking is likely to be the Internet,
where censorship by Arab states is still fairly lax. In Syria, the
website www.maaber.org has already managed, in four short years, to
establish itself as a vital outlet for young and aspiring minds. The
site offers sections on philosophy, nonviolence, psychology,
environmental affairs, and literary endeavors, especially poetry and
short stories. Although based in Damascus, its contributors and
readership come from all over the Arab world, as well as from Arab
communities in Europe, the United States, and Australia. Despite its
continued political reticence (and its highly sophisticated language,
which makes it accessible only to a tiny minority of readers), Maaber
nonetheless showcases youthful thinkers who possess exactly the kind of
analytical skills and introspection that are sorely needed if Syria, and
the rest of the Middle East, are to develop a more realistic and
fruitful vision of the future.
Though Maaber is by far the most sophisticated such website, others have
joined in the attempt to take advantage of the relative freedom of
expression on the Internet, such as Akhbar al-Sharq (www.thisissyria.com),
Rezgar (www.rezgar.com), and my own Tharwa Project (www.tharwaproject.com),
which focuses on the concerns of ethnic and religious minorities in the
Arab world. The proliferation of such websites is an indication of the
hunger in Arab states for intellectual initiatives, and comes at a time
when access to the Internet and its popularity have become more
widespread throughout Syria, despite the relatively high costs involved.
But larger and more systematic efforts are needed if the challenge is to
be met. Arab states desperately need to empower their young. More to the
point, they need to do so in the right way—that is, in a way that makes
them feel they are an integral part of the world and more involved in
the making of contemporary civilization—rather than pariahs or mere
relics of things passed.
Ammar Abdulhamid is currently a visiting fellow at
the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, at the Brookings Institution in
Washington, DC, where he is working on a monograph on the next
generation of Arab intellectuals. He is a Syrian novelist and social
analyst based in Damascus and is the coordinator of the Tharwa Project,
which seeks to raise awareness of the living conditions of minority
groups in the Arab world.
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