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Tue Jan 22 18:01:32 IST 2008

Indiscriminate hostility makes Muslims enemies of the state

Dear Oe-san:

I must say first of all how honored I am by this exchange of letters with
you. As one of the world's great writers, you are also a sensitive witness
to the travails of our time, particular those that concern Japan, an
extraordinary country that seems to embody more intractably than most, the
contradictions, the ups and downs of modernity and tradition, war and peace,
dependence and audacity, empire and its loss.

No one has written more profoundly about these matters in the context of
what I would call Japan's worldliness, that is, its place in the historical
and secular world, than you, and your first letter to me is a perfect
instance of what I mean about your work. If in the end you raise questions
of an almost epochal seriousness-several of which I cannot answer here-then
that too has been your style, to pose stark alternatives against each other
without prettification, for example, between empire and victimhood, or
between memory and future directions. We must face them, you say
courageously. For that I am deeply grateful, as I am also for the
consideration that you give to my own work.

I have now lived in the United States for 51 years, having come here from
the Arab world (Egypt and pre-1948 Palestine) when I was a schoolboy aged
15. It was a momentous move for me, full of unhappy dislocation, a sense of
loss, and great difficulty getting used to a place that was totally
different from the warm (in both senses of the word) environment of Arab
society.

After slowly getting used to America, getting all my education here, and
then finding a job teaching at Columbia University (I began in 1963 and I am
still a member of the faculty), I find myself feeling like a lost stranger
all over again. The other day a friend asked me, ``What does it feel like to
be the enemy?'' which is something that every Arab or Muslim American that I
know feels: We are the officially designated enemies of a nation whose
president committed himself publicly to a war against evil, on an
apocalyptic level and scale unknown to previous history.

The war against Afghanistan was fought against the Taliban and al-Qaida,
both of whom are unlamented in defeat; but it is still a noteworthy fact
that two of the officially designated members of the ``axis of evil'' are
Muslim states, one of them Arab, and that the only countries since the
Vietnam War that the U.S. has waged all-out war against are Muslim
countries, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, whose complete destruction was
desired, if not totally achieved.

The media here has ceaselessly pursued ``terrorism'' and ``radical or
militant Islam'' with such insistence and such indiscriminate hostility as
to have made us all into enemies of the state, a state acting on behalf of
righteousness and good with, it would seem, a mandate from God. Arab and
Muslim Americans are routinely challenged by police, airline attendants,
security officials because of the way they look, and even because of the
language they speak or read. A plane-traveling friend of mine was recently
asked to put away his Arabic newspaper because, the attendant said, it was
``disturbing'' other passengers. Understandably enough, Americans fear for
their security after the atrocities of Sept. 11, but ``evil'' can't be
localized so easily and found to be emanating only from the non-Atlantic
world. Who can forget Herman Melville's character Captain Ahab in Moby Dick,
the greatest American novel, in relentless, crazy pursuit of the white whale
that has become his monomaniacal obsession as the personification of evil?

For the first time in my life I find it next to impossible to read The New
York Times or watch the network television news: both seem driven in their
reporting and commentary by a patriotic attitude that essentially supports
the war, increased defense spending (raised to an unprecedented level), and
the projection of U.S. power, with the ability to fight a war everywhere in
the world.

I myself have always opposed religious politics and have strongly condemned
wanton and suicidal violence, and I have done so not only in English but in
the Arab world in Arabic. And yet I feel that the hostility toward and
misunderstanding of ``Islam'' (which is a useless description for 1.3
billion people who come from innumerable traditions, use hundreds of
different languages, and possess every variety of diversified culture) have
enveloped whole portions of the globe, especially in Europe and the U.S., so
that everything has been boiled down reductively to a few caricatures of a
whole culture and religion in order to sustain an attitude of the most
profound bellicosity and to drag a huge body of Americans, unthinkingly and
uncritically, into supporting that attitude.

Some of the arguments used to keep Americans at war are, for instance, that
Islam is enraged; or, Islam has not had a Reformation and needs one now; or,
something has gone wrong with the Islamic world; or, finally, that Islam is
a militant and violent religion.

The result has been to make the complex, dynamic interaction of peoples,
cultures and traditions a simple oppositional matter, rather in the
(basically) mindless and simplified way advocated by Samuel Huntington in
his ``The Clash of Civilizations'' on the one hand, and, on the other, to
blind Americans to what their nation or culture is in fact doing.

This is strikingly reminiscent of the rhetorical war between the U.S. and
Japan during World War II, described by John Dower. But, that was soon over
and replaced for a time with Japan-bashing that occurred while Japan's power
grew so remarkably in the 1970s and after. Hostility between Islam and the
West is a much older one. It goes in both directions, of course, but with
the enormous asymmetry of power favoring the U.S., it is a far more
disturbing and destructive exchange.

What I would underline in such a situation is the ever-increasing importance
of understanding and criticism, both of which are the essence of citizenship
and democracy.

My impression is that what has overtaken America is a wave of triumphal
patriotism, much of it of course stemming from the shock of the atrocities
of Sept. 11. Yes, it is completely understandable for the United States to
have responded to the attacks, but that response has been overlain with a
kind of metaphysical language justifying unilateralism abroad while
preventing discussion and criticism at home.

Thus President Bush speaks of a crusade in one breath, of an axis of evil in
another, whereas what we are talking about (in the terms of history and
reality that you so eloquently invoke in your letter to me) is American
power on such an unprecedented scale as to grind down the rest of the world
and say, as Bush does continually, you're either with us or you're for
terrorism.

No one has defined terrorism adequately even though the whole world seems to
be mobilized to fight against it, Japan included, as you very accurately
say. The U.N. spent several years in the mid-1970s debating the meaning of
the term, and was unsuccessful in finding a common, all-encompassing
definition.

The problem is that, used without qualification as a concept merely to
identify what one doesn't like, or something evil that has been done, or an
official enemy, the word ``terrorism'' can also obscure what may be an act
of resistance, or of desperation caused by a preponderance of power that is
both heedless and destructive. I agree that what bin Laden did, and what his
followers advocate, are terroristic because they call for the indiscriminate
killing of innocent people and a false divide of the world simplistically
into his enemies and his allies. What madness this is, and what a
misrepresentation not only of Islam but of the complexity of human history.

But I think it is especially wrong to use the word ``terrorism'' uniformly
(as General Sharon does) whenever Palestinians strike back at Israel. If one
were to say, as Sharon and George Bush repeatedly do, that Palestinian
suicide-bombings are terrorism-I myself find them unacceptable-and then
demand that Yasser Arafat should stop Palestinian violence altogether, the
context is entirely missed, which is that Israel has been in an illegal
military occupation of Palestinian territory for 35 years, the longest one
in modern history (along with the Japanese occupation of Korea between 1910
and 1945).

Israel is a nuclear power, with F-16s and attack helicopters furnished by
the United States; it has used those to collectively punish and besiege an
entirely civilian, unarmed, stateless and dispossessed Palestinian
population, all the while confiscating Palestinian land, building illegal
settlements, destroying houses, assassinating leaders, and now, imprisoning
Yasser Arafat in his compound. To every Arab and Muslim, what Israel has
been doing is state terrorism, and what Palestinians do most of the time is
to resist that violence, sometimes using desperate terrorist means.

The problem is that for independent intellectuals like you and me, the
questions we raise, the moral issues we discern, the language and imagery
that we use are central to the whole enterprise of democratic citizenship.
You have shown in your beautiful reflections on the atomic bombs in Nagasaki
and Hiroshima, or rather in your careful work recording the testimonials of
people who lived through that indescribable apocalypse, that human knowledge
is essentially tragic and always somehow inadequate to the terrible
immediacy of human experience. That doesn't stop one, however, from thinking
and trying everlastingly to elaborate the situation that presents itself so
urgently for consideration, analysis, judgment.

And this is one reason, whether we live in Japan or the United States, the
engulfing power of enormous military enterprises and huge corporate
endeavors prompts us to deal with them carefully and stubbornly, analyzing
and demystifying them, without falling into the kind of assent to authority
that so many of our compatriots have succumbed to. Never unquestioning
solidarity without criticism, is my motto. And I think yours, too.

Doubtless we are now in a new phase of history, of which the regulation of
political discourse by central authority is an intimidating reality for
individuals everywhere. Isn't it also our role, I would ask you cherished
Oe-san, not only to outline the reality but also to present alternatives to
it?

So many of our generation have turned away from their earlier critical
positions and have embraced ``pragmatism'' and endorsements of the status
quo. But surely there are other ``realities'' to which we can appeal, here
and in Japan. Maybe we can go into this in our next letter.

I embrace and salute you,

With my fondest wishes,

(C) Edward W. Said

These stories originally appeared in Japanese, the Asahi Shimbun on Feb. 13,
14 and 15, and in asahi.com culture site,
http://www.asahi.com/culture/bunka/index.html

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<TITLE>Letters Exchanged between KENZABURO OE and EDWARD W. SAID </TITLE>
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<H2>Dear all, 
 
Here is a great piece. 
PS a belated welcome to Matlida and Theresa in Amsterdam to this list. 
Best 
Anjali Sagar 
 
 
Letters Exchanged between KENZABURO OE and EDWARD W. SAID 
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