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Bombardment by
“rootless” and “cluster” words
And healing from them
through co-authoring meanings...
Munir
Fasheh
Director, Arab Education Forum
Center
for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University
October
2006
Introduction
As a Palestinian, I
experienced two kinds of bombardments:
bombardment of bombs (from planes and tanks) and
bombardment of words. Both are still very active
against Palestinians at the time of this writing
(October 2006). While bombs destroy and defeat
people from outside, “rootless” and “cluster”
words function like a Trojan horse or an AIDS
virus and defeat people from within – they
slowly kill the immune system of the “inner
world” of each person and the immune system
within the community.
Although bombardment by
weapons has been directed (for 500 years) mainly
against peoples outside Europe, bombardment of
words first targeted Europeans themselves. [I
will elaborate on this later] Controlling minds
through institutionalized standard official
language (later known as state-directed
education) was first implemented in Europe:
France, Sweden, Britain, then Germany and Italy
and, later, was exported to other countries
through colonization. In other words,
while bombs and words
have bombarded the “South”, the “North” was
bombarded by words. In this sense, healing from
words is a struggle common to all peoples. The
belief in “universal thought” – in the sense
that there are universal meanings and a single
undifferentiated path for progress, equipped
with universal tools to spread them – is an
example of a word that bombarded all
people. Healing from this belief and regaining a
pluralistic attitude in living (which is crucial
to regaining sanity and peace of mind and soul)
is a struggle common to all people. Words that
people are bombarded with are not always the
same in the South and North but the purposes are
similar: to distract from what is really going
on; to rob people of their abilities (and in the
South of what they have); to disvalue knowledges
that cannot be put in words; to spread the
consumption pattern in living; and to deepen
control through competition and measuring the
worth of a person by means that claim to be
objective.
While the effect of
bombs is easily felt, bombardment by words goes
– for the most part – unnoticed; in fact, most
people embrace them as sign of modernity and
progress. Such bombardment has increased
tremendously since WWII as a necessary
accompaniment of “development”, which was
launched in 1949 by US president Truman.
Inventing rootless words – starting with the
notorious, inhuman, disrespectful
‘underdeveloped’ – never stopped! Such words
function like cluster bombs
– that’s why I like to refer to them as ‘cluster
words’. Whereas aircraft, rocket, and artillery
deliver cluster bombs, experts, consultants,
professionals, big organizations, educational
curricula, and TV networks deliver “cluster”
words. “Underdevelopment” is an example of
“cluster words”, which – for more than 50 years
– has been spreading and exploding within people
and communities, causing a lot of damage.
A word that is worth
stressing here is that our situation in the
“South” and “East” is still more hopeful than in
the “North” and “West” simply because the
control of minds by institutions and
professionals is still not as deep and
entrenched as it is in northern and western
societies. Minds in the north and west, in
general, seem to be formed mainly by texts and
images (produced by professionals and
institutions in all fields).
In other words, it is still easier for many in
the South to recognize ‘cluster words’ planted
in various fields of life, than for westerners
who seem to have lost this ability and
sensitivity. It is easier, for example, for a
person in Baluchestan (than for one in Chicago)
to see the fallacies of education. We can play a
crucial role in today’s world in pointing to
“cluster” words and, thus, avoid or reduce their
harm. Asking, we Walk
(the subtitle of this
publication) is in harmony
with this role. Visions from the
global south cannot stop bombardment of
“cluster words” in the contemporary world but
can contribute to protecting people and
strengthening “immune systems” of communities.
My hope is that this article would contribute to
this effort.
Since the early
seventies, one aspect of my work in Palestine
(and in Arab countries since 1998) has been to
break away from the hegemony of official words,
meanings, and measures. Living in Palestine
helped me keep asking while walking about
words, meanings and measures. The way I
articulate it today is by stressing that every
person is a co-author of meanings and measures,
and by encouraging people not to use a word if
they don’t have a personal meaning for it! This
cautious attitude includes seemingly “neutral”
words such as knowledge, rights, identity,
equality, and empowerment.
Caution regarding expressing personal
experiences and stories
A trend – that is
fashionable throughout the world today – is to
encourage people to express experiences and tell
personal stories. Although I have been part of
this thrust since 1971, I realized over the
years that such a call could be naïve because it
could be easily co-opted by expressing personal
experiences and stories using dominant words and
meanings. In other words, we would be carrying
and spreading the virus of rootless words
without realizing it and, thus, deepening the
defeat within. I
realized that there is a difference between
expressing/ telling personal experiences and
stories using dominant words and meanings
and expressing them using words and
meanings that stem from the place, community,
context, and culture that one lives in and
interacts with. Thus,
we need to question not only master narratives
but also our personal narratives when we tell
them using dominant words and meanings, because
then we would be spreading the virus without
realizing it.
In 1988 – the first year
of the first intifada – I realized
something that puzzled me then. The Israeli
authorities did not mind Palestinians having
conferences denouncing Israel’s closures of
educational institutions and demanding their
opening. At the same time, however, Israel was
intolerant and brutal against initiatives by
people who started teaching children in their
homes and neighborhoods or started communal
farming (using lands of people in the
neighborhood). The military order in August 1988
criminalized such actions and exposed people
engaged in them to imprisonment and/or
demolition of their homes! It was both shocking
and revealing to realize how frightening it is –
to those in power – for people to run their
lives and manage their affairs. Complaining
about Israel was not threatening, but acting
autonomously was intolerable! [It reminded me of
Sartre’s comment on Franz Fanon’s book “The
wretched of the earth”: the danger of the
book stems from that it “does not talk to us”.]
The Israeli behavior inspired me to write an
article entitled: “free thought and
expression vs. freeing thought and expression.”
I realized for the first time in my life that
the slogan “free thought and expression” was
really a distraction from something deeper:
freeing thought and expression; it is a slogan
that robs people their freedom to think and act.
Demanding the opening of schools is an example
of free expression. It is quite another matter
for people to free themselves from this slogan
and simply live, think, act, and manage their
daily affairs. I realized that a main role of
modern institutions and professionals is to
obliterate this option from people’s
imaginations. Their role seems to be to rob
people and communities of their abilities: the
ability to learn, heal, raise children, give
birth, marry, die, provide means for living,
feel sense of worth, and construct meanings,
understandings, and knowledges – without
institutions and professionals. Such activities
in modern societies have to be monitored and
implemented by institutions and professionals.
Along the same lines, the first intifada
also helped me see that a challenge we face is
to free our minds from models and paradigms –
how to think, act, and relate outside the
confines of a paradigm and outside rootless
phrase “paradigm shift”. The challenge is to
free self from models and not to be free to
choose from various models! [Later in the paper,
I will discuss “the worth of a person” as an
example of thinking and living outside models.]
A fundamental
characteristic of community is that it is a
place where people take care of their needs and
manage their affairs without institutions,
professionals, and permissions. The first
Palestinian intifada helped me see
clearly the difference between institutions and
structures that are run by people (that is, not
institutionalized). Israel was able to close
institutions but not people’s structures, such
as: families, neighborhoods, and al-jame’
(the mosque). It was the first time I realized
the true meaning and spirit of al-jame’.
As a result of shutting down all institutions,
the mosque immediately regained its original
meaning and function: open public space, an
assembly place (the literal meaning of al-jame’
in Arabic). The were immediately transformed
into people’s mosques, to spaces open for all
people and controlled by people. That still
inspires me greatly. I have never experienced
another structure (not universities, churches,
clubs, or any other) that has the same
‘environment’ that I felt in mosques during the
first intifada. They became welcoming
places where people of all backgrounds met and
ran their affairs. Whether people needed a place
to teach, heal, inform, take care of the
wounded, or distribute food, people’s mosques
played that role in a natural way.
People are either
nurtured by communities or controlled by
institutions. Individualism, consumerism, and
greed are the biggest threats to communities.
This is why the Zapatistas have been very
inspiring to peoples around the world and a
nightmare to those in power. And this is why the
Europeans even after they wiped out the vast
majority of Native Americans, they were still
afraid of their cultures and communities.
They went ahead with programs to obliterate them
through various means. The story of residential
schools is very revealing in how political,
economic, religious, and educational
institutions collaborated to kill the spirit of
indigenous cultures and communities. The POW WOW
in Albuquerque (which I attended in May 2006) is
another example of how that spirit is being
destroyed through commercialization and
competition. Part of the immune system of a
community is its social spiritual fabric;
rootless words, competition, and consumerism
tear that spirit and fabric apart.
The Oslo agreement was a
clever – and criminal – way in tearing apart
Palestinian community. Up till 1993, Palestinian
communities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were
intact, and hope was alive – in spite of attacks
by the Israeli army and Israeli policies. Oslo
was an attack on both: it substituted hope with
expectations and communities with official
lifeless structures that robbed people of
abilities, responsibility, and initiative.
Being a student or an
employee – more often than not – means being a
coward and dishonest: having to lie most of the
time, to say what you don’t mean and mean what
you don’t say, always trying to please whoever
is higher in the hierarchy, abiding by rules,
regulations, laws, and instructional materials
and judged by measures that ignore fundamental
aspects. At best, a student or employee can
demand rights as articulated by institutions –
rights that have nothing to do with dignity.
Dignity – just like wisdom – is a lost concept
in modern life. An employee talks about rights,
promotions, and awards and prizes, which – more
often than not – means giving up dignity.
Knowledge that is dropped
from above by institutions and professionals
exhibit false connotations. If we look around
us, we notice that in spite of the tremendous
growth in knowledge during the past 300 years,
life is deteriorating at many levels: at the
level of the social spiritual fabric, of food,
air, water and soil, at the level of happiness
and meaning in life, of entertainment, and of
relationships among people. We notice that
knowledge that was produced during the past 3
centuries created many more problems than it has
solved (and it solved a lot). Similarly, in
spite of the tremendous growth in education, we
witness the disappearance of thousands of
languages and “worlds”.
Unlike bombardment by
bombs, rootless or cluster words usually come
nicely packaged with sweet labels such as
progress, help, and assistance and with measures
that claim to be objective and universal. They
come with an aura of being academic, scholarly,
and scientific. The declared purpose of
bombardments by words is usually to civilize,
reform, educate, transform, empower, and
develop. Rootless words that flourished in the
20th century include: development,
nationalism, nation-state, progress, universal
thinking, education (formal, non formal and
informal), human resources, basic needs, human
rights, knowledge society, planning, identity,
citizen, globalization, information, assessment,
and capacity building. May be we have no control
over stopping such bombardment, but we can – and
we should – try to create better immune systems
against them. Healing from the hegemony of
rootless words is necessary for creating a
happier and saner world. An important part of
this healing process is to perceive us as
co-authors of meanings and co-creators of
measures.
Development as a rootless – and ruthless –
abstraction
Underdevelopment and
development were coined in their current usage
in 1949 – just a short time after the two atomic
bombs exploded in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
However, whereas everyone heard about the
explosion of the two bombs, very few seem to
have felt the explosion of the two words. They
“exploded” without noise, in a much softer way
and, with time, they became seductive, even
addictive. Leaders of all orientations and in
all fields embraced them. The damage that was
caused by dropping these two words on countries
around the world during the past 50 years
exceeds – in my opinion – the damage done by all
the bombs dropped during that period. We can
witness ruins of all kinds: social and societal
ruins, psychological and personal ruins, and
environmental ruins. No bombs, for example – at
least so far – wiped out forests and languages
as much as development has. The disappearance of
forests in Black Africa and the Amazon region,
and of more than 1000 languages (during the past
50 years), all in the name of development, are
indicative of the disasters to come – if current
trends in development and consumption patterns
continue. Much has been written about these two
cluster words. I just want to cite a statement
in 1995 by All Africa Conference of Churches,
marking the 50th anniversary of the
World Bank and IMF (and launching ‘Fifty Years
is Enough’): “Every child in Africa is born with
a financial burden which a lifetime’s work
cannot repay. The debt is a new form of slavery
as vicious as the slave trade.”
I said that the declared
purpose of bombardments by words is to civilize,
reform, educate, transform, develop, help,
serve, and empower. In spite of thousands of
examples that refute this claim, it is still
active and alive. An article written on August
27, 2004 by John Kerry, the Democratic nominee
for president of the United States then, was
entitled “An
Unwavering Commitment To Reforming the Middle
East”! Ignoring what was happening to people and
communities (military occupations, stealing of
lands and oil, destroying a whole country, Iraq)
and, instead, talking about reform as a rootless
abstraction, is beyond my ability to understand.
This commitment to reform and help is a
language that is used not only in politics, the
mass media, and the military, but also by poets,
scholars, and educators. Rudyard Kipling, the
well-known English poet, for example, wasn’t
ashamed to declare that it is the right of India
to be ruled by Britain and the duty of Britain
to rule India! At a completely different level,
in the introduction to a series of books on
education, Habits of Mind, (2000), the
leading story that the two authors mention as
embodiment of the main idea in the series is
about 4th grade children in Minnesota
who want to go to an African country where a
genocide was taking place and help the people
there by teaching them “habits of mind”!
Somehow, habits of mind in the series do not
seem to refer to genocides that are still being
celebrated in Minnesota! Worse than that: I
personally – through my studying and teaching of
math and physics – carried the same virus. I
wanted to ‘help’ my students be scientific and
logical, which carried within it the assumption
that they were neither! It is frightening how
easy it is to deceive the mind when it is
stripped of wisdom and connection to life.
Living in Palestine helped me heal from many
such myths, and instead embody other “myths”
that I felt are much more human and respectful
such as: “there is no child who is not logical”.
The current cluster word
that is exploding all around the world is
“security”. It is a fundamental word in the new
world order, justifying wars and providing means
for stealing, killing, and destroying.
Rootless words are
dangerous because they are abstractions that do
not stem from people’s lives. They are not
abstracted from experiences, observations, and
reflections that people go through over a period
of time and who start noticing patterns and
common traits or characteristics. They are
abstractions of new kind, they are fabricated in
political, educational, or other institutional
laboratories, and dropped on people as new
discoveries and presented with professional
covers… The process of abstraction has been
inverted!
Historically, education
is one of the first and longest surviving
rootless words. Arabic, for example, has no
synonym for it. This is not a sign of weakness
in Arabic but of the fact that the word does not
stem from life. The two words used to refer to
education – ta’leem and tarbiya –
mean teaching and upbringing respectively.
Education is an artificial word coined to
correspond to the idea that Nabrija conceived of
as a means to control people in an artificial
political area called ‘state’. In contrast to
education (which is an institutional word),
learning is a ‘life word’. Today, almost
everywhere around the world, education
monopolizes learning. Without being aware of it
the way I am now, I stressed in my teaching –
during the 1970s – the importance of rooting
meanings in learners’ experiences. [I did that
mainly through math and science clubs in
schools, and through Math 131 – a course
for first year students at Birzeit University.]
Rootless abstractions lead to consumption of
meanings and to identifying words with shallow
and pale manifestations: democracy with
elections; civil society with non-governmental
organizations; learning with schools and
universities; a person’s worth with grades and
certificates; knowledge society with power; and
illiteracy with ignorance.
Words used by people in
real life have rich, flexible, and diverse
meanings. One example will suffice to
illustrate. When Tristan, my grandson, was 4
years old, I noticed that he already discovered
that even a simple word like “no” has as many
meanings as there are people around him. When
his father says no, it is different from his
mother’s ‘no’, different from my wife’s and
mine; and he used that diversity cleverly. He
discovered that ‘no’ has no universal meaning.
In a sense, his conception of “no” is broader
and richer than dictionaries!
More examples of rootless words
Another rootless word
that I would like to elaborate on is “identity”
– because of its role and popularity in the
world today, especially among Palestinians. I
don’t remember it was popular before the 1980s.
Stressing identity kills the rich dynamic sense
of community by a shallow construct of the mind
and of official language – where realities
become secondary, and real people become
unrecognizable. It is an institutional word
whose aim is to create artificial and vague
conformity and unity. Self-knowledge, self-rule,
aliveness, and being attentive to one’s
surroundings – which are the bases of freedom
and of a real community – are
marginalized through allegiance to the word
identity. Identity is usually expressed in
mechanical symbolic acts, such as dabke
(Palestinian traditional dance), which is
radically different from being part of one’s
lifestyle. It becomes more an idea to write
about and debate rather than a way of living.
One aspect of the “cultural soil” in Palestine,
an aspect of Palestinian life before the Zionist
invasion, was the existence of the three
religions – Islam, Christianity and Judaism – in
addition to many other communities, within
harmonious relations. This spirit in addition to
the spirit of the first intifada hardly
fit the general criteria of identity.
Palestinian identity grew as a mirror image of
Zionism. Just like Zionism pulled the Jews out
of the wonderful role they were playing in
Europe, Palestinian identity pulled Palestinians
out of the wonderful role they were playing in
the Arab world. The concept of Palestinian
identity transformed me from feeling that I
belong to a civilization horizon to a “dream”
that keeps shrinking!
If abstractions stem from
a multitude of experiences and observations,
then those who insist on using the word
“identity” need to explain how it grew out of
their lives and experiences – otherwise, their
use of it would be rootless.
The same is true of the
concept “nation state” that sounds wonderful at
the beginning but slowly robs people of
abilities and freedoms. Unlike words that grow
from the “soils” of communities, cultures,
history and daily living, words such as identity
and nation state are dropped – like bombs – from
above, with ready meanings.
I will mention very briefly
few more rootless words as examples of how they
distract, deform, or sicken people’s minds and
perceptions. ‘Brain drain’ is one example:
Doesn’t it imply that those who do not leave
their homelands have no brains? Other examples:
"marginalized people" and “deprived children”…
although they sound caring, they are very
disrespectful, because they refer to people who
have a name, dignity, knowledge, and ways of
living by adjectives that say basically that
they are less. Other examples include “human
resources” that replaced “human beings”, and
“good citizen” that replaced “good person”.
“Human resources” treats people as commodities
that have a price in the market. “Good citizen”
refers usually to a person who blindly obeys the
state or authority. In contrast, a “good person”
refers to one who ponders things in his/ her
mind and heart and would refuse to do harm to
any one or to the environment. Two more
examples: “knowledge societies” which assumes
that there are societies that have no knowledge,
and “want to be left behind” referring to anyone
who refuses to follow the catastrophic dominant
path.
Rootless words vs. knowledge that is
inseparable from the knower
Talking about rootless
words is intimately connected to how we perceive
knowledge. Rootless knowledge belongs to
institutions; it is more like a commodity that
is packaged and sold and bought – usually at an
incredibly high price. Institutions rarely
recognize knowledge that is inseparable from the
knower, and that often cannot be expressed in
words and concepts. The kind of knowledge that I
became increasingly aware of and fascinated by
is the one that grows with the person and
becomes part of him/her, without anyone
recognizing it. The first person who made me
aware of this inseparability of knowledge and
knower was my mother who was an amazing
embodiment of it.
It was so much part of her life that neither she
nor I (nor any one else) saw it. Only when I was
35 years old and struggling to make sense of
math to teachers and students that I realized
her knowledge and her mathematical knowledge in
particular. How (without formal instruction of
any sort, and without ever reading or writing a
word) she was able to know – as manifested in
her way of living – profound aspects in life,
such as math, religion, and upbringing of
children, which people in modern times spend
years to understand through words and concepts,
will remain a most inspiring, most puzzling, and
most revealing mystery in life for me. The
realization of how much people understand
without instruction set me free from much of
what I learned in institutions. It reminded me
that Jesus’ disciples were common people –
fishermen, shepherds… and mostly illiterate;
yet, they understood Jesus well. We are told
today that we have to study many years in order
to understand Jesus! Same with Islam: Prophet
Mohammad was illiterate and many who first
understood his words were common people. Same
with Marx, ordinary workers had no difficulty
understanding him… Such knowledges form the
real wealth that many people have – yet
totally ignored by institutions. This
suppression of significant knowledges and
expressions was the underlying purpose of
education as was conceived in Nabrija’s mind 500
years ago.
Reflecting on my mother’s
story and many similar stories, we notice
something interesting: when learning is
happening, we don’t notice it and we do not use
‘learning’ to refer to it. And when learning is
not happening, we use ‘learning’ to refer to it!
If, for example, a child is playing soccer –
through which s/he learns a lot – we say s/he is
playing soccer, not learning; similarly, if a
child is swimming or riding a bicycle or cooking
or planting. It is ironic that we use ‘learning’
only when there is no real learning going on,
such as when children are at school!
The combination of
ignoring knowledges that are inseparable
from knower and bombarding people
with rootless or cluster words
have been a most destructive combination to
human life and communities.
More examples of knowledges that are inseparable
from knower: Alan Bishop, a
mathematician at Cambridge University in
England, tells some interesting stories about
his experience in teaching geometry outside
England. In the university of Papua New Guinea,
for example, he was explaining the concept of
equal areas of geometric figures. He noticed
that his students were laughing. He asked why
and the response was, “Where would you use such
a concept?” He said in measuring areas of land
lots for example. Their laughter became louder.
They said that two lots of land have different
shapes, soils, elevation, position, distance
from town… saying that they are equal in area
makes no sense, and if it does, it is
insignificant. In another place, Bishop tried to
understand people’s concept of space among the
Aborigines in central Australia. During a visit
to a friend there, he thought he had a good
question through which he would understand their
concept of space. He asked his friend, “If you
start walking in the desert in Central Australia
and you get lost, what would you do?” His friend
looked at him in astonishment and said, “I will
go home.” Bishop thought that his friend
misunderstood the question so he repeated it,
and his friend again said that he would go home.
It was difficult for Bishop to realize that in
his friend’s culture, getting lost never means
not knowing where one came from, but not knowing
which direction to take next.
During the 1970s, when I
used to go around asking children about math, I
was always fascinated by the insightfulness of
their answers. No mathematician or book or
educator that I know of, for example, ever gave
a definition of a point like that 7-year old
girl in a remote Palestinian village: “a circle
without a hole”! Such experiences made me feel
that what can be taught are usually the less
important aspects of a “subject” or field!
One last example: when my
grandson was 15 months old, I was putting pieces
of cereal on the table in front of him and he
was picking them up and eating them. What I
noticed was that every time a piece was dropped,
he would look down, not up and not sideways. He
– like every child – discovers gravity at an
early age. The claim that Newton discovered it
is thus not quite true, but that does not mean
that what Newton did was insignificant. Thus,
the way we deal with gravity in schools embodies
two lies: (1) Newton discovered gravity and (2)
not telling what his contribution was
(abstracting from several phenomena that he
observed: falling objects, rotation of the moon,
tides…)
Healing from rootless and cluster words through
co-authoring meanings, unplugging self from
dominant patterns, and regaining wisdoms
Although we witness
increasing deterioration around the world at
many levels, we also witness signs of “healing”
that have been gaining momentum in recent years.
The shift that we witness in many parts of the
world and which is manifested in groups and
movements around the world, embodies respect for
diversity and faith in people and regeneration
of cultures. Increasing numbers of people are
disillusioned by the dominant logic embedded in
education, nation states, development, and
progress, and are seeking more meaningful ways.
The search moves in several directions:
direction of “old” cultures and wisdoms,
direction of new discoveries that are in harmony
with old wisdoms, direction of self-rule and
self-knowledge, and direction of protecting and
creating spaces where people live, learn,
interact, express… outside institutions and
professionals.
In order to get out of
the mess we are in, we need to free ourselves
from the mental cages that imprison our minds
and imaginations; to unplug ourselves from the
pattern of consumption, especially consumption
of words, meanings and measures; and to
re-integrate in our daily lives the sources that
nurture us: land, history, and culture. These
require working at several levels: healing from
rootless words by perceiving ourselves as
co-authors of meanings and measures; liberating
ourselves from universal thinking and regaining
a pluralistic attitude in living; and becoming
again searchers for truth and for what was made
invisible or worthless in our cultures.
In the rest of this
article I will elaborate on an example that has
been the guiding principle in my thinking, life,
and work for the past 8 years, and that embodies
the various aspects mentioned above: freeing our
minds from the mental cages, unplugging from
dominant patterns, co-authoring meanings and
measures, regaining pluralism as a core value in
life, regenerating aspects in our culture that
embodies wisdom and dignity, and protecting and
creating spaces outside institutions and
professionals. The example I am talking about is
Imam Ali’s statement concerning the source of
worth of a person.
The worth of a
person
Over the years, I became
increasingly convinced that the British
conquered the Palestinians (as well as others)
from within, by
shifting the locus of the worth of a person from
the person and the community to rootless symbols
such as grades, degrees, prizes, and symbols
that claim to be objective and universal and to
bestow real value on the person,
and whose source and legitimacy came from
London, through licensed professionals,
legitimized by official institutions. London
matriculation became (in the 1920s, 1930s and
1940s) the main measure of the worth of
Palestinian youth. Over the years, the virus has
gone much deeper.
This triumphant march of
arbitrary and rootless symbols was accompanied
and supported by some “cherished pillars” of
Western civilization, two of which are: the
belief that experience can be reduced to theory
(i.e. the intellect can completely understand
life/ being), and the belief in universals
(including the belief in universal meanings and
the belief in universal thinking by which I mean
a single undifferentiated path for “progress” –
the Western path). Western civilization is not
the only one that believed in universals. What
is distinctive about it, however, is the fact
that it is the only civilization that produced
universal tools to impose its ways and beliefs
on others, one of which is measuring people
along a vertical line.
The shift of the worth of
a person from the person and the community to
vertical measures led to the tearing apart of
the person’s “inner world” and of the
social-cultural-spiritual fabric in the
community. In spite of its destructive impact,
we seem to embrace this shift as a savior! In
other words, we embrace what robs us of natural
capacities and abilities – to learn, think,
express, relate, know, play, be healthy, and
feels one’s worth.
The well being of people,
and of children in particular, is intimately
connected to having the source of worthiness
come from inner harmony and from the
relationship that one has with the world around
him/her. What is needed, thus, is shifting the
locus of the worth of a person from institutions
and symbols back to the person and community.
Such a shift has been central in my thinking and
work since the early 1970s but had to wait for
more than 20 years to find an articulated
principle that captured it: a statement by Imam
Ali (1400 years ago!) I found in it great
insight and inspiration, and it became the
guiding principle of the Arab Education Forum,
which I have been directing since 1998 (and of
al-jame’ah project within it).
It is relevant and inspiring in the world today.
Imam Ali’s statement in Arabic is:
qeematu
kullimri’en ma yuhsenoh
ÞíãÉ ßá ÇãÑÆ ãÇ
íÍÓäå . According
to it, the
worth of a person is what s/he yuhsen.
Yuhsen, in Arabic, has several meanings,
which together constitute the worth of the
person: the
first meaning refers to how well the person does
what s/he does, which requires technical
knowledge and skills; the second refers to how
beautiful/ pleasing what one does to the senses,
the aesthetic dimension; the third refers to how
good it is for the community, from the
experience of the community; the fourth refers
to how much one gives of oneself and not what
one transfers from one place to another; and the
fifth meaning refers to how respectful (of
people and ideas) the person is in discussions.
According to the statement, a person’s worth is
not judged by professional committees or
official bodies, or by measures that claim to be
objective and universal, but by the five
meanings embedded in the word yuhsen. It is only
in relation to the first meaning – technical
knowledge and skills – that professionals and
institutions may be needed.
When I realized the
wealth and depth of that statement, I realized
how ignorant, empty, and criminal the rootless
term ‘underdevelopment’ is, and how easily we
were deceived by it. In spite of the on-going
destruction it has been causing within us and
around us, we still cling to it as if it
reflects reality! In order to heal from it (as
well as from similar words), we need to shift
our source of worth back to what we yuhsen.
It is worth mentioning
here how the authors of the Arab Human
Development Report 2002 treated Imam Ali’s
statement. They translated it into English
without realizing that it embodies a world that
cannot be translated into English! They
translated it: “the worth of a person is what he
excels at”. The authors are Arabs, yet failed to
see the richness in the Arabic word. Instead,
they fell victims for the dominant rootless word
“excellence”!
Every language is a world
of its own. Such realization is crucial in order
not to fall easy prey for “universal” words and
meanings. In our case as Arabs, the Arabic
language provides a world that is rich with
aspects that currently are forgotten. In
addition to the word yuhsen, I would like
to elaborate on the word: al-muthanna –
the dual. Although I am using ‘dual’ to refer to
al-muthanna, the two concepts are worlds
apart. Al-muthanna does not exist in
European languages. Its absence is crucial in
how Europeans perceive and relate to others.
Al-muthanna embodies a logic that is
different from Aristotle’s and Hegel’s. In
Aristotle’s logic, you are either identical or a
copy of I, or not-I. [Bush embodies this logic,
“If you are not with us, you are against us.”]
In Hegel’s logic, you and I can form a new
synthesis (one expression of which is referring
to one’s spouse as “my other half”). In
contrast, within the logic of al-muthanna,
you remain you and I remain I, but there is a
third “creature”, which is the relationship,
separate from both – similar to a common baby.
This third creature becomes so important in both
persons’ lives, almost inseparable from them.
The absence of al-muthanna is much more
serious than what Europeans can comprehend and,
unfortunately more than what most Arabs realize.
Al-muthanna reflects the importance of
the relationship between two people – without
dissolving either one; it is neither a higher
synthesis nor a replacement of them. The absence
of al-muthanna from European languages
explains – at least partially – why a person
like Huntington could not and probably would not
be able to build an authentic dialogue with
others – he sees others at best through
Aristotle or Hegel’s logic. Unfortunately, in
Arab schools, al-muthanna is usually
taught in a mechanical way. I personally believe
it should be taught in Arabic classes as an
example of pluralism and in math classes as
logic different from Aristotle and Hegel’s
logics.
* * *
Living and working in harmony with Imam Ali’s
statement is what I personally see as a “vision”
for “education” – at least in Arab countries. It
does not waste time fighting the dominant logic;
it transcends it by naturally embodying
pluralism, wisdom, health, respect, dignity,
humility, and that every person has worth (which
is what s/he yuhsen). The idea of al-jame’ah
is one way of realizing this “vision”.
A modern researcher, who wants to study
India, for example, does not start with
India, but with concepts, a statement of
purpose, and a methodology and carries
all that as his tools to understand
India! The belief that concepts are
universal and fit all countries is
rarely questioned. It is frightening how
easy it is to deceive the mind can be so
easily deceived. To try to fit life into
professional abstractions, rather than
let abstractions be formed as a result
of many diverse and rich experiences, is
a dangerous inversion.
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