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To Muslims: Smash the Doors, Wash your brains..
Came across this excellent article by Farooq Suleria that rather candidly talks about the dearth of creativity in Muslims of today. I love the poem by the Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani at the end. First an excerpt from this piece and then the poem:
…the solution to all our problems is always simple: return to an imagined past which, mercifully for the people of the seventh century, never existed. Every time, a scientist in the West is ready with an invention, our readymade answer is: we knew about it 1,400 years ago what the West has found only now. We kill Theo van Gogh when confronted with a film. We burn down our own cities in response to a blasphemous and racist caricature. Still, we refuse to understand that our answer to every “provocation” is either a fatwa or mindless violence – perhaps because creativity is anathema to us. Not because we lack fertile minds, but because we lack liberation and freedom — liberation from self-imposed mental, moral, and cultural censors. And freedom to think and express. Time to heed the great Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani, who said:
Five thousand years
Growing beards
In our caves.
Our currency is unknown,
Our eyes are a haven for flies.
Friends,
Smash the doors,
Wash your brains,
Wash your clothes.
Friends,
Read a book,
Write a book,
Grow words, pomegranates and grapes,
Sail to the country of fog and snow.
Nobody knows you exist in caves.
People take you for a breed of mongrels.
June 18th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
[...] ~ Freedom To Be Embarassed — If you come from a complicated & messy family, an embarrassing institution, or have once believed or done really stupid things, sometimes you just have to face up, ‘fess up, embrace the suckitude, and break the dirty secret. People need to do that in the HRC– I mean, where ARE the whistle-blowers in that corrupt institution? The same is so with too many modern Arab and Muslim societies, where denial, blaming, and stagnation seems the rule– and hence where the rot of Islamism and Jihad is seen as the magical cure-all for every problem ever. Author Farooq Suleria recently wrote: [...]
June 19th, 2008 at 7:17 am
I guess it applies to anyone who is existing in a limited way. I m sure there are exceptions everywhere - positive as well as negative. May the positive exceptions prevail and become the rule.
The poem you’ve shared here is simple and yet so impressive.
June 22nd, 2008 at 11:05 am
A good post. Here is the link to Nazar Qabbani’s website you asked for: http://www.nizar.net/english.htm
Unfortunately it doesn’t not contain all of his works. I tried hard to find one of his poems titled “Balqis” which he wrote after his wife died in a bomb blast. Reportedly, he blamed the whole Arab world for his dear wife’s death in his beautiful poem.
Hope to see your website’s new look soon!
Irfan
June 29th, 2008 at 7:12 am
Nizar Qabbani was a great Arab poet– progressive and wrote beautifully on women’s rights.
My father has one of his books and I am sharing a small stanza from his poem The Epic of Sadness:
I did not know…
that tears are the person
that a person without sadness is only
a shadow of a person
July 17th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
poetry submissions…
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