أكتب اليوم في إطار مبادرة للمدونين التونسيين لجعل يوم غرة جوان/يونيو/حزيران ٢٠٠٧ يوما مخصصا لمسألة المغرب العربي الكبير.
إنطلقت مسيرة هذه الوحدة رسميا في سنة ١٩٨٩ و لا أزال أذكر مشهدا جميلا من إحدى القمم المنعقدة في تونس عندما تولى الرئيس التونسي بنفسه قيادة المرسيدس الرئاسية يصحبه فيها الرئيس الجزائري و العقيد الليبي و الرئيس الموريطاني و الملك المغربي.
الإنطباع السائد عن هذا المشروع في تونس على الأقل ينم عن شيء من التذمر من بطء بناء الإتحاد. قد يكون ذلك بسبب التقدم النسبي لجيراننا الأروبيين في وحدتهم، غير أني أرى أن الحصيلة إيجابية رغم هزلانها وأضن أن المستقبل سيشهد تسارعا في نسق الإندماج إن شاء الله.
منذ حوالي ١٢ عشرة سنة كان حال البلدان الأعضاء أكثر قتامة فقد كانت ليبيا تحت حصار دولي جامح و كانت حرب أهلية تقطع أوصال الجزائر و كانت تغمر موريطانيا أجواء فساد خانقة و كانت تونس تعيش مواجهة بين الحكومة و حركة النهضة فضلا عن الخلاف الأبدي بين الجزائر و المغرب حول ملف الصحراء الغربية.. لحسن الحظ تبدو الأوضاع اليوم أقل تأزما.

في تونس، إنتهت المواجهة بين الحكومة و حركة النهضة و بدت آثار الإصلاحات على مستوى المعيشة و البنى التحتية و آداء الإدارة و ليس أدل على ذلك من النتائج المشرفة للبلاد على مستوى العديد من المؤشرات العالمية.
في ليبيا رفع الحضر فعليا و بادر القذافي بإنهاء برنامج تسليح نووي عاد على ليبيا بمكاسب ديبلوماسية قد يكون أهمها إعادة العلاقات مع الولايات المتحدة. في سياق آخر يبدو أن مجهودات ليبيا و نجاحها النسبي في إفريقيا بدأ يرفع من شأنها عالميا.
في الجزائر إنتهت أعمال الترهيب و التقتيل و لم تبقى سوى حوادث متفرقة نرجو أن تنتهي.
في المغرب يبدو أن محمد السادس قد وضع البلاد على طريق التحديث و يبدو أن المغرب يحضى بإحترام و تقدير دولي مميز. علاوة على ذلك تقدم المغرب بمقترح مشجع لحل مشكلة الصحراء الغربية. و الأرجح أن هذا الإشكال يمثل أحد أهم العوائق لتطبيع نهائي بين الجارين و بالتالي لنجاح المغرب العربي.
أما في موريطانيا فقد حصلت معجزة صغيرة عندما قام الجيش بتسليم السلطة لحكومة مدنية بعد أن نظم إنتخابات ناجحة.

قد يكون هذا تصورا مفرطا في التفاؤل و لكنه يروق لي..

Edward Said is an American academic, he was born in Palestine and lived in Egypt for some time before immigrating to the United States.

Orientalism is a classic that Said had put with great care, the book had simply changed the way the West looks at the "Orient". It had even created a negative tone to the word "orientalism", modern western scholars are apparently distancing themselves from being called "orientalists".

The book re-examines the term "orient" and what it actually means to the Western reader, or maybe what it was made to mean to the Western reader. Orientalism argues that the West actually made its own Orient and that the Orient as know in the West is actually the Western discourse about it.

To illustrate the idea, Said gives as an example the way Orientalists made their "scholarly" analysis of the revolutions and rebellions against the colonial rule in Africa and Asia. For instance, in their analysis of the Arab revolt in Egypt, some Orientalists gave the impression that the Arab "violence", is somehow due to inherent tendencies to chaos rather than to legitimate pursuit of freedom and independence. Colonialism needed to be justified with orientalist theories like "Arabs/Africans/Indians are incapable of self-governance".

The book goes through the representations of the Orient since medieval times, this was essentially anti-Islam rant fuelled by the religious authorities in Europe. Said spends a good part of the book describing the orientalism of colonial times which is the period when "Oriental Studies" in Europe became of great importance to the colonial mouvements in Britain, France, Belgium, Germany and others. Indeed, one of the most central ideas in "Orientalism" is that the orientalists were essentially serving the colonial interests. Some critics blame Said for ignoring other orientalists who were not affiliated with colonial authorities and seemed to be solely interested into Oriental arts for instance. Mahmoud Darwish put this in his stunning beautiful symbolic style in a poem called Tibak (طباق):

نيويورك. إدوارد يصحو على كسل الفجر

يعزف لحناً لموتسارت

يركض في ملعب التِنِس الجامعيِّ.

يفكِّر في رحلة الفكر عبر الحدود

وفوق الحواجز

يقرأ نيويورك تايمز

يكتب تعليقَهُ المتوتِّر

يلعن مستشرقاً

يُرْشِدُ الجنرالَ الى نقطة الضعف في قلب شرقيّةٍ

يستحمُّ. ويختارُ بَدْلَتَهُ بأناقةِ دِيكٍ

ويشربُ قهوتَهُ بالحليب

ويصرخ بالفجر: لا تتلكأ

Orientalism, just like Said described, is still alive and well. Bernard Lewis, a British now living in the US is probably the best example of Said's orientalists. Despite his strong disagreement with Said, Lewis is regarded as a major figure of modern Middle Eastern studies. When Lewis justified the war in Iraq with "we free them or they destroy us", he summarised what Said has been trying to tell us in his book.

Despite my disagreement with some of Lewis analysis, I think his extensive research may give the Muslim world some very useful clues on how to regain more status and accelerate development. I will try to make my next politico-historical reading a Lewis.

I have been living in Western countries for a few years now and I have never attended a mass, at a Christian church that is. Actually, I have been living close to several churches in Tunis for a decade and I always thought of visiting the Roman Catholic church in avenue Habib Bourguiba. It never happened for lack of time, lack of determination and mostly for the fear that it may appear inappropriate to the local Christians.

I talked about this to a co-worker and he invited me to attend the mass at the Guildford Saint Saviour's church which I did (with my wife) on 26 February 2006. It was a very worthwhile experience and I'd love to have it again.

To a muslim, the prayer ritual is obviously quite different. It consisted into a considerable amount of singing and music playing which would correspond more to a joyful adhkar (أذكار) session in the Islamic tradition. The person leading the prayer gave a speech about Jonas, that's Yunus (يونس) in Arabic. Except from the mention of the Trinity in the lyrics, I didn't see much conflicting with the Islamic teachings.

The common belief that muslims cannot pray at a church or at synagogue is not totally accurate. When Syria was conquered by Muslims in the 7th century, Christians and Muslims were praying at the same church (Saint John maybe) alternating services on Fridays and Sundays. Later when Omar Ibn Al-Khattab (عمر إبن الخطاب) conquered Jerusalem (القدس), he commanded that muslims shall not pray in Christian worship places for fear that it may establish a tradition of possessing churches in the future.

It happened the day of my visit that the church was ogranising a kind of informal meeting to discuss about "Is nothing sacred?". Assured by the ones who invited me, I attended; the discussions addressed several topics like some show I didn't know about but which appeared to be blasphemous, the muslims reaction to the Danish cartoons and so on. At the very end, I asked permission to comment on a question by one of the attendees: "do Muslims take their religion more seriously than us?" and (briefly) on the Danish cartoons affair.

My point of view was essentially that for muslims Islam has been a power that brought scientific, social, military and economical advances and it's still being regarded as the social system that turned a bunch of desert warring tribes into masters of the World. Islamic Civilisation owes all of its achievements to Islam, therefore, I think this is why the Islamic religion has this great esteem for Muslims. The US channel PBS used a nice expression to describe this: Islam -- Empire of Faith, it's a documentary which runs over 3 episodes: The Messenger, The Awakening and The Ottomans.

The Christian church in the West, on the other hand, was more regarded as an obstacle to Western advances. Tales of blasphemy charges against scientists are still vivid in the minds and I believe that this has costed the church a lot of credibility over the past centuries. That's obviously the opinion of someone who knows very little about the history of Christian church(es).

The Danish cartoons affair deserves a post by itself, but at the church I only pointed out that the violence the media has described happened in inherently violent and instable places, namely Gaza, Palestine, Nigeria, Pakistan and such. The cartoons were a mere trigger for communities already under tension.

The reactions to my visit were mixed, someone from the church's staff said that what I did was "brave", another attendee was staring at us for the whole session and gave the impression that he didn't like us being there. Many others expressed sympathy and escorted us on the way out, some even asked us to come again. Thank you all for the warm welcome.

The Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadi Nejad had called, in a press conference, for a public TV debate with United States president George W. Bush.

The White House dismissed the invitation as "just a diversion from the legitimate concerns that the international community, not just the US, has about Iran's behaviour." It's probably worth noting here that what the US speaker refers to as "the international community" is only a handful of countries, namely Great Britain, the US, France and Germany; that's only 4 (6 if you count Russian and China) countries out of about 200 and is, in my opinion, a very long way from being "the international community".

This is not the first invitation of direct discussions with the US Administration which the Iranian president made. President Mahmoud Ahmadi Nejad already wrote an 18-page letter to his American counterpart about a similar topic 4 months back. The letter had seen a similar fate to the public debate: turned down.

I think this could have been a golden opportunity to ease the tensions between Iran and the US. I'm sure there are tons of mis-understanding piled up on both sides, since we're still talking about the "Great Satan" on one side and the "Axis of Evil" on the other.

On a less serious note, I believe that the US Administration is right about avoiding this confrontation: George W. Bush, who is not well known for his eloquent speeches, will certainly have a hard time talking about World affairs with a Civil Engineer who holds a MSc and a PhD in transportation systems? Even the CNN readers think their president doesn't stand a chance.

Sinan was one of the comics that marked the childhood of millions in the Arab World. My sister had a Sinan T-shirt when she was about 4. It's one of these comics made in the 70's and, very successfully, translated to Arabic. The translation of these Japanese anime is usually done in Syrian and Lebanese studios; Young Future and Space Toons are names that come to mind. I believe that Sinan's English name is Beaver.

The opening song is still vivid in my mind 25 years later, it goes like..