17
Yassin al-Haj Saleh, Translated by Max Weiss*
Yassin al-Haj Saleh was born in Raqqa in 1961, and studying medicine at Aleppo University he was arrested for his political activities, going on to spend sixteen years in the jails of the Syrian regime (1980–1996). He is among Syria’s leading public intellectuals. Al-Haj Saleh is the author of a memoir of his time as a political prisoner, Bi-l-khalas ya shabab: 16 ʿaman fi al-sujun al-suriyya (Salvation, My Boys: 16 years in Syrian Prison), and critical works such as Asatir al-akharin: naqd al-islam al-muʿasir wa-naqd naqdihi (The Myths of Others: Critique of Modern Islam and the Critique of its Critique), and al-Thaqafa ka-siyasa: al-muthaqqafun wa-masʾuliyyatuhum al-ijtimaʿiyya fi zaman al-ghilan (Culture as Politics: Intellectuals and their Social Responsibility in the Age of Monsters). After his brother and his wife were disappeared in Syria in 2013, al-Haj Saleh moved to Istanbul, where he continues to live in exile. He also helps to run al-Jumhuriyah (The Republic), an online platform for the publication and discussion of articles on Syrian politics, culture, and society.
The participation of intellectuals in the Syrian revolution was greater than expected. Intellectuals were jailed during the revolution. Intellectuals contributed to various dimensions of its activities. Intellectuals stood out among the leadership of the opposition groupings that appeared in the wake of the revolution. The names Najati Tayyarah and Razan Zeitouneh and Fadwa Soliman and Burhan Ghalioun give just an initial impression of the role of Syrian intellectuals in the revolution.
I
In addition to their numbers, the participation of intellectuals in the Syrian revolution presents two notable features. The first is the important engagement of women, including in work on the ground. Some women activist intellectuals have been arrested while many have been forced to keep a low profile and still others have had to flee the country. Alongside Razan Zeitouneh and Fadwa Soliman, we should add Reem Al Ghazzi (who is still arrested today), Rafah Nashed, Hanadi Zahlout, Razan Ghazzawi, Guevara Nimr (arrested for a period of time), Rosa Yassin Hassan, Khawla Dunia and Hanan al-Lahham and so many others, to say nothing of those activist women who now live outside the country, including Rima Fleihan, Mai Skaf, Rasha Umran, Suheir al-Atassi and Samar Yazbek, all of whom left in order to escape the dangers threatening them. This is also not to mention the dozens of young women working to organize revolutionary actions, including regional coordination, as well as those who have just begun their reporting and artistic work. And even all of this fails to account for the participation of Syrian women in the revolution in general (including such well-known figures as Dana Jawabreh, Marwa al-Ghamian and Malak al-Shanwani … all three of them arrested for some time), or about their initiative to organize themselves while remaining independent in their work. None of this has yet been considered in a systematic way.
II
The second feature of the participation of intellectuals in the Syrian revolution is exemplified by the fact that “intellectuals of the word,” or the book, are not the most visible kind today, as opposed to how the role of the intellectual had been characterized in public life throughout the previous phases of the country’s history. The activities of many of them today have shifted towards the auditory and the visual: films, songs and art installations, to say nothing of what is made possible on the Internet and specifically social media sites in terms of mashing up words and rhythms and film clips. Specific protest activities are not only presented as scenes of celebration by means of the camera or the computer alone, but also distinguished by their musical arrangement and practice and organization and production. Caricature (think of Ali Farzat, of course) should also be added here as well as banners and posters.
By the same token, a not insubstantial number of “intellectuals of the word” demonstrate positions vis-à-vis the revolution that range from caution and uncertainty to tepid support and doublespeak, even if they don’t openly come out against it. This might be attributed to the fact that the “intellectuals of the word” – who are, on the whole, older than intellectuals of the image and of art – have internalized repeated defeats in their lives, and they no longer have the heart. Also many of them regress to a normalizing mentality, living in a world of camouflaged words that barely allow for the inclusion of anything based in reality. Their own intellectual and psychological security takes priority over the exhausting participation required to make general conditions more just. The intellectuals of the image and music and color, by contrast, are more in tune with the vagaries of life, less stuck in a falsified mentality by virtue of the fact that they are younger, generally speaking, on the one hand, and the diversity of their weapons for action that are more in touch with the sensibility and imagination of a broader swath of reality and ordinary people, on the other hand.
III
In some ways the revolution was an appropriate moment for the emergence of a new, younger opposition distinct from the traditional opposition, one that is not riven by partisan affiliation, but closer to life and its various spheres, less centered on ideology and authority. It was also the constitutive experience of younger, budding intellectuals who were not defined by traditional intellectuals (including the author of these words) but by their more innovative techniques.
The truth of the matter is that most traditional intellectuals were connected at some stage of their life to the partisan and ideological opposition, and some of them still are in some way, which is one reason the relationship between the new intellectuals and the new opposition is so tightly bound, facilitating discourse about a new “historic bloc,” formed out of “the working poor” (i.e., those who live off of their labor), a spectrum of young political activists animating the new opposition, and the new intellectuals, who are, again, mostly young people.
IV
But if this is the unmistakable general trend, it would be incorrect to describe a sharp dividing line between these two generations of intellectuals. There is only one large dividing line: between those who are with the revolution and those who are with the regime. Among the former there are traditional oppositionists and intellectuals, older folks and those who speak, and those juveniles who are with the regime.
The truth is that the most important thing that can be said about the traditional intellectuals is not that they haven’t participated in the revolution, because some of them have. The takeaway should be that most of them have only participated as politicians, less have done so as intellectuals.
This is a marked feature of the traditional historic bloc, if such a term even makes sense: intellectuals have their eye on politics, even among those who prefer to be known as “thinkers.” They need to be called out as anathema to the traditional opposition. In their intellectual labor, there is a great deal of politics and unspoken yet direct political accounting.
The most noticeable failure among traditional intellectuals is their participation in the revolution from a cultural perspective, that is, acting more forcefully in intellectual, aesthetic and moral terms, including principled critique based on their own values.
By the same token, the new intellectual doesn’t seem to find any difficulty in joining the revolution without seeing it entirely as a political activity, adhering to a specific party line, or even joining the ranks of a political party. The truth of the matter is that a number of the symbols of the young revolution, including their martyrs, are artists in their very mode of living, even if they weren’t professional artists before. What drove them to participate in the revolution are moral commitments to justice and liberty and humanity more than they are particular political opinions. They are rising up without a revolutionary ideology. They are being imprisoned without any heroic illusions regarding imprisonment. In their general stance there is no shortage of disdain and bravery and humility.
V
The following words written by Fadwa Soliman on her Facebook page are as apt a definition of the new Syrian intellectual as any:
One of my girlfriends asked me if I had become – willingly or unwillingly – a symbol of the ʿAlawi revolutionary artist … that I should take care in my public behavior to remain an uncontaminated symbol … I tell that friend and others that I’m not an idol. As far as I can tell, the idols have fallen for the Syrian people in their country. I’m not a hypocrite who would allow herself to be transformed into a lifeless icon. I am Fadwa, and I salute all the life and vitality that is in the world. And just like life I have my negative and positive attributes. I have a lover like anyone else. I fast and I pray, in my own way. I might have a glass of wine that my grandfather had produced. I’ll drink his wine as a toast to victory. I respect those who don’t drink and I respect and praise those who pray. I honor those who fast. But a human being who simply carries on and keeps going is not an idol. If you reduce me to a symbol, you rob me of my freedom. So down with symbols and long live liberty … my liberty. I’m not an ʿAlawi woman. I’m not an actress. I have been a true revolutionary in the name of the enduring values of my society every since I was born, a revolutionary for liberty and for people to be free to believe whatever they wish, to worship however they please, to love however they wish, even if that means bowing down to a tree. Down with the ʿAlawis and let the human beings inside of them remain. Down with the Sunnis and the Druze and the Ismaʿilis and Islam and Judaism and Christiantiy, and let the human beings inside of them remain. Long live the human being who is free and generous wherever they may be, whatever their religious affiliation. Long live the human being wherever they may be and whatever their religious identification. Long may they live … Viva … viva.
Truly astonishing. I am not an idol! I am Fadwa! Just like life! I have a lover! Down with symbols and long live liberty! I am a revolutionary! Down with the ʿAlawis and the Sunnis and Druze … and long live the human being! She declares her refusal to be an idol at a time when Syrians are tearing down their idols!
Fadwa Soliman is a well-known actress in her thirties. She first acquired fame when she appeared in revolutionary neighborhoods of Homs (she comes from the countryside around Tartous, and she had been living in Damascus) alongside Abdul Baset al-Sarout (20 years old, the goalkeeper for the Homs youth soccer club al-Karameh (dignity), who identifies as the guardian of the dignity of the Syrian people).
Fadwa isn’t an actress for the revolution (even if she is an actor in the revolution). But even many others who disagree with her resemble her in their sensitivity and their assertion of personal freedom.
Comparable examples to Fadwa such as Amer Matar and Shadi Abu Fakhr are imprisoned, Ghiath Matar the martyr – they are the faces and symbols of the new Syria. They are unlike any others. What distinguishes them is that they think from their heads and feel from their hearts and judge by their own conscience.
VI
What has concerned me up until this point is the potential foundation for independent thought and critique, for the humanities, for philosophy and for culture more broadly in our new Syria. This foundation is modest at its inception and it is vulnerable to challenges in the days to come from at least two angles. The conservative Islamist perspective that articulates an intellectual and values-based model clamps down on the basis for free inquiry, an impulse towards censorship of culture and control over education. On the other hand, there is the perspective of the culture of the image, or digital culture, as well as the arts that comprise a point of strength for the revolution today, and which depend, to a large extent, on technology.
Democracy is inextricably bound up with free inquiry and the idea of objective truth and the critical intellectual. What will be the state of these things in a socio-political context that grants a wide berth in public life to these Islamist movements, and also manages to win over the digital world of the young generation? We don’t know. It’s likely that the foundation for culture will be broader but with less high culture. But didn’t people like De Tocqueville and Nietzsche say the same things about nineteenth-century European democracies?
Everything will depend on what survives this regime of total destruction in Syria. And even though it’s likely that we will enjoy a greater share of freedom no matter what the outcome, just about everything else will be more difficult. Freedom in itself makes everything harder.
*This essay was originally published in the online journal al-Hiwar al-mutamaddan on January 19, 2012: www.ahewar.org/debat/show.art.asp?aid=292101.