The Trial of the Egyptian Revolution: Maikel Nabil

First published at 5PMBAHRAIN

It is a chilly winter. Not yet you would say. Except in the Middle East, where the Arab spring has opened a Pandora box of winterly creatures that spared us autumn altogether. Rather than staying stranded in the complex political economy of the Arabian Gulf, where change is expected to come slow and the process of state-building hasn’t been finished so far, we looked with hope at North Africa when the people united with the cause of freedom and overthrew the regimes of Egypt and Tunisia and ultimately that of Libya as well.

What seemed to herald then the beginning of a new era in the Middle East is now the symptom of what Egyptian blogger Maikel Nabil put into words months ago: To overthrow the dictator but not the dictatorship.

A new era in Middle Eastern politics has no doubt begun: It is a new era of authoritarianism, abuse and yet more silence for the people. Those of us who followed day by day the events at Tahrir, long before the spring would reach Yemen, Syria and Bahrain; we did so not without a certain measure of skepticism which was manifested by global leaders alike.

On the one hand, we had to celebrate how political power unexpectedly seized the street and grew exponentially by the minute until several weeks later the Egyptians were victorious; on the other, one could not express enough reservation about the transition of power.

Apparently successful examples of liberation from tyranny such as Iraq, Afghanistan and other lesser conflicted nations could never pass the stage of transition until alas another conflict would break free. I strongly believe that political power cannot be passed, created or transitioned; it is something that must happen and its absence is not a symptom of failure, rather, it is the failure itself.

By the end of the rather long period of protests (however brief compared to the situation in Syria and Yemen and to a lesser extent and for different circumstances, Bahrain), the same Egyptian army that had pledged loyalty to President Mubarak and that had ruthlessly launched attacks on protesters, decided to join the revolutionary struggle and from then onwards began to be voiced the all too felicitous claim that the army and the people are one.

Few people expressed criticism at the time and then a fragile period of transition began, one that saw the emergence of groups that had been forever silenced in Egypt – with the good and the bad; but ultimately the true colors not of the revolution (a revolution is always beautiful) but of the revolutionaries began to surface; quickly enough previously self-appointed activists fell prey to the opportunism typical of those keen and quick enough to realize that the change of regimes was only nominal and that they had to play their cards the best they could.

This was followed by the ruthless authoritarian grip of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forced that has put over ten thousand civilians on trial in military courts on bogus and meaningless charges, number which amounts to more than those tried in Mubarak’s entire rule.

Some countries in the region do consider relevant to charge a culprit on insulting the military, criticizing the government and spreading rumors; while this is true, none of those countries (perhaps with the curious exception of Turkey) unlike post-revolutionary Egypt, are confessed to be democratic and at best have insisted that democratic processes will last several decades. The list of abuses committed by SCAF runs very long:  helpless bureaucracy, corruption, physical and verbal abuses, virginity tests, tight censorship on media and journalists, intimidation of Egyptian and foreigner alike, political maneuvering and endless manipulation.

The ugly truth of revolutions is that it is never revolutionaries who make the revolutions; they are only lying in waiting until political power is ripe in the streets and then they seize it, what happens then of course is precisely what I outlined above: political power, the result of human mutability and contingence is as such, a very fragile thing, it must be let happen, it cannot be seized lest it be destroyed and turned into violence.

Violence such as that practiced by SCAF is never political – because politics and political power is the will of a people, whereas violence is the will of one man or one group, and like with the Egyptian Pharaoh, political power by means of violence is a very solitary institution. This is what happened in Egypt, once the people achieved the revolution; their power was seized by revolutionaries – the same that will be turned into staunchest conservatives the day after.

But the trial of the revolution has begun. It began already when a young blogger, Maikel Nabil, a 25-years-old Egyptian Copt known for his radically unsettling views about the military and the State of Israel, began blogging about how the army and the people have never been one, and reported about ideological inconsistencies and abuses committed by the army on the people during and after the revolution.

He probably had been under the radar for a long time before that, accordingly, his house was stormed, and he was put in prison, tried in a military court as a civilian and given an extended sentence of three years for doing nothing but expressing his opinions publicly on the web. Although many others (in fact thousands) were tried the same way, Nabil was the first political prisoner of post-revolutionary Egypt, and the only one who remained in imprisonment only because of a blog.

Other prominent media personalities who had risen in the course of the revolution as star bloggers were otherwise released. Nabil’s case did not gain much prominence at home or abroad derived from the facts of his life: An ethnic Copt, an atheist, an atypical radical, supporter of Israel, critic of the revolution. His plight fell on almost deaf ears.

Over forty days ago Mr. Nabil began a hunger strike to demand his immediate release. Now entering the 43^rd day, an appeal had been scheduled on October 4^th, however it was postponed until October 11^thbecause of a court file that did not arrive on time; circumstance that no one seemed to bent on overturning other than a few activists who were at the court and who were harassed, threatened with imprisonment and one of them summoned into the court briefly: For no other reason than using her phone camera in a demonstration in front of the military court, Sahar Maher was charged with misdemeanors, her phone confiscated and she was informed that she would be as well tried on a military court the following week.

Even at the prospect of his death, knowing full well that he had committed no other crime than the exercise of free speech, not only the decision remains unchanged but the support of Egyptians at home and activists abroad is rather weak compared to other cases where the risk involved was substantially less. The few people campaigning for his release, among them his father and brother and some activists, among them the very prominent Egyptian blogger Mona Eltahawy, have assured us that the postponement of the trial is nothing but a death sentence.

So much for democracy, it is not only that the true intentions of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces have truly surfaced but also have the capabilities of the Egyptian populace. The belatedness in expressing vocal support for the case of Mr. Nabil derive from the fact that few in Egypt today are willing to hear any criticism on the outcome and success of the revolution and like Mr. Nabil said, what was true for himself in March, is already true for many others: There’s more fear in the streets now than there ever was under Mubarak.

No doubt there is a long road ahead of Egypt in this new era, however, of what of worth is all this bloodshed, all this madness, all this sacrifice? What is the worth of this all if once the beginning had been supposedly achieved; the rights of the innocent cannot be protected, if criticism cannot be heard, if the life of this one man is not worth another public outcry like the one at Tahrir, then what was the life of Mohamed Bouazizi worth after all? What was the life of Khaleed Said worth at all?

This one case, apparently simple and straightforward as it is, it is ought to put the Egyptian revolution to its hardest test yet, to its definite trial, which in case of failing, will leave us with the bitter taste of realizing how it is that it took only a couple of weeks not to liberate Egypt, but to make it go from oligarchic authoritarianism to military authoritarianism. It is time to stop finding guilty culprits abroad and elsewhere for everything that happens at home; in Egypt, in Bahrain, in Israel and everywhere in the Middle East.

If it wasn’t the case that there’s so much wrong with ourselves, it would only suffice to ‘overthrow’ one power or the other to change our lives, but time and again, this old and rather dead paradigm is proven wrong on and on and on. How can we stand up to tyranny in the region if we cannot change our own ways of thinking? If we cannot change the prejudice and the hatred we are taught at home? If we cannot let go of tribal, religious and cultural masks?

So right she had been in the 1990’s when Hungarian philosopher Agnes Heller declared in recanting her older socialism, that she would go in the direction of Kierkegaard (introspection) rather than Marx (political action) because the revolution, the revolution of everyday life, that revolution is ought to begin in yourself – it cannot be brought from anywhere, no one can bestow it upon you, there’re no manuals written for revolution.

Egypt has to redefine the meaning of patriotism for the Middle East now, whether it is an awakening of values, human ideals and the autonomy to use your own judgment, or if once again, it is more and more of the old anti-imperialist, anti-Semitic, xenophobic, backward, monolithic and especially egoistic system. It remains to be seen whether Egypt will remain enslaved to Pharaoh or whether they will cross the Reed Sea, and then finally understand that politics is not about how I feel about Maikel Nabil or not, or anyone, but about how we build the common world.

6th of October in Jerusalem

Published first at BIKYAMASR

It is that day of the year – 6th of October – that glorious day in the Egyptian psyche that commemorates, or rather celebrates, so runs the story in the Egyptian media, the victory during the 1973 October War when the Egyptian army defeated the Israeli army and regained Sinai. Events planned to commemorate the Armed Forces Day included on Wednesday, among others, the visit and floral offering of Hussein Tantawi, chairman of the Superior Council of the Armed Forces, to the memorial of the Unknown Soldier in Nasr City; art and sport performances in schools, and a variety of events held or to be held on Thursday in different governorates all over Egypt. Another celebration planned in Alexandria will honor warriors of the 1973 October war and also the martyrs of the Egyptian January 25 Revolution.

The writing on the wall of what this national and military celebration represents for the Republic of Egypt nowadays, after the strange twist that the revolution has taken, is something about which one cannot express discontent as much as hesitation. There may be too many versions of the story; for some like the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces and some of nascent nationalist movement perhaps it is business as usual; for others it might be reason to scorn, to laugh, to complain, to mourn – all this is still subject to intense debate. What does it mean, though, 6th of October in the capital of the Jewish State? How do they view Egypt then and now? Should we congratulate the new Egypt on this simultaneously cheerful and sorrowful day? Or should we express panic and fear about what the near future holds in store?

This year 2011, almost 40 years after the war and in the happy year of the Arab revolutions, the celebration falls almost on the same day of Yom Kippur, which infamously codenamed the war in the Israeli mind as Jews walk into the holiest and most solemn day in the liturgical calendar. It remains still difficult to speak about Egypt without falling prey to the politics of enmity. In the course of preparing for the Israeli matriculation exams for Zionist history and then later on in university, the topic is by no means avoided, nevertheless, it comes as a surprise to hear that Egyptians celebrate a victory while we were told and taught that Israelis were the victors. This proposition in itself would ignite the most violent reactions charged with intense emotions. There cannot be two victors in a war.

I would even dare say that for the average Israeli, looking at 6th of October as an Egyptian celebration would be more or less a taboo. There are some facts nonetheless that are very clear from a historical point of view: The Israelis were not prepared for the war and the blow on the morale of the Zionist institution was rather severe so that enquiries were launched to investigate possible culprits, the outcome of which is widely documented in Israel. The State of Israel remained nonetheless religiously committed to the idea of its military superiority and its position of power in the region. Never did I see this idea challenged until the year 2006 with the outcome of the Hezbollah-Israel war in Lebanon, when it became clear that the army had become a monolithic, all too heavy, all too undisciplined institution.

How could one address himself to the Egyptians to discuss the meaning of 6th of October if it is not yet possible to discuss it at home? It would be unfair to deny that one writes not without a certain degree of fear and guilt. Israeli society has been radically transformed in the course of these decades, younger generations have emerged, less connected to the tragic history of European Jewry, highly critical of or at least ambivalent about Zionism, less committed to the military institution and certainly less afraid of facing their Arab counterparts.

In theory and at home this comes easier said than done. I remember being lost once in the Old City of Jerusalem at the age of eighteen with a British friend and then coming out of Damascus Gate right into the center of East Jerusalem; I had never been so afraid before, it was this foreign language, Arabic, the curious faces of the pedestrians, the inspecting laughter of the young men and the climate of self-inflicted hostility. The same culture of fear that had driven us out of our native lands to seek shelter in the land of our ancestors, it was the same fear of the other what we experienced that day.

In retrospective it is possible for me to say nowadays, with the years and kilometers of distance that have elapsed, that many Israelis feel guilty about the injustice committed on the Palestinians and this guilt is easily transfigured into fear. No matter how hard we try to convince ourselves otherwise, no matter how much we rely on the military and on the leadership, it is impossible sometimes to escape that helpless feeling that what happened to our ancestors in Europe and elsewhere in the Arab world will also happen one day in the land believed to be promised.

The ruthless occupation and the terrifying instability led many people, in spite of the great prosperity, to live in a constant state of anxiety. At times I questioned myself about how really Jewish the state was; the internal paradoxes of Zionism often made manifest how right had been Hannah Arendt, writing a decade before the creation of the state, that Israel would become a semi-sovereign militaristic state, behind threatened borders from which Jewish culture would somehow vanish. On the other hand, there was always this optimism and this defiance, this willingness to make ourselves part of this great project in the make, called the State of Israel. The paradoxical existence of this irregular state in an ocean of hostility seemed to be yet one another paradox of Jewish life itself.

Looking back at 6th of October, there is not only the dread about a certain weakness perceived only silently but also the seed of that very fragile and often imaginary peace between Israel and Egypt which was indirectly the consequence of the war, but the Arab Spring and the end of Mubarak’s rule put an end to this illusion in dramatic ways. Just like the United States, Israel was not quick enough in sensing the true reach of the protest movement and the old leadership expressed much concern about how a new Egypt without the artificial long-established peace would challenge the status quo of the region for the Jewish state. The delusions of realpolitik showed their true colors when the Israeli leadership made it clear that it was preferable to remain at peace with a regime than at war with a free country. People in the Israeli public understood this and that is how the protests in the country demanding equality began with the slogan ‘Walk like an Egyptian’.

No doubt the Israeli leadership belongs to the generation of Mubarak and Bin Ali; they lack the vision to imagine a new Middle East and anchor themselves on each and every failure of the Arab revolution, in order to bring their point across over and over. Egyptians are in the right to challenge the legitimacy of the peace agreements that were never such; otherwise not only the economic but the cultural ties between the two countries would have been strengthened rather than let alone to cool and die.

The Arab revolutions must become for the State of Israel not a panic alarm but a well awaited opportunity to fix the injustices committed against the Palestinians and to provide the space for the type of self-reflections necessary, if we want to live one day without this unbearable guilt and fear that nobody speaks about. It is clear to me of course that while I am defending Israel’s right to exist and the possibility of a peaceful coexistence with Palestine, some of my personal friends consider my position that of a traitor and resent the welcoming approach to the revolution which after all, is not in Israel’s best interest.

Truth being said, they’re not completely mistaken and not for political reasons. Many dormant chimeras of the last hundred years have arisen from the dead since January and it has become clear that not only a political solution between our countries seems far fetches but also that the hostility toward Jews in the Arab world is as alarming as we had always thought or perhaps more. Several incidents in the last couple of months have made it clear not only that the Egyptian revolution is far from complete, but also that there seems to be no place for Jews outside the threatened borders of Israel.

Zionism has become not an allusion to the dreadful combination of European nationalist politics of history and the plight of a homeless people, but also a cliché of the Arab world applied to anything that falls out of favor; whether it is King Hamad of Bahrain, the Syrian regime, Mubarak, the liberals, the religious, the leftists; in short, anyone who is an object of distaste or disagreement is immediately labeled a Zionist and not only that, there is no differentiation whatsoever between Jews and Zionists.

I would be the first to agree that normalization with Israel, not between governments but between peoples, will come by as an impossible task unless Israel meets for once its commitment to peace, to stop the settlements and to treat the Palestinians fairly – this is beyond question. Where I become worried is when Egyptians fail to recognize that the State of Israel is not going to go anywhere, perhaps it will be possible to change the demographic and geographic landscape, but this state in itself is not going to go up in smoke, sloppily as it is maintained. In order to question the legitimacy of Israel a certain measure of political decency is necessary in which Egypt will have to assess its own relationship to the Jewish people historically and how the 1973 war in itself wouldn’t have been possible, hadn’t it been one another power game of the Cold War.

6th of October is a celebration that the Egyptians have owned up to and they are in their right, as it represents their struggles past and present and a way into the future, whatever this future holds in store. However, circumscribing it entirely to a military parade under the present conditions signals perhaps a deliberate avoidance to tackle the impossible political situation they are living in under a more or less established military rule. Jerusalem will remain cool and cold on what this celebration represents but what Jerusalem might think is irrelevant to the unexpected course that Egyptian history took.

Defining politics as friendship or enmity with a foreign country is a rotten left over from European politics of the past centuries, from the vicious complacency of nation states and from what threatens democracy the most: The yoke of tribal and ethnic politics. There is no better way for the nascent free Arab states to support the Palestinian plight than stressing their own commitments to democracy and plurality, rather than replicating the blind circles of hatred and fear that we were taught in. A war, always a silly thing, can be the leitmotif of greatness as the Greeks knew so well, but greatness is not self-serving, it is a responsibility without which no freedom can last longer than the hour of liberation.

As a Jew, I want to see a free Egypt, a free Palestine and a democratic Israel; none of that will be possible while thousands of people are put on trial in military courts, while people chant death to the Jews, while authoritarianism slowly erodes democratic promises. Let’s celebrate 6th of October, not for what it stood in a past that a nation wants to be free thereof, but on the basis of what can be built thereupon.

Maikel Nabil in Athens and Vienna / October - November 2011

Comme je descendais des Fleuves impassibles,
Je ne me sentis plus guide par les haleurs:
Des Peaux-Rouges criards les avaient pris pour cibles
Les ayant cloues nus aux poteaux de couleurs.


-Arthur Rimbaud, September 1871

Letter to Paul Verlain

[As I was floating down calm rivers
I no longer felt myself steered by the haulers:
Gaudy Redskins had taken them for targets
Nailing them naked to totem poles.]



During the months of October and November, my friend, the painter Katherina Olschbaur, will be participating in the XV Biennalle de la Mediterranee in Thessaloniki - Greece, featuring some of her art work. At the same time we will run a project in parallel throughout October
and November for a wandering exhibit firstly in Athens during the course of the Biennalle and then later in November in Vienna in the context of "Vienna Art Week: Reflecting Realities - Wien und Psychoanalyse". Further stations are still under planning.

The name of this project is "Bateau Ivre", (the Drunken Boat) based on the famous poem of the French poet Arthur Rimbaud. Inspired in Rimbaud the project takes on theme of the drunken boat as a metaphor for restlessness and of the boat as the restless mankind absent from the boat itself; tumbling and itinerancy as a (human) condition to be implemented in the form of a travelling exhibition. The journey of restlessness becomes the central concept in an exhibition featuring works in the format of postcards, almost old-fashioned,     creating a loosely defined geography of place; from which the greeting, the message of the postcard, that has been sent to the other, becomes a circumscribed two-dimensional space. An exhibition as a book of poems, a drunken journey with an open end.

There are no formal creative requirements, as long as the format of the postcard is met. The postcard should tell a story about unrest, at the discretion of the artist. As it is going to be shown in different cities more postcards will be added along the way and at the end  of the journey they will be published as catalog. As the call was sent to some young artists and the concept evolved, I suggested to include postcards from the Arab Spring, without which, unrest in 2011 is difficult to conceive of. The current state of unrest itself made it very difficult, but eventually besides postcards coming from Western and Eastern Europe, we managed to receive some impressive works from Bahrain, telling the now tragic and somewhat paradoxical story of February 14 in pictures; the works will be seen for the first time in our exhibit and unfortunately the artists will remain anonymous.

I am in charge of writing a central text, included as a part of the exhibit part dealing with Bahrain and also of writing a lengthy philosophical essay to serve as introduction to the published catalog of the journey; reflection on the work of Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig "The Star of Redemption", the most important Jewish philosophical text of the 20th century that was written by Rosenzweig while he was a German soldier in the course of the first World War and sent in the form of postcards to his mother in Kassel, who typed it out into a manuscript form.

Postcards were received in Vienna until the beginning of September, however I would like to invite artists, designers and other people in Egypt to create a couple of works (perhaps 2 or 3, since the exhibit is planned as something intimate, not numbering over 40 works) that reflect upon the struggle of Maikel Nabil, the Egyptian blogger jailed for nothing but expressing his views and the first political prisoners of the bitter post-revolution in Egypt. The works can be either physical and sent directly to Greece or scanned/photographs, which we will then print out and arrange in the desirable format. As Maikel Nabil struggles for his life and only few people remain vocal for his cause, I want to take advantage of this opportunity to allow Egyptians and Europeans alike to reflect upon this tragic and contradictory experience through art - always a locus of freedom.

Art should remain committed to aesthetics lest it loses itself, and become itself politics and political action; for this reason it couldn't be simply any of the pictures and letters of Maikel that we all know and have seen, they should be crafted by a human hand, turned into art, to tell his story which is not only his, but also the story of the Egyptian revolution and its aftermath. Political art has become already a cul de sac for a deliberate abandonment of the aesthetic, but it is possible to act upon the political without leaving the realm of art; one example would be the writings of Susan Sontag while she was in Bosnia during the Siege of Sarajevo, directing a Bosnian version of  Beckett's "Waiting for Godot"; making a political statement and yet not leaving the realm of art.

Timing is crucial here, therefore I urge to pass this onto your friends so that as people campaign for the release of Maikel, a token of appreciation and reminder of his story will be shown in Athens and then continue to travel Europe, in this drunken boat, allowing us to reflect in deeper level than that of politics of the present about the meaning of Tahrir. If you are interested or know anybody who would, please contact me as soon as possible.

Thank you


Arie Amaya-Akkermans

The Values of the Egyptian Revolution: The Case of Maikel Nabil

The Values of the Egyptian Revolution: The Case of Maikel Nabil

The litmus test of the Arab Spring is being delivered simultaneously at different undisclosed locations in Egypt – the particular importance of this cannot be overstated since it is both Tahrir Square and the person of Mohamed Bouazizi what stands at the symbolic heart of the Arab revolutions. Since Bouazizi has been dead for exactly nine months tomorrow, that leaves us with Tahrir and Egypt as the preferred trope of our greatest hopes about the revolutionary spring whose results, now going into winter, are less clear than ever. What is particularly difficult and complex about this test is not only that the questions asked are more difficult than those included in standard tests because they compromise our moral choices but also the fact that the results may define whether a man lives or dies.

It might be even a little late to write an article, since Maikel Nabil may as well die anytime soon, even during the writing of this article, unless affirmative actions are taken on the part of the Egyptian people and the networks of activists all over. This man, a young Egyptian, was arrested in March (once the Egyptian revolution had in theory apparently succeeded) and sentenced to years of imprisonment on the bogus and totally meaningless charges of insulting the army and spreading rumors. In response, over forty days ago he began on a hunger strike demanding a fair process and not only has his plight fallen on deaf ears, but he has also not been remitted to a medical facility and the case has been ignored by a vast majority of those in Egypt that call themselves activists and advocates for human rights.

What now connects Mohamed Bouazizi and Tahrir is that tomorrow (04.10.11) it will be exactly nine months since Bouazizi died in the hospital after he set himself on fire on 17.12.10; what caused the departure of president Ben Ali and triggered massive protests and uprisings all over the region, so that on this day Egypt will see a court appeal scheduled to decide Nabil’s fate, symbolically speaking, nine months after the revolution began, as if it were a pregnancy of which doctors are unsure whether it will be a miscarriage or not. Circumstances however, seem to have affected the blogger’s fate negatively; the fact that he declares himself in support of the Jewish state, belonging to a Coptic Christian family, not being a well known media personality, and more than anything, the sad fact of having been absolutely correct in his criticism of the army and the post-revolutionary situation in Egypt long before it was clear to the Egyptian street.

The way in which the case will result, is ought to define a lot about the true reach and intent of the revolution especially in light of the upcoming elections to be held in a matter of weeks, the first in Egypt in several decades. What is then the life of a man compared to the hundreds who have lost their life in the course of the revolutionary struggle? Probably the answer to the question far exceeds the complexity of what we can outline here, but suffice it to say that when a revolution is claimed to have been already achieved, with a very hefty price tag, involving significant loss of lives, there is but little sense in allowing a man to die just because of voicing an opinion or another. It was this desire precisely, the desire of Egyptians to express themselves freely and act accordingly what motivated the protests and what gave people the will and ultimately the political power to carry on with their plan to oust Mubarak until the very last consequences in spite of the risks involved.

The crowds of protesters celebrated the disposition of the Egyptian army back in February in support of their momentum and quickly enough it became common to hear people say that the army and the people are one. The particulars of this fallacy are the writing on the wall on a daily basis for over six months now, including military trials for thousands of civilians, all kinds of abuse and harassment, imprisonment, countless missing persons, deliberate measures against journalists, virginity tests performed on civilian protesters, storming into houses and other incidents widely documented both in the press and in the eye witness accounts of several bloggers. The fact that Nabil was among the first to point in the direction of such dark prospect shouldn’t tell us much about his arrest and eventual sentencing as much as it does give some clues as to why Egyptians who supported the army and its role during and after the revolution would resent him and not be particularly active in the cause to release him.

Be as it may, one finds it hard to believe that a country has been liberated from a tyrannical rule only in order to fall under even worse standards of tyranny in which civilians are tried in military courts and where criticism of the establishment is ground for incarceration. On this it is probably true that all Egyptians agree but the catch is that in this new republic, in which an era of freedom has just started, people refuse to stand for someone whose rights have been clearly trampled on, only because they cannot agree with his views. The people of Egypt should know that in allowing this to happen – or rather, in not opposing it – they have paved the way for a new era, yes, for a new era of authoritarianism, a new era of abuse and a new era of yet more silence. Even at the expense of disagreeing with Nabil’s assessment of Israel and other topics, it is an undeniable fact that his analyses of the situation in Egypt were correct. It seems as if nothing has changed in Egypt, as if – in words of Nabil – the dictator was taken out, but not the dictatorship.

What a sad reflection on yourself Egypt, a country that just months ago achieved what had been deemed impossible – the ousting of tyranny – and that most of us (including myself) did not believe would happen until the very last moment, but where a people decided to sit in until they would be freed from absolutist rule. The fact remains that Egyptians needed and still need to be liberated not only from the regime but also from themselves and from their own ways of thinking. Before a revolt can succeed to actually inaugurate a new era, the chains of the past have to be broken and it is here that resides the truly unique and human nature of politics: It is able to enact new beginnings and to promise freedom on the basis thereof. This means of course letting go as well of the familiar ways, of prejudices, of traditions, of historical traps, of taboos, of presumptions. It was not only until Hegel proposed the notion of a ‘presumptionless’ philosophy, that he became the political philosopher of modernity, if for no other reason.  In such an insecure world as ours, it is imperative to realize that everything can be changed, transformed, annihilated and juxtaposed.

The condemnation of Nabil by Egyptian society is the ultimate symptom of their political ineptitude and of their immaturity, condemning a young man to die only because of dissent of opinion, which was after all the fuel of the revolution itself. When Maikel Nabil decided to exercise his right to freedom of expression in that so-called new Egypt he was actually exercising the right of all Egyptians, standing for their rights and for their freedom since it is part and parcel of democratic processes to challenge the grip of authority and to demand accountability for wrongdoing. Whenever we accept that someone’s rights are trampled on just because of dissent, we are not only standing idle before tyranny but we are also openly queuing up in line to be abused next. Political activism in Egypt has lost nearly all meaning, being nothing but a meager reflection on radical European ideas washed down and reduced to infantile clichés about disobedience, fuck the system and other petty slogans. Egyptian activists debate themselves at the moment between opportunism and defeatism. At a time when they should be standing in protest in behalf of this one man that represents the difficult task of thinking for yourself, they’re kept busy with the farce of Ilan Grapel, an alleged American-Israeli spy, while neglecting their own.

On the eve of the French revolution, in the year 1784, Kant wrote one of his most famous texts addressing the answer to the question of ‘What is Enlightenment?’; according to the famous philosopher ‘Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity’ and defines immaturity as ‘the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another’. The motto of the Enlightenment was defined by Kant as ‘courage to use your own understanding’. When the French revolution broke, things in Kant’s native Prussia stayed more or less the same and the goals of the Enlightenment provided little ground for political change, so that Prussia stayed more or less authoritarian well until modern times, with the even greater paradox that in such enlightened times it was by all means possible to criticize God and the church at the same time it was strictly forbidden to criticize the ruler, Frederick the Great, without the risk of exile and other heavy fines. Not unlike the situation in Egypt after the revolution, where lots of new and formerly outlawed ideas are not accepted and acceptable, for so long as the authority of the Supreme Council for the Armed Forces is not questioned or challenged in absolutely any way.

Kant’s Prussia learnt the hard way that it is very difficult to revolutionize without reform, more difficult than reform itself.  The reform is not a couple of empty lines thrown into a piece of paper for public display as reform is usually understood in the Middle East – an essentially meaningless tactic aimed at pleasing audiences, a reform is primarily a change of heart. So in this line of argument, the logical order to follow would be Enlightenment or maturity, then reform and then revolution – not the other way around. When a man remains unable to think for himself, it is unlikely that he may be able to lead a country or a society into the future in such uncertain times.  Not thinking for oneself is Egypt’s modern plague – much more lethal than all the Biblical plagues together; this is easily detected when attention drifts from the core matters of politics and life in society to trivial affairs of less than secondary importance right now such as the relations with Israel, petty religious strife without any theological basis, the all too fashionable conspiracies about how the West planned Arab Spring to destabilize the Middle East, after it was already accused of not lending enough support for Arab Spring. Every problem in Egypt, from the pollution in Cairo to the burning of Coptic churches, it is all a Zionist and American conspiracy against the people of Egypt who are universally innocent and righteous.

If this man happens to die incarcerated, it is not only that this will be in the conscience of those Egyptians who refused to take a stand while it was still possible as they did in several other cases, but it will stand as a heavy sore wound at the heart of the Arab revolution, that in practice condemned a man to die for the same reason that the revolution had begun in the first place. I refuse to resort to those typical Middle Eastern concepts of hero and martyr, without ground in objective reality, but still will recognize that to the same extent that Bouazizi was a symbol at the heart of the revolutionary moment, this man, Maikel Nabil, is also a symbol in the other end of things. He represents the minority (liberal) opinion that has to be protected by the (democratic) majority because it is only in a permanent state of questioning and challenging that this maturity, this autonomy, required for Enlightenment can be found. Unlike cars, malls, resort complexes and themed parks, human institutions cannot be imported and cannot be thought to be infallible. Every country and every people must find its own path, must find in itself its own spiritual resources to guide itself, and not to guide itself into freedom (which is a groundless concept) but to guide itself in freedom into fairness, justice, equality, etc. There is no freedom without personal autonomy, without maturity to think for yourself and question, without courage; otherwise it becomes freedom only as non-slavery, but still too far apart from the human dignity that a revolution is ought to bestow upon a nation.

You’re still on time Egypt, on time to show some courage and some compassion, in time to assert what it is that you stand for, and if you are worthy of your freedom, if you are worthy of a revolution, if you are going to go into history as a textbook case of revolutionary promises or of revolutionary lies. Maikel Nabil needs to be free, and you need him to be free more than he needs it. If you could supposedly free a country, what does it take to free a man? Show some dignity and stand up for your rights, before they wrong them too.

Morning Passages

A self-image that reminds one of something that no longer is, the habit of the praying night falling prey to something oscillating between abandonment and genius, followed by the emptiness and noise of the beautiful mornings, the sinfulness of a precarious opulence filled with laughter and the stench of smoke blending in with a despair growing so weak, weak enough as to be converted into shallow nostalgia. Not the nostalgia of the years gone by or of the person transfigured into a postcard, it's more like the lust of the hours, of the previous hours, spent in an ill combination of antipathy and reflection.

One always wants to write, it's an eternal craving, an abject metaphysical object. Even the slowest moments, those free from rage and untouched by time, those moments feel like an overture, a different kind of writing so to speak. They're incomplete, shattered, wholly unfulfilled, a bad reflection on art, but how true essentially. It is only the absence of passion what makes them soar and grow into illness, deadened undertones, thin hues, invisible wasted hours. He re-reads himself, not absent from glee, not absent from contempt, but finds the words poetically dead, written for another time, succulent but too much inebriated. Not standing on their feet for long enough to shatter the mirror that reflects them.

Writing philosophy, you thought, what an obscene idea! A certain immaturity comes embedded with the thought, with philosophical ambition itself. The nights always a temple, a burden to relief, so ugly the mornings, perfect for oblivion, for deep sleep, unfit for conversations, completely deranged, impaired for truth. Devotion to philosophy alone is a form of vertical annihilation, one could possibly never write anything out of such self-defeating source. Poetics, philosophy, verbosity - it all works against the pursuit of truth that a writer is meant to convey, falsifies the source so to speak, tanning it with blood from another age, stealing whatever there is of life and thirst in the curious observation of the world. Real prose should be completely uninspiring, that's where its Messianic message is: the hatred for the step-mother, the stupidity of the brother, the failed love of the father, life in the village, the erotic encounter in dim light, the shadow of a man that this or that writer now is.

The selfless discovery, that pursued by science, the originality of philosophy, the claim of the exceptional, doesn't quite hold up for literature; that's why I entirely agree with the saying that the modern novel shouldn't be difficult to write at all. This easiness however is a bear trap, a cage, because there's a difference between poverty of language and deconstruction of expression: The language must be built up, step by step, in all its beauty, ecstatic in colors, opulent philosophical monster and then, only then, it must be slowly reduced to its minimal proportion in violent strokes. That's the only moment when modern literature happens, it is not something that you do, it's something that just happens.

There's more miracle than sculpture. Writing must live always outside of itself, it must be a pilgrim on its own skin, as if on Christian virtue, believing it's nothing but a loan less temporary than life, refraining from the use of existence as an actual word. It is that position of observation, even in the most personal and intimate matters, what can turn guilt into an absurd proposition to make on oneself, it's nothing but a philosophical trap, a semantic tribute to dead landscapes, to chemically dried fruits. Looking at a painting, that's to no avail when one's fishing for a trope; he's ought to await patiently the moment in which the painting grows legs of textile and they carpet the world, drowning the surplus of elaboration, saving the incidental detail, allowing the maggots to surface in majesty, overlooking the rotten body of the animal.

The imagination is a futile device, at a time when the tide has swept away the wild currents of the fictive characters that furnished the world with aesthetic independence; the barriers have been lifted in between the rivers and the cities and the oceans. The realities, political and historical, two words since ever forbidden in literature, run miles ahead of the most imaginative care-free childish mind, wrapping the ailments of desire and pushing them forward into a compunction, an obsessive absence of desire; the present, instead of rapid and beautiful, has turned into the ever so stultified image of events, unfolding without enough paucity to catch one's breath and begin anew as the pen demands. Art must be everything but silent, and pure thought, prolonged contemplation, too much time spent in the daily hour, have become forms of sin, forms of reckless silence, of muteness, incapability. Art must not sin, it must only sin without knowing. Knowledge, the curse of Eve, is already a treaty, an apology, an homily, and no longer the billboard in the train station turned into innocuous passion that is called in the other words, the modern novel.

A dead thing. Too quick to live, too quick to pass out.

Note

Things hadn't been what they were, but it is that, the sense of loss, soluble lossitude, the anger keeps soaring, it reaches the boiling point, but it's choked already, expressionless face, loud and without limbs - "The crisis has become permanent" -. The numbness is intimately absolute, and the mere existence of the other a fact that doesn't unfold. Friendship experienced like a trembling mannequin, the skin quite deadened, like a branch weary from the summer tide. The fury is extinguished. Exquisite Christian sin, ecstatic beauty, anonymous lawlessness, Protestant opposition to a warm bleeding Oriental delight. The logic itself transfigured into a swordly ailment; this landscape always the same: Murderous island.

How to make Bahrain shout into the Light?

First published at 5PMBAHRAIN 

How to make Bahrain shout into the Light?

When historian and political analyst J. E. Peterson published in 2009 his analysis of the promises and realities of the political reform that swept Bahrain all throughout the 2000’s, he opened with the thesis that since Bahrain is the first post-oil economy among the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, many of the stresses in Bahrain will soon be felt elsewhere in the Gulf. It only requires minimum familiarity with the social and political situation in the region to grasp that Peterson was right, but also, a little insight on the particulars of Bahrain is enough to reveal that he was also wrong.

Every country in the world can claim – and not without a measure of correctness – that it is unique and not similar to its neighbors; all communities thrive on idiosyncrasies of their own, derived from the fact that no human being is identical to the next fellowman. Bahrain, however, does stand as en exotic pearl in the Arabian Gulf where it stands for a dynamic paradigm of history and politics that makes it almost an island – which alas it is!

It is true that Bahrain is the first post-oil economy in the region and that this had pushed the country toward a more diverse economy, with all the social and political challenges involved. Where Peterson falls short is where the great Fuad Khuri was right, writing thirty years before Peterson that the peculiarity of Bahrain is the combination of civil society with relatively advanced bureaucracy pieced together onto a persisting syndrome of tribal politics.

Tribal politics belongs nowadays to a set of keywords universally applied to the Gulf and understandably so, however, civil society and advanced bureaucracy are not. Some sort of cosmopolitan civil society was established in the island long before the arrival of Al-Khalifa and the protectorate status in the British Empire; it is a natural consequence of its role as a trade center that goes back thousands of years before the spread of Islam.

Advanced bureaucracy was a necessary step in affirming British rule in the island because of its strategic location, and then was significantly expanded during the last years of colonial rule and even more during the early days of independence. In both respects – civil society and bureaucracy – Bahrain stands decades ahead of its richer, more powerful neighbors, at the same time that the outstanding tribal texture of its society lives in an open contradiction with the above, making modernization, liberalization and institutionalization a very painful process. Many of Bahrain’s greatest ills were built-in during colonial times and still not completely eroded.

Keeping with the times, it is paradoxical to realize that after the discovery of oil, Bahrain stepped back several decades by reverting from a diverse economy of fishing, pearl diving and dates with extensive international ties, to a monolithic oil-based economy as that of the neighbors; while this was translated into progress for the region, the exact opposite happened in Bahrain, where the oil economy fueled the decrease of equality and political participation. In this sense, Bahrain does not meet the definition of the Arab rentier state, so widespread among commentators on the affairs of the region.

An historical excursus seems unnecessary in times of upheaval since this information is widely available elsewhere and does not necessarily reflect the tensions of the present. My intention accordingly is not scholarly but rather points to what we can learn from this all in the Bahraini experience and out of it.

Hundreds of pages have been written as of this year about the uprisings that swept Bahrain almost exactly seven months ago and that though abated, have not entirely disappeared. One more article either praising the government or the protesters or discussing the unknown future on the basis of the present alone seems to me nothing but an exercise in intellectual status quo.

We’ve all grown weary by now from shouting in the dark. The politicians in the opposition find themselves with their hands tied, the government is exhausted and hence reforms will be very hard to come by in this climate, the international observers have turned their eyes toward the irresoluble situation in Syria and the delicate transitional politics of Egypt and Libya, not to mention the crucial threshold that should define Palestine’s bid for statehood and the regional isolation of Israel.

Lastly and more importantly, the citizens of Bahrain, the most important piece in this puzzle, they are themselves tired and although many in the protest movement are not readily accepting it, people desire to return to normalcy and voices of uneasiness and complaint are heard not only against the intervention of the security forces to clamp down small protests spread in the villages but also against the protesters.

Those of us who were thinking of Bahrain as a medieval primitive society where a small family rules over a fully disenfranchised majority, we were clearly getting our story out of a single source and probably did not even know Bahrain existed before the likes of Robert Fisk made the case for its protest movement.

The history of Bahrain and its contradictions serves the purpose of showing the extent to which we are not dealing here with a sudden awakening of an entire people against a regime. The tale of February 14 is the last straw in a century long struggle between several forces that are by no means limited to Shia against the rulers.

A complex texture of conflict pervades Bahrain’s modern history: Sunni vs. Shia, modernist vs. religionist, progressive vs. Islamist, left vs. reactionary, communist vs. traditionalist, urban vs. rural or village vs. city, tribal vs. urban, etc. not to forget the internal divisions inside the ruling family and their tribal allies that go back decades and centuries. Some of these conflicts are typical of a tribal society but the radical universals of much of this struggle are by no means tribal and they cut across the most varied segments of society, bearing the imprint of an early modernization of public life tainted by the tribal nature of private life.

At the Pearl Roundabout we witnessed the unleash of an incredible new political force that at once united Bahrain but that quickly bifurcated into the old pattern of Bahrain politics: At the evident lack of formal organization, the opposition became not only weakened by its own internal contradictions but made its age-old mistake manifest: Their great talent for gathering large crowds into peaceful organized protests and their just as great inability to control the same crowds when things turn violent.

This is not an isolated event of 2011 – it has happened over and over in the 1930’s, 1950’s, 1970’s, 1980’s, 1990’s, 2000’s and now – with the felicitous consequence that whoever opposed reform inside and outside the government always found an excuse to delay on the ground of such regrettable events. The government on the other hand – and this means a lot more than the Al-Khalifa family alone – failed to understand the spirit of the times and acted out of a regional paranoia rather than local understanding.

That there were reasons to worry and act upon a revolutionary momentum that might be hijacked by resentment against the royalty, is justified and was soon enough proven right; that the proper manner to do it was destroying Pearl Roundabout and unleashing large-scale attacks against the civilian population was not justified and just as well, was soon enough proven tactically wrong.

Out of this conflict in which so much mischief was wrought on many innocent people and not only by the government, those involved acted out of selfish interest and forgot about the majority of Bahrainis who had been happy to join the protesters at the Pearl Roundabout but that were soon alienated by the way in which the opposition achieved unity: Through negative performance rejecting any type of compromise that would not meet all their demands immediately, and to which the government reacted with just as much stubbornness and immediacy.

Demands for human rights and calls for the overthrow of a regime fall under two different categories, and though they are obviously interrelated in the modern political scenario, they are not identical. The naïve belief that the success of the former will follow from the success of the latter has been proven wrong time and again.

When a regime is overthrown, the Leviathan is freed and then people realize that what they called ‘regime’ was only a symptom inside a corrupt system and not the system itself. Those who seize power through violence, noble revolutionaries are they may be, will turn into staunch conservatives the day after.

An attempt to overthrow the rulers of Bahrain is oblivious of many a thing: The fact that what they call Al-Khalifa is not only a ‘family’ but an extended tribal group with both strong and loose ties with tribes all over the region; that Sunnis were also part of the ethnic map of Bahrain before 1783, embodied in the Hawalas from Southern Iran that are part and parcel of Bahrain’s society with prominent families such as Kano, Khonji and Fakhro; that the claim of the Shia as the indigenous inhabitants of Bahrain is at best romantic for an island 

occupied by every world power since the 3^rd millennium BC.

There is an idealized conception of Bahrain before Al-Khalifa that might be a mythical reaction to the agony that many endured during their rule, but that not only the Shia suffered and that by no means all the Shia suffered. Not to mention the fact that defining Bahrain as such Shia indigenous land would be the equivalent of understanding it as an organic national state which it has never been. A successful overthrow would not mean the transition to a national state but rather the split of Bahrain into several ethnic and tribal fractions, all of them claiming an ancient right to the island.

Bahrain is the land of the Bahrainis, regardless of their origin or when they arrived in the island; such is the fate of cosmopolitan trade centers with highly fluctuating populations. The time has arrived to let go of the tribal masks – a call which I make to government and opposition alike – and to make a choice between tribe and state. In order to achieve this not only violence and aggression of the symbolic and physical type must come to an end immediately, but also a new era in politics must be inaugurated.

By a new era I do not mean yet constitutions, national charters, parliaments and the like, which are obviously premature in Bahrain. A new era here means an era of transparency where politics is not the affair of a few majlis negotiating behind the scenes; politics is a public affair and as such every step taken must be a matter of public knowledge.

There is much to be discussed, old resentments against new challenges, and insofar as the future of this society – young and old at the same time – is at stake here, the palliative care of secret talks is to no avail. The time has come for sincerity, and sincerity means also hearing a lot of things we do not like, we are not prepared to hear, things we have never dared to say.

No matter how forward Bahrain society has come in a great deal of respects – for example the education and awareness of the young – there remains much to be done and in spite of its complex textures, Bahrain still remains part and parcel of the region where it stands in which the winds of change are hard to come by. The process of gradual reform is the best – realistically speaking – that a tiny country dependent on foreign forces and resources can aspire to. This being said, this calls not only for intelligence on the part of the government to listen to the people but also for a wiser leadership among the opposition which is at present obviously lacking insofar as it entrenched into its internal affairs, no less than what they are opposing.

No matter how dark the distant and recent past has been, the success of a revolution or reform does not depend on the number of martyrs – a figure that has lost all value in the Arab world – but on the willingness of a people to realize that Bahrain is still on time to return to a path of mild reform in which the selfishness of the personal is replaced by something much more difficult: Shouting into the light out of the darkest times.

Israel decides to break off all ties with Qatar

Translation of the article in Hebrew that originally appeared at http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART2/275/145.html
By Eli Brandenstein


Report of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs establishes that the rich emirate harbors anti-Israel feelings and donated millions of dollars to Hamas. As a response the government has decided to implement a break-off of ties in all levels.


The government of Israel has taken off its gloves and is ready for a fight to defend its stance before Qatar, that regarding the settlements and Gaza, in Israel and the world. A classified report was prepared by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs detailing the consolidation of growing strong opinions against Qatar in the government of Israel. Israel considers actions in the near future against the emirate, defined as hostile to Israel.


The main reason behind the break-off with Qatar is its anti-Israel activities of Qatar in the world, stressing the great deal of political and legal assistance that Qatar provides to Palestinians from within the Arab league in preparation for the unilateral process of declaration of Palestinian statehood to take place at the UN in September.


It appears that the ministry in Jerusalem has worked in the last couple of months in halting the Qatari influence in the region, and thwarted a couple of projects with Qatari funding in Israel and the territories. Already before, the government had decided to close down in March the representation office in Doha. The closure of the office included a termination of the rental agreement and firing two local employees. According to the report, this action, exacerbated the tension about Israel. Additionally, Israel has also blocked access of Qatari officials to Israel or the Palestinian territories.


In the report it is stated that Qatar maintains deep connections with Hamas, that include among other things, frequent visits to Doha by the organization's leader, Khadel Mashal. According to a top Jerusalem official, 'We will not put up with Qatar's wide scope of anti-Israel actions'. Qatar today is one of the main actors in the boycott against Israel in the international scenario.


In December 2008, after operations in Gaza, Qatar decided among tensions in the Arab world, to break off ties with Israel. In January 2009 Qatar expelled Israeli diplomat Roy Rosenblatt, from the representative mission in Doha.


Nonetheless, Qatar still allowed Israel to keep its office and two local employees, in order to not cause further damage to the relations between the two countries. The ministry argues that the continued relationships had no other effect or purpose than that of allowing Qatar to be active in the Palestinian territories, creating only more tension for Israel.


After relations came to an end with Israel, the Qataris send a number of requests for renewal of ties in order to follow through with some projects in Gaza and to bring into Gaza construction supplies, and this way, clarified its position vis-a-vis affairs in the Middle East. The request was turned down by Netanyahu and Lieberman. A couple of months ago,the Israeli prime minister and his Qatari counterpart met in Paris together Sarkozy, however it seems that the meeting had no positive outcome. 


The decision of taking action against Qatar was received by the top level officials at the ministry, and by the minister himself. According to one official, 'We will not put up with Qatar's wide scope of anti-Israel actions'. Qatar today is one of the main actors in the boycott against Israel in the international scenario, hence it is not possible to continue unmolested and behave as if there were normal relations. 


A list of the measures taken against Qatar was consolidated after consultations with different experts in Israel, who agreed that Qatar is acting in detriment of Israel. According to the secret report, among Qatar's activities in the anti-Israel front include central influence in the legal arrangements prior to the bid for Palestine's statehood at the UN in September. Qatar, it seems, also maintains deep relationship with the Hamas movement, that includes visits by Hamas leader to Qatar. 


According to their information, Qatar is responsible for funding of projects in Gaza such as El-Fahoura, which is a place to provide assistance to students and also dormitories, in order to battle the Gaza blockade. However, through a charitable foundation Qatar also sends money to Hamas, and transferred over a million euros to the organization this year.


Other activities in which Qatar is engaged deal with strengthening anti-Israel activities connected to the Turkish flotilla. In this context, a congress was sponsored in which legal experts debated the possibilities and consequences of legal actions against Israel. Qatar has also promoted anti-Israel opinions through its TV network Al-Jazera. According to the ministry, Al-Jazera provides a platform for inflated anti-Israel opinions. It is also said that Qatar hosts multi-religious forums in which an anti-Israel agenda is promoted.


In compliance, because of the inclinations of Al-Jazera toward demonization of Israel, the government will not allow journalists from Al-Jazera to be active in Israel. As of today, journalists of the network can come to Israel only if they hold passports from countries with which Israel has normal relations. It seems that no more workers from the network will be allowed into Israel in the future.


The measures were not limited only to publicity, but also to security. From now on there will be no more cooperation between Qatar and the military industries in Israel. They had extensive contacts in the past and sold military equipment from Israeli industries. From now on no more sales weapons to Qatar.


The ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defense, in a joint decision, decided lately not to withdraw the Qatar Foundation from the list of organizations that are not permitted to be active in the territories. The foundation is a large charitable fund, property of the Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani. In spite of a request from Qatar, Israel will no longer permit them to work in the Palestinian territories.


Until now, Israel used to allow Qatari officials to join certain events in Israel and the territories, under the cover of sponsors. These envoys visited on behalf of organization such as the Jordanian Foundation, the Red Cross and the Red Crescent. The report states that it will be no longer allowed for Qatari officials to be part of such missions. Lately, for example, Israel did not allow the Qatari mobile phone company QTEL to enter the territories.


The last measures that was decided upon, according to the report, was action against the legitimacy of Qatar in the international scenario. It is not a simple challenge: This year Qatar won the bid for the Worldcup in 2022.

Books on Iranian Cinema

I had been in the past fascinated with the work of Hamid Dabashi, an Iranian-born American professor of Iranian Studies at Columbia who had written one polemic book about Islamic liberation theology, in which he argued that Islamic resistance to imperialism and colonialism of the American kind was a form of liberation theology, coupled with the rise of conservatism inside Shia Islam. A very arguable and radically controversial thesis that nonetheless is thought-provoking when proposed with wealth of materials and arguments. However I found out that he also wrote two very important texts on Iranian cinema, topic about which, I had been trying to locate materials for a long time. The books provide an unparalleled wealth of sources, critical commentary, interviews and historical material on Iranian cinema that will please, inform and entertain all of those who have come to love somehow the magic of Iranian film. 

Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present & Future

Hamid Dabashi

Paperback: 320 pages

Publisher: Verso (November 2001)

Language: English

Abbas Kiarostami planted Iran firmly on the map of world cinema when he won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival for his film A Taste of Cherry in 1997. In this book Hamid Dabashi examines the growing reputation of Iranian cinema from its origins in the films of Kimiyai and Mehrjui, through the work of established directors such as Kiarostami, Beyzai and Bani-Etemad, to young filmmakers like Samira Makhmalbaf and Bahman Qobadi, who triumphed at the Cannes 2000 festival. Dabashi combines exclusive interviews with directors, detailed and insightful commentary, critical cultural context, an extensive filmography, and generous illustration to provide an indispensable guide to a globally celebrated but little-studied cinematic genre. 

Download: http://ifile.it/0p9esgj

Masters & Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema

Hamid Dabashi

Hardcover: 456 pages

Publisher: Mage Publishers (May 15, 2007)

Language: English

The rise of Iranian cinema to world prominence over the last few decades is one of the most fascinating cultural stories of our time. There is scarcely an international film festival anywhere that does not honor the aesthetic and political explorations of Iranian artists. Three generations of filmmakers--from Bahram Beiza'i to Mohsen Makhmalbaf to his daughter Samira Makhmalbaf--are all active today, creating works of spectacular range and depth. In Europe and in North America, in Asia and in Latin America, in Australia and Africa, the thematic and narrative richness of Iranian cinema has met with tremendous acclaim. Indeed, its particular mode of realism--building on such cinematic antecedents as Italian, French and German neo-realism--has become truly trans-national, contributing a new visual vocabulary to filmmaking everywhere. "Masters and Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema is narrated around fifteen of the best Iranian filmmakers of the past half-century and takes a close look at both their lives and their greatest works. In his vivid account, Hamid Dabashi explains how--despite the censorship of both the Pahlavi monarchy and the Khomeini Islamic Republic--the creativity of these filmmakers has transcended national and cultural borders. The author explores the rise and ascendancy of Iranian cinema in the more general context of modern Iranian intellectual history. He delves into the roots of Iranian cinema in Persian poetry and fiction and examines ways in which a rich cinematic tradition has been nourished. The book also studies the role that prominent film festivals have played in fostering the global success of Iranian cinema and it investigates the reception of these films withinIran, an intriguing story in its own right.

Download: http://ifile.it/kd8unwx