Charlie Rose

Shalom Freedman  10/12/2008 12:57 PM Report

Adonis claims that Jewish intellectuals do not support dialogue with Palestinians. This is so completely ridiculous that one wonders how Charlie Rose let it go by. Three- quarters of the intellectuals of Israel are left- wing people who not only advocate 'dialogue' with Palestinians but have long focused on creating an Arab state alongside a Jewish one. As opposed to that the overwhelming majority of intellectuals in the Arab world preach the destruction of Israel.

Sam  10/09/2008 02:14 PM Report

Yes, Adonis, Said, and Darwich are still being studied and debated in the Arab World. Each initially has demonstrated some literary talent and achieved some recognition. However, after having disavowed the rights, ideals and aspirations of their communities, and put themselves in the service of a nefarious agenda bankrolled and promoted by hostile foreign powers, they are being largely regarded (and rejected) as an abscess in the body of literature. It is no coincidence that each one of them elected to make their home outside of the Arab World. Their Faustian deals are textbook examples of the devil getting taken advantage of. They got all that they wanted from the West, but delivered next to nothing by way of return.

Curio  10/09/2008 08:07 AM Report

Oh nevermind. I got it. Although, maybe you might like to write about him anyways.

erik r  10/09/2008 07:40 AM Report

im disappointed about this. a lot of what adonis explained, mostly stuff about himself, he makes available in a humble way like no other writer, really.he even calls himself essayist. so seldom one thinks about the work, I mean, where else can one find such level of writing,other than in the newyorker? are these commentors reading any of his work? well,anyway,this is making him a more precious person, slowly joining a little group along with people like, I don't know.. Rossellini maybe. people that after having been neglected usually head out through a little back door.

Curio  10/09/2008 06:03 AM Report

To Rami: Which Darwich is this?

Sam  10/08/2008 08:38 PM Report

Is your name Rami or Adonis? Honestly, now!

Rami  10/08/2008 03:22 PM Report

Obviously Sam has very little knowledge of the Arab world, and is stuck in some preconceived and closeted space. Adonis's influential essays and poems are widely read and debated in the Islamic Arab world.

If there is a fresh voice its his, Darwich's and Said's.

afaf ackall  10/08/2008 07:06 AM Report

Thanks for Charlie Rose for introducing Adonis to Americans. They see some Arab illumination.

I hope and trust that Adonis will be announced Nobel Prize winner tomorrow Oct,9th.

Adonis..Thanks for coming to the USA.

--- Well, the Zionist Jews in Palestine have been taking their violent turn now: or, 'After Hitler, *OUR* turn!' ---   10/07/2008 04:44 PM Report

Sam on Tuesday, Oct 7 at 04:26 PM: "Despite all manufactured narrative to the contrary, Islam and Judaism both lack this [inherent\ virulent brutality endemic to traditional Christianity."

Sam  10/07/2008 04:26 PM Report

What a waste of Columbia University money! Separation of church and state happens only when enough people in a given country are fed up with religion and want the church off their backs. This phenomenon is particular to traditional Christianity (as opposed to Mormonism). Despite all manufactured narrative to the contrary, Islam and Judaism both lack this virulent brutality endemic to traditional Christianity. From Constantine’s Augustine through Thomas Aquinas to Martin Luther, Calvin and Zwingli copious bloodshed was the hallmark of Christianity. Ordinary Muslims have experienced violence and brutality not from Islam regimes, but from Western backed tyrannical ones like the Shah of Iran and Sadat of Egypt. Unlike Adonis, Orhan and their types (who do not honestly believe in Islam), ordinary Muslims don’t feel the need for separation of religion and state; quite to the contrary. As a non-Muslim, I too prefer that state of affairs, should it ever be practicable. But, it would be foolish on my part to attempt to invest in that. In Islam, I know that the political and the legal and the civic are all inextricably fused with the mystical and devotional. Since there is no spontaneous motive force to speak of in that direction, no amount of coercive power (soft and hard) that Western Powers can exert that will ever achieve any appreciable traction in that direction (with all due respect to the super geniuses at the University of Columbia). The narrative that the University of Columbia is trying to sell through Adonis, Orhan and others has proven worthless in producing real idealism or any sense of duty in the purported proponents of that narrative in the Muslim World. Though Adonis and Orhan were able to swindle their way into comfortable living in the West, they know full well that they will never be able to swindle their way into anything that resembles real traction in the Muslim World.

--- How about achieving the separation of religion and politics in the U.S. and Israel? ---   10/07/2008 01:38 PM Report

Maybe BERNARD LEWIS, THE GOOD JEW THAT HE IS, can advocate and achieve the separation of religion & politics in the modern *Jewish* racist colonization of historical Palestine via Israel.

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And maybe Bernard Lewis can condemn the *LACK* of separation -- and the increasing closeness -- of religion & politics IN THE *U.S.*! _____ In fact, religion & politics -- especially Christian and Jewish religious fundamentalism & politics have been getting closer and closer since the days of Ronald Reagan. _____ We have a country *founded* on the *Christian* white-supremacist belief in the extermination of tens of millions of the indigenous American population and the centuries long direct and indirect enslavement of tens of millions of a kidnapped population -- BOTH FARRR SURPASSING WHAT *HITLER* EVER DID! _____ We've later had Christian and racist Jewish-supremacist Zionists running U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East based on, respectively, "God's ancient prophecy and promise" to and about the Jews. _____ The govt is outsourcing feeding the poor (especially when the economy is really bad) to the administration's favorite Christian churches. _____ We have Republican Christian supremacists in the U.S. who would force women into unwanted pregnancies by legally imposing on women what they can and can't do with their own bodies. _____ With and since Reagan we've had a couple of Christian "Armageddonist" Republican presidents. _____ And at last we have a vice-presidential candidate who believes in the imminent "end of days".

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I'd tell Bernard Lewis to worry about the Judeo-Christian separation of religion and state first.

arbi  10/07/2008 01:02 PM Report

It is very probable that Adonis will acquire Nobel prize on Thursday

http://jalelelgharbipoesie.blogspot.com/

Arbi  10/07/2008 12:59 PM Report

It is very probable that Adonis will acquire Nobel prize on Thursday

http://jalelelgharbipoesie.blogspot.com/

Charles Borland  10/07/2008 12:17 PM Report

I have to disagree with both Imad and his quote from Bernard Lewis. The separation of religion from politics is not simply a Western solution. It has worked quite well for China, Japan, Russia and India too.

If, over the course of the next 25-50 years, the rest of world kicks it's oil addiction the Middle East will be left in the collective dust of the global economy. Religion will not be a viable economic crutch to lean on at such a point.

Now is the time for the people of the Middle East to insist on the separation of Mosque and State. Otherwise both will crumble.

--- Email to a late-night friend: AHHHH, THE *GOOD* A-RAB!! ---   10/07/2008 04:59 AM Report

I was watching this Arab poet, Adonis Ali Said Asbar, on the Charlie Rose Show. As many Arabs do on mainstream American TV -- the ones mainstream nationwide American TV even lets on -- he spoke too obliquely and too briefly about the Israel-Palestinian conflict (just a few vague comments about trying to bring the Palestinian and Israeli parties together to talk): ______ NOTHING about Israel's founding myths/lies (#1: "A land without a people"), NOTHING about Palestinian indigenousness, NOTHING about Zionist apartheid colonization (the latest bunch of oppressive European colonizers, this time white Jews instead of white Christians, stealing land and killing in the non-European world), NOTHING ABOUT *ISRAEL* BEING A FOREIGN *RELIGIO*-ETHNIC *SEMITHEOCRATIC* STATE who's existence the U.S. props up (to the tune of many *billions* of U.S. taxpayer dollars each and every year), just like the U.S. props up other theocratic and/or dictatorial and oppressive regimes in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East and, before, Saddam, and happily supported the Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistian as long as the U.S. before found it useful, while the U.S. govt spouts on and on about "democracy". ______ If someone didn't fundamentally know what the Israel-Palestinian conflict was about, besides Zionist/Israeli/Western mythology and propaganda, someone wouldn't know what it's all about from THE *GOOD* A-RABS on Western TV. ______ But, then, as I said, those are the only kind of "SAFE" A-RABS/MUSLIMS that typically even get on American mainstream TV -- all the other A-rabs get on American TV in newsclips as "terrorists". ______ Asbar had *plenty* of criticism of, monolithically, "the anti-modern, theocratic, backward, [of course, MONOLITHICALLY NEGATIVE\ A-rab mentality" [except for the *rare*, "civilized", "good A-rabs") and Arab regimes, though -- but he never points out that there's ole ISRAEL right there: A SEMI-*THEOCRATIC* STATE -- AN OFFICIALLY, IDEOLOGICALLY, *RACIST* STATE BASED ON "PURITY OF BLOOD" -- that's trying to recreate its "glorrrious ANCIENT *RELIGIOUS* PAST" from over *2,000* YEARS AGO, based on "GOD'S *ANCIENT* PROMIST" FROM 5,000 YEARS AGO!! -- but the West sees NOTHING wrong with *that* kind of "anti-modernity"! ______ AHHHH..., THE *GOOD* A-RABS!!

Imad  10/07/2008 04:09 AM Report

As Prof Bernard Louis put it, separation of religion from politics is a Western solution for a Western problem. As a Syrian living in the US I absolutly disagree with Adonis diagnosis that all problems in the Arab world are due to the injection of religion in politics. It is the colonial powers that created Sykes Picock artificial states, Israel, and dictator regimes.

If what Adonis claimed is true, how come many relegions in the middleast coexisted throughout 1500 years or more! Syria for example is an icon for coexistance and cross tolerence.

Charles Borland  10/07/2008 01:23 AM Report

Modernity was introduced into the Middle East engulfed within the imperial trappings and folds of colonialism's robes. Thus, it is almost impossible for those trapped by recent Middle Eastern history to separate their hatred/ambivalence for the West with their hatred/ambivalence for modernity. And so a harsh resistance is perpetuated. Until modernity is seen as distinct from the West, the cycle will continue. Until those in the Middle East see modernity as part of the human sum and not simply or uniquely 'Western', the cycle will continue (after all, we don't call it Arabic Algebra, we simply call it Algebra - same goes for modernity). And until the West peers out from behind its supercilious wall of enlightened rationalism the cycle will continue.

Cheers to Charlie for having Adonis.

Douglass Montrose-Graem  10/07/2008 01:21 AM Report

As a fellow poet I admire Adonis's plea to separate religion from politics in the Muslim world as being of paramount importance - a vital development America sadly does not seem to encourage.

A line in Psalm 40: 'I DELIGHT TO DO THE WILL OF GOD' [also the title of my ebook www.delightdelight.org\ - that is, in my view, the aim and duty of our brief existence in this mortal coil - seemed to have been completely outside the universe of to-night's fascinating discussion. More the pity!

sock puppet  10/07/2008 01:06 AM Report

Senoir Asbar's wisdom was spot on. Secularism has to precede or at the least accompany modernism. Religion, particularly fanatical religion, ultimately stifles cultural advancement.