Noting that recent dramas produced for the media in the Arab world "do not deal with the present, not to mention the future," Kuwaiti columnist Ahmad Al-Baghdadi wrote, "[This is] because fear dominates our lives as Arabs. We are not [living] in countries that believe in liberty, and therefore it is better for a person to be in a safe place, not to cause himself harm...." Due to such fear, the article later concluded, "the Arabs lie about everything, glamorize every failure, and never try to deal with the facts...."
The remarkable article, published October 19 in the United Arab Emirates' Al-Itihad daily, included the explicit charge: "Political tyranny is the reason the producers of these drama series do their best to avoid dealing with sensitive contemporary issues, and escape into 'art' which projects to the historical past, and take pains to avoid dealing with the harsh reality of the Arabs for fear of the political regime. No writer knows how the regime will interpret his writings and how it will understand them. Not to mention the religious and political prohibitions, the customs and traditions."
Bemoaning the lack of true art, which Al-Baghdadi defines as "revolutionary", he went on to write, "The function of a real, committed artist is to oppose the harsh reality and not succumb to it. Such submission, as a result of fear of political and religious tyranny, is what has led to the pervasiveness of the buffoonery in our lives.... blandness has become the most prominent characteristic of the lives of the Arabs, and all this stems from the lack of freedom of speech."
According to a second scathing Arab self-criticism, this time published in the Saudi Arabian Al-Jazirah newspaper, "our [Arab] universities have become little more than large buildings full of students. The only thing about them that would indicate they are universities is the banner bearing the magic word 'university' which is displayed everywhere."
The commentary was written in the wake of "the ongoing din and palaver from Arab writers... as well as academics and intellectuals who wanted to know why our universities were not on" a recently released list of the world's 500 leading universities. The writer, Eissa Al-Halyan, first chastised, "Tell me [the name of] one Arab university that can stand side by side with Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Stanford, the Sorbonne, or a number of other justly famous world-renowned universities."
Then, he followed up with: "Universities are rated by various indicators related to both academic and research performance. This includes university alumni and staff who win international prizes and awards, internationally significant research, published articles, and academic performance...
"It is no wonder that seven Israeli universities appear on the list or that Israel rates 12 out of the 35 countries with the world's top 500 universities."
Al-Halyan lamented that Arabic higher education is stuck in modes of instruction hundreds of years old, while, "the world beyond our borders is living in - and reacting to - the era of discovery and the age of electronic information. ...While universities in other parts of the world compete with each other to produce distinguished academic research, ours busy themselves with elementary academic matters, spending their time discussing admissions, ceremonies, and conferences...."
"Incidentally," the writer concluded his November 3 article on a cynical note, "the list was not produced by any European or American agency; it has nothing to do with either the CIA or Mossad. It came from the Institute of Higher Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China."
[The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), an independent, non-profit organization that translates and analyzes the media of the Middle East, provided all translations.]
The remarkable article, published October 19 in the United Arab Emirates' Al-Itihad daily, included the explicit charge: "Political tyranny is the reason the producers of these drama series do their best to avoid dealing with sensitive contemporary issues, and escape into 'art' which projects to the historical past, and take pains to avoid dealing with the harsh reality of the Arabs for fear of the political regime. No writer knows how the regime will interpret his writings and how it will understand them. Not to mention the religious and political prohibitions, the customs and traditions."
Bemoaning the lack of true art, which Al-Baghdadi defines as "revolutionary", he went on to write, "The function of a real, committed artist is to oppose the harsh reality and not succumb to it. Such submission, as a result of fear of political and religious tyranny, is what has led to the pervasiveness of the buffoonery in our lives.... blandness has become the most prominent characteristic of the lives of the Arabs, and all this stems from the lack of freedom of speech."
According to a second scathing Arab self-criticism, this time published in the Saudi Arabian Al-Jazirah newspaper, "our [Arab] universities have become little more than large buildings full of students. The only thing about them that would indicate they are universities is the banner bearing the magic word 'university' which is displayed everywhere."
The commentary was written in the wake of "the ongoing din and palaver from Arab writers... as well as academics and intellectuals who wanted to know why our universities were not on" a recently released list of the world's 500 leading universities. The writer, Eissa Al-Halyan, first chastised, "Tell me [the name of] one Arab university that can stand side by side with Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Stanford, the Sorbonne, or a number of other justly famous world-renowned universities."
Then, he followed up with: "Universities are rated by various indicators related to both academic and research performance. This includes university alumni and staff who win international prizes and awards, internationally significant research, published articles, and academic performance...
"It is no wonder that seven Israeli universities appear on the list or that Israel rates 12 out of the 35 countries with the world's top 500 universities."
Al-Halyan lamented that Arabic higher education is stuck in modes of instruction hundreds of years old, while, "the world beyond our borders is living in - and reacting to - the era of discovery and the age of electronic information. ...While universities in other parts of the world compete with each other to produce distinguished academic research, ours busy themselves with elementary academic matters, spending their time discussing admissions, ceremonies, and conferences...."
"Incidentally," the writer concluded his November 3 article on a cynical note, "the list was not produced by any European or American agency; it has nothing to do with either the CIA or Mossad. It came from the Institute of Higher Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China."
[The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), an independent, non-profit organization that translates and analyzes the media of the Middle East, provided all translations.]