Tradition : the cloak of the Enemy
Tradition: the cloak of the Enemy
by Dima El Sayed
In the 7 years I spent in Paris, many a thing
were not what I expected from what they call a traditional Democracy. Chief
among these disappointments I went through in Paris was media …unbiased or a
relatively unbiased media was apparently a figment of my idealistic imagination.
Those of you who lived in France, might
have noticed that News for example is merely echoed from one channel to the
other, that after a quick cruise through meteorological information, or the latest
on the tour de France, or Paris Dakar, News was only a diluted version of what it should be: an active search for the
Truth or at least a truth…
What
struck me mostly in the general situation of media, the public discourse and the
general state of mind that resulted of
it was the “set-in-stone mentality “ of
the commoner’s mind, the black and white vision of the world … the
blind faith in the knowledge of the nature of Good and evil . Yes, Good and Evil seemed to
be such an evidence sometimes that it took me quit a long time to understand
why the French make fun of George Bush’s
axis of evil theory … it is not the idea that didn’t settle with the French
mind , now I know, it is the identity of the evil and yes , its name. In a laic
state, you see, it doesn’t do to call evil, Evil !
You think I am
speaking of morality, and indeed I could be … but why then, you ask, if
morality was of such importance in the public discourse, why when a media’s favorite
puppet philosophers want to disparage one voice, he would immediately label
said voice ‘moralisateur ‘?
The reader would have
guessed by now, ‘moralisateur’ is pejorative term that means moralizing, i.e
giving moral lessons. And that would be
in itself an ultimate accusation to which no defense could be satisfying.
To this I answer, that
moralizing has become abhorred, not because of the values it speaks of, but
because of the values it destroys. Moralizing has become dangerous, not to the
amoral mind, as the enlightened would like to think of him or herself as, but
to the traditionally moral one … to me the immoral one masquerading as the
state or the Order.
To this order, with
its traditional morality, that does not speak its own name, all Zarathustra’s calls for ‘creating new
values” are shrieks that need to be silenced . not because to bring new values
is to moralize but because giving life to new values, means doing away with the
old ones … and in order to do so , one needs at first to admit that they
exist…no, that they prevail .
However, when established in time and space,
the value as I see it, loses its moral ‘fond”. Burdened with its followers, it
becomes the very thing a moral value should fight. It becomes Tradition. That
is the case of secularism ( a la francaise) for example, that shifted from a
revolution against the rule of the Gods, to
a holy rule with its churches, religious figures and scriptures…with its
undisputed instructions on the nature of
good and evil.
Sitting on my table in
a small coffee shop in the so called conservative, traditional city of Tripoli in Lebanon, following with my
francophone cynicism the Arab spring , I recognize the traits of the same enemy
… the traditional mind.
My enemy. Was there
ever any more fatal, sneaky enemy then the traditional mind? The one that cloaks itself with everything one
loves: memories, family, habit, and the scents of the known yes and even love.
The enemy of research,
and thus of Truth! What would God be if
not the Truth ?
The ultimate Sheitan
would be then the traditional mind, wearing the jacket of a French secularist or
the beard of a Salafi… tradition parading as morality
When Mohammed the Prophet,
was calling upon the people with his new teachings “to come to what Allah has revealed and unto the Messenger , the
people said to him "Enough for us is that which we found our fathers
following even though their fathers had
no knowledge whatsoever… “[1]!
Time and again
is the traditional mind upset by the ‘new values’ time and again do people
express their distrust of what does not come from their own fathers, time and
again they are asked to seek knowledge.
Knowledge says the
Coran, not tradition . Tradition screams the Sheitan.( name of the devil)
Knowledge cries the solitarystroller, when stones are cast
against the veiled , knowledge cries she
when they are cast against the unveiled … !
Let us take a brief
moment and ask the reader to ponder the differences between morality and
tradition.
Does he/she know that a mistake that has been reiterated in time and
space becomes tradition… that the same
prophet who revolted against the blind rule of tradition proclaimed that he was
sent to complete ( supposing there was already a started path ) the best of moral
values ?
I see
in Morality the commitment to Truth. I see in morality the aspiring to the
universal , what does not aspire to the universal , could not claim to be moral
. Whereas tradition dwells in the local
in the differences, in the specificities , not of an individual mind you but of
a group … of a tribe Where ‘the Fathers’ are the decision makers .
I see morality in a
man defending his land from a colonizing power, in a woman writing her version
of the Truth notwithstanding the consequences… I hear Tradition however, is the
incessant whining of the preachers in the gloomy shades of their corrupt
institutions, in the politicians discourses where morality serves only as a
bait to the traditionally immoral exercise that is Politics .
in his letter , election advice to his brother
Marcus, Quintus cicero writes in one the most brilliant texts on how to win an
election:
“ the most important part of your campaign is
to bring hope to people …on the other hand you should not make specific pledges
either to the senate or to the people, stick to vague generalities. Tell the
senate you will maintain its traditional power and privileges …” [2] ( for that is what every Senate wants for
tradition to perpetuate itself.
I write this, while
the Arab revolution that had done away with the father ( dick-tator ) is now in full battle against the other wing
of the Enemy, against Tradition.
Many are those who would love for us to confuse
tradition with morality:
Fathers who want to be
feared like Gods, who spent all their lives afraid of dick tators , brothers in need of their
daddy’s approval afraid of growing up, mothers,
mothers who were too scared to speak up
against the lies they lived for so long less the whole temple crumble … I see
the jealous husband, the weak lover… the “ un-natural and the un-Loved” as Chaplin said ( monologue in the good dictator)
Many are those who
would like to confuse us but there must be no confusion. In times of revolutions, in times of birth,
the old must give place to the new. Winter must allow for spring, Tradition
must bow to the morality of the NOW, and in these cycles, in the birth of new
values and our reaching out for new freedoms, we should learn to be suspicious
of all that is traditional, whether it was an Islam or a Democracy.
For every revolution
is a way by itself, it cannot walk on already paved paths.
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