Media Arabia

 It’s June 2010 and we are few days away from a great sporting event that takes place once every four years. It’s the World Cup, one of the few global events that still maintain a magical allure for billions of people. This time it takes place in South Africa and it is a first for the Dark Continent. It promises to be an exciting and competitive occasion, a time to engage in a great sport, with exceptional teams, the best in the world, as they battle their way into an historic final.

 Few weeks ago, at the onset of the World Cup finals in South Africa, I wrote an article for Addustour daily entitled “celebrating other nations’ victories.” It was an ode to the magic and euphoria of the World Cup as a universal festival belonging to fans.

 

I also talked about the rituals that some of us engage in, as fans, and suggested that in many cases supporting foreign teams transcends the usual demonstration of solidarity. There are those among us who suddenly become more German, Brazilian or English than the actual citizens of these countries.

 

They brandish flags, wear team shirts, paint their faces with sovereign national colors and go into frenzy when their favorite team is playing. You don’t want to test them if their team has lost, or make cynical remarks about their manifested loyalties. I suggested that this was a peculiarly Arab phenomenon. And I said that this sort of newly-found and usually short-lived tribal-like loyalty is perhaps our way, as people, of compensating for our own lack of achievements, athletic and otherwise.

 

And I think by suggesting this I had gotten myself in trouble with some die-hard soccer fans, who thought I was attacking the spirit of the game and their rituals.

 

I plead not guilty to all charges. I love soccer, especially the World Cup finals, and like millions of Arabs I rarely miss a match, follow up the games of great teams—I like Brazil while the rest of my housel-hold is fervently German—and would spend hours listening to post-match analysis and watching replays. I am a fan of soccer and while I don’t support any particular league and don’t have a favorite club, I still take the World Cup seriously.

 

My observations about how local fans go out of their way to express their identification with the teams they support by hoisting flags and wearing the jerseys of their favorite squad, among other things, have to do with our communal hunger for victory; to be bona fide participants in the big triumph culminating in one team lifting the coveted World Cup in the final game.

 

And my argument is simple; that since our hope of ever seeing an Arab team achieving that honor is naught, then we have to find a surrogate identity, one we can harmlessly borrow so that we can claim our own victories, even by proxy. As a Jordanian and a supporter of Brazil, I am rewarded with a victory by the Samba squad without being accused of betrayal or treason. It is a legitimate adoption of a temporary identity, one that is discarded the minute the Mondial is over. It is a form of a psychological migration of identity for the purpose of tasting victory, or defeat.

 

But sports is about siding with individuals or teams with whom one has no direct link. This is part of its magic and allure. This is why I feel bad when Roger Federer loses a tennis match, or why my son is saddened when Chelsea is beaten, or why my friend becomes tense when Barcelona is defeated. I am not Swiss, my son is not a Londoner and my friend has never been to Spain.

 

Identity is the most complex socio-political issue in the world today. It can be a source of pride, anxiety or friction. It is a difficult thing to define, especially in today’s globalized world. Identity is also about national belonging; of unity of purpose and goal. Few weeks ago I attended a press conference in Istanbul where Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdogan lashed out at Israel over the naval massacre it had committed against an aid flotilla in the open seas. He spoke about the injured Turkish pride, pumping up national gusto that reflected on the faces of all Turks present.

 

We tend to borrow identities to compensate for our hunger for national achievements. Identities can be all encompassing, and they can be divisive and shattering. They can be customized and downsized, to the level of the family, tribe, ethnicity or religion, or they can be a magnet, a melting pot, erasing all differences; underlining a national identity.

 

There are mature identities and raw ones, and there are ones that continue to evolve and develop. For example, the English pride themselves in having one of the most developed identities in the world today, backed up by tradition, history, culture, religion, geography and others. They also have a team playing in the World Cup. I would be surprised if the English, with their famed conservative nature, would adopt a foreign team, be it Brazil, Argentina or Spain, if their own team loses its bid. For most, the World Cup would be over by then and it wouldn’t matter much who finally wins.

 

The same can be said of other nations whose teams are playing in the finals. Germans will never hoist a Brazilian or a Spanish flag. The defeat will be a national calamity; an affront to their identity, national pride or whatever.

 

There is a difference between being a fan and becoming fanatic. The latter is an expression of want, a need to assimilate on voluntary basis with a high roller or a winner. I don’t blame, not for a minute, Arabs who become Germans or French or Brazilians during the World Cup. Their allegiance makes sense even if they justify it as pure love of the game and cheering for good play.

 

We need to compensate for our national deficiencies and one way of doing it is by borrowing identities and joining in the celebrations. If Jordan had qualified and was playing against Brazil or Germany, where would our true allegiance be? As Jordanians we would never forgive one of our own if he or she dares to cheer the other team when our boys are playing. This is how complex our confusion with the issue of identity has become.

 

I love soccer and I honor the World Cup event as a universal carnival that belongs to fans first and foremost. And while I never paint my face, wear other team’s jerseys or hoist a foreign flag on my house or car, I am biased, supporting a team, or two. But that is as far as I will go as a fan. I would love to celebrate victory, a genuine one that is home grown and not imported.  

 

 

                      

 Scheherazade, the fabled queen/storyteller, immortalized in One Thousand and One Nights, is on trial in an Egyptian court, for the second time in 25 years, and may possibly be found guilty of indecency! Legal action to ban the famous epic book of stories and folk tales has been submitted by lawyers representing “concerned citizens”, i.e. Islamist extremists, creating an unprecedented backlash by intellectuals, writers, poets, thinkers, artists and ordinary citizens who have mobilized to defend the book and its heroine.

 

It is the latest in a series of attempts by Wahabi-style Islamists to change the face and substance of Arab culture and traditions. The last lawsuit against the book took place in the 1980s and the court then ruled against the plaintiff. This time the lawyers hope to reverse that decision and ban the classic book. The recent republication of a popular edition in Arabic has triggered controversy and renewed calls to ban the book on the basis of depiction of sexuality and use of offensive language.

 

Hopefully the courts will toss the case away, again, because if they didn’t it will indeed be a black day for Arabs everywhere. The Arabian Nights, as the book is known in English, is perhaps the backbone of world literary heritage. Very little is known about its origins, but it is believed that it was first compiled and made popular during the early days of the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad, or what is known as Islam’s Golden Age, between the 8th and 13^th centuries AD.

 

It is believed that the stories and fables recited by Scheherazade to her husband the ruthless ruler King Shahryar originated from ancient Persian, Indian, Mesopotamian and Egyptian myths and legends. It is thus an invaluable source for the development of fiction, poetry, politics, human psychology, science fiction, and yes understanding sexuality, among others.

 

No book of stories has changed the world as much as the Arabian Nights has over so many centuries. And even though there are millions of people who have not read the entire voluminous book, now available in almost every living language, almost everyone on the planet has heard of Sindbad’s adventures, Aladdin’s magic lamp and Ali Baba and his hidden treasures.

 

The western world was first introduced to One Thousand and One Nights through the French edition translated from Arabic by Antoine Galland in the 16^th century. The West was intrigued by the audacity and suspense of the book of tales. Later editions include Edward Lane’s 17^th century translation of what became known as the standard version. He used a more complete Egyptian edition. But that version was heavily censored, which drove more scholars, including Sir Richard Burton to publish his own, a more liberal edition, in the 19^th century.

 

Ironically the latest, and most original edition, was compiled in Arabic from the ancient Syrian version by Muhsin Mahdi in 1984 and rendered into English by Husain Haddawy in 1990. The Arabic version that became popular in the Arab world in the early part of last century was the so-called Boulaq edition, published in Egypt.

 

The erotica contained in some of the tales recited by Scheherazade has created more controversy, shock, awe, infatuation and reaction in the West than in the land where the book first appeared. Old references to the book by medieval Arab scholars range between the disparaging (coarse book) and the indifferent (translated untrue stories). But the book survived and there are no references to incidents of ancient Muslims calling for its removal or destruction.

 

But it would be unfair to judge the book only in terms of its sexual content and inferences. The Arabian Nights is a unique book that continues to inspire and mesmerize people of all creeds, cultures and color. Because of its universal appeal it had been “localized” by Chinese, Japanese and other cultures. Such gleeful adoption of its fables underlines the magnetism and durability of the One Thousand and One Nights.

 

Where would Disney films be without it? Where would all those famous writers of legends, super creatures, heroes with magical powers, villains with fiendish plots and netherworld intrigues, such as J. R. R. Tolkien (Lord of The Rings), be without the influence of the Arabian Nights with its djinns and ghouls, magic carpets, mermaids and other mythical animals?

 

To presume that a court can ban such an immortal work of literature is a farce. It only proves that we are descending further into an abyss of intellectual retardation and ignorance. It is like calling for the banning of Shakespeare’s works because they insult royalty, or stereotype Jews. If we condemn Scheherazade then we bless an intellectual witch-hunt that will make the Spanish Inquisition look like a picnic on a Friday afternoon!

 

It happened before in our tumultuous history. The great Arab philosopher Ibn Rushd, or Averroes as he is known in the West, is considered by many as the father of European Renaissance and the founder of secular thought. His writings and philosophy were considered heretic by the Caliph who banished him and ordered that his books be burnt.

 

This time it is not the caliph who is opposed to Scheherazade but short-sighted and zealot Islamists who believe they are protecting society by calling for her proverbial execution. Scheherazade avoided death by talking her way into the king’s heart and mind; now it is up to us to come to her defense by becoming vocal and by defending her right to speak out her mind in her pursuit of salvation. By doing so we are also safeguarding our right to do the same!