Ornella Sukkar is a Journalist specialised in Oriental Studies and International Affairs. The views expressed in the article are hers.
Narratives, as created and propagated by either the media, the academia or any other group, have the power to instil a specific mindset in people. The instilled mindset may either be real or just a complete fabrication, however, the mere fact that it comes from a body or group of authority such as respected media houses, the academic or even the church makes it believable. Well, when it comes to Arab culture and Islamic doctrine, there are certain narratives which aren’t true but are recognized and believed by many non-Muslims. How do such narratives come to be believed as the absolute truth and what drives these narratives to be propagated? Well, analyst, researcher and commentator on Middle East issues Ornella Sukkar says the genesis of all the narratives surrounding the Middle East and Islam stems from the colonial era. In a well-detailed opinion piece, Sukkar writes:
“Has the fog of colonialism really lifted from the skies of the Arab countries, or is what the general scene reflects the opposite - as the American sociologist Edward Shils believes that the intellectual is the educated person who has a political ambition, either directly through striving to be the ruler of his society, or indirectly, by contributing to shaping the conscience of its society. The intelligentsia has a multi-functional definition. It cannot be limited to one element, so its definitions are multiple. However, what interests me is to confirm the nature of this problem that plagues this concept and affects the intellectual structure of the Arab intelligentsia with the remnants of colonialism in the period of neo-colonialism and post-colonialism, because any influence on colonial culture is evidence of the presence of the colonizer within the Arab cultural structure and its dominance due to the ability to direct it cognitively, ideologically, economically and culturally.
Historical readings show that the Arab intelligentsia was greatly influenced by colonialism in its classic and modern forms. Those who think that the role of colonialism has passed are mistaken. This article therefore seeks to focus on the Arab identity that is targeted and persecuted by all kinds whose intentions include to obliterate, abolish and disappear it through murderous and satanic strategies. The ultimate aim is to distort the image of the Arab person and Islam through media campaigns targeting the Arab mind and collective memory through a set of tools that contributed to disrupting and distorting Arab societies and falsifying history to serve the colonial agenda, through soft power, knowledge, and the giants of traditional and digital media, by spreading triviality and flattening it by applying the herd theory by manipulating minds and enabling forgetfulness as well. This is the case with the Palestinian issue.
Here, I wonder why we are always revolving in a vicious circle of tyranny and widespread injustice, for which there is no solution other than renewing the rule of the tyrant without accountability. It is a good question, and the answer to it is self-evident - after a systematic series of destruction and sabotage by proxy agents planted by colonialism that serves the colonial project in the region through the principle of power, hegemony, and authority that has been able, over centuries, to perpetuate its dominance and spread throughout a country based on lies until the lie has become the truth. However, The Al-Aqsa Flood operation restored the pride of this nation by exposing the truth of the West, which pays lip service to human rights, justice, and equality, and revealed the truth of the deception that has been institutionalized for centuries, which serves to spread the alleged pluralism and practicality through respect for human rights and minorities. However, all of this was a big lie with which the world was deceived.
The West in most of its historical eras was not secular, and the Christian Church certainly did not call for secularism, so how can we claim that secularism is included in the teachings of Christianity, because what we are witnessing is the process of racial classification and discrimination by the European West and its colonial legacy is nothing but a religious legacy based on the desecration of the other. Because of the tendency of the race to be superior to other peoples, the process of killing people, children, and women is a systematic series that is inseparable from the Judeo-Christian heritage, which must be reviewed because it bears many readings that urge destruction and exaltation that the underworld is defiled.
The sin that has befallen Christianity is that it has been politicized. And its Zionists, as evidenced by the statements of Pope Francis, who called for the recognition of homosexuals and their marriage, as well as many details surrounding the Vatican and its positions, but what concerns us is that relying only on military victories alone without following up, monitoring and prosecuting the event, that is the seventh of October, is more like an emotional process and a reaction than an action. If these victories are not translated into an intellectual project that opposes and confronts the policy of colonialism, whether through Arab drama, documentary work, the media, or a new Arab discourse worthy of the sacrifices of the cause, its struggles, and its martyrs.
In conclusion, the International Court of Justice announced that it had received a request from South Africa to initiate procedures against Israel to accuse it of committing “acts of genocide against the Palestinian people” in the Gaza Strip, given that the struggle of the South African people shares with Palestine the experience of overthrowing the apartheid regime for the white minority, while the positions of some influential Arab countries have not issued any significant position on this matter. It is important to learn from the experience of South Africa how it confronted the colonial forces and how it reviewed its relationship with the colonizer according to a new literature that expresses African literature resisting the colonial narrative, which Husserl calls the positivist reduction of the idea of science.
According to Western civilization, science has always been knowledge aimed at achieving hegemonic power. On other peoples by exploiting the biblical narrative in the service of the Zionist colonial project on Palestinian land, which raises many questions related to the Jewish Holocaust in Europe. Was it really that six million Jews were targeted and exterminated, or was it a lie that Jews and Judaism were exploited to achieve colonial projects in the Middle East? The Enlightenment West is nothing but a deception in which the Jews were made to believe that they had the right to exist for the sake of these satanic goals and to dismantle and destroy this region according to the concept of humanism by Paul Bascon (1923-1985), which is based on the interpretation of the factor of fission when one becomes the source of new parts from which the unity of new strains of Division and rupture for control?
Failure to review this colonial legacy and correct its literature and intellectual approaches contributes to generating cognitive and intellectual violence and passing it on to generations without accountability, which places the world facing estrangement and separation instead of reviewing and correcting the historical and colonial path to serve the national project and national identity and reduce the tendencies of violence, extremism, Western arrogance and assertiveness. On the language of privacy among local and indigenous groups with the aim of meeting, tolerance, dialogue, criticism and review to develop political modernity. Europe’s national conflicts were nothing but a war project aimed at developing those societies under the pretext of national homogeneity, developing the concept of the state, creating a shift in absolute power and moving towards modernity.
* Ornella Sukkar is a Journalist specialised in Oriental Studies and International Affairs. The views expressed in the article are solely hers.
