But, what is Happiness.....ولكن، ما هي السعادة؟

But, What is Happiness?

But, what is happiness? The ever in-answerable question. No matter how hard one tries to think about it, to dig deep for a philosophical, theological, logical, practical, ethical, empirical or psychological answer for, happiness is indefinable. I would go even as far as saying, happiness is not actually liveable or imaginable.
Why happiness is not definable, liveable or imaginable? Because happiness does not exist, it does not have being (ousia/substantia); it does not have ‘is-ness’; one cannot point at as ‘being-there’ (Dasein) or as ‘behold’.
When St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas wanted to hold the grip of the identity of evil, they both discovered that the only logical definition they could come out with, by the help of Platonic/Plotenian thought, is ‘evil is the absence of good’. They both talked about the idea by means of elaborating on the analogy of ‘light-darkness’. For them, the dark, the negative, the black does not truly exist; it has no ontological being-ness; it cannot be an arche, and only light, the positive, the white exists and has being. Therefore, evil does not exist because it is the expression of darkness and negativity. Only goodness has being, therefore, existence, because it is the arche, the origin, of light and positivity. be that as it may, ‘evil is the absence of good’. When light sets down, its absence shows itself by means of a ‘no-light’ state we call ‘darkness. When, similarly, the human virtue becomes invisible and in-active in life, this virtue declares its absence through a ‘virtue-less-ness’ state we call ‘evil’.
It is many theologians’ and philosophers’ personal infatuation with the Plotenian/Augustinian/Thomist idea of the ‘absence of’, no matter how objective and rationally neutral they tried to make us believe that they are, what makes them apply the same logic on happiness, saying that happiness exists and sadness is just the opposite and the absence of happiness. Sadness is the negative that does not exist and happiness is the positive and good that has an existence (whether this existence is mental only, as the idealists say, experiential only, as the empiricists say, material and economic only, as the pragmatists and positivists say, or psycho-sentimental only, as the Freudian and Marxists say).
As a matter of fact, the ‘absence of’ logic does not apply to ‘happiness-sadness’ equation. For, happiness, as sadness, does not have a being, is not ‘is’, is not an existence that is marked otherwise by means of its absence, because happiness has no ‘being-there’ or ‘behold’; has no Dasein. And, if, for the sake of sheer argument, one wanted to experiment the logic of ‘the absence of’ to happiness-sadness, one aught to say ‘happiness is the absence of sadness’, not the other way round: it is the name we use to describe these moments when we are not in a state of struggle or bewilderment; not in a state of ‘fear and trembling or ‘sickness unto death’ or state of dread, to borrow Kierkegaard’s terminology. happiness is the name of the ‘break’, of the German ‘Pause’, which we sometimes find ourselves in, in-between one life-session and another.
What is happiness? It is a state of absence, of pause from being-there. It is this chance for us to be absent from existence; to be out of presence with the world; to be released for a moment from being-there with others or as part of their existence. This is why happiness is not truly communal and it is irrelevant to any aspect of collectivism. One cannot share his or her moment of happiness with any one else because ‘the state of absence’, ‘the state of no-being-there-ness’, cannot be shared with others: how can we make the absent experienced by others, when we who are ourselves in that moment standing in it are absent by means of it? One cannot share her happiness with others, because happiness is the moment of absence that enables us to be free from the demand of being-there, of being at-hand, with others. Happiness cannot be shared. What can be shared with others, nevertheless, is the knowledge, the information, that at this moment we are making a break, we are happy. But, what does being happy really mean and how does it look like? This remains for us, lingers within us, marks our absence from sadness, or marks the short absence of sadness in us: sadness goes out of sight sometimes because life also needs to take a break from us, as much as we need to take a break from it too.
Next time you say ‘I am happy’, make sure that you are just telling the world that you are making a pause, you are taking a break. Yet, do not expect others to perceive or capture what is this happiness like or what it is made of, because at that very moment you are absent from the web of life; you put off for a while your ‘being-there’ garment, your presence’s mask. Once the Muslim sofist , Ibn Arabi, also alluded to this reversing of the Plotenian logic of ‘absence of’ when states that happiness is that state of ultimate union of passion, which, rather than appear, makes us dive into the absence of the soul.



ولكن، ما هي السعادة؟

ولكن، ما هي السعادة؟ هذا السؤال عقيم الجواب أبداً. مهما حاول المرء جاهداً التفكير فيه واللوب عن جوابٍ فلسفي، أو لاهوتي أو منطقي أو عملي أو أخلاقي أو اختباري أو بسيكولوجي له، تبقى السعادة عصية عن التعريف وغير قابلة له. لابل وسأمضي أبعد من هذا لأقول أنَّ السعادة في الواقع لا تُعاش ولا يمكن تصورها.
لما لا يمكن تعريف السعادة وعيشها أو تصورها؟ لأنَّ السعادة غير موجودة؛ ليس لها كينونة (جوهر /ذات)؛ وليس لها فعل كون؛ ولا يمكن للمرء أن يشير إليها كـ "وجود-هنا" أو كـ "هاهي ذي".
حين أراد أغسطينس وتوما الأكويني أن يحيطا بماهية الشر، اكتشف كليهما أنَّ التعريف المنطقي الوحيد الذي يمكن الركون إليه، بمساعدة الفكر الأفلاطوني/الأفلوطيني، هو "الشر غياب الخير". كلاهما تحدث عن تلك الفكرة من خلال الاستطراد حول رمزية "النور-الظلمة". اعتبر كلاهما أنَّ المظلم والسلبي والمعتم لا يوجد في الواقع وأنه لا يملك كينونة انطولوجية ولا يمكنه أن يكون مصدراً بدئياً، وأنَّ النور فقط، الإيجابي والأبيض، موجود وله كينونة. لهذا، لا وجود للشر لأنه تعبير عن الظلمة والسلبية. للخير فقط كيان ولهذا له وجود لأنه تعبير عن مصدر بدئي، عن الأصل، عن النور والإيجابية. من هنا جاءت فكرة "الشر غياب الخير". حين يغيب النور، يتبدى غيابه بواسطة حالة "لا-نور" ندعوها "الظلمة". وحين تنحجب الفضيلة الإنسانية، على حد سواء، وتصبح عديمة الفاعلية في الحياة، تعلن تلك الفضيلة عن حالة غيابها من خلال حالة "لا-فضيلة" ندعوها "الشر".
إنه الوله الشخصي للعديد من اللاهوتيين والفلاسفة بفكرة "غياب الشيء" الأفلوطينية/ الأغسطينية/التومائية، مهما حاولوا أن يجعلونا نصدق بأنهم موضوعيين وحياديين، هو ما جعلهم يطبقون المنطق السابق الذكر على السعادة، ليقولوا أنَّ السعادة موجودة أما الحزن فهو الضد الذي يمثل غياب السعادة. الحزن هو السلبي الذي لا يوجد والسعادة هي الإيجابي والصالح الذي له وجود (سواء أكان هذا الوجود عقلياً صرفاً، كما يقول المثاليون، أو اختبارياً صرفاً، كما يقول التجريبيون، أو مادياً واقتصادياً صرفاً، كما يقول البرغماتيون والوضعيون، أو كان نفسياً-عاطفياً صرفاً، كما يقول الفرويديون والماركسيون).
في الواقع، لاينطبق منطق "غياب الشيء" على معادلة "السعادة-الحزن". فالسعادة كما الحزن لا كينونة لها وليس لها فعل كون وليست بالوجود المدلول عليه بدالة غيابه، لأنَّ السعادة لا "وجود-هنا" ولا "هاهي ذي" لها. وإذا أردنا، بغرض الجدل البحت فقط، أن نجرب منطق "غياب الشيء" على معادلة "السعادة-الحزن" لتوجب علينا القول أنَّ "السعادة هي غياب الحزن"، وليس العكس: إنها الاسم الذي نستعمله لوصف تلك اللحظات التي لا نكون فيها في حالة صراع أو اضطراب، حالة "خوف ورعدة" أو حالة فزع أو حالة "قنوط حتى الموت" على حد تعبير سورين كيركيغارد. السعادة هي اسم "الفاصل" أو "الاستراحة" أو "الوقفة" التي نجد أحياناً أنفسنا فيها، ما بين حصة حياة وأخرى.
ما هي السعادة؟ إنها حالة غياب؛ فاصل وتوقف عن "الوجود-هنا". إنها تلك الفرصة التي تتاح لنا للغياب عن الوجود، لنكون خارج الحضور في العالم، لننعتق لبرهة من "التواجد-هنا" مع الآخرين أو كجزءٍ من وجودهم. هذا ما يجعل السعادة أبعد ما تكون عن الجمعية والشركة حقاً وما يجعلها نافلة بالنسبة لأي منطق اجتماعي. لا يمكن للمرء مشاركة أي آخر بلحظة سعادته لأنَّ تلك الأخيرة هي "حالة الغياب" هي حالة "اللاوجود-هنا". لا يمكن إشراك الآخرين بها، إذ كيف يمكن للمرء أن يجعل الغياب قابلاً للاختبار من الآخرين حين يكون هو نفسه من يقف في قلب تلك البرهة، غائباً عن الآخرين بواسطتها؟ لا يمكن للمرء مشاركة سعادته مع الآخرين لأنَّ السعادة هي لحظة غيابه التي تمكنه من التحرر من متطلبات الوجود-هنا والتوافر للآخرين. لا يمكن مشاركة السعادة مع أحد. ما يمكن مشاركته مع الآخرين، مع هذا، هو معلومة أو إمكانية معرفة أننا في هذه البرهة نأخذ وقفة، أي أننا سعداء. أما ما معنى أننا سعداء حقاً وما هي طبيعة هذه السعادة؛ تلك أمور تبقى لنا وحدنا، تكمن داخلنا وترسم علامات غيابنا عن الحزن أو تُعلِّم غياب الحزن القصير في دواخلنا. يحتجب الحزن عن الرؤية أحياناً لأنَّ الحياة تحتاج بدورها أن تأخذ استراحة منا بقدر ما نحتاج لأن نأخذ استراحة منها.
في المرة القادمة حين تقول "أنا سعيد" تأكد من أنك تقول للعالم أنك تأخذ استراحة لبرهة، أنك تأخذ وقفة. ولكن، لا تتوقع من الآخرين أن يستوعبوا أو يحيطوا بتلك السعادة وماهية مضمونها، لأنك وأنت في قلب تلك اللحظة تعلن غيابك عن شبكة الحياة وتخلع لبرهة ثوب الوجود-هنا وقناع الحضور. مرةً، لمَّح المتصوف الإسلامي ابن عربي لنفس عملية عكس منطق "غياب الشيء" الأفلوطيني حين رأى أنَّ السعادة هي حالة اتحاد عشقي مطلقة تجعلنا بدل أن نتجلّى نغوص عميقاً في غياب الروح.

The Problem is Religio-phobia, not Islamo-phobia...المشكلة هي دينو-فوبيا وليس اسلامو-فوبيا

The Problem is ‘Religio-phobia’, Not ‘Islamo-phobia’

One of the most significant and problematic issues today’s circles of scientific, intellectual, sociological and even political thinking in the world in general, and in Europe and the United States in specific, is the issue of the relationship with Islam and with the Islamic presence in western societies. Since the nineties of the twentieth century, the term ‘Islamophobia’, or fear from Islam, started occupying the research and media centres and to become as such a phenomenon, for whose deciphering and analyzing sake, huge budgets were spent and new academic positions were established in the non-Islamic world. But, is it accurate naming what we witness of western position towards Islam and the Muslims ‘fear from Islam’ or ‘Islamophobia’? And is what the West reveals of positions and reactions toward its Muslims, whether the immigrants or those who were burn in it and never belonged to any other Islamic country, is substantially, strictly and exclusively a phobia from Islam?

My answer to this question is that the western attitude towards Islam is not in content and presumptions a sign of a specific ‘fear from Islam’ per se. The core-matter in depth is a specific European, and to a lesser extent American, fear from the phenomenon of religiosity in general and the retreat of many people in the west –which declared itself a secular, non-religious system in the past four centuries, especially during the age of modernity – into paying attention to religion and reflecting growing religious tendencies in general. This renewed interest is in my conviction the essence of the tense relationship with Islam in the west: there is a kind of a general fear and nervous anxiety from religion and religiosity, whether this religiosity phenomenon – that emerges recently from the tomb, where modernity buried it for centuries – took Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, scientologist, general-spiritual, magical-supernatural or even, expectedly, Islamic identity. The west lives in what I would call ‘religio-phobia’, and not ‘islamo-phobia’ situation. Those who live in the west and observes the public square’s activities, movements and views from any Christian thought that reflects clear religious and theological mind-set in European societies, can spot an existence of a ‘christiano-phobia’ parallel to ‘Islamo-phobia’, and that both phobias are actually expressive of the fact that the European societies have not developed yet a clear view about the nature of the new relation it aught to make with the return to the public square of the interest in religion; such an interest which, by the way, has not begun with the Muslims immigration to the west, but emerged from the heart of the philosophical and intellectual western sphere since the middle of the last century.

But, what is the reason behind the active presence and vividness of ‘religio-phobia’ in the European societies? Answering this question takes us far beyond the issue of the west’s relation to Islam towards studying the western research centres’ reinterpretation and analysis of the western societies’ general context. One cannot miss, for example, the significant literatures of Charles Taylor in Canada and Jürgen Habermas in Germany, who both argues in their latest texts that despite the criticism and offense they were exposed to, the phenomenon of religiosity and religion have never vanished from the intellectual and public western squares, not even during the time of modernity’s total anti-religious hegemony. Instead of leaving the square altogether, the religious discourse gave up the central-attention place and resorted to the periphery, joining many other discourses and playing an often unrecognized, undermined or undervalued role in intellectual and daily life. Both Habermas and Taylor similarly conclude that admitting the fact that religiosity did not leave the public square make us realize why people in post-modernity pay attention to religious thought again. They even call the western civil and secular societies to admit the presence of religiosity and to reconsider the value of its role.

If these epistemic awareness and interest, and after all these long centuries of antagonism against religiosity, occupy the academic and intellectual scene in the west today, the western public scene, to the contrary, is still flopping in a modernist mentality that is torn apart by old sentiments of fear, rejection and disbelief in the value of religion for life reality; sentiments that influence still the normal individual’s thought and attitudes in the European and American public scene. Many western people – who were born, raised, educated and lived for decades and generation after another in societies that push religiosity to the far corner of the private, individual, implicit and intrinsic – have not reached yet the balanced and objective level of interest of the intellectuals and scholars who seek a renewed understanding of religion-culture relationship. More significant still, these individuals have not reached a stage of preparedness and tolerance to deal with a new wave of religiosity (Islam and non-western Christians sometimes) they have not known closely before. This new religiosity started to surround them and face them in their daily life, from individuals and newly-formed communities, who came from-without the west and congregated in it through the ages, and whose presence is hardly deniable and noticeably influential and active. These new groups have not experienced before the journey of estrangement from or rejection of religiosity and have never gave up considering religion a defining, collectivist truth that exceeds in its reality the individuals’ private life and constitutes also the intellectual, societal and behaviour boundaries of the community (this view applies, for example, to the Muslims and Christians alike who immigrated from the Near East and Africa)

In the context of this basic background and constructive transformation in the western secular thought’s relation to religiosity and its transition from a non-religious modernity into a postmodernist condition that is intellectually broader and more emphatic on the ‘many’ and the ‘relative’, one can, in my opinion, more precisely decipher which kind of phobia the west experiences and glean that what the westerners express toward the religiosity of the Muslim communities in their societies in specific is just one of many other faces of a general phobia from the return of religious autonomy to the public square. It is an existential phobia generated by the fact that the western secular and civil settings are not yet sufficiently prepared to deal with religion according to a new relationship that does not invoke religion’s pre-modern authoritative, absolutist and oppressive role, but creates to it a new role based on the respect of human thought’s freedom, the critical nature of scientific thought and the pluralism and democracy of the state that is far from theocracy and superstition.

The West fears Islam not because it is ‘Islam’, but because it is a form of religiosity it has not dealt with before and it does not know whether or not it can find for this religiosity a positive, interactive connection with the western scientific, rational and secular heritage. The west fears Islam exactly as it fears the return of Christian religion’s role in the public square, because it is afraid that this Christianity would be a photocopy of a religiosity and religious authority the west has already confronted and fought against its negative and dark impact on its life and experienced the progress its victory over this impact has lead to. As the western societies are seriously suspect that people’s renewed interest in the Christian heritage may be an invocation of a negative and backwardly Christian legacy, it is equally suspicious, and upon the same presumptions, about a new, external religious heritage, like Islam, because it fears that this new religion may have the same regressing and negative impact. And, as the west reflects fear from the implications and connotations of Muslim religious leaders and teachers’ call for allowing the western Muslim citizens to practice Shariʻa as the regulating criterion of their life and to establish Islamic Shura council to super-intend the Islamic affairs in the west, it also equally fears from Pope Benedict XVI’s invitation to the west to return to its Christian roots and to maintain the values and principles of the church.

Both the fear from a newly experienced Islam and from a retrieved Christianity are two sides for one and the same coin of religio-phobia and of fear from the return of religiosity to the public life’s decision-making centre. The difference between these two phobias is in terms of degree and circumstances, not in terms of essence and epistemic foundations. The difference lies in how Christians and the Muslims in the west express their interest in and practice of religiosity, in addition to the west’s knowledge of each religion’s heritage and its discourse’s content. Christianity is a familiar constituent of the western historical heritage since many centuries ago. While Islam has always been viewed by the west as an ‘other from-without’ and the western knowledge of Islam has almost always been either marginal or superficial or pre-tailored. One can add to this that the most important factor, on the level of daily societal interaction, is the westerners’ discovery that the notion ‘Islam is religion and nation alike’ defines in one of its dimensions the nature of living, behaviour, appearance, affiliation and identity that the Muslim should abide with to be considered truly ‘Muslim’, and not only the method of thinking, the system of values and the web of meaning. This means that religiosity in its Islamic form is more organically attached to the daily lived and practiced in the public societal square. And, in a western society, wherein religiosity in its Christian form remained for the past two centuries subject to the individual appraisal, the private context and the theoretical and idealist choice-making margin, there is no doubt that the people’s suspicions about religiosity in its Islamic form would be more visible, direct and would occupy the central attention.

It is my conviction that the awareness of the Muslims in the west and in the Islamic world alike of the nature of the western attitude towards Islam, and their realization that the phobia we detect in the western world today is just a religio-phobia and general fear from the return of religiosity to the public square, can both help driving the Muslims, Christians, Jews, non-religious, secularists, atheists and others in the western and Arabic societies alike to sit together around the same table and evaluate and ponder the intellectual and epistemological changes that hit the human in postmodernity and to deal with them as changes the ramifications and consequences of which concern us all.
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المشكلة هي‘دينو-فوبيا’ وليس ‘إسلاميو-فوبيا’
[النسخة العربية نُشرت في ملحق السفير الثقافي الأخير، العدد 11724، بتاريخ 22/10/2010]

واحدة من أهم وأكثر المساءل إشكالاً اليوم في دوائر البحث العلمي والثقافي والمجتمعي لا بل والسياسي في العالم بشكل عام، وفي أوروبا الغربية وأمريكا بشكل خاص، هي مسألة العلاقة مع الإسلام ومع الحضور الإسلامي في المجتمعات الغربية. منذ أواسط التسعينات تقريباً، بدأ مصطلح "إلإسلاموفوبيا،" أو ما يمكن ترجمته بالعربية "الرهاب من الإسلام"، يغزو الدوائر البحثية والإعلامية ويتحول بحد ذاته إلى ظاهرة باتت تُخصَّص لدراستها وتحليلها وسبر أغوارها ميزانيات هائلة وتؤسَّس لأجلها مناصب علمية جديدة في الجامعات في الغرب والعالم غير-الإسلامي.
ولكن، هل يصحُّ تسمية ما نراه من موقف غربي تجاه الإسلام والمسلمين بـ "الرهاب من الإسلام" (إسلاموفوبيا)؟ وهل ما يبديه الغرب من مواقف وردود أفعال حيال مسلميه، سواء المهاجرين أم الذين ولدوا فيه ولم ينتموا إلى أي بلد مسلم خارجه، هو في العمق رهاب من الإسلام تحديداً وحصراً؟
جوابي على هذا السؤال هو أنَّ موقف الغرب من ظاهرة الإسلام ليس في الواقع "رهاب من الإسلام" في المضمون أو الخلفية الذهنية. المسألة في العمق هي رهاب أوروبي حصراً، وأمريكي بدرجة أقل، من ظاهرة "التدين" عموماً وعودة الكثير من الناس في الغرب – الذي أعلن نفسه مجتمع علماني لا-ديني في الأربعة قرون الماضية، خاصة في عصر الحداثة – إلى الاهتمام بالدين والنحو نحو التدُّين بمعناه العام. هذا الاهتمام هو بقناعتي لب مسألة العلاقة المتوترة بالإسلام في الغرب: هناك نوع من الرهاب العام والتوتر القلِق من الدين والتدين، سواء أخذت ظاهرة التدين – القائمة من قبر دفنتها فيه الحداثة قروناً – هوية مسيحية أو يهودية أو بوذية أو هندوسية أو سينتولوجية أو روحانية عامة أو ماورائية سحرية، أو حتى، بطبيعة الحال، إسلامية. يعيش الغرب ما يمكن أن أسميه "دينو-فوبيا" (religio-phobia) وليس "إسلاموفوبيا". ومن يعيش في الغرب ويتأمل إرهاصات الحراك المدني ومتغيراته ومواقفه من الفكر اللاهوتي المسيحي في المجتمعات الأوروبية يدرك أن هناك في الواقع "مسيحو-فوبيا" بقدر ما هناك "إسلاموفوبيا" وأنَّ كليهما تعبير عن عدم وصول المجتمعات الأوروبية بعد إلى اكتناه طبيعة العلاقة الجديدة المطلوبة التي يجب أن تتعامل بها مع عودة الاهتمام بالتدين إلى الساحة الثـقافية العامة (public square)؛ هذا الاهتمام الذي لم يبدأ، بالمناسبة، مع هجرة المسلمين للغرب، بل نشأ من قلب الفضاء المعرفي الفلسفي والثقافي الغربي عينه منذ منتصف القرن الماضي.
أما ما هو السبب الذي يجعل "الدينو-فوبيا" ظاهرة حية وفاعلة في المجتمعات الأوروبية؟ فالإجابة على هذا السؤال تأخذنا أبعد بكثير من مسألة علاقة الغرب بالإسلام نحو دراسة مرحلة إعادة التفسير والتحليل التي تقوم بها مراكز الفكر والبحث الغربية لطبيعة المجتمع وتقييمها النقدي للسياق الحياتي العام في الغرب. المتابع للدراسات الفلسفية التي يقوم بها مفكرون من طرفي المحيط الأطلسي لا يمكنه أن يتجاهل أدبيات مفصلية لمفكرين مثل تشارلس تايلر في كندا ويورغن هبرماس في ألمانيا. فكليهما أثبت في مؤلفاته الأخيرة بأنَّ ظاهرة الدين والتدين لم تختـفيا ابداً في الواقع من الساحة المدنية والثقافية في الغرب، ولا حتى حين كان فكر التنوير يعيش ذروة هيمنته في عصر الحداثة، بالرغم من النقد والدحض الشديدين الذين تعرضا لهما. كل ما جرى أنَّ الخطاب الديني لم يغادر الساحة، بل اكتفى بالتخلي عن موقع الوسط والجلوس على الأطراف مع الخطابات الأخرى ليلعب دوراً في الحراك الفكري والحياتي من هناك، وإن لم يتجلى هذا الدور بوضوح وينال الاعتراف بوجوده في أغلب الأحيان. يخلص هبرماس وتايلر على حد سواء إلى القول بأنَّ عدم مغادرة التدين للساحة الثقافية العامة واعترافنا بهذه الحقيقة يجعلاننا ندرك لماذا يعود الإنسان في عصر مابعد-الحداثة الحالي إلى التلفت نحو الفكر الديني. لا بل إنَّ هبرماس وتايلر يدعوان المجتمع المدني والعلماني الغربي لإقرار هذا الحضور للتدين والعمل على إعادة النظر بدوره.
إذا كان هذا الإدراك والاهتمام المعرفيين يشغلان الفكر الأكاديمي والثقافي الغربيين اليوم وبعد تلك القرون الطويلة من النفي للتدين، فإنَّ الشارع العام الغربي مازال، على العكس، يتخبط في عقلية حداثوية مازالت تتنازعها مواقف قديمة تخاف الدين وتـنبذه ولا تؤمن بجدواه في الواقع المعاش ومازالت تجد لها تأثيراً على فكر وحياة ومواقف الفرد العادي في الشارع الأوروبي والأمريكي. لم يصل الكثير من المواطنين الغربيين، الذين وُلِدوا وتربوا وتعلَّموا وعاشوا لعقود طويلة وجيلاً بعد جيل في مجتمعات تحشر التدين في زاوية الخاص والفردي والسري والجواني، إلى توازن وموضوعية مفكريهم وعلمائهم في فهم علاقة الدين بالثقافة. بل والأهم من هذا أن هؤلاء الأفراد لم يصلوا بعد لمرحلة من الاستعداد والمرونة للتعامل مع موجة تدين جديدة لم يعرفوها عن قرب من قبل، بدأت تحيط بهم وتطالعهم بوجهها في حياتهم اليومية من أفراد وجماعات مستحدثة في المجتمع الغربي جاءت من خارجه وتراكمت فيه عبر العقود وبات وجودها ملحوظاً وفاعلاً، وهي جماعات لم تعبر يوماً رحلة الغربة عن الدين أو نبذ التدين ولم تتخلَ عن اعتباره حقيقة ماهيوية جمعية لا تتعلق فقط بحياة الفرد الخاصة بل ترسم أيضاً ملامح الساحة الثـقافية والمجتمعية والسلوكية للمجموع (ينطبق هذا مثلاً على المسيحي كما المسلم القادمين من الشرق الأدنى أو من أفريقيا مثلاً).
في سياق تلك الخلفية القاعدية والتحول البنيوي في علاقة الفكر الغربي العلماني بظاهرة التدين وعبوره من حداثوية لادينية نحو مابعد-حداثوية أوسع أطيافاً وتمظهرات فكرية وثقافية وأكثر تشديداً على "المتعدد" و"النسبي"، يمكن برأيي أن نسبر بشكل أكثر دقة أي نوع من الرهاب يعيشه الغرب، وأن نلاحظ أن ما يعيشه الغربيون حيال تديُّن التجمعات الإسلامية الغربية بشكل خاص ما هو إلا وجه من أوجه متعددة لرهاب عام من عودة ظاهرة التدين إلى التأثير على الساحة العامة وفوبيا وجودية سببها عدم استعداد المجتمعات العلمانية والمدنية الغربية الكافي بعد للتعامل مع الدين بطريقة جديدة لا تستحضر دوره السلطوي والقمعي والظلامي في عصر ماقبل الحداثة، بل تخلق دوراً جديداً له يحترم حرية الفكر البشري ونقدية العقل العلمي وتعددية وديمقراطية النظام الدولتي الأبعد ما يكون عن الثيوقراطي والغيبي.
يخاف الغرب من الإسلام لا لأنه "إسلام"، بل لأنه مظهر تديني لم يتعامل معه من قبل ولا يعرف ما إذا كان يستطيع أن يجد له فضاءاً تفاعلياً إيجابياً مع الإرث العلمي والعقلي والعلماني الذي يقوم عليه الغرب أم لا. يخاف الغرب من الإسلام مثلما يخاف من عودة المسيحية إلى لعب دور في الساحة العامة، لأنَّه يخاف أن تكون تلك المسيحية نسخة مكررة عن تدين وسلطة دينية رفضهما وحارب تأثيرهما السلبي والظلامي على حياته واختبر أن انتصاره على هذا التأثير دفعه للأمام. وكما أنَّ المجتمع الغربي يحمل شكوكاً جدية بأن يكون اهتمام الناس المتجدد بإرثها المسيحي استعادة لإرث مسيحي سلبي ونكوصي، يشك بنفس القدر وانطلاقاً من نفس الذهنية من إرث ديني جديد دخل عليه، مثل الإرث الإسلامي، لخوفه من أن يلعب هذا الإرث الجديد نفس الدور النكوصي والسلبي. وكما أنَّ الغرب يتخوف من معاني ودلالات دعوة شيوخ وفقهاء مسلمين إلى السماح للمواطنين المسلمين الغربيين بممارسة الشريعة الإسلامية لقوننة حياتهم وبتأسيس مجلس شورى لرعاية شؤون الأمة الإسلامية في الغرب، يتخوف أيضاً من دعوة البابا بندكتوس السادس عشر الغرب إلى العودة إلى أصوله المسيحية وإلى التمسك بقيم ومبادئ وتعاليم الكنيسة.
كلا الرهاب من إسلام مستجد والرهاب من مسيحية مستعادة وجهين لعملة واحدة هي الدينو-فوبيا والرهاب من عودة التدين إلى مركز القرار في الحياة العامة. الفرق بين الرهابين هو في الدرجة والظروف وليس في الجوهر أو الجذر المعرفي. الفرق هو في كيفية تعبير كل من المسيحيين والمسلمين في الغرب عن اهتمامهم بالتدين وعن ممارستهم له، بالإضافة إلى الفرق في درجة معرفة الغرب لإرث كل من الدينين ومحتوى خطابه. فالمسيحية جزء مألوف من التراث التاريخي الغربي منذ قرون عديدة. أما الإسلام فلطالما نظر له الغرب على أنه "آخر من-خارج" ومعرفته عنه لطالما كانت هامشية أو تخيُّليِّة أو مسبقة الصنع. كما أنَّ العامل الأكثر أهمية على مستوى التفاعل اليومي والمجتمعي مع المسلمين في الغرب هو اكتشاف الغرب أنَّ مفهوم "الإسلام دين وأمة" يعرِّف في أحد أبعاده ماهية الحياة والسلوك والمظهر والانتماء والهوية، وليس فقط منهجية التفكير ومنظومة القيم وشبكة المعاني، التي يجب أن يتحلى بها المسلم والمسلمة ليكونا "مسلمين حقاً". أي أنَّ التدين في وجهه الإسلامي أكثر التصاقاً باليومي والمعاش والممارس في الساحة المجتمعية العامة. وفي مجتمع غربي لطالما ظل فيه التدين في القرنين الماضيين بوجهه المسيحي المنبوذ حبيس المزاج الفردي والسياق الخاص والهامش الاختياري النظري والفكري، لا شك وأنَّ شكوك الأفراد بالتدين في وجهه الإسلامي ستكون أكثر وضوحاً ومباشرة واستئثاراً بالاهتمام.
إن إدراك المسلمين في الغرب والعالم الإسلامي عموماً لطبيعة الموقف الغربي من الإسلام وبأن الفوبيا التي نلحظها في العالم الغربي اليوم ما هي إلا "دينو-فوبيا" ورهاب من عودة الدين إلى الساحة العامة، سيساعد بقناعتي على دفع المسلم والمسيحي واليهودي واللاديني والعلماني والملحد وسواهم في المجتمعات الغربية والعربية على حد سواء للجلوس على طاولة واحدة والتفكير معاً بالمتغيرات الفكرية والمعرفية التي أدركها الإنسان مابعد-الحداثوي والتعامل معها كأنها متغيرات تعنينا جميعاً وعلى نفس القدر من التأثير والنتائج.

I Want to Become a Cherry...أريد أن أصير كرزة

أريد أن أصير كرزة –II -
(قصائد دادائية)


- 12 -
صدقتها حين قالت:
"فيل آت هوم"
لكن "فيل" لم يكن في المنزل
فيل كان "لم"،
فيل هو "منزل".

- 13 -
"آريو كمفورتبل؟"
كم "فورتبل"
يحتاج المرء
ليكون "آر"؟

- 14 -
قصَّ الشريط ليفتتح المعرض
ولم يبادله الشريط القصَّة بأفضل منها
فظل في مكانه ينتظر
أن يفتتح أحدهم حياته
لأنظار الناس.

- 15 -
لا تصدق ما يُقال.
صدق ما لا تصدق،
ثم لا تقله لأحد
كي لا تصدقه.
كي لا يُقال.

- 16 -
قطرات المطر الكبيرة،
تشبه في قصة شعرها
وشكل عينيها
قطرات
المطر
الكبيرة.
أعرف هذا
لأننا هذا الصباح
التقينا من قبل.

- 17 -
كتبت له رقم هاتفها على قصاصة ورقٍ
وهي ترتدي ملابسها
وتتسلل بأقل قدر من الضجيج خارج الغرفة.
أثناء نزولها الدرج،
كانت قصاصة الورق
تحاول وحدها أن تتصل بها
من سلة المهملات.

- 18 -
تصحو المدينة من نومي
وتفتح عينيها على البارحة.
فيقول لها ماغريت
وهو يتناول الغداء:
"دعي قدماكِ عند الباب
قبل أن تدخلي الحمام
غسلته الغد فقط
بدموع عيني."


- 19 -
برقبة طويلة وخطاً سريعة
يتعثر بالرصيف
وترتطم جبهته بعمود النور.
يهوي آخر الطريق دون أن يصل.
يسبق الجميع
دون أن يقطع خط النهاية.
يصل قبل الموت
وينام قبل وصول الحياة.

ذو الرقبة الطويلة، المتلهف الأخرق
ينفخ قدح رحلته قبل أن يصل الشاي
ثم يحيي الكرسي الفارغ
قبل أن تستيقظ الطاولة.
مسرعاً, حزَّ رقبته الطويلة
ثم رمى رأسه بين أرجل المارة
وراح يسأل:
"هل تذكرونني؟
أنا الزائر النحيل
من كسر كوب الشاي
وراح يمسح بكم قميصه
خياله من على الأرض
قائلاً: يا له من كابوس غريب"

- 20 -
قلت لله: "أحبك"
ابتسمت "أحبك" في وجهي
أما الله
فظل يتطلع من
زجاج النافذة

- 21 –
ألمسني, أيها الموت
لا تستحي.
ضع يدك على بطني
ومرر أصابعك
فوق عظامي الناتئة تحت الجلد.
عجِّل،
قبل أن تدخل الحياة الغرفة
وتسيء فهم المشهد.






I Want to Become a Cherry
(Dadaist poems)

- 12 -
I believed her when she said:
“feel at home.”
But, ‘feel’ was not home
feel was a ‘not’.
feel is a ‘home’.

- 13 -
“Are you comfortable?”
how many ‘fortable’
one needs
to be ‘are’?

- 14 -
He cut the ribbon
to inaugurate the exhibition.
and, the ribbon did not respond
to his cut with a better one.
so, he remained in his place
waiting for someone
to inaugurate his life
for the eyes of people.

- 15 -
do not believe what is said
believe what you do not believe.
then, tell it to nobody,
in order not to believe it.
in order not to be said.

- 16 -
the big drops of rain.
looks in its hair style
and the shape of her eyes
like
big
drops
of rain.
This I know,
because this morning
we met before.

- 17 -
she wrote him her phone number
on a piece of paper,
while dressing her cloths
and sneaking outside the room
with the least noise possible.
as she was climbing down the stairs,
the piece of paper
was trying alone to call her
from the garbage bin.

- 18 -
Wakes the city up
from my sleep
and opens its eyes
on yesterday.
says Magritte to her
while eating his lunch:
“leave your feet at the door
before you enter the bathroom
I washed it just yesterday
with my eyes’ tears.”

- 19 -
with tall neck and hasty steps
he tumbles over the pavement
and hit his forehead with the light-post
he falls at the road’s end
racing ahead of all,
without crossing the end-line;
arrives before death
and sleeps before the arrival of life.

the tall-neck man,
the pining awkward.
he cools up his trip’s cup
before the tea’s arrival
then, he greets the empty chair
before the table’s wake-up

Hastily, he slices his long neck
then throws his head
between the pedestrians’ legs
and asks:
“do you remember me?
I am the slim visitor,
who broke the tea-cup
and with his sleeve
wiped his shadow from the floor,
saying: what a strange nightmare.”

- 20 -
I said to God:
‘I love you’
smiled ‘I love you’
in my face,
while God
remained staring
from the glass
of the window.

- 21 -
touch me, O death,
do not be shy.
lay your hand on my belly
and pass your fingers
above my protruding bones
beneath the skin.
speed up,
before life enters the room
and misconceive the scene.

On Hopping Against Every Hope.....عن الترجي ضد كل رجاء

On Hopping Against Every Hope

It catches the attention that the followers of Jesus did not consider the subject of hope except after Jesus’ ascension; after, that is, he departed away from them. During their time with him, we hardly hear them ask Jesus about things pertain to hope. We almost never find Jesus speaking about hope or about the future from the angle of hope. he either speaks about the present and God kingdom’s recent, real presence in history from his ‘here and now’. Or, he hopes but specifically about justice’ prevalence, the divine justice in specific.
No concern about hope as such in Jesus’ ministry itself. No thinking of hope while Jesus is present with his disciples. Hope, however, comes into the scene; jumps up to the stage, when Jesus is no more on it; when Christ is behind the curtain in the back corridors; when the audiences cannot see him anymore, though the play ensues and the narrative proceeds.
Why hope and Jesus cannot exist together, although Christian faith lays the foundations of hope on Jesus? Why hope is not part of Jesus’ reality, although Jesus is for faith the epicentre of hope’s reality? Why the notion of hope entered the history of Christian faith post-christos, post-pasca, post-ascensiones? It was only when Jesus disappeared, when he left, not before, that Christians started to anchor their hope in him.
In his commentary on the Letter to the Romans, and in relation to Paul’s speech about hope, Martin Luther states the following: “thus, hope changes the one who hopes into what is hoped for, but what is hoped for does not appear. Therefore, hope transfers him into the unknown; the hidden, and the dark shadows. So that he does not even know what he hopes for, and yet he knows what he does not hope for.” Luther must have spotted and paused so long at Paul’s strange saying in Romans 4:18 that Abraham’s faith was based on a hope against all hopes. How can one be against all hopes and have hope still? How can one even be against all hopes by means of having hope, and not by means, for example, of having despair or pessimism? How can the hope that is the foundation of faith be such a hope against all hopes? How can hope be at all when it is against itself?
‘Hope against all hopes’ does not mean hoping against hope as such, but hoping against what makes hope a necessity, against what originates the reason for hoping. This is what we learn from the life of Jesus with his disciples. When Jesus was present with the disciples, they did not need to hope for anything, because they already were face to face wit the subject of hope, with the core of their hope of salvation and deliverance. Hope’s significance does not lie in itself, does not lie in the act of hoping. It rather lies in the essence, in the subject of hoping; in its constitutive content: Jesus Christ is the essence of, the subject matter, the content of hope. And, hoping for Jesus, or even hoping Jesus, means hoping for what is not present, for what does not yet exist again. So, the synonym of hope is ‘absence’, while the opposite of hope is ‘presence’. When the subject of hope is present, hope itself is not there, because hope cannot exist simultaneously with its opposite. When, on the other hand, the subject of hope is absent, hope necessarily exists by virtue of the signification of its synonym ‘absence’.
Why hope was not a topic during Jesus’ life time? The subject of hoping was present and hope cannot exist with its opposite. In the light of this, what does it mean to ‘hope against all hopes’? It means to hope against the thing that originates, that causes, hoping: to hope against the presence and to opt for perceiving the faith that lies substantially in the state of absence. Every hope that circles around present reality, an ‘at-hand’ subject, is a false hope; is hope against itself, because hope as an act would then be more important than its subject: the act of hoping will become the A to Z of hope, rather than ‘what is hoped for’, and the question of ‘how should we hope?’ replaces at the centre of Christian reasoning the question of ‘what is it that we hope in?” In other words, human actions become more important than God, and faith becomes a specific form of practice, rather than a state of ‘trusting what is hoped for and believing in what is not seen.’
‘Hope against all hopes’ means, then, trusting in the absence of Jesus, rather than relying on the present act of belief of the believer. It means realizing God’s absence and the harsh and terrible consequences of this absence in human life, rather than forcing God to show his presence by searching superstitiously for his hand behind every life event or personal experience. Yes, God is not present in daily life. But, this is not actually against hope. It is rather the epi-cause of the existence of hope. In his absence, God allows hope to exist, because hope cannot exist with its opposite (i.e. presence). Hope is meaningful only in the state of absence. The more absence is real, the more the awareness of the reality of Jesus Christ is possible in fact. The absence of God becomes an invitation for us to go beyond ourselves, beyond the boundaries of our ego and human reason towards what lies as a wholly-other. Whereas, if we live as if God is present always in our life, we then take him for granted and mould him according to our conditions and needs and rules.
The absent Jesus, the hidden one, alone can save us, because in his absence he is beyond our actions. In his absence, Jesus creates in us the state of hope that militates against our ego-centrism and offers us freedom instead of it, even from it.

Vienna, 2010




عن الترجي ضد كل رجاء

يلفت الانتباه أنَّ أتباع يسوع المسيح لم يأخذوا بعين الاعتبار موضوعة "الرجاء" إلا بعد صعود المسيح إلى السماء؛ أي بعد أن غاب من وسطهم وصار بعيداً عنهم. أثناء وجوده معهم، بالكاد نسمع التلاميذ يسألون يسوع عن أمورٍ أو مسائل تتعلق بالرجاء. كما أننا نكاد لا نسمع يسوع نفسه أبداً يتحدث عن الرجاء أو عن المستقبل من زاوية فكرة الرجاء بحد ذاتها، بل نراه إما يتحدث عن الحاضر وعن حضور ملكوت الله الفعلي الآني في التاريخ من زاوية الـ "هنا والآن" الخاصتين بيسوع شخصياً، أو نراه يعبِّر عن رجاءٍ معيَّنٍ يدور بشكل خاص حول مسألة العدالة، العدالة الإلهية تحديداً.
لا اهتمام خاص بمسألة الرجاء بحد ذاتها في إرسالية يسوع المسيح على الأرض. لا تفكير بالرجاء أثناء حضور يسوع مع تلاميذه. ولكن، وعلى العكس من ذلك، يحضر موضوع الرجاء بشكل ملحوظ ويقف على مسرح الأحداث حين يغيب يسوع، حين يتوارى ولا يعود مرئياً، حين يكون المسيح خلف الستارة وفي الممرات الخلفية للمسرح حيث لا يستطيع الجمهور أن يراه، بالرغم من عدم انتهاء المسرحية ومن استمرار أحداث روايتها.
لما لا يمكن أن يتواجد يسوع والرجاء معاً، مع أنَّ الإيمان المسيحي يبني دعائم فكرة الرجاء المسيحية على يسوع دون سواه؟ لما لا يكون الرجاء جزءاً من حقيقة يسوع التاريخية، بالرغم من أنَّ يسوع هو قلب حقيقة الرجاء في منظومة الإيمان المسيحي؟ لماذا لم يدخل مفهوم الرجاء إلى تاريخ الإيمان المسيحي إلا "بعد-مسيانياً،" "بعد-فصحياً،" و"بعد-الصعود"؟ فقط عندما غاب المسيح، عندما توارى، وليس قبل ذلك، بدأ المسيحيون بتأسيس رجاءهم وعلاقتهم بفكرة الرجاء عليه.
في شرحه التفسيري لرسالة بولص الرسول إلى رومية، وتعليقاً على حديث بولص عن الرجاء، يقول مارتن لوثر: "هكذا يغير الرجاء الإنسان المترجّي إلى ما يترجاه، إلا أنَّ ما يترجاه هذا الأخير لا يظهر للعيان. ولهذا ينقل الرجاء صاحبه إلى حيز المجهول والمحتجب وظلال الظلمة، بحيث لا يعود يعلم ما الذي يترجاه، إلا أنه يعلم، مع ذلك، ما الذي لا يترجاه." لا بدَّ وأنَّ لوثر قد التقط قول بولص الغريب في رومية 4:18 بأنَّ إبراهيم أسَّس إيمانه على رجاء "ضد كل رجاء"، ولا بدَّ أنَّ هذا القول استوقفه طويلاً وأصابه بالحيرة: كيف يمكن للمرء أن يكون ضد كل رجاء وأن يكون عنده رجاء في نفس الوقت؟ لا بل وكيف يمكن للمرء أن يكون ضد كل رجاء بواسطة ومن خلال تمتعه بالرجاء وليس من خلال تمتعه باليأس والتشاؤم مثلاً؟ كيف يمكن للرجاء، الذي هو قاعدة الإيمان، أن يكون رجاء ضد كل رجاء؟ وكيف يمكن للرجاء أن يكون بالدرجة الأولى أو أن يوجد أصلاً إن كان ضد ذاته؟
لا تعني فكرة "رجاء ضد كل رجاء" أن يترجى المرء ضد الرجاء بحد ذاته، بل تعني أن يترجى المرء ضد ما يجعل الرجاء ضرورة، ضد ما يحتّم مسببات الرجاء. هذا ما نتعلمه من حياة يسوع مع التلاميذ: حين كان يسوع حاضراً مع التلاميذ، لم يحتاجوا إلى ترجّي أي شيءٍ لأنهم كانوا وجهاً لوجهٍ في حضرة "موضوع" الرجاء ومحتواه؛ كانوا وجهاً لوجه في حضرة جوهر رجائهم الخلاصي والتحرري. لا تكمن أهمية الرجاء في ذاته، ولا في فعل الترجي بعينه. إنها تكمن، بدل ذلك، في جوهر وموضوع الترجّي ومحتواه التأسيسي. يسوع المسيح هو جوهر وموضوع ومحتوى الرجاء. وبالتالي، أن نترجّى يسوع يعني أن نتوق لما ليس حاضراً؛ أن نتوق للغائب، لمن لم يحضر ثانية بعد. هذا يعني أنَّ مرادف "الرجاء" هو مصطلح وفكرة "الغياب"، أما عكس الرجاء وضده الاصطلاحي المفاهيمي فهو "الحضور" دون سواه. حين يحضر موضوع الرجاء، يغيب الرجاء بحد ذاته، فالرجاء لا يمكن أن يوجد في نفس الوقت مع ضده. ولكن، من جهة أخرى، حين يغيب موضوع الرجاء ويحتجب، يحضر الرجاء بالضرورة بفضل دالية رديفه، "الغياب".
لما لم يكن الرجاء موضوع بحث أثناء حياة وإرسالية يسوع؟ لأنَّ موضوع الترجّي، جوهر فكرة الترجّي، كان حاضراً شخصياً، والرجاء لا يستطيع الحضور مع عكسه. في ضوء هذا، ما معنى "الترجي ضد كل رجاء"؟ إنها تعني الترجّي ضد ذاك الأمر الذي يخلق ويسبب فعل الترجّي: أي الذي يكمن جوهرياً في حالة الغياب. كل رجاء يدور حول حقيقة حاضرة، حول أمر في متناول اليد، ما هو إلا رجاء مزيف؛ رجاء ضد ذاته، لأنَّ الرجاء كفعل سيسبق عندها موضوعه في الأهمية وستصبح عملية ممارسة الترجّي هي ألف وياء الرجاء، بدل أن يكون ذاك الذي نترجاه هو بيت القصيد ومركز الأهمية. عندها، سؤال "كيف يجب أن نترجّى؟" يحل محل سؤال "ما الذي نترجاه؟" في قلب الفكر المسيحي. بكلام آخر، يصبح الفعل البشري أكثر أهمية من الله نفسه، ويصير الإيمان مجرد ممارسات معيّنة بدلاً عن "الثقة بما يرجى والإيقان بأمور لا تُرى."
"الترجّي ضد كل رجاء" يعني، إذاً، الثقة بغياب يسوع والتعويل على هذا الغياب، ولا تعني الاتكال على ممارسات وأعمال المؤمن الإيمانية في الحاضر. إنها تعني أن ندرك غياب الله الفعلي واستيعاب النتائج القاسية والفظيعة لهذا الغياب في واقع الحياة البشرية. وهي لا تعني أبداً أن نجبر الله على إظهار حضوره بأن نبحث غيبياً عن يده السرية المختبئة حلف كل حدث حياتي أو اختبار شخصي خاص. نعم، الله لا يحضر في كل فعل حياتي يومي. نعم الله لا يحضر بهذه الصورة. ولكن، هذا الغياب لا يقف في الواقع ضد الرجاء ولا يناقضه. إنه في الحقيقة المسبِّب الرئيسي والموضوعي لوجود الرجاء وتفعيله. بتواريه، يسمح الله للرجاء بالحضور، فالرجاء لا يستطيع الوجود مع ضده (أي مع الحضور). للرجاء معناً وجدواً في حالة الغياب فقط. وكلما كان الغياب فعلياً أكثر، كلما صار إدراك حقيقة يسوع المسيح ممكناً في الواقع. يصبح غياب الله هنا دعوةً لنا لنمضي أبعد من حدود ذواتنا الضيقة؛ أبعدَ من حدود أنويتنا وعقلنا المحدودين نحو ذاك الذي يكمن في "الآخر المفارق". في حين أننا لو عشنا وكأنَّ الله حاضر دوماً في حياتنا فإننا سنتعامل مع حضوره بمنطق الأمر المسلَّم به والمفروغ منه وسوف نعمل على تطويع هذا الحضور وتشكيله بما يتناسب مع شروطنا وحاجاتنا وقوانيننا.
فقط غياب المسيح، ذاك المتواري، هو ما يخلصنا لأنَّ المسيح في غيابه يقف وراء حدود أعمالنا البشرية واشتراطاتنا. يخلق المسيح بغيابه فينا حالة رجاءٍ تتجنَّد ضد غرورنا وتمحورنا حول الذات وتقدم لنا الحرية بدلاً عنها، لا بل والحرية منها.

فيينا، 2010

“I Muddy, Therefore I Am”: An Encounter with Egone Schiele..."أتطيَّن، إذاً أنا كائن" : لقاء مع إيجون شيلي

One cannot claim that he or she visited Vienna without entering part of her over-hundred museums and without one washes his eyes with the genius brush and deep paintings not only of Gustav Klimmt, but also of the brilliant artist, Egone Schiele. With fierce expressionist brush similar to none, and rather than dematerializing the human body, Egone Schiele welcomes you to his world by an invitation to delve with him deeper and deeper into materiality, to lose your breath while you drop with him fast down into the muddy state of shape or to a mercuric state of existence; as if his Gospel says: ‘I muddy into, therefore I am’. And, as you are barely trying to resist suffocation with the beauty of that state, as a fish penetrating the sand, or a bird sucking the sea, Schiele whispers in your ear that the human melancholy not only makes the body our boat and survival shore, but also our fatal, inescapable destiny.



Thus takes Egone Schiele, before he even finished his twenties (he died at the age of 28) Austrian expressionism beyond the boundaries of the creation and mad, infinite brilliance of his master and mentor, Gustav Klimmt. Klimmt aims in his expressions, fierce colors and smashingly dazzling figures at dematerializing the body by conceptualizing it and then re-materializing it in thick layers of emotions and metaphysical moments. His kerygma is: the beyond lies in the depth of the lived. Thus Klimmt paints. Whereas, you leave the balling around the paintings of Egone Schiele loaded with his scream: the beyond is the destiny that lies in the melancholy of the material. Thus Schiele tries to de-paint.

Leopold Museum, Vienna,
15 July-6 August, 2010


لا يمكن للمرء أن يدَّعي أنه زار فيينا دون أن يزور بعضاً من متاحفها التي تفوق في عددها المائة ودون أن يغسل المرء عينيه بالريشة العبقرية والأعمال التشكيلية العميقة لا لغوستاف كلِمت فقط بل وللفنان المبدع إيجون شيلي. بريشةٍ تعبيرية عنيفة لا تشبه سوى ذاتها, وبدلاً عن تجريد الجسد البشري من ماديته، يرحب إيجون شيلي بك في عالمه بدعوةٍ للخوض معه أعمق وأعمق في المادية, لتفقد أنفاسك وأنت تنحدر معه سريعاً إلى أسفل حالة الشكل الطينية أو إلى حالة وجودٍ زئبقية؛ كأنَّ إنجيله يقول: " أتطيَّن، إذاً أنا كائن." وأثناء محاولتك أن تقاوم بالكاد اختناقك بجمال تلك الحالة، كسمكةٍ تغوض في رمل خق كعصفورٍ يمصُّ البحر، يهمس شيلي في أذنك أنَّ التـفجُّع البشري لا يكتفي بجعل الجسد سفينة وشاطئ نجاتنا، بل ويجعله أيضاً قدرنا المهلِك الذي لا مفر منه.



كذا يمضي شيلي، حتى قبل أن ينهي عشريناته (مات عن عمر 28 عاماً)، بالتعبيرية النمساوية أبعد من حدود الخلق والنبوغ المجنون اللامحدود لمعلمه وأستاذه، غوستاف كلِمت. يهدف كلِمت بتعابيره وألوانه العارمة وأشكال شخوصه التي تصفعك بالدهشة إلى تحرير الجسد من ماديته بمفهَمَتِهِ ومن ثم إعادته إلى مادية جديدة قوامها طبقات كثيفة من المشاعر واللحظات الميتافيزيقية. خبره السار هو: يكمن الماورائي في عمق المعاش. كذا يرسم كليمت. في حين أنك تغادر رحلة التدرج حول لوحات إيجون شيلي وأنت محمَّلٌ بصرخته: الماورائي هو القدر الكامن في تـفجُّع المادي. كذا يحاول شيلي أن يحطم الرسم.



متحف ليوبولد، فيينا،
15تموز-6 آب، 2010

Vienna Who Are You, Dear? Impressions on an Aged City...فيينا، من أنتِ يا عزيزتي؟ انطباعات عن مدينةٍ هَرِمَة

Vienna reveals herself as a very aged, old woman with wrinkling body, hardly able to raise her arm and quench the lantern of her eyes, as she tries to sleep out of the plentitude of monotony and the weightiness of burdensome. Snores Vienna like a sick mother, forgetting the cup of milk on the table and washing not the smell of cigarettes and the taste of dust from her mouth. At night, Vienna hardly knows itself, while she runs from a pub to another, trying to offer herself to the one who pays more.
Phlegmatism and emotionlessness float through the air of the city. Sexuality is the biggest delusional obsession of the people: blind hunger masqueraded with all the faces of idealism, the core of which is meaninglessness and the ultimatum is nihilism and vanity.
In Vienna, I drink the cup of apprehension. Time is valueless, yet aging is a fate no one wants to terminate at. Vienna is Europe at the brink of disintegration; at the edge of deterioration, where beauty is colorless in its brightness; greatness is a day-dreaming at its centre-stage; where people are cold and rude and semi-sedated by the very same abundance, easiness, excessiveness and beauty called: Wien.
In Vienna, lives the confusion of versatile beauty with nihilistic vanity, of the great potentials with delusional melancholy… Vienna, who are you, dear? who are your people?

Vienna, 15 July-6 August, 2010







تكشف فيننا نفسها كأمرأة عجوزٍ هرمة جداً بجسدٍ مترهِّل، بالكاد تقدر أن ترفع ذراعها وتطفأ قنديل عينيها وهي تحاول أن تنام في وفرة الرتابة ووطأة الملل. تشخر فيينا كأمٍ عليلةٍ، ناسية كوب الحليب على الطاولة دون أن تغسل رائحة السكائر وطعم الغبار عن فمها. في الليل، بالكاد تعرف فيينا نفسها وهي تركض من حانةٍ إلى أخرى وتحاول أن تعرض نفسها لمن يدفع أكثر.
البرود وجفاف العاطفة تطوفان في جو المدينة. الجنس هو الهوس الوهمي الأكبر عند الناس: جوع أعمى يختبئ خلف أقنعة مصطنعة من مثالياتٍ جوهرها اللامعنى وذروتها العدمية والهباء.
في فيينا، أشرب كأس الإدراك. الزمن عديم القيمة، مع أنَّ الترهُّل قَـدَرٌ لا يريد أحد أن ينتهي عنده. فيينا هي أوروبا على شفير التفكك، عند حافة الاضمحلال، حيث الجمال بلا لون في بريقه؛ والعظمة حلم يقظة على قمة خشبة مسرحها؛ وحيث الناس باردون وقساة وشبه-مخدرون بعين الوفرة والسهولة والإسراف والجمال المدعو: فيينا
في فيينا، يعيش اختلاط الجمال المتنوع بالهباء العدمي، الممكنات العظيمة بالتفجُّع الوهمي...فيينان من أنتِ يا عزيزتي؟ من هم أهلكِ؟


فيينا، 15 تموز-6 آب، 2010

I Want to Become a Cherry........أريد أن أصير كرزة

أريد أن أصير كرزة
(قصائد دادائية)

- 1 -
أترى الفرق
بين الحائط والصورة؟
الحائط ليس صورة
وأما الصورة
فهي ليست
صورةً أيضاً.

- 2 -
تطلَّع في أصابع يديّ
وهي تغوص في علب الألوان.
إن رأيتها خمسة،
كنت عليل البصر.
وإن لم ترها خمسة،
فأنت عليل البصر أيضاً.

- 3 -
اللون الأحمر
طويل الثوب
أجعد الشعر،
جميلٌ ومغويٍ.
ولكن،
أين اللون فيه؟



- 4 -
تعال نمحي اللوحة.
تعال نمحي.
تعال
لوحة.

- 5 -
لوِّن ثديايَ بأحمرٍ قانِ
وكوِّرهما بأسودٍ خفيف
ثم على بطني،
فوق العانة بقليل،
ارسم خطاً رفيعاً أخضراً:
أريد
أن
أصير
كرزة.

- 6 -
لا تسألني عن اللوحة.
سلِ اللوحة عني
ثم أخبرني خلسة
بما باحت لك
القماشة الرمادية المثقوبة
التي أغطي بها السرير.

- 7 -
لم أكن بوارد التطفل:
اقتحمت الغرفة
حاشراً كفي بين فخدي المرتعشين
مفتشاً عن المرحاض،
حين رأيتها عند قدميه
وتحت إليتيه المرتجتين
وهو يحاول أن يحز عنقها.
نظرت اللوحة إلي
بعينين كمشمشتين، وهمست:
"نهاية الممر،
الباب الأول
على اليمين."

- 8 -
ببذة بيضاء
وقفازين من الحرير
وعضوٍ يتدلى كساعةٍ من البنطال،
راح الأزرق
يسقي بطن القماشة الأخضر
ويتفرج على فخذيها
تصفرَّان من الغيرة.

- 9 -
وإن حطمنا اللوحة
ما الذي يبقى من مشهد الجريمة؟
تبقى
اللوحة
طبعاً.

- 10 -
لا تكترث للعناوين
لا تصدق الألوان .
صدق فقط نفسك.
أتراها الآن؟
هي
تراك
أيضاً.

- 11 -
لن تعرف متى تبدأ الصورة
وأين ينتهي الحائط.
لن تحزر أيهما أنت.
المهم حين تفرغ من رسم نفسك
أن يجد العالم من يدله عليك
قبل أن يتبول
في بنطاله.


_________________________________________________________________________
* النسخة العربية من القصائد نشرت في صفحة كيكا الألكترونية والنسخة الإنكليزية هي كالعادة ترجمة الشاعر ويخص بها مدونته







I Want to Become a Cherry
(Dadaist poems)


- 1 -
can you see the difference
between the wall and the picture?
the wall is not a picture
while the picture
is not
a picture
too.


- 2 -
look into the fingers of my hand
as they dive in the colors’ boxes
if you see them five,
you are weak-sighted
and if you do not see them five,
you are weak-sighted too.


- 3 -
the red color
of long dress
and curly hair,
is beautiful and seducing.
but,
where is color
in it?


- 4 -
let us erase the painting.
let is erase.
let us
a painting.


- 5 -
color my breasts with dark red
and round them with light black
then on my belly,
slightly above the vagina,
draw a slim green line:
I
want
to become
a cherry.


- 6 -
do not ask me about the painting.
ask the painting about me.
then tell me secretly
what did she tell you,
the gray pierced sheet
which I use
to cover my bed.
- 7 -
I did not intend to intrude:
I rushed into the room
cornering my hand between my trembling thighs
searching for the toilet,
when I saw her at his feet,
under his shaking bum
while he tries to slice her nick.
the painting looked at me
with apricot eyes and whispered:
“the end of the corridor,
first door to the right.”



- 8 -
with a white suit
and silky gloves
and an organ
sagging like a watch from the pants,
the blue irrigated
the textile’s green belly
and watched its thighs
yellowed with jealousy.


- 9 -
And if we destroyed the painting
what is left of the crime-scene?
the painting,
of course.


- 10 -
do not care about the titles.
do not believe the colors.
just believe yourself.
can you see it now?
she
sees
you
too.

- 11 -
you will not know
when the picture starts
and when the wall ends.
you will not guess which one is you.
what matters is,
when you are done painting yourself,
someone would show the world
the way to you
before it pees in its pants.




the Museum of Modern Art, Vienna, 2010

As Rabbits...كالأرانب

As Rabbits


Do you remember?
they crossed rapidly
while we were sleeping
scared in the mound:
your hand over my chest
and my fingers caressing you.
/

Their mouths were
filled with warnings.
Their shadows
tremble violently.
an eye on each other,
and an eye seeking to kill
our forbidden love.
/

Do you remember?
I berried my face in my hands
agreeing when you whispered:
‘there are dates I hate
for the ugliness of those
who appear to us from.’
/

I remember, then,
you made me promise you
if the world passed
without annoying the rest of your wounds,
I should not also disturb you
with the wailing of my desire.
/
is the solicitude of passion
what makes us tremble
as rabbits?




كالأرانب

أتذكرين؟
مرّوا على عجلٍ
حين كنا ننامُ خائفينَ في الأُكمَة
يدكِ على صدري
وأصابعي تمسحُك.
/
أفواههم تعجُّ بالوعيد
وخيالاتهم تنتفض بشِدَّة.
عينٌ على بعضِهم
وعينٌ تبحثُ كي تقتلَ حبناَ المحرَّم.
/
أتذكرين؟
دفنتُ وجهيَ في كفيَّ موافقاً
حينَ همستِ في تلكَ اللحظةِ:
هناكَ تواريخٌ أكرهُها
لبشاعة من يطلع علينا منها.
/
أذكرُ جيداً أنكِ وقتَها
أخذتِ مني وعداً
إن مرَّ العالمُ دون أن يقلق راحة أوجاعَكِ
أن لا أزعجكِ أنا أيضاً بعويلِ شبَقي.
/
أَ مِن وحشةِ الشهوةِ
صرنا خائفين
نرتجف كالأرانب؟
..................................................

Reflections on the Christian Theology of Hope

What is the purpose of life? Whereto the carriage of history takes the human across the wilderness of time? Is their a meaningful ultimatum worth searching for? Such inquiries were raised by the famous Russian author Leo Tolstoy almost two centuries ago in a confessional text on an existential struggle he passed through searching for the meaning and purpose of life.
Half a century before Tolstoy, the German philosopher, Schopenhauer, insisted that the process of life and existence is static and changeless, and it should, therefore, be encountered except with pessimism. Schopenhauer structures his philosophy of life on a denial of any belief in an ultimate or supreme purpose for existence. Tolstoy, to the contrary, lands with his searching boat on the shore of the conviction that there is actually a supreme purpose and meaning for life, the sum of which is represented in the notion of ‘faith’ or ‘belief’. ‘Faith’, says Tolstoy, is the state of perceiving of the essence of human life, which protects, even prevents, the human from self-destruction and gives her purpose for living. Faith is the power of life.
Schopenhauer’s and Tolstoy’s views about life and existence feature in the life and thought of the humans in today’s world. There are people who build their view of reality upon what they glean from observing life’s negative and tragic events. This observation turns them into pessimistic persons, living in a state of negativity, hardly expecting that the tragic life would one day qualitatively change: everything is static and changeless; there is no better than what now is. On the other end of the spectrum, there are others who structure their attitude toward life upon a specific religious conviction based on a belief in the existence of an infinite, wholly other Being, who endeavours, in His supreme power, to drive life towards an ultimate Good. Such a belief, Tolstoy says, is the generator of the living aptitude of millions of people around the world. The subject of the human eagerness for living and survival is not absent from Schopenhauer’s point of view. It is, actually, as valuable and basic in his thought as it is in Tolstoy’s. The difference between their views, though, is that for Schopenhauer the realistic person thinks that we perceive life in its ultimate shape and value when we dispense with the optimistic expectation, humans may hold, about a futural supreme Good. The power of life lies, for Schopenhauer, in the prevalence of a realistic view of the world as is; no more, no less; free from any imaginations about a better world that may be waiting for us upon the horizon of the future. This is probably what Schopenhauer means when he says in his book, The World as Will and Idea, that the world is our idea. Tolstoy’s human being seeks to understand the meaning and essence of life and existence through the act of belief, the state of faith. Whereas, Schopenhauer’s human being struggles to live life free from optimism. Both characters are realistic incarnation of the human being in her relationship with history and time process. They both stand on the same ground with regard to this point.
When we, nevertheless, study both philosophical approaches in the light of the Christian understanding of existence in time and life, we find that the proposal of Tolstoy is closer than Schopenhauer’s to the Christian theological thought about the relationship between being and existence. Theology organically links the act of understanding life and its telos with the Christian interpretation of the state of belief, or of faith. Faith in Christian theology is a living journey as such; a process of subsisting in an openness towards the other; life in a state of expansion beyond the single, individual self’s narrow boundaries.
What takes Christian theology beyond the boundaries of Tolstoy’s understanding of faith, nevertheless, is that the former does not merely build upon faith, but also explicitly and affirmatively rejects pessimism. Christianity does not concede the pacifist, negative trend of realism that fosters indifference to any grey dimension in human existence. One can likely say that Christianity stands on a middle-ground between Schopenhauer’s extreme pessimism and Tolstoy’s extreme reliance on the metaphysical dimension of being. It confronts pessimism without sacrificing its appreciation of the valuable role of realism in reading the present state of living, on one side; and it takes the notion of faith, the act of belief, beyond the state of supernatural submission, construing faith a power of revolution and change that stem from a realistic and objective perception of reality, on another.
Between the descriptive, realistic pessimism and the intrinsic state of belief that seeks an ultimate, supernatural telos from-without human existence, Christianity proposes the theology of hope. It argues that ‘hopeless realism’ is just a moment of psychological release of intrinsically accruing loads of despair, frustration and helplessness. Yet, it also states that ‘hopeless faith’ is just a religious confidence in supernatural, private ideas that are hardly rooted in human history. Without hope, as Juergen Moltmann says, faith vanishes; because it deteriorates and eventually dies.


Today, the contemporary Christian believer, in specific, and religious person, in general, seem to be swinging violently between pessimistic realism and intrinsic, privative belief that lacks tangible hope in a historical, or history-based, future. The majority of Christians would most probably agree about the problematic implications of pessimism. However, they may not all realize, or even consider as challenging, the fact that the individualistic, privative form of faith that is indifferent to the historical and communal realities of human life seriously lacks the truth of hope. There are many Christians who think that faith builds upon hope just because one of the components of the Christian religiosity is the believers’ waiting for the second coming of the Messiah and their anticipation of the last day at the eschaton, the end of times. One of the traditional teachings of the Christian church(s) states that the believer should hope for God’s interference in history at the end of ages to exterminate the present heaven and earth and establish the ‘New Jerusalem’ that descends from heaven. While proclaiming this biblical promise, the church must always associate this proclamation with an explanation that the theological connotations of this biblical discourse lay beyond its literal structure and poetic and symbolic style. At face value, the biblical, tragic, symbolic language about the eschaton is enigmatic and vague for the human of today: it is puzzling rather than enlightening, it causes fear rather than confidence and despair rather than hope. Such symbolism drives the majority of Christians to marginalize the idea of ‘the Day of the Lord’ and to ignore the Christian teaching on the second coming; to an indifference, that is, to the hope about a coming better future created by God. For, why would the human hope for cosmic destruction and anticipate nihilistic condemnation? Would not such symbolic image of the eachaton bring us back, in a way or another, to a circle of existence and world-view that implicitly carries features of Schopenhauer’s negativity?
If life proceeds toward its inevitable, religiously certified annihilation, and since history is drawing near to its final abortion, why, and in what, should we hope? What good such a tragic, catastrophic eschatological image of the ‘End of Days’ offers to our historical life, since history still exists and we still dwell in it? If Christian hope lies totally and exclusively in the belief that God would eradicate Evil and brokenness only at the end of times, is not the church, then, calling the world to suffice with infertile waiting, vigilant withdrawal and passive indifference? Moreover, is not such totally futural approach an indirect allegation that the idea of hope has no real presence in present life and that one should confine herself totally to the belief in the last day and to rely obediently on a God who neither relates to history or approaches it positively?
What does ‘the idea of hope has no real presence in present life’ means? Linking hope strictly to what will happen at the end of history alone means a denial of any possibility of change in the present, real history. It means replacing this real history with an elimination of the present and a total denial of historicity per se, because the God of history does not include the present in his salvific view of time. ‘The end’ here only connotes annihilation and death, not change and new beginning. This, however, is not what Christian thought suggests. When the community of God asks its Lord’s salvation from weakness and evil and seeks His freedom and righteousness, it does not expect this to happen by means of life’s annihilation, but through the change of its nature, of its being. Being creatures implies our inability to experience and perceive anything that lay beyond the boundaries of the structure of life itself. We cannot speak about ‘lifeless-ness’ because we hold no rational conception about such a notion, and we cannot cognize any meaning for such a notion that does not stand within the boundaries of reason alone. The same applies to our conception of time. We cannot perceive time except as temporal creatures. And, since we are temporal creatures, we cannot cognize the idea of ‘timeless-ness’ apart from time as such. Be that as it may, when we hope for the second coming of God in Jesus Christ in history, we hope that God would change the nature of history, and not to annihilate it. Rather than annihilation and destruction, the incarnation is God’s entrance to history and His dialogue with it: God redeemed history and transformed it. Christian hope is based on the notion of change (transformation), not annihilation, on freedom from alienation from real life (redemption), not on condemnation of life. Our God is the God of the living, is a living God, the source of eternally infinite life. There is no faith without hope, as there is no pessimism without annihilation.
The Christian theological understanding of hope, therefore, should be structured on the notion of ‘change’. This notion as such is historical in nature. To say that a certain state would change means that there would come a time when this state would no more exist as it is now. It will, that is, become a past and will be followed by a new present. For us, who live this state and hope for its change, this anticipated present is a future that has not happened yet. The awareness of the possibility of the existence of such a futural state in reality does not originate apart from the idea of hope. The truth of hope, in turn, requires a principal awareness of the existence of the possibility of change, which the human can experience and live within the framework of time. This is why Christianity refuses Fukoyama’s claim that history has reached its end, because such a claim ignores the two dimensions of hope and change. Apart from the human’s awareness of what we call ‘change’, the human cannot realize the reality of hope. And, without hope the reality of change has no realistic manifestation or tangible incarnation. If we deny the truth of change, the present would turn into an endless, eternal time that transcends historicity and even eliminates it, for without change history as such does not exist, and this makes the present, eventually, a non-human state of being. Believing, for instance, that the state of suffering is a universal, atemporal state demise the human’s awareness of the state of suffering per se, because it places this state beyond the boundaries of human thought, and, eventually, beyond the realm of the notion of hope.
The notion of hope, therefore, is organically related to the notion of change. And, the notion of change is linked to history and temporality. Thus, hope is linked to history and temporality too. Hope is hoping while standing in history, and not outside or over-against it. It is a belief in the change of the present state in the coming future. And, as long as there is change this indicates that humans can experience hope and realize it in time and within history. Our hope about the end of the suffering state and our experience of deliverance or salvation mean that the truth of suffering is not cosmic, absolute or eternal, but temporal, circumstantial and present; and there will be a futural time that will become a ‘present’, wherein this state would be replaced with a reality beyond suffering.
The idea of change is related to time, at least within the framework of the human awareness and cognition of this idea. The idea of changelessness, on the other hand, is related to non-temporality. Thus, the human awareness of hope is a historical and temporal awareness. Our hope about the future departs from what happens in history, and then it moves forward towards the change that will also happen in, and to, history, and not after it ends. We believe and hope that the evil present will change here in our lived time, and not only after death. This is what the paschal resurrection of Christ proclaims to us. It is the hope that occurred in history, changing the state of crucifixion, turning it into an event from the past.
We cannot as humans think of a change we hope for after death and the elimination of the world. We are this world that we hope for its elimination. Without time, we are not able to perceive change in history, since we build knowledge upon an encounter with known things within a temporal framework. The human cannot have hope in the divine future except within the process of historical change. The Christian hope does not, therefore, focus only on the end of days, when earth and heaven would no more exist. The majority of Christians acknowledge this last theological idea without totally or fully perceive its content, because this idea designates a divine action beyond the limited realm of human, historical awareness. Nevertheless, the Christian hope which we can experience and perceive as humans is the one that can envision the change that might happen in the midst of the broken present, paving the way before us to live a new historical situation. Our hope, accordingly, starts primarily from the divine incarnate God in Jesus Christ and ends ultimately in the depth of the divine Creator in His eternal trinity.
Jesus Christ is the historical God, who entered into the mechanism of the notion of change and created within us, in the midst of time, an awareness shaped by hope. We cannot truly understand the creedal statement ‘and we hope for the resurrection of the dead’ apart from an objective, historical condition of death we can interact with humanly. In addition, we cannot truly understand the statement ‘we hope for the resurrection’ apart from an objective, historical state of resurrection we can interact with and express by human thought. This is what establishes our presently experienced hope on the power of the state of the resurrection that God revealed in Christ and Christ personally lived as a new radical and unexpected change in the heart of life.
The community of God, who lives in a state of hope, does not seek an image of change that descends down from beyond time and the historicity of life. As well as it does not limit itself to the state of groaning and pleading for the fast coming of the end of days. If the community of God limited itself to this latter state, it would undermine the presence of God in history and marginalize the incarnation and the resurrection alike. In our living of the state of hope, we search for a change that lies within the boundaries of the meanings of the resurrection. The resurrection is the Christians’ mirror for viewing time and witnessing history. It is what makes us realize that the suffering of the present is just a temporal and not a cosmic state. It convinces us about trusting in the value of hope, for it reveals to us that hope is our path towards a realistic and not a yotopic change: a new state that will turn evil into past and salvation into a present proceeding towards the future.
This dynamic nature is inherent to the substance of history, as itself a creature in the image of God, as it is constitutive of a state of time that is immersed with the eternity of God. In his book on the concept of time, father Henry Bullad tackles the relationship between time and eternity. Following the scholars of the eschatological methodology, Fr. Bullad argues that the misunderstanding of time concurs with another inaccurate interpretation of the notion of eternity. Eternity, he continues, is neither a stage that succeeds and replaces a previous stage called ‘time’, nor a stage that starts after God ends the stage of time, as we may imagine. Eternity is not just a state of metaphysical changelessness and staticity. It is, rather, a reflection of God’s presence in His dynamic, live and creative being in the midst of the temporal nature history. The presence of eternity in the midst of time, which happened in Jesus Christ, fr. Bullad says, turns time up-side-down and totally redefines history. Instead of a hope directed towards an eternity, the world of which we would meet after the termination of history, we have a hope oriented towards a history baptised with the presence of eternity (God in His full dynamicity); a history into which enters the eternity of God and heals its presence, leading it to the door-steps of a future drawn by God’s ever presence with us. History is neither mere waiting nor an inevitable, fatal destiny. It is the state and context of change and renewal, which God certainly creates inside the substance of His creation. The time of the living being, of the human creature, is a creative time that moves and drives things forward. Christian hope is based upon the belief that the eternal realm of God is effectively present in history; it dialogues with it and changes its finitude. God, thus, is influentially present with the human of history, dialoguing with him and sharing with her the experience of change and progress.
The Christian churches’ general puzzlement about, and undermining of, the doctrine of the second coming (eschatology) stems, as Juergen Moltmann says, from a contemporary, popular belief that this doctrine is irrelevant to the lived time and to history in its substantial relation to human nature. Eschatology is in fact a theological discourse on the Christian hope of change and on considering this hope as an experiential factor we encounter in life, and not only after its end: in the midst of this life that is under the mercy of death. Eschatology means “the doctrine of Christian hope that includes the subject of hope and the state of hoping it creates.” Our awareness of what is called ‘the state of hope’ is connected to the mechanism of reasoning that is limited to the means of human cognition. We cannot understand ‘state of hope’ if it remains mere abstract idea, without objective and experiential implications. Our understanding of hope is linked to a historical subject, whether this subject is what we hope for its change or what we hope to be. Eschatology links between our historically-shaped cognition and the notion of hope. It plays the role of the theological identifier and introducer of the concept of ‘change’ on the basis of living this latter and experiencing its truth as we sew it in the resurrection of the crucified, dead and risen Jesus Christ. Eschatology does not drive us outside a hopeless time. It is, rather, a significant theological Christian view that takes us right into the heart of the inferno of time and discloses before our eyes that the present is not a static entity. It reminds us that change is substantially inherent to history. This penetration into the depth of life is hope at its peak. By his resurrection from the dead, Jesus took us into the heart of the state of temporal death and revealed to us that one of the substantial characteristics of life is the change that sometimes takes place by means of death. Christ’s resurrection is the cry of hope that creates within us the action of change. It raises us from the states of despair, defeated-ness and retreat from the world and involves us in God’s salvific and liberating action.
There is hardly an attention to eschatology, and there is rarely any active and balanced teaching on the theology of hope in the Middle Eastern Christian context. There is no real change, therefore, in the Eastern Christians’ understanding of the meaning of ‘historical presence and role’ in relation to the progress of human life, whether in the Middle East or in the world. Hope has turned into a hostage of an atmosphere of tragic passivism flourishes only in the context of radical, fundamentalist Christian communities. These communities do not offer a reliable or complete theology on hope and the Second Coming. It merely calls enthusiastically for alienation from the historical reality, appealing to God in heaven and passionately begging for the day of the final judgment. Who sits still waiting for this end, imprisons himself in stagnation, nostalgia and imaginary thought, and undermines action, perseverance and fight for the cause of building the human and society. Ripping the church of its theology of hope marginalizes the spirit of change that characterizes the truth of the resurrection. And, ripping off the religious faith its power of change is an expelling of the human being from the space of God’s creation; the creation, that is, that is mixed with the yeast of time. The hope that is structured on the notion of ‘change’ is the missing link between the realist understanding of the world in its historical progress and the teleological belief in an ultimate, absolute good that will happen metaphysically. Eschatology is the missing link between anthropology and the doctrines of christology and the incarnation, even with the doctrine of God. If this link continued missing, the Middle Eastern churches’ faith in Jesus Christ will remain lost between Schopenhauer and Tolstoy.

The Beginning of Wisdom is…Getting Real!

When Rudolf Botlamnn spoke about mythology in religious thinking and presented to scholarship the notion of ‘demythologization’, he rumbled the Christian theological scene. Yet, he also wiped a very think layer of dust off theology’s understanding of existence. Bultmann believed that whether Jesus of Nazareth existed once in history or not is not what really matters for the believer in the first place. What matters is what this Christ’s event means to the person in today’s reality, in the real ‘then’ and ‘here’ of being (Dasein). Thus, coming to terms with the meaning of the event called Christ in reality means actually coming to terms with the ‘real’ in this event; with this event’s core-reality. Be that as it may, ‘demythologization’ does not mainly state something about Christ’s historicity or non-historicity, but rather designates a concern about inviting the human to encounter reality and to be his and her Dasein via encountering in faith the event of Christ.

In this sense, demythologization is an invitation for standing in the real realm of existence; in the Da-sein, the ‘then’ and ‘here’ of the real world, of the realistic context of existence. The beginning of wisdom is, therefore, demythologization. It is just the beginning. Yet, it is the real, inevitable, even inescapable, beginning: demythologizing one’s self, one’s life, one’s belief and one’s disbelief alike, one’s view of the world and one’s relationships with the others. It is not an attack against historicity (Boltmann never said he is against the Quest of the Historical Jesus. he just thought questioned its relevance and structural textile). It is, rather, an invitation for existing historically, as well as, nevertheless, an invitation for realizing historicity by means of realizing that reality is what it is in its Dasein, not what one imagines it to be (mythologizes it) in one’s own mind. The same principle is applicable to the human position in relation to the world, to God, to disbelief in God, to the other etc. Demythologization means discerning the difference between these entities and their truth in one’s idealist mind (i.e. a difference that marks a distinction between Heidegger and Hegel, or between Boltmann’s disciples themselves: Käzemann and Konzelmann, on one side, and Ebeling, on another.)

When Jesus of Nazareth sent his disciples in mission, he asked them to enter the houses and reside therein. Yet, if came a time when their hosts happened to reject them, they should go out, wipe the dust of the city off their sandals and never look back. A strange, even provoking, demand from the one whose life and destiny are believed to reveal forgiveness, other-concerning and out-reaching spirit. One expects the Nazarene asking his followers to have patience, forgive their opposing hosts, to try again to win those who rejected them to the cause and to spend further time in the city to convince its people about the Kingdom of Heaven. To the contrary, Jesus said “who refuses you, refuse him back. Who says to you ‘get lost’, say back to him ‘get lose too’ and the erase the traces of your visit to his place completely of your clothes.” What is this really? It is a demythologization of the image of the Kingdom and the attitude of the people about it in the mind of the disciples. He is telling his group “do not have illusion about the definite and certain success of the Kingdom’s mission. If people rejected it and refuted you, which is natural and would happen anyway, carry on, do not look back and do not fight back upon stubborn imaginative expectations. Failure is also part and parcel to the reality of our cause.”

Demythologization is what humanity needs to survive from the plethora of nihilism our imaginative illusions are driving us through: modernist illusions about the superiority of human reason and knowledge and power, as well as postmodernist illusions about the superiority of communication and relatedness and globalization. Getting real is the beginning of wisdom, the beginning of living in the ‘here’ and the ‘then’ of history, in order to travel beyond it. Demythologization of reality is the beginning of making it, of its being.

But, Why Writing Ever?

Once, I was asked: “how would you like your life-journey to end?” I said then: “I would like to die while sitting at my desk, reading and writing.” I still have the same wish and the same imagination, though my wishes are becoming gradually sort-of nice dreams clustering together as a herd of beautiful thoughts one entertains but never eventually owns or achieves.

The question of my relationship with the act of writing haunts me. It has always done! Not because I am a first-rate, perfectly prolific writer, but because I am sort-of addicted to writing. Words and sentences and lines have kind of a spell on my soul. In my poems, I expressed perpetually my wish to be free from writing. On the other hand, failing to publish every written work my fingers and pen produced, especially those which I believed to be publishable, should have, presumably, pushed me away from writing. But, just to the very contrary, the further I fail, the further I write.

It challenges me deeply the fact that Jesus left no written text whatsoever. He seems as cannot care less about writing. And when he faces us with this fact, we force on his story of the stoning of Mary Magdalene a claim that while the crowds were rioting, Jesus was writing with his finger on the floor. Where did we get this image from, when the biblical texts do not state so clearly whatsoever? Jesus was not a writer, though he does seem to show at some occasions that he reads; he has, that is, an interaction with written materials sometime, somewhere. When it comes to writing, Jesus is free, pen-less, paper-less, and even wording-less.

Is this because he himself was ‘the Word’, as Christian Faith proclaims, and words are written by someone; they do not write themselves? But, the eternal Word did not become an incarnate text (opposite to the Islamic view of Qur’an), but an incarnate, infleshed being, a human with ‘Da-sein’. So, Jesus was not even per se written, despite being ‘the Word’. I wish I can hear Jesus’ opinion about writing. I wish I can ask him: “why didn’t you write? What do you think of writing? Have you ever written anything: words, ideas, dairies, poems, letters…anything?”

I wonder if writing is related to love, though. Is it possible that Jesus has no space for personal, private love in his life because he himself became the space for life to redeem itself by means of the love of its Creator? I cannot prove it. Yet, I can say that writing in my case has always been linked with the concept of ‘love’: personal, ideal, general, social, spiritual, etc etc. My act of writing has always been baptized with the truth of love, obsessively immersed with it; it was as such an act of love. By this, I do not mean the content of the writing action/event or the addressee of what I write. By ‘writing is an act of love’ (or even is a Dasein of love) I mean the state of writing as such: I write in love, I write out of love, I write to love, I write love, I write as someone in love. It does not matter anymore whether one writes or not words of love; whether one writes ‘I love you’ or never does. This cross of writing is a fate of love: almost a ‘to be, or not to be’ state of being (yet not necessarily Shakespearian one). So, to be or not to be is not ‘the question’, not any more in fact. It is rather ‘the writing’, ‘the love’ we need to survive. Something Jesus was not in need of, was not per se, because he was not focusing on survival or even on living; leave alone on dying. To write or not to write/ to love or not to love, this is the question.

Writing is my survival. And, when to my friends, who ask me “how are you?” I answer “surviving” I mean actually “I am still writing”, or even worse “I am still loving.”