A useful<\/em> distinction; making us ponder, how different are they?<\/p>\n Apparently<\/em> useful; how do we get to, at this an sich<\/em> thing?<\/p>\n Old questions; maybe no new answers, but worth pondering.<\/p>\n To the West, Syria spells colonial history–by the West since 1916 more than by the Ottomans since 1516–and post-colonial history.\u00a0 Why?<\/p>\n Because history is a stage with West<\/em> in key roles as colonizers–Sykes-Picot in 1916 wrestling (Iraq and) Syria from the Ottoman empire into its own as French colony–and then as decolonizers, from France.<\/p>\n ‘Syria’ was actually more like London’s “Middle East”, the whole region; but the French used the name for the Picot French part only.<\/p>\n So much for the f\u00fcr mich<\/em> part, for West.\u00a0 How about the an sich<\/em>?<\/p>\n No definitive, final answer.\u00a0 And this “sich<\/em>” sounds suspiciously like some “\u00dcbermich<\/em>“, and what it means in practice is an expert<\/em>.\u00a0 As if s-he is not also some “ich<\/em>“, who has constructs her-his Syria.<\/p>\n No way to the “real Syria”?\u00a0 Wrong question, there are as many Syrias f\u00fcr mich<\/em> as there are mich<\/em>; and as many an sich<\/em> as we define.<\/p>\n Like temperature and pressure exist also without physicists studying and measuring, with their fixation on [OC-760mm].\u00a0 They chose that.<\/p>\n And we can choose our Syria, and what we want to study about it.<\/p>\n Like physicists, we can use our senses to sense Syria, looking, listening, smelling, touching-feeling; relying on the inter-sensory,\u00a0 like sight and<\/em> sound confirming its extension, and inter-subjective communication, I-Others confirming that they sense Syria the same way.<\/p>\n There is my Syria.\u00a0 Your Syria.\u00a0 Our Syria.\u00a0 Many Syrias.<\/p>\n My Syria is profoundly Muslim, run by the imams.<\/p>\n The imam has one leg in the mosque, chanting, calling for prayer from the minaret as what the West calls a priest; and one in the Sharia court, as what the West calls a judge.<\/p>\n As that both-and is unknown in the West, West has difficulties seeing both.<\/p>\n And my Syria is profoundly Ottoman; 400 years with tolerance for the other religions of the kitab<\/em>, and for non-Arabic minorities.<\/p>\n Wanting to learn “what Syria is about today” I want them to tell me directly; not indirectly, in writing or orally, via “experts”.<\/p>\n So, going to Syria, what touched my senses?<\/p>\n Colonial and post-colonial history shaping the future, of course.<\/p>\n The contradiction between Alawite, Shia minority under the Assads in power, and a Sunni majority well above the magic 50%, of course.<\/p>\n The contradiction between Russia’s huge only base outside former USSR, granted by Assad in return for protection, and US, of course.<\/p>\n But over and above that I was touched by something unexpected and fundamental: a country in deep dialogue over “what is true Islam”.<\/p>\n A dialogue at a level far above this author, but two positions were easily understood:<\/p>\n The Salafi position: true Islam is what the Prophet said and did as patriarch in Medina, from the hegira<\/em> in 622 till his death in 632.<\/p>\n The theological position: true Islam is found in the Qur’an<\/em>.<\/p>\n There is something subversive in the contrast: could the Prophet, possibly, have had positions, on some issue, contradicting the Qur’an<\/em>?<\/p>\n Or, maybe, and wisely so, no clear position at all, as on the question of how to identify his own successor?\u00a0 By blood, by election?<\/p>\n Leaving that aside, there is something fascinating in a country having a dialogue, meaning mutual search, by way of words, dia logos<\/em>, about the whole basis of their existence.<\/p>\n This author has witnessed something similar on a bigger scale: China, 1976-1980, four years following Mao’s death.\u00a0 Arne N\u00e6ss, the late Norwegian philosopher, referred to the countless encounters all over China discussing “Confucianism” as “the masses philosophizing”.\u00a0 Meaning searching<\/em>–for what, and how, maybe not so clear–mutually<\/em>.<\/p>\n Until Deng Xiaoping designed a new economy with the freedom to bypass cooperatives, marketing farm products in the nearest town thus reviving market systems and merchants.<\/p>\n But back to “Syria”, searching for the “real Syria”.<\/p>\n There is more to it: also the fertile crescent<\/em>, stretching from Iran and beyond to the Mediterranean, huge, immensely fertile.<\/p>\n And then the French crime, colonizing, usurping “Syria”, from a region and cradle of agricultural fertility to a patch of land colonizable from Paris.\u00a0 But the dialogue unfolding inside Syria over “true Islam” transcends by far such limitations.<\/p>\n How does the “Islamic State”, IS, enter in this?\u00a0 Maybe in two ways.<\/p>\n As a part of the State system, to counter NATO and a militarizing European Union.\u00a0 But present IS is too small for that task.<\/p>\n As an “Islamic caliphate”, designed to counter; to counter what?<\/p>\n A Saudi Arabia with its commercialization of Hajj–the pilgrimage for all the world’s Muslims (1,650 million), once in a lifetime, to Mecca–with a huge hotel where rich people can watch, and pay for watching.\u00a0 By bringing the hajj back to the ordinary very poor Muslim pilgrims.<\/p>\n In so doing the IS Islamic caliphate seems to transcend the Shia-Sunni divide as Mecca-Medina are for both.\u00a0 In other words, there is world history unfolding in what the US tries to reduce to a winnable warfare against some IS soldiers in Syria and Iraq.<\/p>\n In all this only one thing is certain: Syria, once out of the French colonial bottle, cannot be forced back into that bottle again.<\/p>\n An educated guess: the new name for the “Middle East” is “Syria”.<\/em><\/p>\n __________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n My Syria is profoundly Muslim, run by the imams. And my Syria is profoundly Ottoman; 400 years with tolerance for the other religions of the kitab, and for non-Arabic minorities. Wanting to learn “what Syria is about today” I want them to tell me directly; not indirectly, in writing or orally, via “experts”. So, going to Syria, what touched my senses?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-127440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127440\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/johan-galtung-brown.jpg\")
<\/a><\/em>Johan Galtung, a professor of peace studies, dr hc mult, is founder of <\/em>TRANSCEND International<\/a> and rector of <\/em>TRANSCEND Peace University<\/a>. <\/em>He was awarded among others the 1987 High Livelihood Award, known as the Alternative Nobel Peace Prize.<\/em> Galtung\u00a0has mediated in\u00a0over 150 conflicts in more than 150 countries, and written more than 170 books on peace and related issues<\/em>, 96 as the sole author. More than 40 have been translated to other languages, including <\/em>50 Years-100 Peace and Conflict Perspectives<\/a> published by <\/em>TRANSCEND University Press<\/a>. <\/em>Transcend and Transform<\/a> was translated to 25 languages<\/em>. He has published more than 1700 articles\u00a0and book\u00a0chapters and over 500 Editorials for <\/em>TRANSCEND Media Service<\/a>. More information about Prof. Galtung<\/a> and all of his publications<\/a> can be found at transcend.org\/galtung<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"