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The Row Boat"Had we but world enough, and time..." * A Series of Impressions2/24/2005 18:03:30To pass the endless time I have been looking at excerpts from Sayyid Qutb's "The America I Have Seen," an account of his time studying pedagogy in the United States of the late forties. Qutb was an Egyptian, and his thinking went on to form the groundwork for Islamicist movements throughout the Arab world. My interest was most especially drawn to Qutb because much of his time was at the Teacher's College in Greeley, Colorado, which is near where my grandfather and much of my mother's family originated. It is a silly and beautiful place, with mountains on one side and Nothing on the other, a great emptiness of drought that extends toward the Nebraska border. Surely we have all by now heard our culture condemned in one form or another by the "extremists." And as perhaps expected, that is exactly what Qutb does. America's only virtue, in his eyes, is its industry and ingenuity with sytems. All else, the civilization, the virtues and sensibility, are in his eyes utterly void. Religion is superficial and unedifying. Sexuality is primitive. Even the haircuts are ugly. NPR's response to "The America I Have Seen" is cleverly dismissive, and I think in many ways that is perfectly fair. By their account, Qutb is really talking not about America in truth, but instead the dangers in the assumption of American values by Egypt. This may well be true. And indeed, this reading is playing by the rules. Qutb is harsh and generalizing toward us, so we are right to be toward him. That is the general tendency and the nature of the present public understanding that informs this impending "clash of civilizations," so to say (for a blog to make you itch, see jihadwatch.org). We throw simplistic stones back and forth. Yet there is something ripe and interesting about this moment; the chance, quickly escaping, to glance at ourselves from a wholly different lens. To wonder at what mundane assumptions of ours seem utterly repulsive to the other. And wonder if about something, at least, they might be absolutely right. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
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