Why Islam Cannot Be Modernised

Amid warnings that the fall of Aleppo may be just the start of “a bloodier phase” in Syria’s continuing civil war, I’d like to take time out to look at the work of Adunis ‘Adonis’ Asbar, universally regarded as the greatest poet presently writing in Arabic.

Although he champions Palestinian rights, Asbar - known by his pen-name ‘Adonis’ - has challenged Palestinian nationalism and hopes for a political solution that respects the aspirations of Palestinians and Jews alike.

“I am among those who seek the ills of the Arabs in their own history, not outside of it,” he says.

Indeed Adonis, Syrian-born and a long-time opponent of President Bashar al-Assad, hit the international headlines earlier this year when he claimed that Islam could not be modernised.

Respected for his particular understanding of the language of the Quran, he noted: “Arabs have no more creative force. Islam does not contribute to intellectual life, it suggests no discussion. It is no longer thought. It produces no thinking, no art, no science, no vision that could change the world. This repetition is the sign of its end. The Arabs will continue to exist, but they will not make the world better.”

Now aged 86 and a Nobel Prize nominee, Adonis divides his time between France and Lebanon. His personal friends include Israeli poets, Ronny Someck and Natan Zach. Adonis and Zach have even published a joint work together and when Adonis's work was published in Hebrew in Israel in 1989, Someck wrote a tribute poem that was added to the preface.

I conclude here with a piece that was translated into English by Shawkat M Toorawa whose notes may be read at:    https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/translator-notes/detail/49323.

The New Noah

1

                      

We travel upon the Ark, in mud and rain, 

Our oars promises from God.   

We live—and the rest of Humanity dies.   

We travel upon the waves, fastening 

Our lives to the ropes of corpses filling the skies. 

But between Heaven and us is an opening, 

A porthole for a supplication. 

"Why, Lord, have you saved us alone 

From among all the people and creatures? 

And where are you casting us now? 

To your other Land, to our First Home? 

Into the leaves of Death, into the wind of Life? 

In us, in our arteries, flows a fear of the Sun. 

We despair of the Light, 

We despair, Lord, of a tomorrow 

In which to start Life anew. 

If only we were not that seedling of Creation, 

Of Earth and its generations, 

If only we had remained simple Clay or Ember, 

Or something in between, 

Then we would not have to see   

This World, its Lord, and its Hell, twice over."

                         2

If time started anew, 

and waters submerged the face of life, 

and the earth convulsed, and that god 

rushed to me, beseeching, "Noah, save the living!" 

I would not concern myself with his request. 

I would travel upon my ark, removing   

clay and pebbles from the eyes of the dead. 

I would open the depths of their being to the flood, 

and whisper in their veins   

that we have returned from the wilderness,   

that we have emerged from the cave, 

that we have changed the sky of years, 

that we sail without giving in to our fears— 

that we do not heed the word of that god. 

Our appointment is with death.   

Our shores are a familiar and pleasing despair, 

a gelid sea of iron water that we ford   

to its very ends, undeterred, 

heedless of that god and his word, 

longing for a different, a new, lord.

Source: Poetry (April 2007)

Natalie Wood (17 December 2016)