By Hicham CHENTOUFI
By Hicham CHENTOUFI
Morocco World News
Rabat, June 24, 2012
Roger Garaudy’s death will certainly spawn an endless stream of reactions and conflicting emotions in the heart of his supporters and opponents alike. This matchless philosopher and objective thinker’s life was marked by great achievements that led to widespread acclaim and, at the same time, insidious abashment. But despite all, Garaudy’s death is a declaration of a new era similar to that followed the fall of the Berlin wall. This is because great thinkers constitute a landmark in the shrine of human history and intellectual progress. Thus his death can be a source of pain and joy.
It is a pain in the heart of those who are still walking on the ruts of Garaudy’s restless mind, which had moved from entirely different modes of thought and clashing beliefs. It is a joy in the heart of those who cling to specks of dust to overshadow the shining face of truth, claiming that there is no truth but the one package in their flimsy and shoddy wraps.
It is a pain and immense loss to those who still hold that there is always another way to look at the world and history, to approach what is deemed as true, to produce counter meaning and construct new realities. Those who don’t feel complacent with what they know and endeavor relentlessly to come up with new approaches to what has become a canonical truth as a result of hegemonic thoughts.
It is an effusive source of joy for those who put impediments in the face of the gushing stream of cultural interdependence and hybridism, bragging about their divine right to be superior. It is at the same time a pain for those who go to all lengths to demystify the primal myths that put history in sealed handmade historical boxes and handed it over for consumption.
It is a pain in every soul that goes beyond primeval loyalties, political affiliations and agendas in order to utter the sacred word “NO” in the face of the guillotine. It is an excruciating pain and tantalizing grief for those who still hold steadfastly to the idea that ideologies are manmade tools that aim at disfiguring the intellectual’s public role and performance within the patterns of patriotic bluster.
It is a pain for those who still unwaveringly believe what Edward said, “Universality means taking a risk in order to go beyond the easy certainties provided to us by our background, language, nationality, which so often shield us from the reality of others. It is however a joy for every ethnocentrist who deems conflict as the basic underlying psychological drive and give voice to Freud’s zealous declaration that Hannibal and Rome symbolized the conflict between the tenacity of Jewry and the organization of the Catholic Church.”
It is a pain for every impartial thinker and unbiased truth seeker who is ready to dissent and renegade his most cherished convictions when a state of ‘complete sureness,’ as Garaudy said, is reached. It is a joy for intellectual fakers who disseminate their humdrum ideas and turn them into common sense through fraud and interpolation.
Roger Garaudy can be an angry wound in the heart of every sentient and evenhanded thinker, but it is a calamity for Palestine and her sympathizers across the globe. It is a calamity for every rational human being who rejects the myths of shame that deceitfully go over the deeply rooted history of the land and people and declare that ‘Palestine is a land without people for a people without land.
Edited by April Warren
