Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/720024
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 28 AUGUST 2016 15 the weakness of the Syrian elite and as witnessed throughout the Arab Spring, the weakness of the left in the Arab world, mainly in Syria and previously in Egypt. We are the witnessing the weakness of the left all over the world." Khoury says that following the collapse of the Soviet Union, eve- rybody thought social democracy will win the battle but then social democracy became neoliberal and destroyed itself. "The left has no right not to re- invent itself because the left is the only tool to defend the people… The incarnation of this weak- ness and defeat of the left is an interior defeat, an auto defeat. It's not only an intellectual issue, it comes at a big price and this price is blood." If the left cannot write a new narrative, Khoury says, "then we have no narrative." "In Syria there was a popular revolt, where hundreds of thou- sands were killed and impris- oned. Protests were oppressed by tanks and then the world went silent, and the left was unable to read this. During the first nine months there was a civil demo- cratic opposition with leftist ten- dencies but this leadership was killed by the regime and then the doors were opened for the Saudi and Qatari sponsored militias and Iran." For Khoury, Islam is part of the equation but religion is not to blame for the unrest in the Mid- dle East and terrorism in the rest of the world. He draws inspiration from the nineteenth-century Lebanese writer Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq who for a while lived in Malta where he translated the Old and New Testaments into Arabic. Khoury talked about the au- thor's fractured identity: Al- Shidyaq was born into a family of Maronite Christians in 1805, converted to Islam, and later rediscovered Christianity on his deathbed. He was then buried nor in a Muslim not Christian cemetery. "I like him, he is my teacher. I see no difference between reli- gions." He says blaming religion for the cycle of death in the region is tantamount to blaming Chris- tianity for the Crusades, some- thing which no serious historian would conclude. Khoury, born a Lebanese Chris- tian, says there's no denying Is- lam needs to change. "Nineteenth century schol- ars tried to modernise Islam but all reformists were defeated by Wahhabism with money, through the help of the US and imperialism and the defeat of the Arab World in the 1967 six day war." Winston Churchill had once said that he would create a state wherever there is an oil well in the Gulf and Khoury says that to understand the region one must analyse each State. "We need to analyse their mon- ey, how their money was never used productively but only used to build mosques and spread Wahhabi ideology. Only then can we seriously discuss whether the reason for unrest is religion or socio-economic and political factors." Quoting a character in his most recent book, Broken Mir- rors, I ask him whether any cause is worth tormenting ourselves over? "In 200 years time, historians will look back at the Arab-Israeli conflict and they will say 'Oh my God what madness' in the same way we do when we look back at the Crusades. 200 years of occupations, wars and mas- sacres. This is evil, the banality of evil. History is banal and un- fortunately we are agents of this blindness." Interview Lebanese writer Elias Khoury is one of the leading lights of Arab literature and he says that the Israeli occupation is classical colonialism built upon a rational and cynical project of ethnic cleansing revolutionary