The New Era: Arab Decline Revisited……..
I got a private comment about my earlier posting that Arab don’t read anymore. The person disputed my assertion. I have thought about it for 2 minutes and I have concluded that not only they don’t read anything serious (besides religious stuff), but they also hardly write anything worth reading. The elites almost never say anything worth listening to either. Actually Arabs stopped writing seriously and reading seriously after the death of Egypt’s Nasser. It could be just a coincidence, but it seems to be true: the decline started with Sadat and accelerated with Mubarak.
After that, the era of ascendancy of the Salafi ideology, boosted by petro-money, started. Arab literature has taken a grim departure from its earlier freelance approach. Arab literature is not written for readers anymore, there is no money in that because they don’t read. It is now written for the potentates and tribal princes. The era of absolute tribal monarchs is upon us.
The decline has been in all aspects, not just literature. The exception being in the petroleum states, in my native Gulf, where material standards have improved greatly. Real literacy has worsened even in the Gulf region with its resources and its “Culture Festivals” and the Book Fairs where at least as many books are banned as are allowed..
See, I was right in my earlier posting.
Cheers
mhg
Mon Email
Comments