HOW READING EDWARD SAÏD IS ESSENTIAL TO UNDERSTANDING PRESENT-DAY FRANCO-BEBERIST IDEOLOGY

Edward W. SAID died on September 24th, 2003 of leukemia. Born in 1936 in Jerusalem (Palestine), he was a Literature Professor at Columbia University, New York, teaching notably the subject of Comparative Literature. His works, particularly his book on Western orientalism, titled ORIENTALISM: The East in the Eyes of the West, reveals his deep understanding of his time, but also of universal culture. His rejection of the theory of the clash of civilizations, proponed by Western neo- conservatives, was based on political analysis but also more essentially on a high conception of humanism, of which he said this:

"... humanism is the sole act, and I would venture to say, the final act of resistance that we have to fight against the practices and the inhumane injustices that disfigure the history of Humanity."

In his broad intellectual work, he was able to light the deadlock of a reductionist approach to imperialism, reduced to its sole political-military and economic dimensions. Without under- estimating the weight of arguments of the geopolitical mercantile type, Edward Said has underlined the importance of representations of the world, of ideologies, of cultural alienations in the domination of the North over the South. From "the universal civilizing mission" in the colonial discourse of the 19th century to "the clash of civilizations" of the present warrior rhetoric of the Empire, we witness the same ideological resorts which identify the Western with the Universal and disqualify the very principle of cultural diversity.

Edward Said has shown that another world was possible, that another perspective could be put forward: that of a universalism based on the plurality of histories, of geographies and imaginaries. In his book Orientalism, Professor Edward Said unveiled the basis of Western cultural domination over the Arab nation. He has notably shown that some orientalists have hardened the difference between the Islamic period (14 centuries) and the pre-Islamic period (100 centuties). It so happens that it is here that lies the KEY FOR UNDER- STANDING the root of Berberism (as well as "political maronitism" in Lebanon or "Coptic pharaonism" in Egypt).

The West manipulates Pre-Islam (reconstructed for its own purposes) against the Islamic period. The role of our patriotic historians and intellectuals now is to undertake a reppropriation of OUR pre-Islamic past, and even its valorization, doing this from an Arab-Islamic civilizational perspective. The nationalist historian Tewfiq el Madani has already shown the way in his book on Carthage. The same with Fairouz, the diva of the Arab Nation, who sang Al-Qods in a quest for freedom, for liberty, and Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra. Despite the present crises, despite the decadence, we have an exceptional history, incredibly productive of sense.

The Berberists have a fraudulent claim over the pre-Islamic past of Algeria. WE HAVE A CLAIM OVER THE PRE- ISLAMIC HISTORY OF ALL THE ARAB NATION, FROM NUMIDIA TO ASHUR, FROM YEMEN TO CARTHAGE, FROM PETRA TO SOUDAN, FROM AKKAD TO NEJD. WE CLAIM THE WHOLE ARAB NATION, WITH ALL ITS GEOGRAPHY, WITH ALL ITS HISTORY.

(traduit en anglais par Okba Rahal)