Foreword
Terza Pagina World and Al Jadid: an International Cultural Club.
by Rina Brundu
I met Elie several years ago while surfing the Internet. We kept in touch since that time and often Elie contributed to Terza Pagina's issues with articles from Al Jadid. Recently we came to agree that if people meet there must be a reason - spirits that are very much alike do meet and it does not matter where their physical bodies live.
Myself and Elie share the same experience of emigration to an English speaking country. We share the same love for our birthplace. We both work in a different field from the one to which our soul seems most attracted to. We both have made of our sites the HOME of those same souls and the place where we meet our dearest friends....
Indeed, spirits that are very much alike DO meet and look forward to meeting many others...
I wish to thank Elie for his brief essay (below) which he wrote especially for Terza Pagina World's readers (its italian translation can be found here), as well as for the many articles he contributed to this very special issue of our magazine. Many thanks Elie and... until we work again together, may God keep you in the palm of HIS hands.
Rina Brundu
Dublin
18.04.2009
Al Jadid’s Purpose—‘The New’
by Elie Chalala
One salient feature of Al Jadid lies in focusing on “the new,” as the name Al Jadid means in Arabic. This correctly suggest that Al Jadid has distanced itself from tradition, if tradition means indiscriminate safeguarding of the past. We in Al Jadid cannot be a voice of the past because the past could mean oppression of minorities, of the poor, of intellectuals, just to name a few. We are a forward-looking publication rather than an apologetic one, celebrating the critical and the humane in Arab and Arab-American culture.
Born in Lebanon, I spent my teenage years in Beirut and immigrated to the United States in 1972. I studied political science at UCLA, and published articles on Middle East issues in professional journals, books, and national and international publications such as the International Herald Tribune, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Boston Globe, The Humanist, Free Inquiry, among others. I am currently an associate adjunct professor at Santa Monica College in California, where I have been teaching political science since 1988.
I have been asked many times why a political scientist would publish a cultural and arts review rather than some sort of a political science review. Although I am neither a poet nor a novelist, I have always been interested in arts and culture. But any personal reasons for my interest in publishing are secondary to the major reason, which is the exceptionally poor coverage of Arab arts and cultures in the Western media, mostly in the U.S. and to a lesser extent in Europe.
The coverage is an important factor but so is the timing. When I published Al Jadid in 1995, the Cold War was over, which led me to assume, naively so, that politics had retreated somewhat to the back burner, and that interest in culture and arts has gained more momentum. Of course, all this evaporated after the events of September 11, 2001 and the war on Iraq in 2003.
The events of September 11th have presented us in Al Jadid with a pain and challenge. It struck a severe blow to the accomplishments made in recent years by Arab Americans toward correcting centuries-old stereotypes, both of themselves and Arabs in the Middle East. I feel this blow acutely, for one of Al Jadid’s goals is to share with the English-language readers the wealth of Arab culture and arts, contributing to the goal of correcting common misunderstandings about the region and its peoples. We have approached this difficult task through book, film, music, and art reviews, intellectual debate, poetry, and other short works of fiction, offering an all too rare view through the eyes of our best writers of this besieged part of the world. Unquestionably, this task has become more difficult. Non-Arabs will ask more questions and demand more convincing answers from us and the many other individuals and organizations who have devoted years of their professional lives to advancing an alternative to the orientalist stereotype of the Arab.
Neither the setbacks posed by the events of September 11th nor the war on Iraq discouraged us in Al Jadid. The will to continue is sustained by many factors –
the Arab world still has wars, civil strife, censorship issues, vestiges of the colonial mentality; and here in the U.S. we still have the demonizing and marginalizing of Arabs.
Given the “rebirth of politics,” we were also asked how we can avoid politics since politics is at the roots of demonizing Arabs in the West and sustaining dictatorship in the Arab world. In Al Jadid, we were fully aware of the importance of politics but chose to approach it differently – politics in Al Jadid is covered via culture and arts. A book about politics, a film about human rights abuses, a political intellectual debate, all these and others are covered in the pages of Al Jadid.
Many observers have noted that literature tends to provide an escape from political repression anywhere in the world. Since most Arabs live under authoritarian regimes, literature remains a primary area where individuals can escape the yoke of the state to express themselves. Thus by exclusively focusing on arts and culture, Al Jadid has incorporated this observation into its coverage approach of the Arab cultural scene.
Our goals in Al Jadid have always been the same since the magazine was founded in 1995. These include introducing the English readers into the Arab cultural and artistic scene, providing them a substantive picture of creative productions and creators, with special emphasis on the freedom of conscience and expression. Unfortunately, the censoring and prosecuting of intellectuals and artists consume a substantial part of our coverage, and this is due to the dominance of the authoritarian state whose tolerance of plurality of opinions remains limited.
Equally important to us was to dispel the notion that the main trend of thought among Arab intellectuals is not Islamic fundamentalism but rather secularism. Unquestionably, fundamentalist religious forces had influenced the cultural activities and discourse in the Arab world, but nevertheless, secularism emerges as the dominant trend of thought in Arabic works of literature. We felt this fact needs to be covered in English.
Important in our coverage also has been the translation section which has been growing steadily. Decisions on what to translate are based on the text’s importance to the English-reader and the importance of the theme of the text itself. We publish regular reviews and overviews of the latest Arabic-language books in English, which makes Al Jadid a valuable source for scholars and librarians.
Providing coverage of the productions of Arab-American writers as well as serving as one of the many vehicles to publish their works is central to Al Jadid’s mission. The quality of this literature has undergone change, professionally and thematically. Professionally, more and more Arab-American writers are emerging as a match for mainstream writers. The reader is increasingly introduced to works that tackle taboo themes like sexuality, domestic abuse, and other topics that cannot even be brought into the open in some Arab societies. These trends are very encouraging and promising of good works to come.
Feeling that we have accomplished some of what we set up to do lies in the connection we have established throughout the past 15 years with a readership that plays an important role in influencing public opinion, namely our subscribers, who come predominantly from academia with an interest in Arab-Islamic studies and other professional fields.
Where does Al Jadid go from here? Al Jadid’s immediate plan is to continue to grow, qualitatively and quantitatively. It is imperative that we are present online as much as in print, if not more. Much of our energies are now geared in this direction. We have introduced many changes which made our digital and electronic presence visible. For example, we introduced a secure online subscription which made it easy for readers to subscribe. A digital issue of Al Jadid is also available for subscription for a lower price than the print version.
Soon, the Al Jadid website will have a new look, thanks to a new webmaster who is working on revamping the site, with a complete revision of its pages and page content. The site will publish exclusive online content on a weekly basis to ensure that our readers get the latest news and views about Arab culture and arts. Among the new website’s features is a permanent column: “In case you missed it! The cultural view from within and without the Arab world.”
Finally, how has Al Jadid survived financially? Al Jadid has been a labor of love. People who work with us donate their time generously. Al Jadid’s sole revenue comes from subscriptions. A limited number of advertisements are confined to cultural and artistic products. But neither subscriptions nor advertisements match the human capital that is largely donated to Al Jadid – the contributions of authors, artists, editors, proofreaders, and the scores of interns.
by Elie Chalala for Terza Pagina World.
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