Writing in chaos
When even heads of government are making pronouncements on the basis of false reports, at what point will it become possible to write perceptively about the horrific events of the past two weeks?
For several years starting 20 years ago I taught a course titled ‘Islam in the Modern World’ at the University of Calgary and elsewhere in North America. I found that I was not able to use the same teaching notes each year after first composing them in 2003. Between courses the situation in the Muslim world could seem to change so dramatically, and along with it perceptions of Islam in the West, that I would need to significantly revise my materials.
Today I write after two weeks since first hearing news of the October 7 Hamas violence. If I taught the course ‘Islam in the Modern World’ again this year, I would need to revise my teaching notes once more — both for Islam and for the modern world. At this point, I am finding it hard to say whether the more significant new material would be about the Middle East events or the Western responses.
Even after two weeks it still seems too early to me to write something meaningful about the new situation. The writing of my Islamic Studies colleagues on the events, especially on social media, strikes me as at best premature and at worst badly mistaken. How can one write perceptively about the events on the basis of false reports (which, in the case of the Canadian government, were trusted until late this evening)? I suspect, however, that the last two weeks will give birth to a great deal of writing about Islam, as well as writing about what is presently being written about Islam, through the winter for certain and perhaps even for years to come.
In the meantime I left a big gap after my last newsletter, sorry subscribers. Quite honestly, I was struggling to complete what I had set myself to do, which was to analyze a pair of YouTube interviews that Jordan Peterson recorded with British Muslim polemicist Mohammed Hijab in 2021 and 2022. I found Hijab’s claims and attacks disturbingly aggressive, and Peterson’s responses frustratingly inadequate. At the same time a deadline for an essay on the same subject for my friend Ron Dart’s Festschrift was sneaking up on me. In the end I discovered a key to the essay in Dr. Dart’s own study of Peterson. I hope to be able to share that content in at least a couple of newsletters in the coming months.