Newsletter No. 1212
Information-Announcement
December 4, 2008

 

THE JAPAN CENTER FOR MOROCCAN STUDIES INAUGURATED IN SAPPORO

As we introduced in Shingetsu Newsletter No. 1198, a new institution called the Japan Center for Moroccan Studies is opening in Hokkaido. The basic purposes of the institute have already been profiled in that earlier Newsletter, and here we review the inaugural ceremony of November 29th, which I was fortunate enough to be able to attend personally.

Some of the key people in this project are Professor Shoji Matsumoto, Dr. Elmostafa Rezrazi (Shingetsu Member No. 2), and Professor Kei Nakagawa (Shingetsu Member No. 13). The program was held entirely at the Sheraton Hotel in Sapporo. The main event was entitled “Morocco as an Emerging and a Hybrid Society within the Mediterranean Context.” The main speakers were Moroccan Ambassador Abdelkader Lecheheb, Professor Nakagawa, and Dr. Rezrazi.

Ambassador Abdelkader Lecheheb’s presentation was of the most direct interest to the purposes of the Shingetsu Institute, as he profiled both the historical and contemporary relations between Japan and Morocco. He started with Ibn Battuta and Wakwak, and moved forward from there. He made several important points about Japan-Morocco business relations that I did not know, and which I will investigate in a future Newsletter.

Kei Nakagawa presented a very detailed paper on the theme of “The Moroccan Approach to Development and Human Security.” In sum, she profiled the development of Moroccan economic policy since independence, with a particular focus on measures to reduce poverty. Her main point seemed to be that the Moroccan government has been taking increased cognizance of the importance of bottom-up approaches to poverty alleviation.

Elmostafa Rezrazi drew attention to what he called the “switching linguistic universe” of Morocco, which incorporates Arabic, French, Spanish, and Berber as major languages. He argued that this context created a kind of flexibility in the Moroccan worldview in spite of some degree of Francophone elitism that is also to be found in the country. He then extended this discussion to an examination of the concept of “identity management” and how this affects Morocco’s regional foreign policies.

After the three presentations, there were briefer comments by the two designated discussants, myself and Lahoucine Rahmouni, a counselor at the Moroccan Embassy in Tokyo. After the discussants spoke, the floor was briefly opened up to the twenty or thirty audience members in attendance.

Later in the evening, many of the participants went up to the top floor of the Sheraton Hotel for a nice dinner and discussion. We divided ourselves into a smoking table and a non-smoking table. As a fairly militant non-smoker myself, I knew my place immediately. It turned out that Ambassador Lecheheb was also a non-smoker, and so I had the chance to get to know him a little. We got along very well as it turned out. I have no idea what they were talking about at the smokers’ table, but the discussion seemed to be friendly and animated.

Abdelghanie Ennam (Shingetsu Member No. 196) requested to meet with me and Dr. Rezrazi for breakfast the next morning to discuss the coverage of Islam at the Shingetsu Institute. We both welcomed the suggestion, and met in one of the hotel’s ground floor restaurants. It turned out that several other Moroccans were there at the same time having breakfast, so several non-Shingetsu Members also participated in the discussion.

The discussion was energetic but friendly, and each person highlighted their own views and suggestions. From the on-list commentary that broke out yesterday, readers of this newsletter already have a taste of some of the issues that were addressed. From my own point of view, what was decided was a confirmation of something I’ve tried to say many times. Namely, that I’m just one little guy out here and cannot possibly hope to cover all aspects of Japanese-Islamic relations based entirely on my personal resources. Others must pitch in with their concerns, views, and information in order to make the Shingetsu Institute’s coverage more comprehensive. The “check and balance,” as one participant put it, is that others are welcome to speak and criticize my presentations when they feel that I am not getting it right. I don’t promise to agree with every criticism thrown my way, but I do guarantee that I will hear out -- and allow all of us to hear out -- the cases made by those who are dissatisfied with the coverage of the Shingetsu Newsletter in some respect.

At any rate, I welcome the establishment of the Japan Center for Moroccan Studies as one of our sister organizations. Indeed, I will be serving along with Shingetsu Members John Edward Philips and Alex Calvo as a member of the new institute’s “Mixed Scientific Committee.” Moreover, Dr. Rezrazi and I are discussing ways in which the Shingetsu Institute and the Japan Center for Moroccan Studies may actively cooperate in the future. This is therefore highly unlikely to be our last report about the activities of the newly-established Japan Center for Moroccan Studies.

COMMENTARY

Commentary related to this subject preceded the actual writing of the Newsletter.

1) From Abdelghanie Ennam of Hokkaido University on December 3, 2008:

I dont know! Anyway! I waited for you to report and inform the rest of the group of the Japan Center for Moroccan Studies (JCMS) inauguration news, and to relate to them to the serious and good discussion / meeting we held on Sunday morning at Sheraton Hotel in Sapporo, but you did not, maybe because you are busy with your classes. I wonder! Or is because it does not matter to you that such a very important, a very fundamental thing, as Islam and how to approach it was considered, although you launched and called your Shingetsu Institute (SI) initiative "Japanese-Islamic Relations" (JIR). How ironic! Islam and Muslims are the cornerstone of such an initiative, but unfortunately one cannot see the seriousness and the use your beloved word "factuality" required for an academician in his / her dealing with his / her subject matters.

Isn't JMCS at the heart of your JIR? How come you, the SI Executive Director, did not send a report of its developments, although you took lots of notes while key speeches had been delivered, and you were singled out by the chairman and given the floor to say a few words. I wonder!

I also wonder why you did not report the results of the meeting about the image of Islam, and the most appropriate ways to approach it, and about the very important issue of the criminalization Islam by referring to it to criminal acts perpetrated by some people who only hallucinate that they are Muslims, whereas God only knows the religious truth!

The meeting was attended by an Ambassador of an important Islamic country, Morocco, which is supposed to be a major part and focus of the Shingetsu Institute mission. You -- as a historian as you defined yourself repetitively -- the writer Rezrazi, Dr. Jbara, and myself, reached a major result in that you took my point and acknowledged your mistake with reporting on the Iranian drug dealers story, and that SI will be more careful vis-a-vis the biases and stereotypes inhibiting the Western mindset and world view regarding Islam.

SI should not forget that Islam, the Islamic World, and Muslims are the subject matter of its initiative and therefore they must be given their due scientifically and "factually." SI should not forget the significant and valid points, corrections, explanations, and re-conceptualizations many scholars have contributed to the issue of the treatment of Islam. All this was not raised only to be forgotten and treated as nothing. We will not be silent, and no one and nothing will silence us in our mission to pursue scholarly, intellectual, scientific, and factual accuracy in dealing with Islam and Muslims. SI should not ignore this if it is specialized in JIR.

I request SI not to close its eyes to this issue, and perhaps regard the whole matter is a passing fancy. I request it again to look more seriously into its definitions of things, to distance itself from the fallacious Bush-terror approach to Islam, to distance itself from the parochial narcissistic mindset, and to be critically open to all sources, paradigms, and systems of thought in this world. SI, if it takes an interest in Islam, should not deal with it as an abstract epithet and / or as a misinterpreted reflection of a few criminal acts by a few people of Muslim origin.

Most Americans voted for Obama because he raised the flag of change and convinced US voters of the total failure of the Bush ideology and the aims behind his war on Iraq and Afghanistan and what he wrongly defines as "terrorism." Bush used Christianity to justify his lost wars and fake causes. He engaged in propagandistic discursive rhetoric about freedom and democracy, and he drove the US and the whole world to an unprecedented economic crisis and increased insecurity, rather than bringing about the peace and stability he long preached about. His religiously-motivated ideologies behind his unnecessary wars and his definitions of Islam and terrorism have proved totally bogus, as he himself seems to have testified in his latest inteviews on ABC and other media outlets. The future will no doubt reveal more. I advise SI not to fall prey to such views, to say the least, with its misguided conceptions.

We will continue writing and speaking loud as long as these outdated biases and prejudices continue to shape certain mentalities and ways of thinking -- if not on SI, we will do it elsewhere.

2) From Michael Penn of the Shingetsu Institute on December 3, 2008:

I must begin to prepare for today's classes in a moment, but let me briefly address the issue of timing as raised by Abdelghanie Ennam. I have been planning to make a review of the opening ceremony of the Japan Center for Moroccan Studies (JCMS) tomorrow, December 4th. Yes, my free time has been a little short due to my recent travels and need to take care of business that has piled up in my absence. Tomorrow's Newsletter will cover some, but not all, of the issues raised by Dr. Ennam, but he and others are encouraged to bring up relevant matters that they feel I have been neglecting -- but let's always keep it connected to Japan in some way.

3) From Samuel Noumoff of McGill University on December 3, 2008:

Bravo, Dr. Ennam!

Your rage is applauded and rest assured that there are many in the non-Muslim world who share your sense of historic injustice and revere the enormous contributions of Islam to philosophy, science, and human culture.

Having said this, may I respectfully suggest that Michael Penn, whom I have never met, is not your enemy. The SI, to my knowledge, has never laid claim to perfection and to the contrary struggles as do all of us for greater precision in our conceptualization. There are far more important targets among the intellectual neocons and their acolytes, and they should be targets of our collective fury.

4) From Elmostafa Rezrazi of the Japan Center for Moroccan Studies on December 4, 2008:

I was shocked by the way that one of our colleagues presented his arguments in such an aggressive fashion. This made me a little bit sad since I do not feel comfortable within rigid and emotionally-oriented debates. It may be that words are being used that are unintentionally insulting. We should not allow exaggerated phrasing to overwhelm the ideas themselves.

I would like to say that the debate that we had on the Sunday morning, November 30th, in the Sheraton Hotel in Sapporo was fruitful in the sense that it demonstrated how Shingetsu is hosting a wide range of opinions and views. In this context, my colleague Michael Penn was trying to be even-handed in the debate, and to understand how to manage the balancing of the categorization of issues published by the SI Newsletter. I did not understand that he had an obligation even to report the discussion. Indeed, personally I was thinking it was an off-record talk, and not by any means an extension of the online debate of the Shingetsu network.

Venturing further, I have to confess that I am not in agreement with Dr. Ennam arguments on this occasion. I cannot accept the notion that Shingetsu should only cover the "true representatives" of Islam. Indeed, I cannot identify in real life or even intellectually precisely who such ideal representatives should be. It is true that Islam as a religion is pure, sacred, and divine. But here at Shingetsu, we are dealing with real-life Muslims, Muslim organizations, Muslim countries, and actions towards the Muslim world either inside the geographical territories of Japan, or else affected abroad by such connections.

In a paper that I published in 1999 on the mechanisms of political identity-building of the Moroccan Islamic group Al-Adl wa al-Ihsan (CIS, Princeton University, February 1999), I made it clear that when the leader of the group, Shaikh Yassine, established his own vocabulary (calling the revolution qawma instead of thawra, the kingship Al-Mulk al-Hadud instead of simply Mulk, and the change Al-Ihsan instead of at-Taghyiir or al-Islah), he was in fact trying to establish boundaries that limited the debate to within his group's logic and within its mental borders' area of control. He then required that those who would like to make dialogue with him use the group's own vocabulary.

I am presenting this example just to clarify that Shingetsu should be open to different "languages" with the respect to religious values; and without allowing any of us to claim a monopoly of the one true knowledge, or to judge others' commitments. I would appreciate it if we should respect the ethic of dialogue, and keep in mind that we are colleagues -- perhaps even friends -- despite our disparities intellectually.

5) The Newsletter, authored by Michael Penn, appeared at this point in the discussion on December 4, 2008.

6) From David Adam Stott of The University of Kitakyushu on December 4, 2008:

It has been interesting to note that some of the participants pontificating in the recent debates about the category system in particular, and the Shingetsu Institute in general, have contributed little or nothing in the way of Newsletters. Surely all Members would benefit more if their energies were directed toward producing something of substance rather than just hot air.

7) From Abdelghanie Ennam of Hokkaido University on December 6, 2008:

My motivation is neither rage nor enmity-triggered, nor is it to emotionalize or sensationalize matters. We are not participating in SI for this. I do not know why the debate has taken this direction instead of contributing to reconceptualizations and the broadening of SI perspectives on, and approach toward, Islam and Muslims, which was my only objective in this case.

I am obliged to repeat myself. I have never called for SI to merely "cover the 'true representatives' of Islam." This is off-point simply because the issue was not raised by me. Actually, there is no room for sinlessness in Islam except for the Prophet Muhammad and the other Prophets who preceded him (Peace Be Upon Them All). Even top Islamic Sunni clerics never declare themselves to be sinless and God-inspired in their actions as, for example, Popes do in Christianity, or even such ordinary Christians as President Bush, who claimed to have received permission from beyond the stars to remove Saddam. This is another issue, which is not irrelevant to our debate, but that is not its original purpose.

My central interest in the points that I have made is simply to examine how SI can provide a much-needed example of an institution that does not perpetuate avoidable misunderstandings and intolerance-triggering biases, prejudices, stereotypes, and the like. I call upon all SI members to jump in and share their perspective for the achievement of this goal.