Saturday's Read: Khaldunism for a New Arab Culture

al-Ansari, Mohammad Jaber, trans. Riyad Y. Hamzah. Encounter of History and Modernity: Khaldunism for a New Arab Culture. (Authorhouse: 2010)



It is interesting to read texts that are translated by non-native speakers. Typical professional practice in textual translation is to have the final version produced or edited by a native speaker of the language of the translation, in this case English. But Riyad Y. Hamzah, by all accounts an extraordinarily gifted scholar, is not a native speaker of English, and it shows in his rendering of al-Ansari's work. Folksy, colloquial terms that are rarely used in highbrow academic tomes - words like "nowadays" instead of "currently" - are sprinkled throughout this translation, calling to mind the difficulty in explaining why "laughable" is decidedly not a synonym of "humorous" or "funny." Although this is just a sidenote - and a long one at that - the point of this introductory detour is to highlight an important, and increasingly analyzed, issue: translation is complicated. It involves a combination of familiarity with language - with grammar and vocabulary and idiomatic expressions - and also a familiarity with literature and culture, with allusions to great works and common parlance; an understanding of the familiar rhythms and unstated expectations of a cultural system. Good translation must not only seek to render the feel of the original, its tenor and syntactical balance (which makes poetry nigh on impossible to truly translate), but it also must be aware of the audience to which the translation is aimed and their cultural presuppositions and blind spots.

As a friend recently remarked:

When Europeans saw Oriental cities with maze-like narrow alleys, they said the cities represented Oriental irrationality. When Iranians built straight roads, one British officer said they were in accordance with "the stern, unswerving simplicity of the national character.” (Diary of Consul, Sistan and Kain, August 1927)

We have a tendency to understand and interpret information according to our own preconceived biases. Translation - good translation, that is - must allow for and anticipate this.

Bahraini philosopher Mohammad Jaber al-Ansari’s brief treatise Encounter of History and Modernity: Khaldunism for a New Arab Culture (2010). Al-Ansari (born 1939), one of the few well-known Arab thinkers from the Gulf, is known for his previous work seeking an innovative approach to Arab political philosophy. He is moreover known for his interest in parallels between the East Asian and Arab experiences of political modernity. Encounter is an unusual book in that it is written as an entreaty to a popular Muslim Arab audience, inviting devout, traditionally-educated Muslims to consider the intellectual breadth and depth of Ibn Khaldun, and calling for a new popular Arab prose that can express both poetry and “rational thought.” As al-Ansari extols Ibn Khaldun’s extraordinary intellectual legacy, he also calls directly for “Khaldunism” as an intermediary between Islamism and Arabism. He argues that just as Arabs can discover the roots of sociology in Khaldun’s thought, they can also find the roots of nationalism and a pluralist Arab state.