Abbas: In Whose Name?

Abbas: In Whose Name?: The Islamic World after 9/11 (Iran, 2009): 271 blz: Uitgeverij Thames & Hudson

 

 

Na zijn boek over militante stromingen binnen het christendom "Faces of Christianity", wilde de Iraanse Magnum-fotograaf Abbas een boek maken over het animisme. In een hotel ergens in Siberië zag hij op de televisie de aanslagen op het World Trade Center van 11 september 2001. Hij wijzigde zijn plannen en besteedde de volgende zeven jaar aan een fotografisch onderzoek naar de reacties op en de invloed van  11 september in de islamitische wereld.

Voor "In Whose Name?" reisde Abbas naar: Irak, Libanon, Iran, Afghanistan, Turkije, Israël, Palestina, Saoedi Arabië, de Arabische Emiraten, Jemen, Indonesië, Thailand, Kenia en Zanzibar. Evenals in zijn twee eerdere boeken die ik de afgelopen dagen heb gelezen en bekeken, combineert Abbas in "In Whose Name?" prachtige foto's met beknopte en zeer informatieve en inzichtgevende teksten. 

Citaten:

- Do we deserve the mullahs who govern us? Iranians are for ever denouncing the corruption of the regime; for instance, the fact that to be succesful in large business, you "have to have some beard" - be associated with a mullah, in other words. And that the religious institutions - which account for a significant proportion of the economy - exists outside all controls, being governed in ways that have more to do with the maffia than any modern form of management. We denounce them. But what do we actually do to change this rotten state of affairs?

- It happened every night. Six muezzins start wailing from the mosques that surround my hotel and I wake with a start at the sound of their harsh voices. In Yemen, the muezzins aren't simply happy to call the faithful to prayer as in other Muslim countries: this is more than that; this is a competition relayed by those blasted loudspeakers. The aim is to see who can intone the longest suras, then recite the dawn prayer - the entire prayer - as loudly as possible and follow it with yet more suras. What's behind this relentless outpouring? Is it meant to shame the non-believer? To shame the person who'd rather be asleep? Surely it's a kind of breaking and entering - but breaking into a person's most intimate space, his sleep and hence his dreams? I'm tempted to discuss it with one of the muezzins, to ask him if he realizes that his summons seem more likely noisy fascism than faith ... but what's the point? I know he'll say he's only obeying God's commands. And going to a different hotel wouldn't help: the old city is littered with mosques.

- I go back to visit a pondok, a Koranic boarding school, near Yala. The place is as wretched as it ever was. In complete contrast are the modern buildings housing a new training school for hafiz - those whose task it is to memorize the Koran. Here, some hundred or so young men are learning to recite the Koran phonetically, in Arabic, a language with which they are unfamiliar and which they will never speak, not even when they proceed to the next stage of their training and learn the meaning of the suras. This monumental exercise in futility has always amazed me: what's the point of a hafiz when a CD can do the job equally well? In an age of supercomputers, Internet communications, DNA testing and genetic engineering, what use is there - other than as an emotional prop - in a text that's been around for fourteen hundred years and that was originally intended as a step-by-step guide to living and surviving in the desert?

- If a man or a woman converts to Islam, that person is welcomed with open arms throughout the Muslim world. But if a Muslim converts to another religion it's lawful to cut off his head. Isn't that one more indication of the arrogance that makes it hard for other religions to accept Islam?

- I've been exploring religions, and particularly Islam, for almost thirty years, since the Iranian revolution which I began covering in 1978. My relationship with God has always been of a professional nature: it's not so much God who engrosses me as other people's perception of God and the unacceptable things they do in His name. Although I have never been on first name terms with God, or with any of His prophets, today I understand more clearly why others feel the need to be.

Net als zijn twee eerdere boeken is Abbas' "In Whose Name?" opnieuw een zeer indrukwekkend boek.

     

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