My favorite civilization is definitely the English, they are unrivaled in the way they've transformed themselves and what is especially remarkable is how the elite have generally managed to keep the people in line (obviously shit like peasant revolt/Jacobian uprising) happened but for the most part the elite kept control and still do. They didn't go through bloodbaths like their neighbors the French. My favorite thinker is Edmund Burke, I love his hesitance, conservatism (in the sense of respect for traditions) and views of representative democracy. And I agree with WaaliCas call for intellectualism, it's one of the things that I'd say two of our most preeminent intellectuals (Said Sheikh Samatar [AUN] and Ahmed I. Samatar) recognized:
AS: The moral of your analysis, then, is this: since we are and will be Muslims for the rest of time, and we’re proud of that, we have to ask the question as to what kind of society we want to build that is capable of participating in the ways of the hyper-modern and globalizing world.
SS:Absolutely. You put it more articulately than I could. You’re right. Look at Western societies: they talk about the separation of Church and State. That’s a fallacy. Religion is intimately involved in the political as well as personal processes. But the genius of the West is that they gave religion a space in the debate, but they also gave Reason a space in the debate. So the two are in this creative...
AS: Dialogue.
SS: Dialogue.
AS: All the time.
SS: Yes. What I want, what I aspire for Somalia—in fact it is our intellectual responsibility—is to create that space in which you can bring the faith into dialogue with reason so that before the day is over ignorant Mullahs will be run out of town.
AS: I have seen this in the Islamic world; Malaysia and Turkey, for example. I took a group of scholars to both countries. I saw the coexistence at the universities of science and religion in a productive engagement.
SS: Yeah, each has a space
It's weird how prophetic this was (Al-shabab started in 2006 and this interview is from 2005):
AS: Because there’s nobody interested?
SS: There’s nobody interested. Possibly the only thing that I think would bring in world attention is that a genuine Al-Qaida camp devel-
ops in Somalia. If that happens, the West will change their minds. But absent that...
AS: Or the Somalis speak with a different voice that is mature and, therefore, can convince the rest of the world that they are ready to help themselves. But that has to be an organic voice, one capable of envisioning a different kind of a future and willing to fight for that future—but needs help.
SS: You know, one of the tragedies during this period of our loss and dislocation is the failure of intellectuals. Because we belong to kingroups, though we don’t care and don’t see it ourselves. But the reality is otherwise with the masses. They all see us as belonging to a blood-group and promoting their agenda. That’s how the common man sees us. As a result, the intellectual, the Somali intellectual class has been discredited. Then there is the European involvement. Huge mistakes that could have been avoided! Like how the entire United Nations Pakistani troops massacre was handled. If only the international community was taking advice from Somali intellectuals. But because we have discredited one another, the world community stopped paying any attention to us. So one of the challenges for the future, we’re talking about the future role of the intellectuals, is first of all to prevail upon the international community to stop insulting us by ignoring us. It is our land. For better or worse, we are the national brain trust of this country. We are, therefore, key actors. Before they initiate any kind of activity in Somalia, we want them to speak to us first. But in order to prevail in that argument, we have to have our civil society of intellectuals.
AS: The present condition and the future of Somali Studies as an intellectual enterprise. How would you characterize it, where do you think it ought to go?
SS: Now, here is where I’m optimistic. I think that Somali Studies has mushroomed from a cottage industry to a mass-consumer production. There is now a good crop of Somali professors. Scholars are popping up everywhere. I was astonished recently when I was in France...
AS: In Paris?
SS: In Paris, the number of scholars I didn’t even know, some in upstate New York, some from other parts of the world. Scholars are every-where and are getting better. Intellectuals like you, let’s face it, have set a kind of an example of a culture of serious scholarship. One may not like a person, but the value of his/her work ought not be denied. This is one of your major contributions to a maturing intellectual culture among the Somali intelligentsia. For instance, when I had my incident in Somalia and the strongman General Aideed, thinking that I was a front for an American invasion of Somali society...
AS: You went with a major news medium (ABC News) to help them understand the history and the culture and the context as an expert.
SS: Yeah, correct. But he, General Aideed, not being educated in a system with separation between the press and the government, was immediately suspicious. He had no conception at all that in the West, most of the time, the press is indeed critical of what the government does. He thought that when he saw the press and the cameras, I was being installed as...
AS: An American man in Mogadishu.
SS: Correct. As a result, he threatened my life and I was rather quickly and unceremoniously...
AS: Rescued?
SS: Rescued by Americans. Now I will not name names, but a number of Somali intellectuals rejoiced: “Ah, finally Said Sheikh Samatar had been humiliated! He had it coming.” [laughs] You know the one dissenting voice? That was you! And we were not necessarily on good terms at that time. In a nutshell, you said (and this I learned from reliable sources), “This is disgraceful! A Somali intellectual is driven out of his country and we are rejoicing in it. No, I don’t want to be part of that, this is a shame.” That’s what you said
AS: Well, if that is happening to Said, it’ll happen to the rest of us too, I thought
SS: Publishing houses! We didn’t have that. We didn’t even have a handful of intellectuals who had a society of their own, which is, by the way, what I’m thinking maybe we should be working on now. I mean this! We should have a civil society of intellectuals.
AS: We will come to that in a minute when we discuss the needs of the future. But your point about the deep backwardness of Somali
culture and society with regard to the ways of the modern world is undeniable. Is there anything else you want to add about the paucity of advanced education?
SS: Somali civil society, because of its lack of sophistication, could easily be vulnerable, easily be taken advantage of by the likes of Siyaad Barre. He hoodwinked us! And the moral to me is troubling. The dark side expresses itself in three areas: one is the harshness of a pastoral society. Now I shouldn’t call modern Somalia a rural society. There are parts with settled people, but the majority has been pastoral. The primary occupation is how to live day to day. This has created a mentality of every man for himself so that self-interest became a natural-like behavior. Even those of us now in the cities have the pastoral curse in us. Individualism and greed are a dangerous brew.
AS: Almost barbaric?
SS: Barbaric! I will come back to that. The other is excitability, inordinate excitability. Richard Burton in the 19th century saw this first. He observed that Somalis were so inconsistent that, within a second, their mood could change from a state—he says in more elegant words—of amicable joviality to a state of rage capable of murder. He called it a strange transition. Very excitable people, particularly when one feels offended, with little attention to consequences of that act.
AS: We are short on deliberativeness?
SS: Deliberativeness is the word; we don’t have that. And third, I think we are also very vain people. Think of Anglo-Saxon pragmatism. A
pragmatism expressed in words like, “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” This is crude pragmatism that enabled the Anglo-Saxons to conquer the world. On the other hand, with the Somali even the smallest of a slight will provoke him into violence, even into murder and mayhem. This is most troubling to me, because we being an egalitarian society, egalitarian necessarily means anarchy and with no cultural mechanism that enables us to respect seniority, talent, or achievement. In other words, a rare Somali can bring another Somali into cooperation unless there is an immediate self-interest in it. For example, I’ll tell you this, not that you need to be reminded of it, because you know it well enough, when we talk about warlords—and that’s a misnomer in the Somali situation.
