The war on error
The title of this essay draws inspiration from the insightful words of Nobel Laureate African-American author Toni Morrison. In her essay, "War on Error," Morrison alludes to the corrective measures enacted by the Church in the 15th and 16th centuries to rectify those who deviated from the prescribed belief systems. Organised religion, in those times, ensured that apostates were "severed from the world by death" (The Source of Self-Regard, Pg 28). This historical discourse remains a part of the monastic curriculum, and we continue to commemorate our graduation ceremonies with its lessons. In her essay, presented at an Amnesty International event, Morrison passionately argues that we are in dire need of another campaign against ignorance – "A deliberately heightened battle against cultivated ignorance, enforced silence, and metastasizing lies." She maintains that the time has come for a new curriculum to curate "the life of the moral mind" and "free spirit," asserting, "No more apologies for a bleeding heart when the opposite is no heart at all. Danger of losing our humanity must be met with more humanity. Otherwise, we stand meekly behind Eris [i.e. discord], hold Nemesis's [i.e. revenge] cloak, and genuflect at the feet of Thanatos [i.e. death]."
The call for a revision of the curricula resurfaces in an article in The New York Times, titled "The Moral Deficiencies of a Liberal Education." Its author, Ezekiel Emanuel, is evidently shocked by the support for the Palestinians in many of the liberal arts schools in the US, most notably Columbia University. Emanuel finds a lack in the education of the students, saying, "We have failed to give them the ethical foundation and moral compass to recognize the basics of humanity." He goes on to add, "What is in our curriculums? What do we think it means to be educated? What moral stands are we taking? The timidity of many university leaders in condemning the Hamas massacre and antisemitism more generally offers the wrong examples." Emanuel's solution is to revisit the core mission of liberal arts so that students don't make "patently uneducated and alarmingly immoral declarations."
The West prefers to have a monocle to measure its moral compass. It believes in constructing consent through lies and tales. I was telling my students about the story of the Western hero Odysseus who blinded the one-eyed monster Polyphemus after getting him drunk. While introducing himself to the cyclops, Odysseus, clever that he was, mentioned his name as "nobody." When the monster cried out in pain, his friends asked from afar what was going on. Polyphemus could only say, "Nobody is killing me." His friends took it as a joke, allowing the Greek hero to complete his act of violence.
Emanuel's response is targeted at the growing protests against the Israeli genocidal counterattack on Gaza, following the terror attack on Israel. The indiscriminate killings of Palestinian civilians, many of whom are children, have drawn heavy criticism from the civil society and campus-based activists. Many Jews who don't identify themselves with the Zionist act and vision of Israel took part in these protests. Two leftist Jewish groups, Voice for Peace and IfNotNow, are campaigning on an avowedly anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian platform. They even blocked the White House, protesting the ongoing "genocide by making use of the Jewish fears of another genocide [against Jews]." Author and social activist Naomi Klein said, "We will not let our fears of antisemitism be manipulated in this way."
Joining this protest rally, Brant Rosen, a rabbi from Los Angeles, said they were witnessing "one of the most consequential moral moments that any of us will experience in our lifetime… [Future generations would ask] Did we act, or did we stand idly by while genocide was committed in our name?" Rosen is part of a "conscientious" group that has been labelled as "self-hating Jews" or "not Jews" for their moral positions. This group is asking a very political question: "How long is the US going to keep covering up for Israel's crimes and paying for it?"
It is interesting how the war is being waged on two different fronts. On the one side, the vendetta mission is on where Israel has dehumanised the Palestinians as "human animals" to justify their complete eradication. On the other side, the discursive iron dome of Israeli intelligentsia is busy airing defence missiles against any liberal ideas that would see both Israelis and Palestinians on equal terms. In these divisive times, Gandhi's words of wisdom, "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind," seem to have lost their resonance.
The West prefers to have a monocle to measure its moral compass. It believes in constructing consent through lies and tales. I was telling my students about the story of the Western hero Odysseus who blinded the one-eyed monster Polyphemus after getting him drunk. While introducing himself to the cyclops, Odysseus, clever that he was, mentioned his name as "nobody." When the monster cried out in pain, his friends asked from afar what was going on. Polyphemus could only say, "Nobody is killing me." His friends took it as a joke, allowing the Greek hero to complete his act of violence.
Five hundred civilians who took shelter in a hospital and a UN refugee school were bombarded by the Israelis. Then the discourses changed. Maybe the weapon of mass destruction was a stray Hamas missile. Nobody killed those 500 Palestinians. The total death toll has crossed 4,000 and counting. Israel has confirmed about 1,400 deaths in the Hamas attack on October 7. The world is waiting for the raging revenge to blow off steam. The initial sympathy that it had is likely to lose ground given the disproportionate use of violence.
The root cause of the violence will once again come to the fore once this dust storm is settled. Colonisation. Israel's occupation of territories and desire to parcel all Palestinians as Arabs to the neighbouring countries have become blatantly clear.
The humanitarian response brewed in the liberal arts settings and locations, where true democracy and freedom of expressions are practised, are guided by this moral stance against colonisation. No wonder, Zionism has found its opposition in liberal arts. The veiled threats are to stop free expressions.
We are too afraid to speak up because we don't know when and how a nobody will vilify us as one-eyed monsters, make us drunk with its spirit, and mutilate or mute us in the process. The us and them camps are becoming dangerously hostile. Then again, when a six-year-old boy in Illinois is killed and his mother brutally stabbed by their landlord just because they were Muslims, we wonder who is right, and who is wrong. When will this war on error end?
Dr Shamsad Mortuza professor of English at Dhaka University.
Views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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