What is implied by the concept of ignorance in a Kurdish context? What is intended by ignorance in its Kurdish framework? Do the Kurds have an ignorance that is specific to them alone and not to others?
Perhaps there is something in that which ought to be affirmed, as long as every people has its own particularity: a spatial and temporal belonging.
And to learn is to be at a level of ignorance directly proportional to what we learn.
What is worthy of being named in this case? In our meetings, in workplaces, in university corridors, in our cultural centers, and in seminars directly related to theory and practice in knowledge.
What is this hat that the Kurdish head carries, and the rate of disappearance within it?
Looking at the visible, through the consumption of the latest goods, the acquisition of everything industrial and electronic, from the “dream” car to the latest mobile phone in its generation and brand, and wearing the newest clothes—all of which collectively point to the West, meaning they celebrate the hat—but what head is actually being examined inside the hat?
Is there something that necessitates reinforcing such a statement, namely: (Submitting to the principle of sanctity in understanding our history has vacated the field for Western historians to research it as they please) “1”.
Why is religion defined, and its boundaries expanded, in a Western manner, more than it is understood as a concept, a presence of values, and a history?
Because religion, in its fundamental formation, carries a human imprint, and everything in it is directed toward humans in its content. Consequently, speaking of it as if it is separate is a paradox in itself, for how can it be defined when it is separate?
Religion, as it is known, is its history. Any ignorance of it, in its foundations and transactions, does not concern it but rather concerns those who speak in its name, as if they are tasked with guarding it, so that the discussion centers on them and not on religion, which has become religiosity.
In this way, directing the gazes of those considered believers toward the sky becomes a continuous inauguration for those who rule on earth and dominate society, to achieve more personal gains, all while not hiding that sacred ignorance which is easy to view in terms of color, size, and role. For (the jurisprudential system, the product of successive generations of jurists… has consecrated the concept of institutional religion, which does not care about individual freedom or the independence of one’s conscience in understanding the faith…) “2”.
And jurisprudence, with its human lineage and the nature of its rulings, remains the living and eloquent witness to the paths of religion in time and space, how it was administered, and what was planned in its name, as opposed to the faith-based concept.
It is easy to say in this regard that the image of religion—its form, color, and its social, political, and cultural embodiment—is what shapes a living definition of the structure of societies and the structure of their social relations.
In the same context, it becomes correct to say that (societies that aspire to be primarily religious decide to reduce margins and deviations; they are thus doomed to permanent instability, because the demand for purity places every person in a suspicious and intolerable position.) “3”
In such societies, it is difficult, if not impossible, to rely on any written history in their name, because what is recorded here, in the field of tradition, the faith-based and hierarchical norm, translates only what is static and prevents seeing what is actually ongoing in terms of social and political activity and living human beings. Thus, we are faced with major paradoxes that are significant landmarks of the gap that is deepening civilizationally between what is taken as religious, in the narrowest immediate sense, and what is actually happening, the technically imported from outside.
In the complex presence of ignorance, any observer concerned with the reality of their society, their environment, their being, and the particular nature within it, can observe the connection of this ignorance to every small and large matter in society.
In this case, we are in a society of preaching that obscures facts, where the bet is on emotions, not ideas; on deferred and unseen promises, not those recorded in chronological account, where (preachers believe that the more they exaggerate in their preaching and ascend in their advice to the heavens, the more it calls for improving people’s morals and elevating them. The reality is that preachers and tyrants are of one kind. The latter oppress people through their actions, and the former oppress them through their words.) “4”
In a striking example in its content, Akram Jamil Pasha says concerning this ongoing reality: (If we exclude about ten respected scholars such as Khawaja Hamdi Afandi and Khawaja Komerji, there were hundreds of mollahs in the guise of scholars, and thieving, accursed, treacherous sheikhs…) “5”
This description is painful in its content, but it pertains to the reality of existing relations and the era in which Akram Jamil Pasha lived, and in his confrontation with those who politicized religion for themselves according to the measures of their own turban or hat, and with those in power in his time. He lived between 1891 and 1974.
We must ask about the account of both knowledge and ignorance, and which of them is more present than the other in society.
Of course, it is not possible to separate them, except in a society suffering from a tragic closure upon itself.
Their presence together is what keeps society on the front of history. The more the gap between them widens, the more it indicates the existence of hands keen on deepening this gap in favor of factions, sects, and creeds.
In such a situation, it is possible to affirm a blatant truth: the naming of ignorance, in its most violent manifestations, as the opium of the peoples. Because any psychological, intellectual, or even nervous strength is subject to reduction, being stripped of its power—i.e., its deactivation—even to the point of killing the body and confiscating the movement that stimulates it to activity, rendering it dead while alive.
Where ignorance turns into enlightenment to govern everything else, no power passes except through it, as in the concept of “sacred ignorance” currently “prevalent” here and there, and our need as Kurds to confront it, while enemies surround us from every side.
Observation and Enlightenment
What was expressed by an Arab intellectual living in Europe for decades, who realized in his later years the scale of the tragedy of his people and what he had lived through via his Arab culture that he carried with him, to settle in Paris and be nourished by its culture based on active ignorance or knowledge supported by stimulating ignorance—namely Hashim Saleh, who translated the Islamic thinker Mohammed Arkoun more than anyone else—brings us closer to the nature of the victims of violence in our societies, and for the Kurds in contrast. He says: (I will say it with all frankness and without evasion: had I not had the opportunity to come to Europe more than a quarter of a century ago, I would have lived and died without understanding anything. The European experience was decisive for several reasons. First, it allows you to distance yourself from your own self, your first environment, and your surroundings… Second, it allows you to master a modern European language filled with references in various specializations and sciences… Third, distancing yourself from yourself makes you understand yourself better… Finally, there is a fundamental reason that conditions all the previous ones: freedom of thought and expression, freedom of understanding and cultural breathing, so to speak.) “6”
He is the same person who previously said that the time difference between East and West is three hours, but historically, two hundred years. “7”
Where frankness accompanies enlightenment and the affirmation of personal self:
I pause at this point at the concept of enlightenment and its connection to the frankness familiar in our daily conversations and writings, but without knowing the qualitative nature of the cultural and intellectual content within.
The source I rely on in illuminating this living scene is what Michel Foucault (1926-1984) addressed through his lectures at the Collège de France centered on “The Government of Self and Others.” “8”
Foucault starts from Kant’s famous essay “What is Enlightenment?” of 1784, focusing on its content, as he links enlightenment to (the human being’s exit from his immaturity. p.49). It is an inability to confront oneself, to coexist with the other on an equal footing, as it appears.
Foucault’s intellectual standing in exploring the concept of the human being intended here is what shows us the type of ignorance that controls it. Immaturity is not natural, nor due to physical weakness, but rather (a kind of fait accompli, a kind of complicity, or a kind of coercion accompanied by a little deception and cunning, whereby some lead others, or lead the others… p.54).
Speaking of enlightenment calls for tolerance, which we often mention. It is negative in its value and societal return. Why?
According to Foucault’s tracing of it: (Tolerance is precisely what distances thinking, discussion, and freedom of thought in its general state, and does not accept—does not permit—except personal, private, hidden, concealed, and covered use, whereas enlightenment, on the contrary, gives freedom its most general and universal form… p.63).
Let us pause briefly at the concept of “frankness” (parrhesia), to which he devoted dozens of pages in his historical and philosophical approach. What does frankness mean? There is much that has been repeated here, and it is almost absent from the minds of many of those concerned with the human being and their value.
There is a set of sequential and integrated points:
Frankness is a way of telling the truth. Frankness is a specific way of telling the truth. p.83.
Also: The frank are those who accept death to tell the truth. To be precise, the frank are those who undertake to tell the truth at an unspecified price, but this price may extend to their lives. p.89.
Frankness is the ethics of telling the truth in its risky and free act, or its act that carries risk and freedom.
And: Frankness means disclosing the real. p.238.
Perhaps the conclusion of the book is the culmination of the idea of a human being enjoying that freedom in which knowledge and ignorance harmonize, where incomplete knowledge directs them in all directions and listening to others, while ignorance keeps them outside, and the pleasure in that is unparalleled by any other pleasure whatsoever—the pleasure of being filled with freedom, of preserved personal value, to be a producer of culture and a builder of history: (Philosophical frankness that takes place between teacher and student [in a Platonic dialogue] does not lead to a kind of rhetoric, but to a kind of pleasure. p.456).
I wonder, how many hundred years historically separate our society, to which we belong, from what the Frenchman Foucault concluded?
What is Not a Conclusion
Yes, ignorance is not the antithesis of knowledge nor separate from it so that they confront each other or each harms the other. Rather, it is inside it, active within it, and interacted with it, as lover and beloved. The true scholar is not like the one who bets on the activity of ignorance to increase knowledge. In knowledge, there is something hypothetical, responding to the reality of knowledge (always relative).
The paradox is that in the West, where we witness knowledge in its daily achievements—technical and human—with full recognition of the right of ignorance that is pointed to. The key to the West’s development, the growth of its cultural capital, even its values or human rights, and the recognition of the other (even concerning animals), is the affirmation that ignorance is the godfather of every new development in science, art, literature, and thought. Hence, there are no existing limits to what is scientific and epistemological; rather, what eliminates the ever-entrenched limits, yearning for the different and further discoveries. Religion, which is observed as heavenly, is examined, with all its components, and more books are written about it from this perspective, i.e., what makes the divine, the Lord, or God more illuminated in His name and the attributed powers, from this very perspective. Therefore, what Socrates said—”I know that I know nothing”—is the most authentic Western precursor, the enduring temporal witness to that. The West invents and discovers because it recognizes its sound ignorance, and because it is constantly alert to the exhaustion of this ignorance’s effect. The questions of science and knowledge compete more than the answers, where conviction is absent or steps aside in favor of historical knowledge, which is constantly open to the new. Listening to others becomes a hallmark of interacting with the different, searching for the unknown and the farther.
It is a direct notification of the deficiency present in the self, and the theory of relativity is the outcome of this relationship.
Thus, not knowing because we know without stopping is what naturally develops life in those societies.
As for societies that fossilize thought, restrict it with a definitive judgment, and consider every “innovation as heresy… etc.” through misinterpretation and mismanagement, religion lives its utmost estrangement, resulting in folkloric violence. Hence, purging violence, mutual repudiation, and hostility have been associated with this sacred ignorance and its symbols.
In our Kurdish society, there is no difference between it and other societies where ignorance, with its sanctifying characteristic, is a great virtue. However, what increases its tragedies is that it is governed by others and pays the price of this ignorance, which is invested by those who wish to enter history with a consciousness required of everyone, through that transparency that strengthens relations among all in their contribution to building a society that concerns them all. It is the society that feeds its knowledge by knowing more of what it was ignorant of, as understood in “imperfect induction,” so ignorance takes on another meaning: it urges the pursuit of knowledge and illuminates history through increase.
It is walking backward in history, and at the same time, the dangers grow, as is palpable from the scenes of fragmentation within Kurdish circles, even the most distinguished of them in academic achievement—a reduction.
Religiosity, which derives its strength from this sacred ignorance, becomes a narcotic for lulling minds and enabling domination over them, where the political and religious meet at the highest peak, through the manipulation of emotions.
In this shared discourse, what is read and repeated in the mosque meets what is delivered in the square on one occasion or another. We witness the extension of this influence, reinforced by sacred ignorance, in its divisiveness within the student and academic milieu, as long as the head is absent inside the artificial or borrowed hat.
In this way, as I have indicated, it is easy, as observed, to distinguish between two ignorances: between an ignorance to be emulated, because it resides within a single thought, a single feeling, a single concept, a single vision, at the moment of constantly affirming that there is a limitation in what is thought, felt, and presented as a concept. It is the beautiful relative that constantly strengthens the ties of kinship between what the mind contains of ideas, the deficiency in ideas, and the state of feeling as a confirmation. And another ignorance, the liquid and invisible elixir that represents the narcotic and destructive substance for the collective mind, besieging every enlightened mind that wanted to break out of the herd mentality.
The two ignorances are in the utmost state of conflict and responsiveness in interacting with the environment, life, and history, and they contribute to attaching the head to the hat if it is unable to represent itself and distinguish itself from the hat’s characteristic.
Especially in today’s world, where the existential challenge has become twofold in light of the changes.
There is no exit into the open air, into the center of history, into movement with the mind in the healthy body, except by keeping the head visible and getting rid of the hat that suffocates life within it. And no power is capable of doing that except by resisting what has become negatively entrenched due to sacred ignorance and its various forces: through inheritance and addition, and by making sacred thinking, which looks to the four directions, supported by questions that guarantee the safety of everyone exceptionally.
Yes, yes, yes: to know and to know more of what we know through the method of self-criticism—the great virtue of knowledge—is to be ignorant in contrast, and to know more because we have become more ignorant. Without that, there is no exit from the aspects of immaturity that Kant emphasized, and that Foucault enriched with his thought and the strategy of the desired. So how can the representatives of sacred ignorance, in a Kurdish context, recognize the immaturity they are in, and emerge into the light before it is too late?
Sources and References
1- Al-Alawi, Hadi: Conclusions on Politics and Political Thought in Islam, Dar al-Mada, Damascus, 4th ed., 2004, p. 15.
Submitting to the principle of sanctity in understanding our history has vacated the field for Western historians to research it as they please. p.15
2- Al-Jamal, Bassam: Sunni Islam, Dar al-Tali’a (League of Arab Rationalists), Beirut, 1st ed., 2006, pp. 101-113.
3- Roy, Olivier: Holy Ignorance: The Age of Religion without Culture, trans. Saleh al-Ashmor, Dar al-Saqi, Beirut, 1st ed., 2012, p. 180.
4- Al-Wardi, Dr. Ali: Preachers of Sultans: A Frank Opinion on the History of Islamic Thought in Light of Modern Logic, Dar Kovan, London, 2nd ed., 1995, pp. 48-55.
5- Jamil Pasha, Akram: My Memoirs, translation from Turkish to Arabic: Dr. Qadri al-Diyarbakri, linguistic revision and introduction: Fidan Adam, Beer, Diyarbakir, 3rd ed., 2007, p. 27.
6- Saleh, Hashim: Historical Closure: Why Did the Enlightenment Project Fail in the Arab World? Dar al-Saqi, League of Arab Rationalists, Beirut, 1st ed., 2007, p. 40.
7- He said this in the 1980s, in an article of his; my memory does not help me confirm its source.
8- This is the title of the book itself, which includes the lectures given at this Collège between 1982-1983, trans. Al-Zawawi Boughoura, revision: Mohammed al-Maazouz, Publications of “Believers Without Borders,” Rabat, Morocco, 1st ed., 2019, where all Foucauldian references are taken from it.
