Taming Cages

Syrian author Nidhal Naisa tells some home truths to the chairman of the Arab Students Union in a debate on Al-Jazeera TV:

The pan-Arab movements that have taken over the Arab nation forced a certain ideology upon the Arab citizens, upon the Arab youth, and they follow this ideology like sheep. When the youth encountered globalization, they found themselves new breathing space. The Arab youth runs away from confronting [reality]. They run away to the virtual worlds of reality TV and the Internet. […]

Don’t you feel ashamed that out of the 500 leading universities worldwide, there isn’t a single Arab university? What are you people doing about this? Among the 500 leading universities in the world, there is no Arab university, no Arab institute. […]

These are not universities. In the words of my friend Faysal, these are taming cages, corrals in which you confine people and teach them some slogans, and they clap their hands, and that’s it. […]

Have you produced anything? What have you produced? Even an aspirin pill you import from the West to this day. Even bread and medicine you import. What have you been doing at these universities? This indicates that these universities are not centers of production, but cages and corrals. […]

With regard to those wretched people who are deluded by the religious scholars and preachers – if they were not brought up in this terrorist environment, an environment that makes people ignorant and superficial, and turns them into bombs…