Translator: Hazem Yab Reviewer: Eric vautier
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,
(Flemish 🙂 Goedenavond, ladies Heren.
(Arabic 🙂 Assalam wa alikom Rahmatou Allah.
“Alikom Salam” which means “Peace be upon you.”
I’m wondering :
where are we on the road to peace in this world?
Personally, I come from a country where there is especially no peace …
I’m talking about Syria.
I was born in Damascus,
the city of Saint Paul, the apostle, and Saladin.
But also, it is the seat of a terrible regime …
Syria has lost peace after years of high-security
where the word “freedom” has become taboo.
So at the age of 19, it was the presidential elections,
or rather re-elections.
With a basic political awareness,
I wanted to make a small symbolic gesture,
a heroic act vis-à-vis the police threat
I wanted to vote white!
So I arrive, I get my ballot,
where he had to choose between “Yes” and “No”.
So big disappointment:
the box “Yes” was selected in advance.
That moment marked my life forever, and engraved in me the desire for freedom.
Freedom of expression: zero;
corruption and lack of prospects for youth.
You should know that Syria, as elsewhere in the Arab world,
70% of the population is under 30 years.
Wood was already dry: it lacked the spark.
And these are the winds of the Arab Spring in 2011
that will make the cough too long capped volcano.
The peaceful youth takes to the streets
shouting “freedom” and “dignity”.
It receives back the sound of guns and cannons.
Blood flows,
men lose their wisdom,
the war begins.
Well, me, in all this? The studies were my compass.
I managed to have a registration at the Catholic University of Leuven.
The day I arrived in Belgium, if you like,
I note on my Facebook:
“Passage of the country chickpeas country chicory! “
My new life opens me to freedom.
I can think freely,
I can say what I think in public,
I can even do what I want,
I can explore different political thoughts,
the associations,
trade unions.
I discovered all at once:
voluntary simplicity,
ecological thinking,
the student baptism
and the concept of the Sabbatical year.
At that time, I could measure how totalitarianism
sprinkled throughout history
social relations in Arab society
and vice versa.
In my original company, at any time,
pressure [collective] requires compliance,
stifles creativity,
undresses and your private life even in the smallest details.
Thereupon
the social scale power relations
and corruption
manage to make you believe that happiness equal property.
That’s why I spent my uprooting
as a success.
Here I am ! I eat organic,
I sort my waste,
I engage in associative …
At the same time, I guindaille … [belgicisme: celebrate]
I kote … [student housing] I sup … [dinner]
However, after 3 years of belgitude,
I still live cultural shocks.
The difference does exist
and will not fade.
It is, in fact, necessary and natural
This anecdote may illustrate my point.
We supped with friends,
and someone brought a dish of pork pie.
So I wanted to make a small anthropological experience:
I wanted to pretend to be able to eat.
And at that time, this is my friend Simon who told me:
“No, Hazem, you, you’re a Muslim, you can not eat! “
It is not I who kept my difference!
If I try to summarize the source of these cultural clashes,
and philosophically, I can tell you this:
In Occident,
West, productivity and efficiency
are the only rules,
objectives and results are the only measures.
All this leads to overwork and burnout unknown to us.
In the West, here,
the mental,
the rational,
seeping into the faith, in love relationships.
By cons, home, his absence we mired in fatalism.
Here, science is too often takes for God.
The concept of “Inch Allah” by cons, leaves room for human imperfection
and let me reconciled with myself, with the existence,
and keeps me cheerful and jovial.
I work for some time in the intercultural and interfaith.
This allows me to say that
the road to peace seems to be one that reconciles the two worlds.
The East and West,
Europe and the Arab world,
each have a long way to go
in me, first,
and, if you wish.
So this is the East
out of his victimhood position
self-manufactured, paralyzing,
that feeds systematically conspiracy theory:
all our misfortune would it be the fault of others?
Let’s stop disempower us.
Could things get better by one stroke of fate?
Let us self-branding.
The Arabs would they not made for democracy?
Then,
it is migrants to open another report with their host countries
a second home, it is anything but a simple report material:
labor and business.
Then,
– If I may –
is the West to understand that to know the other,
it is not enough to confide in politics
or peel the leaves of the newspaper.
Political glasses are not enough to understand human history,
especially in the East.
It is not just the plot,
nor Islamism.
So, practically,
five things.
[One,] dare more meetings,
real, concrete,
empathetic, loyal over time.
Two: dare to explore the human,
rub our differences
and live our vulnerabilities
for a less violent world.
Give space to art,
poetry, music,
places where the differences become calm and beauty.
Do not forget to engage the one and the other,
for each other
for a more just world,
let’s be responsible actors.
Let go of our material ambitions too.
I believe in the relevance
voluntary simplicity and ecological.
I would close by saying thank you.
First to my host family,
with whom sharing our difference in depth
allowed me to expand my same faith.
Thank you to Belgium, which has expanded my world view,
which allowed me to rub Africa like Morocco, Turkey and Italy.
It was Belgium who, beyond the belgitude,
disturbed my certainties
and boosted and inspired my life started.
Danku wel, thank you,
Salam alikom.
(Applause)
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,
(Flemish 🙂 Goedenavond, ladies Heren.
(Arabic 🙂 Assalam wa alikom Rahmatou Allah.
“Alikom Salam” which means “Peace be upon you.”
I’m wondering :
where are we on the road to peace in this world?
Personally, I come from a country where there is especially no peace …
I’m talking about Syria.
I was born in Damascus,
the city of Saint Paul, the apostle, and Saladin.
But also, it is the seat of a terrible regime …
Syria has lost peace after years of high-security
where the word “freedom” has become taboo.
So at the age of 19, it was the presidential elections,
or rather re-elections.
With a basic political awareness,
I wanted to make a small symbolic gesture,
a heroic act vis-à-vis the police threat
I wanted to vote white!
So I arrive, I get my ballot,
where he had to choose between “Yes” and “No”.
So big disappointment:
the box “Yes” was selected in advance.
That moment marked my life forever, and engraved in me the desire for freedom.
Freedom of expression: zero;
corruption and lack of prospects for youth.
You should know that Syria, as elsewhere in the Arab world,
70% of the population is under 30 years.
Wood was already dry: it lacked the spark.
And these are the winds of the Arab Spring in 2011
that will make the cough too long capped volcano.
The peaceful youth takes to the streets
shouting “freedom” and “dignity”.
It receives back the sound of guns and cannons.
Blood flows,
men lose their wisdom,
the war begins.
Well, me, in all this? The studies were my compass.
I managed to have a registration at the Catholic University of Leuven.
The day I arrived in Belgium, if you like,
I note on my Facebook:
“Passage of the country chickpeas country chicory! “
My new life opens me to freedom.
I can think freely,
I can say what I think in public,
I can even do what I want,
I can explore different political thoughts,
the associations,
trade unions.
I discovered all at once:
voluntary simplicity,
ecological thinking,
the student baptism
and the concept of the Sabbatical year.
At that time, I could measure how totalitarianism
sprinkled throughout history
social relations in Arab society
and vice versa.
In my original company, at any time,
pressure [collective] requires compliance,
stifles creativity,
undresses and your private life even in the smallest details.
Thereupon
the social scale power relations
and corruption
manage to make you believe that happiness equal property.
That’s why I spent my uprooting
as a success.
Here I am ! I eat organic,
I sort my waste,
I engage in associative …
At the same time, I guindaille … [belgicisme: celebrate]
I kote … [student housing] I sup … [dinner]
However, after 3 years of belgitude,
I still live cultural shocks.
The difference does exist
and will not fade.
It is, in fact, necessary and natural
This anecdote may illustrate my point.
We supped with friends,
and someone brought a dish of pork pie.
So I wanted to make a small anthropological experience:
I wanted to pretend to be able to eat.
And at that time, this is my friend Simon who told me:
“No, Hazem, you, you’re a Muslim, you can not eat! “
It is not I who kept my difference!
If I try to summarize the source of these cultural clashes,
and philosophically, I can tell you this:
In Occident,
West, productivity and efficiency
are the only rules,
objectives and results are the only measures.
All this leads to overwork and burnout unknown to us.
In the West, here,
the mental,
the rational,
seeping into the faith, in love relationships.
By cons, home, his absence we mired in fatalism.
Here, science is too often takes for God.
The concept of “Inch Allah” by cons, leaves room for human imperfection
and let me reconciled with myself, with the existence,
and keeps me cheerful and jovial.
I work for some time in the intercultural and interfaith.
This allows me to say that
the road to peace seems to be one that reconciles the two worlds.
The East and West,
Europe and the Arab world,
each have a long way to go
in me, first,
and, if you wish.
So this is the East
out of his victimhood position
self-manufactured, paralyzing,
that feeds systematically conspiracy theory:
all our misfortune would it be the fault of others?
Let’s stop disempower us.
Could things get better by one stroke of fate?
Let us self-branding.
The Arabs would they not made for democracy?
Then,
it is migrants to open another report with their host countries
a second home, it is anything but a simple report material:
labor and business.
Then,
– If I may –
is the West to understand that to know the other,
it is not enough to confide in politics
or peel the leaves of the newspaper.
Political glasses are not enough to understand human history,
especially in the East.
It is not just the plot,
nor Islamism.
So, practically,
five things.
[One,] dare more meetings,
real, concrete,
empathetic, loyal over time.
Two: dare to explore the human,
rub our differences
and live our vulnerabilities
for a less violent world.
Give space to art,
poetry, music,
places where the differences become calm and beauty.
Do not forget to engage the one and the other,
for each other
for a more just world,
let’s be responsible actors.
Let go of our material ambitions too.
I believe in the relevance
voluntary simplicity and ecological.
I would close by saying thank you.
First to my host family,
with whom sharing our difference in depth
allowed me to expand my same faith.
Thank you to Belgium, which has expanded my world view,
which allowed me to rub Africa like Morocco, Turkey and Italy.
It was Belgium who, beyond the belgitude,
disturbed my certainties
and boosted and inspired my life started.
Danku wel, thank you,
Salam alikom.
(Applause)
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