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Two Lessons from an Old Imam [POL·REL]

27 January 2015
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New contribution written by Bruno Latour and available at the crossing [POL·REL] commenting on Abderrahmane Sissako's "Timbuktu (Le Chagrin des oiseaux)".

Here is the beginning:

Sometimes artists supply the key to current events before they happen. I’m not referring to the novel of a certain Michel Houellebecq , but rather to the film Timbuktu (directed by Abderrahmane Sissako). In that film we find a local imam resisting jihadists who have come from outside the country. Is this Islam against Islam? No, what we have here is a very ancient Islam confronted by foreigners who show themselves incapable of understanding the history and values of the country on which they have laid their hands, claiming to liberate it by violence, in an act of exploitation. If all this sounds somewhat familiar, it’s because the jihadists are acting towards this venerable city in exactly the same way as the colonizers did in a previous era. Both speak with the indisputable authority of modernizers: ‘you must change your life, radically, right now’. These poor residents, ground down first by colonisation, and then once again by jihadists.

See the full contribution here:
http://www.modesofexistence.org/crossings/#/en/pol-rel

Timbuktu - Extrait VOST : bandes-annonces from AIME team on Vimeo.

External resources:

Bruno Latour, "La vraie sagesse de l’imam" Le monde, 19 January 2015 (in French)

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