Lamya Almas

“فمهمومي لمصطلح المثقف أو المُفكر يقول أنه ,في جوهره , ليس داعيةَ مُسالمةٍ ولا داعية اتفاق في الآراء, لكنه شخص يخاطر بكيانه كله باتخاذ موقفه الحساس, وهو موقف الإصرار على رفض الصيغ السهلة , والأقوال الجاهزة والتأكيدات المهذبة القائمة على المصالحات اللبقة والاتفاق على كل ما يقوله وما يفعله أصحاب السلطة وذوو الأفكار التقليدية.

ولا يقتصر رفض المثقف على الرفض السلبي, بل يتضمن الاستعداد لإعلان رفضه على الملأ.”
― Edward W. Said, Representations of the Intellectual

“عندما جعل علي شريعتي هجرة النبي محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم من مكه إلى المدينة ،فجعلها تنطبق على وضع الإنسان ذاته باعتباره اختياراً وكفاحا وصيروره متواصله ،إنه هجره لانهائية ،هجرة داخل نفسه من الصلصال إلى الإله ،إنه مهاجر داخل روحه نفسها”
― Edward W. Said, Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World

“exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted. And while it is true that literature and history contain heroic, romantic, glorious, even triumphant episodes in an exile’s life, these are no more than efforts meant to overcome the crippling sorrow of estrangement.”
― Edward W. Said, Reflections on Exile and Other Essays

“No one today is purely one thing. Labels like Indian, or woman, or Muslim, or American are not more than starting-points, which if followed into actual experience for only a moment are quickly left behind. Imperialism consolidated the mixture of cultures and identities on a global scale. But its worst and most paradoxical gift was to allow people to believe that they were only, mainly, exclusively, white, or Black, or Western, or Oriental. Yet just as human beings make their own history, they also make their cultures and ethnic identities. No one can deny the persisting continuities of long traditions, sustained habitations, national languages, and cultural geographies, but there seems no reason except fear and prejudice to keep insisting on their separation and distinctiveness, as if that was all human life was about. Survival in fact is about the connections between things; in Eliot’s phrase, reality cannot be deprived of the “other echoes [that] inhabit the garden.” It is more rewarding - and more difficult - to think concretely and sympathetically, contrapuntally, about others than only about “us.” But this also means not trying to rule others, not trying to classify them or put them in hierarchies, above all, not constantly reiterating how “our” culture or country is number one (or not number one, for that matter).”
― Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism