Gharibi Murad: I Have Shared the Pleasure of Reading and Writing with Sayed Mahmoud Al-Mosawi for Ten Years

Ustadh Gharibi Murad:

Can you write without reading? And what is the use of reading without writing? And how can reading and writing make a person set out on the journey of success? And does everyone who reads write? Provocative questions, burning feelings and clamorous ideas. In reality, the story of “Writers' Experiences: From Reading to Writing” ought to begin with “Once upon a time...”; these experiences, which have met between the two covers of the distinguished publication of my dear brother Hasan Al Hamada, truly seem more like a novel of existentialist literature, if the expression is correct, yet they remain real-life biographies, which have translated the path of success through the idea of reading and then writing.
In any case, talking about this book, or writing a passing reading of its details, may distort some of its features and obscure something of its human roses; and one thing brings another to mind, as the French man of letters Jules Renard says: “Whenever I remember that there is a book I have not read, I feel an overwhelming, indescribable happiness.” I do not care to recount what the pages of the book are adorned with, for most of the writers are friends and loved ones from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon, Kuwait and Iraq, and many of them have done me a great favor in reading and writing.
For at the end of the last century I was a university student and at the same time a young writer in the local newspapers, on the pages of thought, culture, religion and society—and, of course, some of the spices of politics, from which we can hardly free ourselves. The first with whom I shared the pleasure of reading and writing were two people dear to my soul: my brother Sayed Mahmoud Al-Mosawi and my brother Ustadh Hasan Al Hamada; they are two people with whom thought, culture, religion, reading and writing have brought me together for more than ten years. My first articles on the World Wide Web appeared on the (Qatifiyyat) website—headed by Hasan Al Hamada—and on the website of Sayed Mahmoud Al-Mosawi, and I was in constant contact with them, without forgetting others among the scholars, thinkers, intellectuals, and cultural and media institutions across the world as a whole.
What I would like to express is that, however much a person reads and writes, he finds himself labouring toward his Lord laboriously, and he will encounter Him. I found this truth with all the participants in the publication, because, whether the matter concerns reading or writing, throughout history there have been writers and readers, each of whom has drawn from the thinking and creativity of the other, and so the matter will continue in this state; but certainly this is not the rule, because our Umma needs the specialized reader and writer, just as it will need a writer whose aspirations go beyond the domain of activity, and whose distinguishing mark is the production of comprehensive thought that embraces the cultural strategy specific to the project of renaissance, reform and development.
This publication reached me on 31 May last, at eleven o'clock in the morning. I was very happy with the postal parcel because it was from my dear brother Ustadh Hasan Al Hamada. I opened the book and began to read it, and I did not stop until I was called to the meal, for I was immersed in the depths of the book—this book that its author had told me about, and whose card I had read on the cultural networks on the internet, and I had remained eager to see its content... Anyway, I went back to reading and began moving from one page to another, meeting people for whom I hold all love and esteem: among them are those I met recently or before, and others with whom we are still in contact via the internet or the telephone or through articles, as we read some of them. I found the book to be like a tour of a museum of culture: its treasures and contents had been stored within its personalities, beneath the ground of its ideas, and here they are today floating on the waters of consultation and intellectual and cultural cooperation; for cooperation is the traditional, ever-renewed thing in our Arab and Islamic culture, yet it is the absent-present in our daily life, from culture to politics and society, except for the economy, with a certain pragmatism...!
This publication, “Writers' Experiences: From Reading to Writing”, has its importance defined by its being a cultural creation polished by the culture of communication, cooperation and consultation; for my admiration for everyone who took part in it grows, one by one, without flattery, for what they achieve in production and humanity, since the future began in their minds and the ideas intertwined in the pages of their books, to reach people in the form of human calories that fight the disease of forgetfulness, and the reader discovers the event through the book; for thought that breaks the chains of injustice, tyranny, compulsion and slander—true, its voice is faint, but it arouses alertness and drives away absent-mindedness... The creativity of this publication is defined by its having combined the ideal and the real, meaning and structure, experience and abstraction; so it was a serious, guiding experience of cooperation that has translated a multi-faceted perception of reading and writing...
This book, with its experiences that are alive and in revolt against ignorance, imitation and every structure that disables freedom and creativity, cannot exempt its reader from his responsibility for self-criticism; and as the Bulgarian man of letters Ilija Trojanow puts it: “The person who sees identity as an evolving project must not see the differences as the basis, but rather the points of agreement and meeting in the expanses of mutual acquaintance, communication between hearts and consultation between minds.” Consequently, no one can justify his abandonment of reading and the pen by inability and personal particularity; that is, to some extent: “I read, therefore I exist”!?
Thus we realize that every reader draws out and sketches a particular picture of these experiences, which either increases his brilliance if he is a reader, or stirs him if he is lost in reading, so that he sets out toward productive and creative reading; and truly spoke the Sage of Islam (a): “Whoever consults men shares in their intellects”..
Frankly, this book counts among the attractive books because it contains important intellectual and cultural raw material, enriching the reader with a method of overlapping specializations... And elevation remains within the expanses of: “Read in the Name of your Lord who created” (Qurʾan 96:1)... and Allah is behind the intent.
______________________
(*) An Islamic writer and researcher from Algeria

Link to the article http://www.elaph.com/Web/Culture/2010/6/572895.html