الذّاكرة في الخطاب: الأنا والآخر ضمن الخطاب الإعلاميّ

Abstract

Assistant Professor in Medieval History and historical and cultural Anthropology.

Perhaps it is strange to deal with the subject of the “other” in Islam, and how memory has been used in discourse between the two main components "Sunnis and Shiites" which are deemed as the "I" and the "other" according to the references of the religious tenets of each sect. These references are mainly produced by a group of the sultans' scholars and jurists with their different backgrounds and ideas. Thus, al-Ash‘arī Sunni line, representing the "I ", contains a great deal of hatred towards its Shiite other mixed with ideas from the first conflict in Islam, and even before Islam, between the sons of ‘Abdul-Shams and the sons of Hashem. This disagreement had carried on in Islam between a group of Mu‘āwiya’s disciples, dubbed as the Shiites of Mu‘āwiya according to Al-Minqarī in his book Wāqi‘at Siffīn, and others carrying the name of the Shiites of ‘Ali.

This memory has been evoked in the diabolical discourse of each opponent. The most dangerous issue is that this hot conflict in the literature of sects and their history has never ceased in the present. The more the events heated up, the more the seditious actions fueled them, as if we were recalling the events of Yāwm al-saqīfa, Yāwm al-dār , al-Jamal and Siffīn, and all those events that were stained by victims' blood on both sides. Creating institutions of the other that is imagined in discourses of memory had helped to create an enemy. What is strange is that these institutions have ensured to evoke this memory and its related notion of the other in people’s imaginary.

In the modern period, the relations between the Iranian and Saudi regimes are deteriorating, with each side working on employing satellite channels for escalating and negating discourses. So for the Shiites, the Sunnis become the killers of Al-Hussein and the ones who betrayed his father and reneged on his bai‘ah (vote) and the day of Ghadir Khumm. While the Sunni party makes Osman murder, the revilement of the Companions, and the mother of the believers (‘Ā’isha) their basic case, forgetting that the origin of the problem is political and has nothing to do with sacred Islamic entities. The use of memory in these events and conflicts exacerbates the situation and lengthens the virtual life span of crises, especially after giving it a sacred aspect. This pathos makes the public annexed to their systems through media and allied with the scholars of the Sultan regardless of the origin of the political problem. For instance, the land of Syria has been a fertile area and a hotbed for this media war, especially that there are 17 sects in Syria.

This paper poses the issue of employing what is considered sacred in the discourse of memory via satellite channels. I will give examples of what I have observed by following popular religious and political satellite channels inter alia  (Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Iraq, Syria, Libya) and other Arab and Islamic channels focused on either religious, political or historical programmes in al Kawthar and Iqra' TV channels. So, what are the tools and mechanisms that underline the work produced by these channels, and how is the discourse of memory used in these conflicting channels? How have media discourses contributed to the dissemination of this culture of hatred and the justification of sectarian violence? What are the most prominent results of the ongoing employment and demonization of the fabricated other through this discourse?