Those
Kurdish “writers” who have sold their dignity and
conscience for money and privilege to despotic
primitive power in Kurdistan, insist on spreading
lies, distortions and rumors intended to defame and
ridicule Dr Kamal Sai Qadir and portray him as a
sick person who tried to make a name for himself by
defaming ‘important’ personalities in Kurdistan.
The dignity and integrity that Dr Qadir has
demonstrated throughout his four months in prison,
and the increasing support he gets in Kurdistan and
internationally, is the best response to these
attacks by the agents of power.
But in order to understand Dr Kamal Qadir both as a
human being and as an intellectual and in order to
have a better insight into the background of his
thinking and courageous challenge to corrupt party
power in Kurdistan, I will translate some of his
articles which have been published in Kurdish in
independent Kurdish websites over the last two
years. |
Dr Kamal Said Qadir, Austrian citizen, an
international legal expert, writer and human rights
activist |
|
The following article entitled “Power and
intellectuals in Kurdistan” was published in
www.dengekan.com in April 2005. This article
speaks for itself. It is a powerful testimony to
Kamal’s strong intellectual beliefs, moral
philosophy, and noble sensitive human nature and
personality. It is noteworthy that Dr Qadir is more
concerned here with the role and behaviour of
so-called intellectuals in Kurdistan who act as
agents of political power than with political power
itself.
The element of personal experience is tangible
throughout his definitions and arguments. There is
in particular the echo of his experience in the
University of Salah-al-Din which where he returned
to teach in 1999 and which, as a scientific academic
institution, he expected to be the vanguard of
scientific discipline, progressive thinking,
democratic change and moral standards in society.
But he was shocked by the degree of ignorance and
shallowness of university “intellectuals” and their
competition to act as servile agents to tribal party
officials. It seems that this article is an
intellectual attempt by him to analyze and theorize
this state of affairs and it can also be seen as a
prediction of his own sacrifice for his noble
beliefs.
Power and intellectuals in
Kurdistan
Kamal Sai Qadir
Part I
In these times when values are in retreat and are
traded like goods, everything: conscience, pen,
body, belief, religion, faith, etc, is being
auctioned for sale to the highest bidder. Realists
say that no period in human history has been
different from this one; life has always been on
sale in the market. Yet, I do not believe that any
era of human history has been as hard as this one
for those who wish to avoid the mayhem of this
practice. Intellectuals are in particular trapped in
a turmoil that forcefully attracts them to the world
of self-marketing, loss of dignity, loss of
conscience and falsehood.
Many intellectuals have been overwhelmed by this
mayhem but they have resisted and stayed steadfast
until their last breath. Many have had to endure
pain and suffering just to taste a piece of bread
with dignity. There are tens of thousands of people
in the darkness of prisons who dream of the birth of
New Man. There are others like [the two Kurdish
martyred intellectuals] Jamil Ranjbar and Sayda
Salih Yusifi who did not even think it was too dear
to offer the most valuable gift that human beings
have. They sacrificed their own lives for a better
future for their nation.
True, intellectuals, wherever they live, have the
highest position in human society, which cannot be
compared with that of a political official or a
technocrat. There is a big difference between having
a higher post and having a higher position. Even the
person who usurps seat of power by force, like a
dictator, or those who become a servant for those
with higher ranks than them, can have higher posts
But higher position can only be attained by those
who become the dervishes of the superior values of
humanity, those who are the example of New Man,
devoid of selfishness, hatred and malice,
oppression, lies, low morals, greed and cowardice,
etc
Higher position in contrast to higher posts and
wealth cannot be obtained through falsehood or
force. Neither can it be inherited because higher
social position is related to knowledge and science.
Knowledge and science cannot be obtained by theft or
torture, lies and deception. Neither can they be
obtained like power, which some people obtain
through inheritance.
That is why there is a historical conflict between
power and intellectuals because those who have power
can do and obtain everything through force or money
but they cannot become intellectuals and scientists.
That is why it is not surprising that rulers (people
of authority) try to buy intellectuals and turn them
to their servants so that they can overcome their
own inferiority in the face of intellectuals. If
they fail to buy them, they try to eliminate them or
at least force them to go to exile as it is the case
in Kurdistan because the superior position of the
intellectual diminishes the image of people of power
however wealthy and powerful they may be. Look at
history: who are those people whom history has not
forgotten? Are they the thinkers and scientists or
are they those who owned wealth and power?
There are few people in the world who do not know
Aristotle; but who were those people who in his time
had wealth and money?
[The modernist nationalist Kurdish poet of
nineteenth century] Haji Qadiri Koyyi had, on
occasions, no shoes to wear, but his name is
eternally alive; yet we do not know anything about
the wealthy and powerful men of his time. [The
Muslim scholar] Imam Ghazali, the teacher of moral
values, who is universally known, owned only one
donkey that he used to load his books. His fame
survived but no one knows who were those people who
inhabited the big castles of Baghdad and Damascus in
his time and owned loads of gold and hundreds of
salves.
Then what are the reasons that push an intellectual
to leave his higher position and relegate himself to
stand on a low threshold at the feet of a man of
power?
I do not think there is any art in selling oneself.
To sell yourself is an act that everyone can do. Let
us suppose that a person has got nothing at all to
sell even clothes. Then he can still sell two
things: first his body and second, his conscience.
Every human being owns body and conscience. But the
person who sells his or her body does not in fact
sell it; he/she just rents it out. Those who sell
their conscience have different types, one of them
is to rent out your pen, because pen is a means for
the expression of conscience.
It is true no one is obliged to remain committed to
be and behave as an intellectual, or once he becomes
an intellectual to remain so. But those who lose the
characteristic of an intellectual because of hiring
out their pens should accept to lose the title of
intellectual and instead to be called technocrats,
because there is a clear boundary between an
intellectual and a technocrat who is expert in an
area.
The original Kurdish text
is published on the independent Kurdish website “dengekan”:
http://www.dengekan.com/doc/2005/4/kamalsaidkader19.pdf
Source:
www.kurdistanreferendum.org
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