Cities of Light at 9PM

By Michael van der Galien - The Moderate Voice - U.S.A.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Cities of Light, the documentary about Islamic Spain will be aired today (Wednesday, August 22nd), at 9PM on PBS in the U.S.A.

What follows is an excerpt from the interview with Michael Wolfe, the Executive Producer.

You can read a review of Cities of Light by the same Author at this link: http://tinyurl.com/34wn6z

You can visit Unity Productions Foundation and read more about the documentary at this link: http://tinyurl.com/34efd5

MvdG: Is what’s known as “Mevlana” (or Sufism) - the peaceful almost Buddhist like Muslim philosophy taught by Rumi influenced by the culture of Al-Andalus?

MW: Not directly, that I know of. Religions of all kinds, and particularly the mystical variety, tends to share a lot of common ground. The Peace That Passeth Understanding is as much a part of Judaism as Christianity and Islam, in the form of Sufism.

But the person Rumi was a Persian, not a Spanish Muslim, who relocated to the west of his father’s country, and worked in a cultural style that was quite different from the Andalusian.

That said, there are many giants of Sufism who happened to hail from Muslim Spain, including Ibn Arabi, whom many consider, intellectually speaking, the Giant of them all.

MvdG: A question about poetry. In the documentary poetry plays quite an important role: every now and then a part of a poem about Al-Andalus is read by the narrator and important poets of Al-Andalus are highlighted in the documentary as well. This led me to conclude the following: if one wants to know whether a given society is progressing (and civilized) one needs to look at the level and importance of poetry. Do you agree with that and if so, what does this tell you about Western and Middle Eastern civilizations / societies today?

MW: Poetry is important in Middle Eastern societies today. Many people can recite their favorite works, by their favorite poets, and there are some poets writing in Arabic and Urdu and many other languages who are both Muslim and gifted poets.

I think the same is true of poets in the West, though our “society” appears to give them less weight and importance. I don’t know how the future will judge western or middle eastern cultural production. Good poets speak to eternal themes while speaking of their times.

MvdG: When watching Cities of Light, one gets the impression - as the experts said as well - that society can only flourish if it is open and open-minded. Isolated societies, on the other hand, stagnate. Could you explain that a little bit more?

MW: Societies and civilizations go down for different reasons. Greece disappeared under Alexander, because he literally took off, spreading its culture from Ionia to Egypt to Baghdad to Persia and India but in the process dissolving the borders of a very tiny, integrated geography of inventive city states.

Self-Isolating societies, on the other hand, cut themselves off and, as you say, stagnate. Spain in the end committed a kind of act of schizophrenia, divesting itself of two-thirds of its cultural and spiritual psyche at just the moment when it became a unified “nation.”

In a sense, this is what Cervantes is writing about and making fun of—a society steeped in old codes of chivalry that no longer apply, with a tradition it no longer understands, and a dilemma it can no longer define because its cultural basis—Judaeo-Islamo-Christian—had been willfully shattered. For the sake of ethnic Purity, Catholic Spain cast two-thirds of being to the winds.

MvdG: Lastly, a reasonably negative question two actually: you do not address in Cities of Light how to behave (tolerance wise) when one of the religious groups falls hostage to fundamentalists and grows, therefore, increasingly intolerant.

Furthermore, one can also wonder whether any multicultural society can last. When we look at history, we see examples of multiculturalism, and Al-Andalus is a prime example of it, but if we look at the fate of these societies and especially Al-Andalus, is it not fair to conclude that perhaps – sadly – multicultural societies are doomed to failure because, in the end, man becomes intolerant since intolerance (evil) is in our nature?

MW: Got me! The institutions of our society today are so very different from the institutions of Spain under Abdul Rahman I, or III, or again under Ferdinand and Isabella…

Cities of Light: The Rise and Fall of Islamic Spain
Producer / Director: Robert Gardner
Executive Producers: Alexander Kronemer & Michael Wolfe
Narrator: Sam Mercurio