ABSTRACT
He refl ects a sense of doom and hopelessness. In his poem ‘The weeping minaret’ he elaborates on the role of the ‘stranger’ – the colonialists, multi-national corporations, occupying forces – and the degree to which they have subverted symbols of Arab identity – signifi ed here by the minaret – and replaced them with signs of Western power, i.e. the ‘chimney’ (fi gure 1.1). In other words while much of the blame for the Arab crisis is from within, external forces are conspiring to maintain the region in a constant state of backwardness. Some Western observers went so far as calling the Middle East ‘the middle of nowhere’.2
