The publishers of Al-Qafilah, a long-established cultural magazine issued by Aramco, have been sending me its quarterly issues for years. At a time when some Arab cultural magazines have lost their distinguished standing, having lost the capacity to keep pace with developments, Al-Qafilah has gone on renewing itself. In the latest issue my attention was caught by a short notice about a book by the American author Gal Beckerman, “The Quiet Before: On the Unexpected Origins of Radical Ideas”. What the magazine ran was no more than a brief review, but it was enough to send me looking for the book and reading a long and enjoyable summary of it.
It sometimes happens, as it did with me, that two lines lead you to an idea that stays with you for days. The idea the book turns on looks simple on the surface, but it runs against what I had been convinced of. The author holds that great events do not begin when everyone turns to look at them, but long before, when they are still no more than a discussion among a small number of people.
Political transformation is usually only the final chapter; the preceding chapters are written quietly, away from the spotlights, and perhaps in places no one notices. I used to think the French Revolution began with the storming of the Bastille, or that the Arab revolutions were a consequence of the Egyptian one. The book advances the opposite idea, and this is where its importance lies, and its bearing on our own age.
The outcome is the ending, not the beginning. I stopped at this idea because we have become prisoners of what we follow today, of the events unfolding around us: the news item, the comment, the analysis, the final verdict. There is no longer time enough for reflection on the course of events. It is as though the age were telling us that the speed of an opinion is proof of its quality, while history teaches us something different, as the book does. The ideas that live longest are not those born quickly, but those that have passed through stages of give and take, of criticism and revision.
Beckerman takes the reader back to the cafes of Europe, the literary salons, and the long letters exchanged among thinkers, where ideas took shape slowly. Those who held them were not looking for a wide audience or for quick applause; they were looking for a more coherent idea. When those ideas matured, they found their historical moment, turned into a force with influence over society and politics, and changed the course of history.
As I read, I remembered a time when cultural magazines performed a function beyond publishing articles. They were a place where people who differed met; the reader followed them, and they shaped his convictions. The aim was not to win a single day's battle, but to add a small brick to a cultural edifice that accumulates over time. My own experience at Al-Arabi magazine over two decades bore that out.
I do not think the book calls for withdrawing from the digital age, or for hostility toward social media. These have become part of our lives, and their impact cannot be ignored. But to my mind they are better suited to disseminating ideas than to making them. There is a difference between carrying an idea to people and helping it to be born and to mature. The first can be done at the press of a button; the second needs time, an environment that permits disagreement, and a measure of patience we sorely lack these days.
Even so, I came away from the reading with an observation I would add to what the author proposes. The crisis we are in is not permanent, and the ideas being born today among the few will produce a current that is itself a condition for the birth of ideas and for changing the reality we complain of. Human experience tells us that some great ideas emerged from writings of limited circulation, but even then, they did not appear fully formed. They needed time to mature and minds to pass them around. Perhaps the decisive factor is not accepting reality, but the time that allows a new and contrary idea to test itself before it hardens into certainty.
This bears on us as Arabs. In our Arab world we do not lack for talk, but new ideas are fewer than we imagine. The reason, in my view, is that the rapid pace has made many prefer dealing with the event, and that daily presence in the media scene has at times become more important than taking the time to build an idea that offers the other option and deserves to survive. The troubled reality of our region says there are two projects. The first is the dominance of the sacred and its use in politics, as Iran and its armed proxies do. The second is being born: the project of the independent national state, and this is happening in Syria, in Iraq, and even in Lebanon. The new project may need time to appear, but it is coming.
Hence the public discussion calling for the new project, which has in fact begun. What seemed a given - the dominance of a political thought that rejects the civil state - has started to change; some now describe those ideas as outside history and are debating ideas opposed to them. Such emerging ideas play a role whose effect shows only after years. Sound policies are not born in emergency meetings; they are usually preceded by a long effort of thinking and of testing alternatives. Societies that think this way are better able to face surprises and to change course, because they do not begin thinking when the crisis strikes, but long before it.
This applies to the Gulf states, which live in a dangerous regional environment. Preparing for the future does not rest on military strength or economic capacity alone. It also requires permanent investment in knowledge, the opening of discussion of alternatives, the production of new ideas, and the encouragement of responsible dialogue. This kind of investment may be less clamorous than others, but over the long run it endures better and runs deeper.
After I finished reading, the book's central idea stayed with me. Many people react to the storm when it blows, but few ask what was happening before it. The answer to that question may matter more than following the storm itself, because understanding beginnings is the best road to understanding endings. There is a beginning taking shape in our Arab world that we all need to support.
