[ilds] Intolerance Wears a Veil

[Charles Sligh]

Thanks for the Alexandrian report, Bruce.

>         *Alexandria* needs *“stable” community values*, he insisted.
>         *Sensuality*, if it means *sexuality*, is not part of *the
>         social equation*. Even *the library* — with its *museum* that
>         includes *pharaonic, Greek, Roman, Coptic and Islamic relics
>         *— is misguided, Mr. Saleh said.
>
>         “There, *Islam* is just one topic among many. We don’t like
>         those *naked Greek statues*. Anyway, *that’s over*. Islam
>         should have a special status at the library,” he said. “This
>         is *a Muslim city* in *a Muslim country*; that is our
>         *identity*.”
>

Where to begin discussion of those statements?

I have *deformed* the report in order to indicate what strikes me. 

I fancy that I tend to imagine history in terms of 1.000 to 2,000 year 
epochs. 

The City comes; the City goes--willy, nilly--Alexandria, she is always 
"leaving" us.

The Greeks and the Jews and the Romans and the Christians and the Turks 
and the French and the English came and went. 

The great poets of secular history, such as Cavafy, Kipling, and 
Durrell, teach me that Islam once came and someday, inevitably, will go. 

What new sect or cultus or tribe will follow?  Will anyone still be 
there to notice or to remember?

But I would rather have some actual present-day Alexandrians from the 
listserv commenting.

Charles

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Charles L. Sligh
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
charles-sligh at utc.edu
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