More Why? of it -- PIC-ing up double talk

W H Y ? - again



This single word was the Sunday BPSB headline of the story of anthropology Professor Richard Antoun’s death at the hands of 46 yr. old Saudi national BU graduate student, Abdulsalam Al-Zahrani. Antoun was Al-Zahrani’s thesis advisor, and was fatally stabbed 30 minutes after Al Zahrani had learned he could not transfer into the Philosophy Interpretation and Culture (PIC) program. Considering his thesis as well as symbolic nature of his act falls squarely in this domain, PIC is called upon to PIC it’s own brains in this case. The following begins to explain why “WHY? is owed. (Not to perpetuate responsibility)

****

“Why?”, headlined in large case letters without grammar (“unanswered questions” is printed below) can pose different questions, pertaining to cause, responsibility, or guilt (who can be blamed for what and punished).

These are not the same, as illustrated, for instance, by rip-tide undertow drowning. The cause is lungs filled with water due to inability to swim to shore; responsibility falls on the circumstances that set up the cause; and guilt falls on whoever failed to take proper precautions (not a question that arises if responsibility falls on an unpreventable ‘act of God’, e.g., muscle cramp).

In the case of Antoun’s death, stabbing with a 6’ kitchen knife is taken as reported cause. Assuming this is confirmed by forensic detail, the question of responsibility becomes: Why did Al Zahrani turned such a deliberate, sustained, violent attack on Antoun? Deliberate, because the knife was apparently brought for that purpose in case his transfer request was denied, which it was. This brings PIC into the circumstances responsible. If the transfer had gone through, Antoun would be alive – though this might be left among “unanswered questions” awaiting Al-Zahrani’s testimony. And if that were the case, the factor of ethnic-religious difference (Muslim vs. Jewish convert) which his thesis title evokes (“Sacred Voice, Profane Sight: The Senses, Cosmos, and Epistemology in Early Arabic Culture) falls among considerations of responsibility. Professor and student overlapped academic interests at: comparative religions; symbol systems; live-in knowledge of Mid East countries, politics, moral codes, mentality. The term “culture war” is used by some religious conservatives for what America is waging against Muslims. “Attack Iran with TV” urges Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute. It seems likely Al-Zahrani was driven to sustained maniacal, unstoppable, unremitting stabbing to act out a reversal of everything perceived as distinguishing Good from Evil. The liberal America Antoun represented would be identified with the polymorphously perverse television culture: Profane Sight. If his thesis was to bring the Sacred Voice of original Arab culture, perhaps through tonalities of its spoken language, and this was being silenced, the circumstances contain this as factor in assessing responsibility.

With this comes the question of guilty. Were circumstances set up so that this ethnic-religious conflict ostensibly responsible for Antoun’s death (assuming it was symbolic, not personal, as above) would inevitably break out? And here we can rule out ‘deliberately’, I think; it is not impossible, but surely unreasonable to seriously suppose there was a calculated plan to kill Antoun. But guilt-without-intent, say by reasonable planning deficit (“don’t turn stallions out in the same pasture” is barn rules), invokes the specter of liability issues. It is at this point that unanswered questions must be pressed.

It is a known fact that the U.S. is acting in concert with Israel in the Mid East to exercise cultural control. This makes the question of who speaks with sacred voice theological – and metaphysical. The sound of Allah’s name would match the sacral writing of “G-d” for “God” by some Jewish authors. If Al-Zahrani was called upon to state and defend his thesis in discourse that muted or glossed the deep spiritual distinction he was advancing, essentially silencing the sacred by the profane, he would be put in the position of one whose religious and scholarly identity would be drawn out, encouraged; then destroyed. Antoun’s existential/philosophical agenda was honorably known far and wide as mutual respect, tolerance, understanding, peace. Surely no guilt could be attached to that in itself. But in context it would be seen as duplicitous -- profane appearance silencing sacred sounds. Perhaps no one, no agency, exists whose responsibility is to foresee violent outbreaks. This one is so on-the-crease of many intersecting lines of conflict, however, it leaves the question of guilt still hanging, calling for answer to “Why?” that goes to theology and metaphysics.

-Sid Thomas, Associate Professor of Philosophy, emeritus
SUNY Binghamton