I agree with you.
This is an interesting subject.
Perhaps we should have a debate
about economy and ethics.
- Really? Come on. - Woody iron.
Weber's work The Protestant Ethic
and the Spirit of Capitalism is interesting.
- Those are Catholic morals.
- I think everybody is presuming that
Islam has ethics in economy,
while the West doesn't have ethics.
I think it has. And the problem of
ethics is common to both sides.
The problem of ethical economy is (incomprehensible).
Perhaps we should have a debate about it.
Just one sentence. Look at China
that also has this common ethics.
The government is emphasizing it.
The motto is no longer communism,
but this Confucionist nonsense ...
harmonic society and so on.
They say all the time, we are more
organized and solidary. But how does it work?
I got this from the party philosopher in
Nanjing, not from dissidents.
How do their prisons function?
So brutally that they leave you there to starve.
If you want to live,
your family must send you money.
You can buy food in the canteen.
Medical service is collapsing, etc.
This is an example of a country for which
one might say abstractly,
"In contrast to our individualism,
they have community ethics ..."
But isn't something else true?
We disparage Protestantism so much.
But Scandinavian countries are Protestant.
Are there any other countries with more solidarity?!
- The presumption of this ethics is secularism.
- Secularization was started by Protestantism.
- This is Protestantism's undying credit.
- True.
Stojan Pelko, State secretary (Ministry of Culture),
will speak now,
and then we'll have closing statements.
Stojan, you won't be too long?
- He's a man of culture. What does he know?
- I know. At the end of our debate ...
I wanted to correct Ervin's lapse.
I'm glad that he mentioned James Cameron (and not David).
Which is so indicative.
On today's perception of the world
big blockbusters have more influence
than politicians.
And now I can answer
why we cancelled the visit.
We temporarily cancelled the visit for
pragmatic reasons.
It would be irresponsible to send
our representatives to Egypt
and with the same planes rescue our
tourists there.
My friends tell me
that there is not a safer city than Cairo.
Let me emphasize Ervin's
statement.
Our interest was to translate Alamut
into Arabic in parallel to our visit.
Maybe we can get a nice
co-production out of it. Maybe Cameron.
The debate about this is still
going on.
I just wanted to add something.
It is essential that we translate Alamut,
so that the Arabs may see what
idiots we Europeans are.
There is not a sillier book than this one.
Do you know what is the basic myth of the novel?
The myth is that there was a Muslim sect
that was drugged and they thought they were in heaven...
This appeared for the first time
in the 14. century in Christian sources.
Here I am again pro-Islam.
They were ethical killers, Assassin sect.
They were fair,
they only slaughtered rich people.
You were severely punished if you killed
someone by mistake. What are you moaning about?
And European crusaders didn't get it.
How can somebody be so devoted?
So they had to invent a story about them.
I apologize.
- You cannot speak now, Majda (Minister of Culture).
- I have a reply. - You can't reply.
You will have a chance later,
after Dr Sterbenc.
How can you still be the
President of Parliament?
This time I strongly agree
with Mr Zizek.
I warn you, think it over
before you send Alamut down there.
To be immodest, you can read
my book about the Shias.
If you read experts on Ismailis ...
Assassins is an European word. They're the Nizari.
Nizaris. Who were Iranian and Syrian.
If you read Farhad Daftary, Marshall Hodgson,
and Bernard Lewis, then you will see,
as Zizek said, that the story (about drugs) is not true.
The Sunni majority labelled them
because it was afraid of them.
Because Hassan-i Sabbah did something
the Sunni were afraid of.
He abandoned the strategy of frontal confrontation
with the Sunni majority.
But because the latter didn't work,
he began with a terrorist way of fighting.
Killing important Seljuq rulers.
We (Slovenes) must be careful here.
Vladimir Bartol (author of Alamut) was
a typical expression of what Zizek mentioned.
Marco Polo, Sylvester de Sacy, and mythology
which was connected with
the European freemasonry.
- Still want to make a comment?
- Of course. For me, it's not a question of translation.
Now that finally the copyrights
for Alamut have returned to Slovenia,
the owner of the rights, publisher Sanje,
instead of giving the book to Hollywood,
should send it down there.
- Where to? - To within the Islamic world.
I think that would be a moral thing to do.
The copyright owner could even make a profit.
To explain. We're not so naive. We've talked
with the director of a national book agency in Cairo
about all the illegal copies of Alamut
out there.
And the translation of such a book
can be a way of cooperation.
We know that this book is about
the West's view of the Muslim world.
From this point of view,
it is a strong attestation of our world.
We are not that naive to think
that we can sell to the Arabs myths about them.
We think Alamut can shed some light on
our civilization and be therefore interesting.
Our institutions of culture exist in order to
give a better examination (promotion) of such works.
We didn't talk with the government officials,
but with institutions that have some insight.
We should take Alamut seriously
at least on a second level.
But, you are aware that Alamut
is a bad novel?
It is primitively written.
Dan Brown is a classic.
- Primoz would like to add a few things.
- I basically agree with you.
Only, we must realise that today 85 % of Muslims
are Sunnis and they're afraid of Shia Islam.
Perhaps they will find it useful,
this new label of Shia Islam. Perhaps.
Yes, because I think Alamut is
more pro-Sunni. I mean the novel.
Thank you. Now we will listen to
the closing statements. We'll start with you, Primoz.
I would like to add to my response
to my colleague’s question.
What can we expect in Egypt? I'm not an optimist.
The army is still part of the structure I mentioned.
Maybe it's not a coincidence that
David Cameron was the first statesman ...
...That a colonial force was the first
to visit this army and sell it weapons.
Why does the army need weapons?
I think it is buying anti-protest equipment.
If I may be a little provocative.
Second thing. If they have elections,
the new regimes will look differently upon,
what our foreign minister commendably noted,
the question of Palestine.
They will not be quiet when the USA tolerate
Israel playing with Palestinians
a game of cat and mouse.
Because. If the United States
will not listen to the arguments in favour of Palestine,
China will. After the second world war, when
the Americans were considering recognizing Israel,
they were at the same time wondering,
will this not strengthen the position of the Soviet Union.
Samo Zbogar.
Just a sentence or two.
Our discussion shows how little we know about Islam.
We definitely need a dialogue
between the West and Islam.
And maybe these changes in the Mediterranean
have brought Islam closer to the West.
Islam gained a bad image after
the attacks of 11/9, the Al Kaida, etc...
Events in the Mediterranean are changing this image.
Facebook youth in Egypt is the same as ours.
And I think this is a positive
advance in our comprehension of Islam.
I will talk for 30 minutes.
For 20 years I've been
observing this fear of Islam.
And now, when not even a single
poor Arab mentions Islam,
we in the West are afraid of
the caliphate.
A common feature of Egyptian, Tunisian,
I don't know about Libyan, events is ...
I spent 10 days on the Tahrir square,
and I got tired of it.
I was waiting for someone to
burn the US and Israeli flag.
And those devils didn't burn a single one.
I went around and provoked.
"What do you think about
burning the US flag?"
They said, "We have our own problems,
don't bother us with your ideology."
It seem to me that we look down on the Arab people,
as if they don't understand the world around them
and themselves, or what happened to them.
And that we would like to explain it to them a bit.
There was a change in the direction
of interest in the Arab world,
and now we are trying to push in the old
"Look, Islam did a lot of evil,"
and 5 minutes later we will start talking
about the 11/9 again.
We should put Islam aside and look at these
societies as if they weren't characterised by this word.
This would be useful for our understanding
of political events there.
Thank you. Slavoj Zizek.
I've chattered too much already,
so I shall forgo my closing statement.
Thank you. That was a nice ending,
we are speechless.
I would like to thank everyone here.
It was an interesting debate.
See you at the next debate.
