If a place has some positive element you like to feel for it, it gives you a little hope. There is intellectual nullity there nowadays. No mind at all. V.S. Naipaul

Der er et par kulturpersoner der er døde inden for de seneste dage. Soulsangerinden Aretha Franklin døde i går. Da hun var på toppen, spændte hendes stemme over 4 oktaver (Julia Andrews klasse) og hun var en rigtig kvinde, der forstod at man godt kunne ønske sig en mand, der kunne sætte hende på plads som en boss så hun vidste, han kerede sig for hende, uden dog at miste Respekt. Nu har musikken mistet hende, som vi danskere har mistet Benny Andersen.

Ja, Andersen var ikke så plat med sine små tø-høer, som jeg og hvor fuglene fløj i flok når de var mange nok, udnyttede han sprogets nuancer og dobbelttydigheder til det gode. Derfor er det også en stadig kilde til undren, når sådanne mennesker med raffinerede sind, bliver så platte som mine Franklin referencer, når de skråsikkert tramper sig ind i den politiske debat.

I Danmarks Radios lille artikel træder Andersens kunstneriske virke i baggrunden for hans meninger i islamdebatten. Så her mindes Andersens ven Mustafa Gezen, “vicerektor og formand for organisationen Dialog Forum, der vil bygge bro mellem folk fra forskellige kulturelle baggrunde”, hvorledes den ‘folkekære’ digter i 2008 var “rejst fra Lyngby til Aarhus for at deltage i ramadanmiddagen, fordi han var nysgerrig”. Som en 3 timers køretur i bil eller tog bliver beskrevet som ‘en rejse’, således opfattes en Ramadan middag også som et kulturmøde, der skulle tjene til inspiration for danskerne. Middagen, uden den månedslange faste, var rigeligt til at inspirere Andersen til at gøre op med danskernes ‘fremmedfrygt’ og fordomme om islam og i 2015 skrev han bogen ‘Sådan kan islam også være‘ i et forsøg på at “nuancere og korrigere en række af de usandheder, der florerer om islam og integration”. Det belønnede Dialog Forum med en dialogpris og i samme år. Også i 2015 var Mustafa Gezen fortaler for en “rummelig og brobyggende stormoske” i København – da som talsperson for Muslimernes Fællesråd.

At tale muslimernes interesser er en god dialog. Plads til mangfoldighed er for muslimer også kun plads til muslimernes propaganda i bybilledet såsom burkaer – det er ikke plads til bøsserne.

Det hører Andersen ikke. Ja, han “kunne beskrive danskerne med humor og ironi” fordi han var god til at lytte til de mindste nuancer i det danske sprog. Han var virkeligt meget, meget dansk. Men han var tonedøv i mødet med det fremmede, der vedblev at være en abstraktion og ikke noget konkret. Det fremmede var blot en spejling af dig selv, det samme, bare anderledes.

Nej, det fremmede er virkeligt fremmed og ikke et spejlbillede af ønsketænkning. Vidia ‘V. S.’ Naipaul havde rejst meget i de muslimske lande, observeret, talt og lyttet og havde så skrevet Blandt De Troende – det var forlægget for Martin Krasniks ‘De retfærdige – en islamisk stafet’. David Pryce-Jones mindes Naipaul i National Review

In March 1979 I interviewed him for the BBC. He said to me, “I know that Trinidad, like India, the other ancestral strand, is a place without any possibility. If a place has some positive element you like to feel for it, it gives you a little hope. There is intellectual nullity there nowadays. No mind at all.” That last sentence is key. Mind is a universal value; everybody can acquire it just the way he did, and then they are civilized.

Those, and only those, who use their mind are able to escape from injustice and cruelty. Among the Believers and Beyond Belief are books of reportage on the horrors that he encountered in Muslim countries where mindlessness has taken control.

Liberals were slow to realize the extraordinary damage Vidia was doing to their aspiration that the world be what they would wish it to be. Some Indians have described him as a traitor to his race, and I once heard a Jamaican professor criticize him as “too brown.” The West Indian poet Derek Walcott accused him of fouling the nest and caricatured him in print as V. S. Nightfall (though he later apologized for this). In Marxist clichés, the academic H. B. Synge called him “a despicable lackey of neo-colonialism and imperialism.” But even those who disliked what he stood for acknowledged his mastery of the English language.

Vidia the writer had complete inner certainty. Inevitably he generated controversy, but he hardly bothered to read what was written about him or to respond to it. Nadira, whom he married after the death from cancer of Pat, filled his final years with grace. On the morning when the Swedish Academy announced his Nobel award, I rang to congratulate him. “Oh, you’ve heard of my little spot of luck, have you.” Nadira and he invited me to accompany them to Stockholm. The moment we reached the hotel, Vidia was swept off to a television studio. On the program with him were two previous Nobel winners, Nadine Gordimer and Günter Grass. They were agreeing that poverty is the whole motivation of Islamist terror. Vidia shot back that like millions of others he came from a poor family and did not commit terror. Infuriated by the liberal twaddle, he went to his room without dinner. About 2,000 people attended the ceremony, and Vidia was instructed to speak to them for not more than three or four minutes. On a podium, he then held up his watch, whose strap had just broken, and said that Julius Caesar invading Egypt had slipped on the sandy beach. An omen! Getting up, Caesar rallied his officers, “What I have, I hold.”

Vidia was a free spirit.

Ja, en køretur kan ses som en rejse og islam som værende mange ting. Men mange af de ting, er der grund til at frygte. Islam kræver magten og i så tilfælde må du sluge hele pakken. Og det er ikke blot den månedslang faste, der skal overholdes, hvis man ikke vil ‘mærke at man lever’ på sine rygstykker.