Leyla Dakhli: Étudier les mondes arabes et musulmans, un métier à risque?, in: Le Club de Mediapart, 18 Novembre 2025, https://blogs.mediapart.fr/leyladakhli/blog/181125/etudier-les-mondes-arabes-et-musulmans-un-metier-risque.
The cancellation of the colloquium on Palestine and Europe, organized by the Chair of Contemporary History of the Arab World at the Collège de France and the Centre Arabe de Recherches et d’Études Politiques de Paris (CAREP) on November 13-14, is, we are told, a matter of academic freedom. That is true, but what does it mean in this specific case?
Reducing this debate to a question of academic freedom causes me, and perhaps some of my colleagues, a certain amount of frustration. Because it allows us to sidestep another, more fundamental question, namely that of the limits within which it is possible at all to address the current situation and history of the contemporary Arab world. What is being discussed today in connection with the war against Gaza, the settlement of the West Bank and the Golan Heights, and the numerous attacks by the Israeli army on sovereign territories is nothing new.
For us “specialists in the region,” dealing with the media is often an exercise in bewilderment, in the face of the self-assurance coupled with ignorance of our journalistic interlocutors—and I’m not even talking about our numerous academic colleagues who specialize in other topics and want to explain to us that we are concealing or exaggerating aspects of the region’s history just because they have read something about it somewhere. Far be it from me to be a know-it-all, but I note that the same journalists show more openness and curiosity when it comes to other regions of the world and other periods of history. It is as if the channel of communication between the production of verified, proven, and validated knowledge and the general knowledge available in society and public opinion has been disrupted; as if something has fundamentally gone awry in science communication.
For us “experts on the region,” dealing with the media is often an exercise in bewilderment, given the self-assurance coupled with ignorance of our journalistic interlocutors—and I’m not even talking about our numerous academic colleagues who specialize in other topics and want to explain to us that we are concealing or exaggerating aspects of the region’s history just because they have read something about it somewhere. Far be it from me to be a know-it-all, but I note that the same journalists show more openness and curiosity when it comes to other regions of the world and other periods of history. It is as if the channel of communication between the production of verified, proven, and validated knowledge and the general knowledge available in society and public opinion has been disrupted; as if something has fundamentally gone awry in science communication.
After all, it cannot be said that people do not talk and write about the Middle East. And perhaps that is why everyone thinks they know what is going on. Nor can it be said that there are not many specialists on the Arab world, including some of the highest caliber, for example in France. These specialists do indeed debate among themselves, and the debates reflect some of the tensions that are stirring up the world of research and French society. However, they are about establishing the truth; about methods and research questions. (Here, academic freedom is exercised in the strict sense, within the limits of scientific review and objection.) These scientific discussions also make it possible to reach agreement. In the academic sphere, the Israeli occupation and Israeli colonization are simply established facts and not a subject of polemic. Here, it is possible to discuss the connection between Zionism and European colonialism, or to use the term apartheid to describe how Jewish and non-Jewish societies are separated from each other in the spatial unity of Israel-occupied territories. Here, it is permissible to describe the armed wing of Hamas as armed resistance. Saying this does not mean denying the nihilistic violence of jihadist groups or putting everything on the same level. But it also allows for a comparison between situations of occupation and responses to occupation worldwide. Focusing on peaceful movements is one option, but the reality on the ground is different and confronts us with the fact that armed struggle has always been part of the history of resistance, in Palestine as elsewhere. In a discussion, one can highlight differences between the armed Ukrainian resistance fighters, the Kurdish resistance forces in Rojava, and the jihadist groups. But it is not honest to categorically reject any comparison between them, to banish terms such as “resistance” in the case of Hamas and reserve them only for experiences elsewhere. Yet this is one of the boundaries that is impossible to cross in public debate.
So what happens to us, who are accused of wrongdoing simply because we reported on the state of research and the current scientific consensus? What are we supposed to understand? That every word we say is now to be the subject of a court case?
Observing what has been happening for months and years, it seems to me that a few lessons can be learned from the many controversies:
First, we are told that not everyone is entitled to participate in the production of this scientific consensus discourse. The same analysis produced by a Palestinian or Arab researcher from the region will often go unheard until it has been validated by a European or Israeli researcher. This was the case with the investigations into the massacres of 1948, which were documented and described by Palestinian historians and witnesses, but only became acceptable thanks to the work of so-called revisionist Israeli historians. This also applied, of course, to the use of the term “genocide” to describe the massacres in Gaza, first denounced by Palestinian witnesses and journalists, then by international NGOs, and finally by Israeli figures and Western specialists in genocide studies. Why are Palestinians not considered worthy of determining and naming what is happening to them? Would this situation be understandable if a European society were affected by the crimes?
Then we are told, and perhaps this is where the academic question is most central, that the truth does not really matter. What matters is balance. A somewhat strange notion, when you think about it. In fact, whenever we describe and explain what we have studied about a sociological or historical reality, we should always consult someone who holds the opposite view. This is something I experienced regularly myself when I occasionally spoke in the media about Syria in the 2010s. When I explained how power or the Syrian society work based on the available research, I was contradicted by pseudo-experts who spouted nonsense about “confessionalism” and “radicalization” and who knows what else, all in the name of balance and confrontation of viewpoints. And, of course, without any distance, without attributing this view of society to what it was, namely the regime’s propaganda. When I hear today how cautiously my colleagues are questioned on the subject of Ukraine and Russia, even if nothing is perfect, I can gauge the distance.
So is it really academic freedom that is at stake here when the scientific nature of a colloquium at the Collège de France is called into question? Or is it rather the recognizable ultimate, undisguised (and thankfully scandalized) contempt with which scientific work produced in this cultural area is viewed? This work is certainly not all perfect, but it is based on knowledge, on skills that have often been painstakingly acquired, on familiarity with often difficult and demanding fields to which the researchers sometimes also have a personal, emotional connection. And this is the final point that I draw from observing the controversies: For researchers working on the Arab world, having strong ties to their “field of research” arouses suspicion. Yet it is this familiarity that constitutes one of the riches on which French and European research can draw. Empathy is a necessary quality for good research, as much as criticism, reading sources in their original language, and deduction. These different qualities, which are in tension with each other in the pursuit of scientific truth, are precisely those that ensure the only meaningful balance. Once again there are numerous examples from other fields that underscore the importance of proximity to the field of research. Would we be surprised if a French researcher specializing in Germany (or vice versa) spent extended periods of time there, established collaborations and friendships, and sometimes even made their lives there?
If research as a whole is threatened today by all kinds of relativism and attacks on truth, when it comes to scientific production on the Arab world, these attacks are exacerbated by the suspicion of “collaboration” with an internally constructed enemy, of which we are supposedly the fifth column. The name of this enemy varies: Islam, “Muslim Brotherhood,” new anti-Semitism, wokism… Or a combination of all of these, which literally tramples on our work, the establishment of facts and investigation of mechanisms, and casts suspicion on the very foundation of our libido sciendi, i.e., our desire to understand these societies, to describe them and make them familiar, with all their complexities and contradictions.