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Moroccan elections of 08 September 2021 حول نتائج انتخابات 08  شتنبر بالمغرب   محمد حصحاص، باحث مغربي مقيم بروما 09  شتنبر 2021   هذه عَشرُ ملاحظات

Mohammed Sabila, an important Moroccan and Arab scholar-philosopher, died on June 19th (1942 – 19 July 2021, Morocco) because of complications due to Covid-19. While he is little known in the non-Arabic speaking world, tributes written about him by prominent scholars that were either influenced by his work, or were his students and colleagues, are a testimony to the large role he played in introducing modern philosophy to Moroccan universities, Moroccan intellectual culture, and Arab culture at large. He was mourned in various widely-circulated Arab language newspapers, like Alaraby (London/Qatar), Aawsat (London/Saudi Arabia), Almayadeen (Beirut), Alittihad (Abu Dhabi), and many others.

If you visited the Museum of Contemporary Art in Palermo, Italy, located in the eighteenth-century Palace Belmonte Riso, in the ancient Corso Vittorio Emanuele in the city centre, a simple work of art, a painting in the stairs that lead you from the first floor to the second, reads “In the middle of” — Nel Mezzo di. It is written three times in big capital letters, in both Italian and English. Until the end of February, before the country-wide lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the first floor of the museum was dedicated to the beautiful paintings of the self-made Sicilian artist Paolo Madonia and his “Burnt Art.” The paintings reflect normal scenes of life and nature which turn out to be blurred, since they are burnt in the combustion process. Still, the reader can easily build a clear image or images out of the burnt paintings. In retrospect, one can read that message — “In the middle of” — as if it were a reading of time, and not only of space. The intent at first, most probably, was to be a reflection of the place of Sicily and Italy as being geographically situated in the “middle of” the world, if the Mediterranean were its middle, as D.H. Lawrence would write in his poem, “Middle of the World.” Now that we are experiencing the calamity of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Italy as its major victim so far, one can say that we are truly “in the middle of” this quagmire as well! Good or bad, you are always “in the middle.” Nevertheless, maybe only a “middle way” can save us.